European Snow on Google Maps

So far it has been a bad winter for European ski resorts. Mild and dry weather mean resorts have very little skiing available. The good news is that snow has begun to fall in some of the most northern parts of Europe.

In Denmark television station TV2 are celebrating the first snow of the winter with a Google Map of readers' snow photos. The station plans to collect readers' photos and add them to the map throughout the winter.



Snow in Europe also means that Ben Marsh's #UKSnow Map has sprung back into life. #UKSnow maps Twitter mentions of snow in the UK.

Over the last couple of days the map has been showing snow around Edinburgh and Glasgow in Scotland. Today there only seems to be a little snow falling in the far north of the country.

Hat-tip: microformats.dk

Polling Results with Google Maps

Danish TV and Radio company DR Forside are using Google Maps to present the results of a poll into gay weddings in churches.

The media company carried out a poll, asking priests if they were in favour or against gay couples being allowed to marry in church. The results of the poll have been overlaid on a Google Map so that readers can see where priests voted yes or no to the question.

The map is a great visualisation of the poll's results but it does need a key. I can work out that a green overlay on the map corresponds to a 'yes' answer and red is 'no' but what does yellow mean? Does it stand for undecided?.

The map reflects the answers to three questions:

1. Homosexual couples should have same marriage rights as hetro couples?
2. If asked, will you give your church blessing to a homosexual couple that have entered into a domestic partnership?
3. Do you think that the Danish church needs a wedding ritual for homosexual couples?

The results were then calculated based on an average of each priest and of all the priests in the 98 municipalities in Denmark.

RED indicates that the priests answered 'no'.
GREEN means they answered 'yes.
YELLOW means they have answered both 'yes' and 'no'.

Coffee & WiFi on Google Maps

You can't go far wrong with Coffee & WiFi and the Coffee & WiFi map doesn't go wrong at all.

This Google Map shows the location of nearby coffee shops with free WiFi. Adding new coffee shops to the map is very easy. You can add a short review of the coffee, ambience and WiFi on offer and even post a photo with your review.

Currently the map has a lot of locations added in Denmark and it has a growing number of users worldwide.

Legoland Now in Street View

Yesterday's release of new Street View imagery, including Street Views of lots of parks around the world, contained a lot of new imagery for Denmark.

The Danish Street View imagery includes Legoland. Other highlights in the new Danish imagery include The Little Mermaid, the Tivoli Gardens and the Old Town of Aarhus



For a full list of the new Street View imagery in Denmark visit the Google Denmark Press Blog.

Hat-tip: microformats.dk

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New Danish Parliament on Google Maps

Microformats.dk has created a simple visualisation of the new members of the Danish parliament following the general election on the 15th September.

Borgen 2011 uses the Google Maps API with an image of the country's members of parliament. Using the CASA Image Cutter the photograph was turned into map tiles and mapped with the Google Maps API.

Users can now zoom in on the image and view individual MP's. The visualisation could be made even more interactive by adding event listeners to the map, so that when a user clicked on an individual MP's image an information window opened with biographical details.

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Copenhagen Bike Parking on Google Maps

Anyone who has ever visited Copenhagen won't be in any doubt about how much its inhabitants like to cycle. It is said that at least 36% of all Copenhagen citizens commute to work, school or university by bicycle.

The city council of Copenhagen has released open data showing all of the bike parking locations in the city. Soren of microformats.dk imported the data into Fusion Tables and, in less than ten minutes, he created this Google Map of bike parking locations.

The map shows 4,190 bike parking spots throughout Copenhagen, with space for 48,115 bicycles to be parked. This would probably be more than enough for most cities, however with half a million people owning bikes in the city it means that many citizens still can't park their bikes in official spots.

Soren hopes that his map will be used by those campaigning for more bike parking locations to identify those areas that need more bike parking spots.

Copenhagen Bike Parking Map

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The Google Maps Good Beach Guide

Danish public television network DR has made a Google Map showing the best beaches in Denmark.

The best beaches (and the worst) were voted for by DR's viewers. The good beaches are displayed on the map with smiley map markers. The sad markers display the beaches that received bad reviews.

You can add your own review of a beach by clicking on the map and completing a short form.

Denmark's 122 Best Beaches

Via: microformats.dk

Coast Radar

Coast Radar is a comprehensive global beach guide. Whether you are looking for a beach holiday, a day at the coast, a coastal path walk, tourist attractions or energetic sports activities, this site has all the details.

The site uses a Google Map as one way to find reviews about different beaches around the world. Finding a beach is simple with Coast Radar's map guide. Simply click on a map marker, if the marker is a cluster the map will automatically zoom in. At the lowest level you can retrieve a guide to a beach by clicking its marker.

