Wednesday, 30 May 2012

The Google Maps Slideshow Sideshow

 
The Earth is a beautiful place and thanks to Google Maps satellite view we can now virtually explore this wonderful planet like never before.

Here are a few Google Maps Slideshows that celebrate the beauty of planet Earth:

Chuchichechocha is a Google Maps satellite view slideshow developed by David Schmidt. The slideshow automatically animates through a large number of beautiful images found in Google Maps.

The application includes controls to pause or to manually navigate through the images. Each image also comes with a unique URL so you can share your favorite views with your friends.


Stratocam is a nice slideshow of satellite images that can be found on Google Maps. As users watch the slideshow they can give each image a 'thumbs up' or 'thumbs down' to show whether they like the image or not.

Users can also submit their own finds by dragging and zooming the map and clicking on the camera icon to select their favourite view. 


Aerial View Slideshow is a collection of my favorite oblique 45° imagery that can be found on Google Maps.

The application animates through a number of 'bird's eye' view images that have been found in Google's expanding coverage of 45° imagery.

Instagram on Google Maps

 
InstaBrowsr is a nice little Google Maps application for finding photos submitted to Instagram around any location. The app was knocked up over the weekend so it is a little rough around the edges (e.g. the info windows don't always expand to accommodate all the photos) but I still like it a lot.

There have been a few other Instagram Google Maps developed but the one's I've seen before haven't allowed for the same fine degree of location searching as InstaBrowser. Using InstaBrowsr you can use the Google Map to find photos around any location. So if you want to see photos of your street submitted to Instagram you just need to locate your house on the map.

You can use the map to explore photos from any location. Want to see photos of the London Olympics site? Then just navigate to 'Stratford, London' on the map. Want to see photos of the Golden Gate Bridge? Then pan to or search for San Francisco. Simple!

Google Maps Catching Diseases

 
The BioCaster Global Health Monitor is a Google Map showing outbreaks of known and emerging infectious diseases around the world. The map works by text mining over 1,400 RSS news feeds for information about emerging diseases.

You can search for news about individual diseases. It is also possible to search the map by date. You can choose to view headlines for the present day or the previous thirty days. You can also look at any specific weekly period over the last four weeks. The timeline control below the map allows you to view an animation of the past thirty days on the map.

 
HealthMap is another Google Maps based application that plots real-time infectious disease outbreaks from around the world.

The map gathers data from disparate sources, including online news aggregators, eyewitness reports, expert-curated discussions and validated official reports.

View Tweets by Location with Twitter Nano


If you want to find out what your neighbors are saying on Twitter or, if you want to view the stream of Tweets surrounding an event, then you should try Twitter Nano.

Twitter Nano allows you to watch a real-time stream of Twitter messages around any location. To use the application you just need to set the location you wish to view with the provided Google Map. The live stream of Tweets is then automatically displayed beneath the map.

You can start and stop the stream at any time by using the 'start' and 'pause'

Pin Your Media to a Map with Mapinterest

 
Mapinterest is an interesting social network built on Google Maps. The application allows you to pin media to places on Google Maps, follow other users, check-in at locations and explore places added to the map by other users.

You can connect to Mapinterest with a Twitter or Facebook account. Once you have connected you can begin adding places to the map.  One of the most interesting features of Mapinterest is that it allows you to add media to place locations. Once on a place page you can add a link to a YouTube video, a Flickr or Instagram picture or even a Pininterest page and the video or photo is automatically added to the place page on Mapinterest. 

Even if you aren't interested in joining a map based social network Mapinterest is a great way to share your videos and photographs with the world.

Nature Conservancy with Google Maps

 
TNC Maps is a collection of Google Maps from Nature Conservancy scientists, in collaboration with governments, scientists and conservation organizations around the world. The site includes over 80 global maps describing the state of terrestrial, freshwater and marine habitats worldwide. 

The maps provide a great insight into nature conservancy around the world. Users can select a map from the drop-down menu and the Google Map is automatically updated to show a heat-map of the selected data. The available data includes information on many conservancy issues, such as forest clearing, threatened species and habitat loss. 

All the data from the maps is held in Fusion Tables and can be downloaded via the link beneath the map.

Languages in Danger on Google Maps

 
The First Peoples' Language Map of B.C. Google Map displays information about the languages spoken by the 203 First Nation communities in British Columbia.

If you zoom in on an area on the map then markers will appear that show the languages spoken in that region. If you open an information window you can click through to view details about how many fluent speakers of the selected language are left.


 
Did you know that there are 192 endangered or dead languages in the United States? That figure includes Coushatta, which is spoken by 350 members of the Coushatta Tribe of Louisiana. It also includes Paviotso, which is spoken by 400 people in Oregon, Nevada, California and Idaho.

The UNESCO Atlas of the World's Languages in Danger highlights the endangered languages listed in UNESCO’s Atlas. It is possible to browse the world's endangered languages on the Google Map via a search box or by zooming into individual countries on the map.

The languages are shown on the map by coloured markers. The map markers reflect the level of danger to the language. Black markers indicate languages that are already dead, red markers those that are critically endangered.