Saturday, June 11, 2011

Guided Video Walks with Google Maps

Walking the Edit

Walking the Edit is an innovative iPhone app that allows you to create a mapped video. It is a great way to create a guided video walk or a video about your neighborhood.

Using the app you can take a walk through a neighborhood and the iPhone app tracks your progress and stores the location of the videos that you take on your journey. When you have finished your walk the app then creates a Google Map of your route with your synchronised video.

The videos are displayed on your automatically created map by small map markers. The size of the marker represents the duration of the video at that location. When you play the video the map view synchronises to the location of the video. 

Skateboarding with Google Maps

Sk8loc8

Sk8loc8 provides a searchable Google Map of over 1800 skateparks and skateshops around the world. 

You can search the map by location and view nearby Skateparks, Recommended Parks, Skate Shops and Unconfirmed Skateparks. You can also click on the map to load nearby skating locations or to add the location of a missing skatepark.

Longboarding and Skateboarding Map

Here is a great map to help skateboarders find the best places to skate in their neighborhood. Edmonton longboard and skateboard shop Local 124 has created this worldwide Longboarding and Skateboarding Map of crowdsourced skating routes.

Anyone can add a route to this Google Map of skating spots and the map can be searched by location and by category. If you click on a map marker you can read details about the spot, rate it and leave comments.

A map sidebar lists the latest routes added to the map and it is also possible to view the locations of upcoming sessions and races on the map.

Toronto is Dangerously Trendy

Toronto is Trending

Toronto is Trending has one of the coolest welcome screens I've ever seen on a website. When you go to Toronto is Trending you are presented with a full-screen video of Toronto. Twitter speech bubbles then appear above some of the moving pedestrians in the video and follow them down the street.

If you switch to the 'map view' you can then see the latest Tweets and check-ins made in Toronto on a Google Map view of the city. The map also displays a number of hotel, ticket and package deals.

The numbered map markers let you see how many people have checked into particular venues. You can select which category of venue you wish to see displayed on the map using the icons at the top of the map.

Altogether if you want to find the most happening venues in Toronto right now then you need to visit Toronto is Trending.

Toronto’s Most Dangerous Intersections

Global Toronto has mapped out Toronto's most dangerous intersections for pedestrians. By looking at the accident history data for 1337 intersections in the city Global Toronto has been able to identify which pose the most danger to pedestrians.

Global Toronto devised an 'accident ratio' for each intersection by combining two sets of data: accidents by intersection from 2000-09 and the average daily pedestrian head-counts at each intersection.

The Google Map shows in red the intersections that have the highest accident ratio. 

Google Maps of Bangkok Traffic

Bangkok Traffic

Bangkok Traffic is a driving directions application for the Thai capital that also displays real-time traffic information.

To get driving directions you can drop two map markers on a Google Map or enter your starting point and destination into the search box. Your route is then displayed on the map and listed in the map sidebar.

Also displayed on the map is real-time traffic information, showing current traffic speeds on the city's roads. It is also possible to click on the webcam map markers to view real-time images from the city's traffic cams.