Wetter

Do you want to know whether you should pack your wet suit before heading for the beach? Wetter is a German website that has a great Google Map that provides not only beach reviews for the whole world but can tell you how cold the water is as well.

The map uses a simple colour coded system to indicate the sea temperature of the world's oceans. The beaches are shown by beach umbrella map markers. Clicking on a map marker opens an information window that displays the current weather and rates the beach in a number of areas, such as 'sand', 'infrastructure' etc.

The site is in German only.

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Death Inequality on Google Maps

Her bliver du ældst

Danish newspaper Ekstra Bladet has created a Google Map to highlight death inequality in the country.

As in many countries, where you live in Denmark can affect how long you live. For example, in Hørsholm Kommune the average age of death is 80 years old whilst in Lolland the average age of death is five years less at 75 years old.

Ekstra Bladet has created a choropleth map to highlight the average age of death in each Danish municipality. The redder the shade then the lower the life expectancy in that area. If you live in an area shaded green then you have a better chance of having a long life.

Hat-tip: microformats.dk

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The Copenhagen Marathon Live Map

Endomondo: Live Copenhagen Marathon Map

The Copenhagen Marathon is running at this very moment. A number of the runners are carrying GPS units and you can follow them live on this Google Map from Endomondo.

The map includes a plan of the route of the marathon. Profile pictures of the runners display their current location on the course. If you mouse-over any of the profile pictures you can view the distance covered by the runner and their current time for the race.

Hat-tip: microformats.dk

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More Sweden on Google Maps

Mere Sverige

Mere Sverige (More Sweden) is a tourism promotion site for Sweden aimed at the Danish market. The site is therefore in Danish. More Sweden uses Google Maps to provide Danish visitors to Sweden with all the accommodation and sightseeing information that they will need.

The map includes some very nice features. In particular the numbered marker clustering solution is well thought out. Numbered markers show the number of points of information at a location. If you mouse-over the marker a small information window opens with preview thumbnails of the individual locations. If you click on the marker the map zooms in so that you can view the individual markers.

Markers on the map are divided into the categories of 'experiences, 'accommodation' and 'transport' and each of these categories is further subdivided. For example 'accommodation' contains sub-categories of hotels, B&B's etc.

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Find a Toilet with Street View

Find Toilet

The pissoir on Jagtvej Street

Denmark's premier toilet finding website, Find Toilet, has now added Google Maps Street View to help you in your time of need.

Find Toilet is a map of public toilets in Denamrk with some excellent search options. Using the map it is possible to find a toilet by town or by region. It is also possible to search for public toilets in a radius of any given location.

You can also search for a toilet by type, for example handicapped or unisex toilets. And now ... (drum-roll please) you even have the option to preview the toilet in Street View.

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More Street View for Denmark

As well as launching Street View in Romania yesterday Google also added about 40% more Street View imagery in Denmark. According to Soren of microformats.dk there is now about 4,3000 km of Street View coverage in Denmark.

Amongst the new areas to get Street View imagery is the island of Bornholm.

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Danish Google Maps Mashups Roundup

Find Toilet

If you are ever desperate for the loo in Denmark you will be thankful for this Google Map. Find Toilet is a map of public toilets with some excellent search options.

Using the map it is possible to find a toilet by town or by region. It is also possible to search for public toilets in a radius of any given location. Lastly, you can also search for a toilet by type, for example handicapped or unisex toilets.

Kobenhavens Biblioteker

Kobenhavens Biblioteker uses Google Maps to show the locations of libraries in Copenhagen.

The map includes real-time map markers that show not only the libraries locations but also indicate whether each library is currently open or closed. If you mouse-over any of the markers an information window opens displaying the library's address and opening hours.

If you click on a map marker you will be taken directly to the library's dedicated page on the website.

Feriepartner Danmark

Feriepartner Danmark lets you search for holiday accommodation in Denmark. The site uses Google Maps to show the locations of properties returned from any search.

You can search for holiday accommodation by date, location and by the number of beds. The location of each returned result can be viewed in a pop-up Google Map. The map also includes a link to get the driving directions to the property from any location.

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Dangerous Companies on Google Maps

Risikovirksomheder

Danish journalist Nils Mulvad has created a Google Map which shows the location of 170 dangerous Danish companies. The companies have been designated dangerous by the Danish authorities because they process chemicals, fireworks or produce weapons etc.

At first the authorities refused to release the list but Nils submitted a Freedom of Information request and the government were forced to hand it over. Nils has now published the list and this map of the companies - it is the first time the list of companies has been published in Denmark.

Nils has also published an open Google Fusion Table of the data, here.

Via: www.microformats.dk

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Street View Trike Spotted in Denmark

The Google Street View trike today started gathering off-road imagery in Denmark. Google use the Street View trike to gather Street View imagery in places where the Street View cars cannot go. Google have worked with VisitDenmark, Denmark's official tourism agency, to decide the locations the trike will visit.

One location that the trike visited today was the Rundetaarn in Copenhagen. You can see Google's trike cyclist valiantly struggling to pedal up the spiral ramp of the tower on this shaky YouTube video.

Danish website Version2 have created a nice gallery of 18 photos that they captured of the trike today.

Via: microformats.dk

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Do You Know the One-Legged Bomber?

The One-Legged Copenhagen Bomber

The Danish police are trying to identify a man who was arrested following a blast in a Copenhagen Hotel. The man was arrested fleeing the hotel after the blast. Explosives and a loaded gun were also found in his room.

The man is 25-35 years old and has only one leg. However the police have been unable to establish his identity. Danish newspaper Ekstra Bladet are using Twitter and Facebook to see if social media can help establish his identity.

Soren of microformats.dk has decided to help the newspaper by producing two Google Maps with the map tiles replaced with a profile and portrait photograph of the arrested suspect.

Warning: these two maps aren't pretty.

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Visualise Danish Datasets on Google Maps

eXplorer

eXplorer is a new tool developed by Linköping University to help visualise Danish data sets. The tool is very similar to Google Labs' Public Data Explorer in that it allows the use to visualise data with Google Maps and view a time-line animation of the data.

It is possible to visualise a number of economic datasets with eXplorer. Once you have selected a dataset from the right-hand sidebar you can view the data on a Google Map and in a number of chart formats.

If you press the play button below the chart you can view an animation of the data over time. The data is also displayed on the map with a choropleth layer. It is possible to click on any of the shaded areas on the map to see the corresponding data highlighted on the chart.

Via: microformats.dk

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The World's Happiest Countries Are ...

Yesterday I posted about Survey Mapper's happiness survey, which seems to suggest that Brazil is the happiest country. Here are some more maps exploring the 'happiness' ratings of the world's countries:

World's Happiest Countries

According to Forbes the Danes are the happiest people in the world.

Mibazaar has created this Google Map to display the results of the Forbes Happiest Countries list. The list is based on results from a Gallup World Poll that surveyed thousands of respondents in 155 countries, between 2005 and 2009.

The poll asked respondents to reflect on their overall satisfaction with their lives and asked questions about how each subject had felt the previous day. Mibazaar's map of the results uses numbered map markers so that you can tell at a glance where a country ranks on the list. The countries are also listed in the map sidebar in descending order.

Tweet Sentiments

TweetSentiments.com provides a snapshot view of the world's mood via a heat map from an analysis of Tweets. The site uses Natural Language Processing and Machine Learning technologies to analyse Tweets from around the world and then presents the results on a Google Map.

Happiness Map

Denmark also seems to be one of the happiest countries on Adrian White's Happiness Map (pdf).

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WikiLeaks War Logs Mapped - Part Four

Ekstra Bladet - Warlogs

Danish newspaper Ekstra Bladet, who have already mapped all the WikiLeaks Afghanistan warlogs involving the Danish army, have now mapped all 75,000 entries.

This Google Map uses the Maptimize marker clustering solution to map so many markers. Approximately 500 reports from the WikiLeaks documents do not contain geographic data so they obviously don't appear on the map.

Also See

• WikiLeaks War Logs
• Afghanistan War Logs: IED Attacks Map - map from The Guardian
• Afghanistan: The War Logs Map - another Guradian produced map

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WikiLeaks War Logs Mapped - Part Three

WikiLeaks War Logs

Having spent a couple of days reporting on Google Map mashups of the WikiLeaks War Logs from Afghanistan I thought I'd have a look at the war logs myself on the WikiLeaks site. Lo and behold it looks like WikiLeaks have themselves mapped all of the 75,000 US military reports covering the war in Afghanistan.

The logs are categorised on the WikiLeaks site by Type, Category, Region, Affiliation, Date and Severity. If you click through to view an individual file you can see the location of the reported incident on a Google Map placed at the bottom of the log.

Næsten 4.000 civile dræbt i Afghanistan

Danish newspaper Ekstra Bladet has been analysing the WikiLeaks War Logs for references to incidents involving the Danish army. They have created a Google Map interface to their findings showing the locations of the references to Danish soldiers.

The mapped incidents are categorised into Enemy Action, Explosive Hazard, Friendly Action, Non-Combat Event and Other. Each category is given its own category of map marker. If you click on a marker you can read the leaked war log in full.

Each information window also has a permanent link. So if you wish to share a particular war log with someone you can give them the link. When the recipient clicks on the link they will be taken to the map and to the open information window of the selected war log.

Hat-tip: Microformats.dk

Also See The Guardian's Maps

• Afghanistan War Logs: IED Attacks Map
• Afghanistan: The War Logs Map
  

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