Prey
Prey is a great way to recover your laptop or phone if it is stolen. If your laptop is stolen and you have have signed up to Prey you can track your computer with the help of Google Maps.
Prey uses either your device's GPS or the nearest WiFi hotspots to triangulate and grab a fix on its location. It can then show you the location of your stolen property on a Google Map. All you have to do then is report the thief's address to the police and await the return of your computer.
Prey also comes with some other handy features, such as being able to take a photo of the thief with your laptop's webcam or being able to take a screenshot remotely (perhaps catching the thief's name whilst they are on online).
Storify has a really interesting account of how someone managed to recover their stolen laptop with the help of Prey and some Twitter friends.
Flow
Water for People is a charity helping people in developing countries through the development of locally sustainable drinking water resources, sanitation facilities, and hygiene education programs.
Water for People are using remote technology to display real-time reports about whether their water and sanitation projects are working or failing. The map allows field workers, volunteers and others to record data from tens of thousands of water points around the world.
Flow uses categorised markers to show which projects are currently functioning, broken or functioning with problems. The links in the map side-panel allow users to quickly zoom to Water for People's different projects around the world.
Asian Carp Map
Reporter Tina Lam and photographer Brian Kaufman have embarked on a 13 day journey through seven states to track how far the invasive species of the Asian Carp are getting to the Great Lakes.
A Google Map is being updated regularly with photographs and reports of their findings. The map includes a time-line so that you can follow the pair's progress chronologically as well as geographically.
If you click on any of the mapped photographs an information window opens so that you can read the submitted report. You can also click through to read the story on the Detroit Free Press.
Canada & UK Post-Elections Round-up
Patrick Cain this week has spotted some post-election Google Maps from theVancouver Sun and The Guardian.
In Canada the Vancouver Post's map looks at the loss of seats by the federal Liberal party in British Columbia, whilst The Guardian maps the results of the British referendum on the Alternative Voting system.
The Guardian's map shows how there was very little support for the Alternative Voting system outside of a few London boroughs, the university towns of Oxford and Cambridge and central Glasgow and Edinburgh.
The Google Places API is now on general release and a Places Library has been added to the Google Maps API.
The new Places Library allows map developers to display venues in Google Places on a Google Map. The venues can be added either via a bounding box or within a radius of a centre point. The displayed venues can be refined by type (e.g. gym, food, zoo, art gallery etc) or by name (e.g. Starbucks).
The Places Library can also display details about the returned venues, including full address information and user ratings.
The Places Library for the Google Maps API doesn't seem to support check-ins. So if you want to give your users the ability to check-in at venues it looks like you will have to use the Google Places API itself with your Google Maps.
Via: Google Geo Developers Blog
Groupon Now
Groupon has finally turned on location and has become a lot more useful in the process. Groupon Now lets you view the nearest deals to your location on a Google Map. It is available both from your desktop and from your mobile device.
Actually Groupon Now is a bit of a misnomer. It should more accurately be called Groupon Later because, for now, it is only available in Chicago. If you are lucky enough to live in the Windy City then you can enter your address and search for deals by category.
The results of your search are displayed on a Google Map and each deal comes with a timer informing you just how long you have left to redeem your deal. The application works really well and, once a few more cities are added, should help to cement Groupon's position as the leading deal-of-the-day provider.
PigeonMap
Pigeon Map is a free classifieds website that uses Google Maps to let you find classified ads near your location.
The classified ads come in many categories with advanced search options. You can search by location and by category, including 'deals', 'events', 'jobs' and 'for sale'. Results of a search are then displayed on the map.
Users can also post their own classified ads to the map by completing a short form.
Radiactivdad
Since the recent disaster at the Fukishima Nuclear Power Plant we have seen a number of Google Maps that show the location of nuclear power plants around the world.
For example Zeit-Online created the American Nuclear Power Plants Map to show how many Americans live near nuclear power plants. Another trend has been to create Google Maps that display radiation measurements.
Radiactivdad is a Google Map that displays the locations of Spain's nuclear power plants and also the results of radiation monitors in the country that have been connected to the web using Pachube.
