Naming Cape Town with Google Maps

Name Your Hood is an interesting crowd-sourced attempt to name the various districts of Cape Town, South Africa.

Using Name Your Hood you can take a virtual stroll through Cape Town. Blue markers show the names of various stores that are shown in the Street View. If you click on a marker you can visit the store's website.

You can also have a go at naming a Cape Town neighborhood. Just click on one of the defined districts on the Google Map of Cape Town and enter your creative name for the area. All the submitted hood names will then be put before a panel of architects, planners, musicians, local celebrities, city officials and historians.

The panel will create a shortlist of the best names chosen by each community. From this shortlist the best name for each neighbourhood will then be decided by public vote.

Name Your Hood

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World Cup Opening Goal Mapped

I couldn't resist mapping the first goal of the 2010 South African World Cup (and what a goal it was).


The map shows how Dikgacoi (D) bypassed the Mexican defence with a beautifully weighted pass ahead of Tshabalala (T) who fired home from 15 yards, out wide in the Mexican penalty area.

I used the Static Maps API v2 Wizard to create the map on top of the Google Maps satellite image of Soccer City. Click on the image above to see the static map in full size.

I could improve the map I guess by adding the positions of the Mexican defenders (but I think that not even they are sure where they were).

The other alternative could be to overlay a Flash movie of a football on top of the Street View of the Soccer City stadium, but that might just be a little too cheesy.


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Google World Cup Marketing Map

Google's World Cup Venue Map

Mapperz has a nice round-up of South Africa World Cup maps. I must say I wholeheartedly agree with his choice for the award of Best Individual Map.

Included in Mapperz's collection is this map from Google, that somehow has previously managed to evade my radar. The map has links to all the host cities of the South Africa World Cup with markers showing the locations of the stadium and local points of interest.

The information windows include links to open the Street View for each of the mapped locations.

If you want to view the Street Views of each of the stadia you can also view them on Google's Street View Gallery.

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World Cup Venues in Street View

World Cup Venues in Street View

Mibazaar has quickly put together this Street View, Satellite View and YouTube mashup of the 2010 South Africa World Cup Venues.

The map animates through each of the 2010 World Cup venues, showing the Google Maps satellite view and the new Street View of the stadium. A YouTube video of each stadium is also provided for each of the satellite views.

Street View SA

Street View SA is a new website that has been created to collect all the weird and wonderful Street View finds that people come across whilst browsing Google Maps in South Africa.

The site has already begun to put together a handy collection, with a little help from its readers.

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Chapman's Peak in Street View

South African Tourism and Google held a competition to vote for the locations that you would most like to see visited by the Street View trike in South Africa.

The winners were Chapman's Peak, Kruger National Park, and the Blyde River Canyon. Checking out today's release of Street View in South Africa it seems that, so far, only coverage of Chapman's Peak and Kruger Park has been released. However the Street View trike is sure to have visited a few other locations, such as the Kirstenbosch National Botanical Gardens.

Chapman's Peak Drive

Chapman's Peak Drive is one of South Africa's most scenic routes. Now that South Africa has Street View you can take a virtual tour of this breathtaking coastal road.

Kruger Park

Kruger National Park is one of the largest game reserves in Africa. With this release of Street View you can now go on a virtual safari.

Kirstenbosch National Botanical Gardens

Hat-tip to Street View Funny for this shot of the Botanical Gardens.

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Toyota Adds Street View in South Africa

Toyota: Find a Dealer

Toyota have the honour of being the first website that I've discovered to implement support for Street View in South Africa.

Toyota use Google Maps to allow customers to search for Toyota dealers and Toyota parts suppliers in South Africa. The maps include an option to get directions to a dealership from any location. The driving directions allow you to view the route before setting out entirely in Street View.

The Street View driving direction option is a fairly faithful reproduction of Thor Mitchell's Street View Driving Directions, which is available in the Google Maps API V2 Demo Gallery.

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South African Safari on Google Maps

Google have become very fond of capturing Street Views in zoos. The new South African Street View coverage includes imagery from Johannesburg Zoo.

Here are some of my African safari finds:

African Elephant


Pelican & Homo Sapiens Cubs


Flamingo


Lion

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Street View Released in South Africa

Street View has gone live in South Africa. A quick scan of Google Maps seems to show coverage for most urban areas in the country.

Soccer City

The 2010 World Cup venues seem to all have been captured, both outside and inside the stadia.


Soccer City - from the inside


Moses Mabhida Stadium


Palace of Justice


Cape Town from Table Mountain


Church in Graaff-Reinet

If you want to check out the latest Street View sights from around the world then visit these websites:

Street View Gallery
Google's very own Street View gallery has put together a collection of all the Street Views of the 2010 World Cup stadia.

Google Sightseeing
I'm sure Google Sightseeing will be springing into action soon to start publishing all the weird and funny sights that people find in the new Street View imagery from Brazil and South Africa.

Street View Fun
Street View Fun is another great destination to keep up with the latest sightings found in Google Maps Street View.

Streetviewer
I've updated my collection of Street Views from around the world to show a few sights from South Africa.

Church Square, Pretoria Street View Tour

Church Square, Pretoria

This Street View tour of Church Square in Pretoria uses the new Street View feature in Google Maps API v3.

Street View in v3 allows map developers to show map markers within the actual Street View itself. This is very useful for creating a tour within Street View to give information about an area.


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South Africa World Cup on Google Maps

The 2010 World Cup starts this week in South Africa.

Mibazaar has been busy creating three Google Maps Mashups to help you keep up with the latest news from the competition.

Team News Map

This map brings you the latest team news from the 32 competing teams. To get the latest news for any of the teams just click on the football shaped map markers that are placed over the individual countries.

The news comes from a Google News feed with more news provided by the World Cup Blog.

Geo-Tagged Videos
This map shows the latest geo-tagged videos from YouTube. Presumably this map will get even more interesting once the competition gets under way.

World Cup Tweets
This Google Maps mashup geo-tags the latest messages from Twitter that are about the 2010 World Cup. You can choose to view Tweets from different parts of the world by selecting from the menu on the left of the map.

Also See

• World Cup Stadia - aerial imagery of each of the World Cup stadium

• 2010 FIFA World Cup Map - vote for your team with this Google Map

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2010 World Cup on Google Maps

2010 FIFA World Cup Map

Mapize have created a Google Map for the 2010 FIFA World Cup in South Africa.

The map is made from the results of a competition run on the Sports Facebook Page to encourage football fans worldwide to vote for their favourite countries. The map shows the votes cast for each of the countries. If you haven't voted already it is possible to vote for any country directly on the map by clicking on the country's map marker.

The map includes World Cup participation details for each of the 32 countries on the map and information about the 10 South African stadiums that will host the World Cup. The map also includes Tweets about the World Cup.


Also See

World Cup Stadia

A Google Map that lets you view the new aerial (bird's eye) view imagery of each World Cup stadium alongside a video of the same stadium from YouTube.

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World Cup Venues in Aerial View

World Cup Stadia

I was checking out the 2010 South Africa World Cup venues in Google Maps today and noticed that most of the new stadium now appear in Google Maps Aerial View.

I have quickly thrown together a Google Map that lets you view the new aerial (bird's eye) view imagery of each stadium alongside a video of the same stadium from YouTube.

Forgive the look of the page, I literally threw it together in 30 minutes, but I think it works OK. When Google releases the Street View imagery for South Africa (which I'm guessing will be in the next few weeks) I'll add the Street Views for each stadium as well.

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