Global Reefs Map
The World's Resources Institute has produced a Google Map to highlight coral reefs around the world that are currently under threat.
The coral reefs are classified by estimated present threat from local human activities, according to the Reefs at Risk Revisited local threat index. The index classifies the threat by looking at overfishing and destructive fishing, coastal development, watershed-based pollution, and marine-based pollution and damage.
A KML of the data is also available to view in Google Earth.
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Where My Friends Be
Where My Friends Be is a nice Google Maps app to visualise the locations of all your Facebook friends. To create a map you just need to connect your Facebook account and in a matter of seconds you are presented with a Google Map showing the geographical distribution of your social network.
Friends Density on Facebook
Friends Density is another nice way to visualise the geographical distribution of your Facebook friends, this time in the form of a heatmap.
Once you sign up to the app in Facebook you can view your friends on a Google Map. You can even read your friends' latest status updates directly from the map.
Join me on the Bridge
March 8th will be the centenary of International Women’s Day. To celebrate the occasion people will be coming together on bridges all over the world, from the Millennium Bridge in London, the Brooklyn Bridge in New York City, the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco, to the Grand Barriere Bridge joining Rwanda and Congo.
Google is collaborating with Women for Women International on their 'Join me on the Bridge' campaign. Part of this collaboration includes this Google Map to help you find a bridge event near you, register, or create your own bridge event.
Via: Google LatLong
Norway's Killing Roads
Bergens Tidende have mapped the Norwegian Public Roads Administration’s database of road accidents. They have used Google Maps to plot 11,440 accidents to help give an overview of the extent and causes of Norwegian road accidents.
Each map marker contains details about the accident, i.e. time of day, type of vehicle, age of persons injured etc. Beneath the map are a large number of filters that allow you to create your own assemblies.
It is possible to view the data by year, time of day and by age. It is also possible to filter the results by the day of the week, speed limit, types of road and a number of other factors.
Via: patrickcain.ca
Maps-For-Free
Maps-For-Free has produced a nice Google Maps application that lets you view a number of relief map layers.
Not only can you use the application to view the relief maps you can add them to your own Google Maps. Maps-For-Free offers free relief maps and other additional layers which can easily be integrated into your own Google Map projects.
A drop-down menu at the top of the map lets the user select from a number of relief map layers, including forest areas, swampland, tundra and many more. The application also includes a nice snapshot tool that allows you to define an area of the map and grab a still image.
iheartmyyogi
iheartmyyogi allows you to search for yoga teachers throughout the world from a Google Map.
It is possible to select a country from a drop-down menu, enter your postcode and select which yoga styles you are interested in learning. The results are then shown on a Google Map in a radius from your selected location.
When you view the details of a teacher you can click on the teacher's location and then view the driving directions from your home or office. If you register as a teacher, you can set your location by entering your address. iheartmyyogi will geocode your address and allows you to fine tune the location directly from the map.
The Best City Hotels in the World
Last the week The Guardian published a Google Map mapping the newspaper's travel videos, called Video Breaks Around the World. This week they have created a Google Map highlighting the best city hotels in the world.
So far the paper has mapped out the best hotels in 32 cities across the world, 'hand-picked by locals and experts from San Francisco to Beijing'. The Guardian says it has plans to add more cities to the map in the future.
You can select to view a city's hotels from the drop-down menu in the map sidebar. If you then click on the individual hotel markers you can read The Guardian's review.
Street View Zombie Apocalypse
Here's the plan, we take the car. Go to Mum's. Kill Phil, grab Liz, go to the Winchester, have a nice cold pint, and wait for all of this to blow over ...
Zombies have taken over the world and, unlike in the movies, they seem to be able to run really fast. To survive you will need to outpace the converging hoardes of the undead in Google Maps Street View.
As you run around the streets in Street View you can view the approaching zombies in the inset Google Map. To stay alive you will need to outsmart them and avoid becoming trapped.
Oh, and if you want to pretend you are in Shaun of the Dead, try playing the game outside the location of The Winchester pub in the film (39 Monson Road, New Cross, London, England).
Also See
Via: Street View Funny
Room 77
Room 77 can help you book the hotel room with the best view. Using some pretty smart algorithms Room 77 is able to show you the view from different hotel rooms using images captured from Google Earth.
Using Room 77 you can check out the views from rooms in hotels in a number of US cities and in London. To show you the view Room 77 calculates the latitude, longitude, altitude and orientation of the room and shows you the view as seen in Google Earth. User submitted photos are also shown where available.
Room 77 uses Google Maps with an overlay of the hotel to allow you to see the view from different rooms within each hotel. The overlays allow you to select different room numbers and even allow you to select different floors in each hotel.
Room 77 even has its own ranking system for hotel rooms based on your individual preferences for view, floor, distance from elevator and connecting rooms. Each room is then shown on the Google Map with a color-coded match percentage indicating: "strong match" (green), "fair match" (yellow) and "weak match" (red).
Via: ReadWriteWeb
