Track Your Laptop with Google Maps

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. 

Monitoring Water Aid with Google Maps

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.

The Asian Carp Invasion on Google Maps

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.

Google Maps, Fusion Tables & Elections

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.