Tuesday, February 22, 2011

Track Your Canadian MP on Google Maps

RepresentMe

If you live in Ottawa, Canada then RepresentMe can help you find out who your elected representative is and what they've done lately.

When you enter your postcode RepresentMe will display your electoral ward on a Google Map and tell you who your Member of Parliament, Member of Provincial Parliament and City Councillor are. 

RepresentMe also displays the recent activity of your elected representatives, including their recent voting record and mentions in press articles. 

A Google Map Warning of Rain

Rain Alarm

This Google Map based application will send you a warning when rain is approaching. 

Rain Alarm displays an animation of current precipitation and can warn you against approaching rain or snow. The app checks a perimeter of 75 km around your selected location every 30 minutes. If rain is approaching your location the map will then sound the alarm.

The app is currently available for the USA, Canada, Australia, the UK, Ireland, Norway, Germany, the Netherlands and Spain including the Balearic and the Canary Islands. 

Save the Pacific with this Google Map Game

Crazy Boat: The Curse of the Trash Vortex

The Pacific Trash Vortex has reached critical mass, flooding nearby seas with strange and valuable debris. A new age of sea entrepreneurship has arisen. Can you man your rusty old boat and save the Pacific Ocean from the floating debris of the Trash Vortex ...?

I've been waiting a while for someone to come up with an interesting use of theGoogle Static Maps API Styled Maps feature. It was definitely worth the wait. This Facebook game makes great use of the Google Static Maps Styled Maps feature and HTML overlays with real latitudes/longitudes to create a realistic backdrop for your challenge to clear the Pacific Ocean of the Trash Vortex. 

Echo Team has called upon some of the greatest mid-century American action serials to make a game that both harkens back to the adventures of yore and puts a new face on the idea of exploration, with an emphasis on the environmental impact of what reckless exploration means to the planet at large. 

Crazy Boat uses your Facebook profile data to give you in-game bonuses for your real-world skills and strengths. If you you post messages about the game to your Facebook wall, you might earn the Forest Ranger skill, and if you post about current events, you might score points as a Politician. 

5% of the in-game revenues go to benefit Project Kaisei, a non-profit organisation dedicated to cleaning up the real Pacific Trash Vortex. 

So, are you up for the challenge?

Rain Alarm Map

Rain Alarm Map















Get live alerts for incoming rain or snow.

The simple idea of this web map and app is to warn you against approaching precipitation like rain or snow. Therefore the app checks in a perimeter of 75 km / 47 miles every 30 minutes, if there is something approaching. Simply leave the page open in the background and you'll get notified.

Note that the map is refreshed automatically so you do not have to reload the page. The buttons on the bottom right en- or disable the animation and the alarm functionality.

The data used originates from governmental weather services and isavailable for the USA, Canada, Australia, the UK, Ireland, Norway, Germany, the Netherlands, Spain including the Balearic and the Canary Islands.

Browsers:
The alarm notifications work best with Google Chrome. For Mozilla Firefox and Microsoft Internet Explorer the alarms work as well, though they are not as pretty and intuitive.

With some browsers your location can be determined automatically or otherwise a rough estimate is used. To correct your location, simply drag the marker to be able to receive correct alarms.

Internet Explorer
You need to keep Rain Alarm as the active tab to be able to receive alarm notifications even when the Internet Explorer is minimized.

Mobile

The app is also available for Android as well as iOS.

Map:
http://www.rain-alarm.com/

Source:
http://googlemapsmania.blogspot.com/2011/02/google-map-warning-of-rain.html
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Town Namesakes on Google Maps

NSW Suburbs: What's in a name?

Did you know that 227 towns in New South Wales are named after UK towns? Well this double Google Map shows you all 227 NSW towns and shows you the location of their namesake in the UK.

The towns are displayed on both Google Maps and listed in the map sidebar. If you click on a town name in the sidebar both the New South Wales and UK map will centre on the chosen town.

If you want to produce a similar map for the namesakes of US towns you can view the code for the map at github. Alternatively you could create a dual map showing the cities/towns other cities/towns were twinned with.