Google Maps has added a fuel cost calculator to driving directions on Google Maps in Europe. At the moment the estimated fuel costs seem to only appear in driving directions in Europe and not in the USA, Canada nor Australia.
The fuel cost estimation appears at the bottom of the driving directions in the map sidebar. If you click on the estimation a calculator opens allowing you to adjust the price, the type of vehicle you drive or switch between petrol and diesel.
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Earth Snapshot
Earth Snapshot is a website dedicated to the observation of the Earth. The site posts daily satellite images and provides information on storms, hurricanes, fires and meteorological phenomena.
The website includes a map created with the Google Maps API and satellite images from the Envisat satellite. The map also includes map markers to show the location of the last 100 articles on Earth Snapshot.
The articles take a closer look at the most interesting of the latest satellite images. The map markers are categorised to indicate if the related article concerns the weather, environment or a fire etc.
Subway Symphony Map
Alexander Chen has built a New York subway map in HTML5 and Javascript. That in itself is impressive but Alexander has improved on Vignelli's subway map by turning the subway lines into the strings of a musical instrument. The strings are played by the movement of the subway trains.
Atlantis Found on Street View
Weekly World News claim to have found the lost city of Atlantis on Google Maps. Whatever you think of Weekly World News' Photoshop skills their claim is at least more convincing than this attempt by the British newspaper The Sun to claim to have found Atlantis in Google Maps' bathymetry imagery.
MacGyver - How to use a Map
In this episode of MacGyver the eponymous hero shows us why Google Maps will never fully replace the good old traditional paper map.
Via: @druidsmith
OpenFile
OpenFile is a new collaborative community news site for Canada. Anyone can submit a story to OpenFile and reporters are then assigned to the story. However anyone can add comments, images, video and helpful links to the story.
Currently OpenFile covers four cities: Vancouver, Hamilton, Toronto and Ottawa. The dedicated page for each city includes a Google Map that shows the location of the user submitted stories.
If you select any of the map markers you can then click through to read the story in full. The web page for each story also includes a smaller Google Map highlighting the location of the story.
