Getting Around Athens with Google Maps

The Athens Public Transit Planner is a public transit network map of the Greek capital, which also includes a very handy trip planner.

The app consists of two main parts; a network map and a trip planner. The trip planner allows users to plan a trip using the city's public transit system. Users can set a starting point, destination and the time of journey and get detailed step-by-step transit directions. The route of the journey is also displayed on a Google Map.

The network map allows the user to view all of Athens' public transit lines. Estimated live departure times for any stop on the network can be viewed by clicking on the station name in the map sidebar. The map itself includes a clever bounding box function that ensures that the available transit lines displayed in the sidebar always reflect the lines available in the current map view.

Greek Taxi Cost Calculator

This Greek Taxi Price Calculator allows users to calculate the cost of a taxi journey anywhere in Greece.

To use the calculator, simply right-click on the map to specify your starting and destination address or use the input fields in the left hand side menu. The route of your journey will then be displayed on the map and the estimated taxi charge is displayed in the map sidebar.

The costs are calculated according to the most up to date prices and include a full itemisation of charges you can expect from your taxi trip. The charges also include the 11% VAT introduced for Athens' taxi services.

Greek Flights in Real-Time on Google Maps

Greek Aircraft Tracking

As one of Europe's favourite holiday destinations Greece sees a lot of aircraft traffic. This Google Map lets you view all the civil aviation flights over Greece in real-time.

The map shows the location of all of Greece's major airports and of all the planes currently in flight in the country's air space. If you click on one of the plane shaped map markers you can view flight details for that plane in the map sidebar.

The details include the plane's manufacturer, current heading, altitude, model and call sign.

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Greece Taxi Fares on Google Maps

Taxi Fare Calculator

This very clever Greek taxi fare calculator can work out the potential cost of any taxi fare in Greece.

Perhaps the most clever thing about this app is that it uses a traffic forecast model that updates the trip duration / taxi cost depending on the hour of day. The model predicts the amount of traffic on the roads at different times of the day and uses this to help work out potential taxi fares.

To work out a fare you can enter a starting point and a destination, or you can just right-click on the map twice to work out a fare. An interactive graph at the top of the map displays an estimation of the duration of the journey at different times of the day. You can also use the time-line slider to work out the potential journey cost at different times.

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GRNET Visualised on Google Maps

GRNET Network Topology Tool

GRNET (Greek Research and Technology Network) is the national research and education network of Greece. GRNET provides internet access to the Research, Academic and Education communities of Greece.

The GRNET Network Topology Tool uses Google Maps to show the location of the nodes on the network and to provide information about the interconnections between network devices, the interfaces' descriptions and tags along with RRD traffic graphs per interface.

The tool is also available in a lightweight version, which can be easily embedded into other websites.

The map includes some custom made zoom buttons that nicely complement the Google Maps navigation controls. The buttons allow the user to quickly zoom back to a level that displays the whole network.

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The Greek Experience on Google Maps

My Greece

This Google Map from the official Greek tourism agency hopes to encourage tourists to the country to share their holiday photographs and videos.

Users of the map can upload their favourite photos and videos of their visits to Greece. If you don't have any photos or videos from Greece you can just browse the map and explore the beauty of the country.

It is possible to browse the map by location, by category or by time of year. Each photo and video is displayed on the map with a small thumbnail image and can be viewed directly on the map by clicking the thumbnail map markers.

As an added bonus if you love this map you can access the data via an API and create your own Google Maps mashup from the content.

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Athens Taxi Prices on Google Maps

Athens Taxi Cost Calculator

This Athens Taxi Price Calculator makes good use of the Google Maps API's Styled Maps option to create a night map for the Greek capital.

To use the calculator, simply right-click on the map to specify your starting and destination address or use the input fields in the left hand side menu. The route of your journey will then be displayed on the map and the estimated taxi charge is displayed in the map sidebar.

The costs are calculated according to the most up to date laws (2010) and include a full itemisation of charges you can expect from your taxi trip. The charges also include the 11% VAT introduced for Athens taxi services in July.

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Google Map of the Week

Athens Historical Buildings

If you are visiting somewhere like Athens, Greece one of your priorities would surely be to view some of the city's historical buildings. Using the historical monuments database from EIE (Archaeology of the City of Athens) Phil Stubbings has created this Google Map showing the location of interesting architecture in Athens.

The map includes a slider navigation control that allows you to refine the buildings shown on the map by date range. So, for example, you could choose just to view buildings erected in the city in the 16th century. The map also has a good search function that lets you search for architectural styles, for example 'neoclassical'.

As well as finding the location of historically important buildings in the city you can also overlay an historical map of the city from 1890.

I really like this map. In fact it has just sneaked in at the last minute to claim the crown for 'map of the week'.

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