Google Maps Go Pop

Europopped: On the Map

Not since Soren Johannessen's Eurovision Song Contest 2010 Map has so much terrible music been assembled in one place. Google Map guru Pamela Fox has created this music map to showcase the wonderful awfulness of Europop.

The map includes a large number of embedded videos of Europop songs garnered from the Europopped blog. If you click on a map marker an information window opens in which you can watch some terrible Europop videos from that country. You can also click through to read the related blog post about the song on the Europopped blog.

All joking aside, there are a couple of really interesting things going on under the hood in this map. First off, the numbered map markers (representing the number of videos mapped at that location) are created using the Google Chart API.

Secondly, instead of using the default Google Maps API information windows Pamela has used a centerbox javascript class. This custom information window opens centred in the browser window and optimises the space to display the embedded videos. 

Burning Man 2010 in Google Earth

We covered some neat things with Burning Man (a very popular annual event that is "an experiment in community, radical self-expression, and radical self-reliance") back in 2007, and they've done some more cool stuff this year.

GEB reader Jeff has shared an image that was captured by GeoEye a few days ago that shows many of the participants forming a giant peace sign around the "man" in the center of the city. Here's the pic:

In addition, GeoEye has already published a fresh image to their "Featured Imagery" layer in Google Earth. You can find the layer titled "GeoEye featured Imagery" under the "More" section of your layers. Fly to this KML and turn the layer on, and you'll see something like this:

There will likely be other imagery coming in over the next few days. If you come across anything noteworthy, share your finds in the comments below.

Check Your Social Status with Google Maps

ihood

Here is a useful site for anyone house-hunting in Germany. ihood is a website that can help you find out about a German neighbourhood. It can also help you check out the social status of your neighbours.

ihood uses Google Maps to help users explore the social environment of an area, such as purchasing power, education levels and professional status. The map also contains local points of information with user reviews.

When you search for an address with ihood.de you are shown the location on a Google Map. The map includes small markers over every house. If you click on an individual house you can view the house's social status on the ihood social thermometer.

There is obviously great fun to be had here in checking out how ihood rates the social status of your neighbours. Are you brave enough however to check out your own ihood social ranking?

AnotherEarth.org -- Two globes in one

John sent me an email last week telling me about a new project he's working on, and it's quite cool -- he calles it anotherearth. He explains it as follows:

This application gives you a number of tools with which you can easily and comprehensively compare two views of the Earth, using the Google Earth browser plugin. These include the ability to synchronize the movement of two Earths, select layers such as buildings, roads and borders for the Earths, jump to locations of your choice, undo/redo any movements, and save coordinates as a URL.

The controls are very fluid, and there are a lot of excellent potential uses for it. You can try it for yourself at anotherearth.org. What are some neat things you can do with it?

John has plans to add more features in the future, making the tool even more useful. If it were up to you, what kind of features would you add to it?

Tripline's Use of Google Geo APIs

Tripline

The Google Geo Developers Blog has a great guest post from Byron Dumbrill, Founder & CEO of Tripline. Tripline was one of my Maps of the Week last month.

Tripline allows anyone to easily create an embeddable interactive Google Map of a journey or trip. I particularly like how the map uses animated lines to connect each stage of a user created trip. In the Geo Developers Blog post Byron discusses how Tripline decided to use the Google Maps API for Flash as the best platform to combine the maps, the animations and soundtrack elements in Tripline.

Byron says that another advantage of using the Google Maps API for Flash is that it makes the created maps easy to share. One of the great features of Flash files is that they are easily embeddable (e.g. YouTube videos). The embedded Flash files also contain a full-screen option that can also greatly enhance the user experience.

The lesson for other Google Maps developers is that if you want your users to be able to embed your maps then you should seriously consider using the Google Maps API for Flash.

Tracking Hurricane Earl with Google Maps

iMap Weather

iMap weather is tracking the path of Hurricane Earl. The map also includes a great animated radar layer that shows the extent of the hurricane.

Hurricane Earl Tweets

Mibazaar has used his Tweet mapping template to produce a Google Map of Tweets about Hurricane Earl. As the hurricane progresses north along the east coast today I expect this map could get very busy.

Ibiseye
Ibiseye use Google Maps to show the path of Hurricane Earl. One very useful feature of Ibiseye is that users are able to click on points along the projected path of the hurricane and find out how close it will be, at that point, to the nearest towns and cities.

StormAdvisory
StormAdvisory use Google Maps to show the track and projected track of hurricanes. The map currently shows Hurricane Earl as an H4 category storm. StormAdvisory also features a news ticker of the latest hurricane news.

Wundermap
Wundermap are also using Google Maps to show the path of Hurricane Earl.

Friday Fun with Google Maps

I Will Kick Your Head Off

Street View in Montreal has captured this friendly warning to potential graffiti artists.

Rainbow Nation Airforce One

Google Maps has managed to catch for prosperity the inaugural flight of the Rainbow Nation's Airforce One in satellite view.

North Korea on Google Maps

Google Maps is rather blank when it comes to map data in North Korea. College Humor has decided to help Google out by filling in the gaps.