Piracy Watch

Piracy Watch uses Bing Maps to help visualise piracy incidents around the globe from 1978 to present, displaying the data in both a map and timeline. The visualization also includes a heat map to give an immediate understanding of what parts of the world have been most impacted.

It is possible to click on any of the map markers to get further details of an incident. You can also click on the incidents displayed in the timeline to load the details and to see it highlighted on the map.

Piracy Watch

Facebook Events on Google Maps

FabMap

FabMap is a Czech language Google Map that helps users find interesting events. You can log into the map with your Facebook account and view your events and your friends' events geo-tagged on the map. 

It is possible to filter the results on the map to show just today and tomorrow's events, events this week or events this month. If you select one of the filter options the events are shown on the map and also listed in the map sidebar. 

You Kill It, We'll Map It!

California Roadkill Observation System

Researchers at the University of California have developed a website to provide a way for people to report roadkill. The aim of the site is to better understand and try to influence the factors that contribute to roadkill.

If you create an account with the site you can begin to start adding your own observed roadkills to the system's Google Map. The animal roadkills displayed on the map are color-coded to reflect the species of animal unlucky enough to be struck or run over by a vehicle.

Judging by the map Highway 280 into San Francisco is definitely the place to avoid if you are a medium sized mammal. The site even includes a suitably gruesome gallery of roadkill photographs.

Via: The New York Times

New imagery of the San Bruno fire

One of the most common requests we get from users--literally thousands of times each month--is that we update or improve the imagery of a certain location in Google Earth and Maps. In order to provide the freshest, highest quality data possible, we partner with different organizations such as GeoEye, Spot Image, Infoterra, DigitalGlobe, the USDA, as well as national, city and county governments. At times we also collect our own imagery using planes equipped with aerial mapping cameras.

We collect imagery to improve overall quality--especially when we want to refresh data very quickly, for example after disasters, to complement data provided by our partners. To date we’ve collected imagery in the U.S. and in Haiti following the earthquake. This past Saturday we collected imagery over the parts of San Bruno devastated by last week’s terrible gas explosion. Google's data and tools are used by many government and non-governmental organizations to assist in post-disaster recovery, as well of course by our millions of users. This San Bruno imagery is now live in Google Earth through a KML overlay link and will be part of the base layer soon.

We are committed to providing the most accurate and up-to-date data in our maps at all times and especially in post-disaster situations.

Google Map of US Light Pollution

Dark Sky Finder

The Dark Sky Finder shows the effects of light pollution in the United States. The map also displays user submitted sites which are good locations for setting up telescopes. 

Light pollution is shown on the map via a heat map overlay. User submitted sites are displayed with simple map markers. If you click on a map marker you can view details about the submitted site beneath the map. 

Users can set the light pollution layer to on or off. Users can also add their own astronomy locations to the map by completing a short form. if you find a great location on the map and you want to share it with others you can get a URL to the map by choosing 'link to this view'.

Also See

Daylight Map - Map of current current day and night time in the world. Also shows the effects of light pollution around the world.

Battle of Britain - Bing Maps

"MSN has teamed up with Shoothill to present an interactive overview of theBattle of Britain. Zoom into a mosaic of archive images and documents; compare present-day maps with maps and charts showing bomb damage during the Blitz; and view high-resolution Photosynths of iconic RAF aircraft."

Mapperz states:
"This is one of the 'Best Bing Interactive Maps' for 2010 (and 1940)"



The TimeMap is based on Bing Maps Silverlight Control. It shows original maps, reconnaissance imagery and target documents of the German Luftwaffe. You can navigate to various locations through quick links in a target list for London and Coventry.

• The TimeScope can be dragged around to explore the location
• The TimeSlider lets you switch between various historic maps and satellite imagery and the Documents.
• DeepZoom - Compositions of the original target documents within the TimeScope.

Click for large view on the Map Controls, TimeSlider and TimeScope.

View the maps here:
http://news.uk.msn.com/in-depth/world-war-two/battle-of-britain/default.aspx

cross-posted from the Mapperz blog
http://mapperz.blogspot.com/2010/09/world-war-two-battle-of-britain-maps.html

A ton more data from the Pakistan flooding

Last month, we told you about Google's quest for more data to help with the massive flooding in Pakistan.

The "Unigeo initiative for Pakistan" has been developing a network link that has a ton of data related to the Pakistan flood.

The latest version (4.1) includes a slight "pre-loaded" transparency on the layers in order to keep the underlying information visible as well as a more ergonomic search panel.

Currently, the included layers are:

• Pakistan affected districts - 2010 Aug 16
• Flooding General overview - 2010 Aug 11
• Floods in Charsadda district - 2010 Aug 02
• Situation in Kheshgi area - 2010 Aug 04
• Charsadda and Nowshera districts - 2010 July
• Situation in Hyderabad - 2010 Aug 29
• Red Cross + Red Crescent Society - 2010 Aug 29

You can get the full KML file here, or check out their site for more information.

Another great resource to check out would be local.com.pk, which has quite a bit of excellent information regarding flood relief. For example, their Hunza Landslide page is very well done, and was featured in a recent TEDxLahore talk, which you can view here.

Find a Bus Top Shelter with Google Maps

Bus-Tops

Bus-Tops is a fascinating public art project in London. Bus-Tops will be installing screens on the roofs of bus shelters across London, creating a medium for artists to show their work. Currently the Bus-Tops team is asking Londoners to choose which bus shelters they would like Bus-Tops' screens to be installed on.

If you want to suggest a bus stop shelter in London for a Bus-Tops screen you can do so by simply entering an address or postcode on the Bus-Tops Google Map. Once you enter a address you can view bus shelters near that location. Clicking on a bus top marker will bring up more information on the shelter.

In order to enable the public to make bus stop suggestions Bus-Tops have created an excellent database of London bus stop shelters. If you click on any of the mapped bus stops you can click through to a dedicated page about that bus stop. As well as viewing the bus stop's position on a Google Map you can view it in Street View, you can get a unique URL for that stop and you can also view all nearby stops.

This is a great resource to find London bus shelters. Very occasionally it is known to rain in London. So, if you are a regular user of London buses, this could be a handy resource to find a shelter whilst waiting for your bus.

Interactive Video Coming to Google Maps?

Quiksee



When I first saw Quiksee in action last year I was blown away. It seems that I was not the only one as TechCrunch say that Google is now buying Quiksee.

Quiksee allows anyone to create their own video tours and add them to a Google Map. The results are very impressive. Play the video above to get an idea of what the results look like when embedded on Google Maps.

It will be interesting to see what Google do with this new acquisition. Will we soon see a new option added to the Google Maps 'more' button? At the moment it is possible to view crowd-sourced geo-tagged photographs and videos on 'Google Maps' from Panoramio and YouTube. My guess is that we might soon have the option to view geo-tagged interactive videos submitted to Quiksee directly on the main Google Maps page.

An Eventful Google Map

Mapping Events

Mapping Events is a mashup of Google Maps and Eventful to display upcoming events by location.

You can search for events on the map by category, place and date. You can then sort the results by popularity, date, title, relevancy and venue. The results of a search are displayed directly on the map and in the map sidebar.

If you click on a map marker an information window will open with details of the event, including the date, time and venue. The window also includes a link to get further details from Eventful.