It's Snow Fun with the Open Sledding Map

If you live in the northeast of the USA then why not celebrate the recent snowfall by using and contributing to WYNC's Sledding Spots map?

You can use the map to add the location of your favorite sledding spots. You can add a review of the chosen slope and even add a photo of the hill in question to give other users a better idea of the thrills it promises. Of course you can also use the map

The New York and Boston Snow Map

The Boston Globe has created an interactive map to show the levels of snow fall in Massachusetts and New York. The Snow Totals map uses data from the National Weather Service to show the depth of snow fall in the Northeast.



If you want to know what to expect with the weather in the next week then check out Forecast. Search for a location on Forecast and you can view a detailed weather

The Bozeman Crime Reaction

There is an episode of the sitcom The Big Bang Theory in which the character Sheldon decides to relocate to Bozeman, Montana, after his apartment is broken into and robbed.

One of the reasons Sheldon has for choosing Bozman for his new home is because of its low levels of crime. Of course the first thing that happens to Sheldon on his arrival in the city is that he is relieved of all his

Introducing the New York Business Atlas

New York's Office of Data Analytics has released a Google Map to provide local businesses with information that can help them in making more informed business decisions. The Atlas should provide an invaluable guide to anyone running or planning to run a business in NYC.

The NYC Business Atlas contains information on population & demographics, local business conditions and other useful

Map Your State Senator

The Senate Address Geo-coding Engine (SAGE) is a Google Maps based application and API that is designed to provide voters with easy access to information about New York State districts and representatives.

Enter an address into the District Lookup and you can view the state district that the address falls within and discover the State Senator for the district. The senator who represents the

Historical Maps in the Digital Age

Charles O. Paullin and John K. Wright's Atlas of the Historical Geography of the United States was first published in 1932. The Atlas contained nearly 700 maps covering a vast range of social, economic and political aspects of life in the Untied States.



Most map fans will probably be familiar with at least some of the maps featured in this comprehensive Atlas of life in America. For example

Where America's Uninsured Live

The New York Times has released a Google Maps based visualization of the insured and uninsured in America. The Mapping Uninsured Americans uses census data released on December 17th to show where the uninsured live.

Users can mouse-over any county on the map to view the percentage of the population without insurance and the percentages with public and private insurance. If you zoom in on the

Visiting the Country Club with Google Maps

The Martis Camp near Lake Tahoe has released a nice Martis Camp Life map of the camp using custom map tiles. The map shows the location of available property and lots for sale at the camp.

The map was created for the camp by web developers seesiterun. The map is fully integrated with WordPress which means that the map markers and the information windows can be easily updated by the client, who can simply use the WordPress posting format to update the map markers and information.

How a Trails Map Should be Made

The Nature Valley Trail View is a beautiful map of trails in the Grand Canyon.

The map includes a number of trails, each of which can be experienced with a glorious animated custom Street View tour. If you click on the menu link you can select any of the trails and then virtually walk the trail with custom Street Views of the whole trail.

Each tour includes an option to animate a walk on the trail, so you can just sit back and watch as you walk the trail with custom Street Views. Below the Street View is an altitude graph and a compass rose is also provided.



The Nature Valley Trail View Grand is a great example of what can be achieved with the Google Maps API. I'd almost go as far as to say it nearly matches the beauty of the Grand Canyon itself.

Hat-tip: Street View Funny

Commercial Real Estate on Google Maps

42 Floors is a nicely designed commercial real-estate Google Map.

Using the map it is possible to search for commercial properties by location, price and by size. Two slider controls allow the user to select the square feet and price range that they are interested in and the resulting properties are displayed on the map.

If the user clicks on a map marker they can get the full details about the property and even view it on Street View.

NPR Signal Coverage on Google Maps

NPR Labs has launched a new Google Maps based Broadcast Signal Mapping System to show the reception coverage of all public radio and television stations in the USA.

If you zoom in on a location or use the search function to search for a city the available stations will appear in the map sidebar. Alongside the station name are icons representing the available coverage overlays that can be viewed on the map.

The map also includes a demographics tab. The demographics tab provides information about the population covered by each station listed in the map sidebar.

Solar Grid Parity on Google Maps

Energy Self-Reliant States has created an animated Google Map to show how "within a decade 100 million Americans could get cheaper electricity from rooftop solar".

Re-mapping Solar Grid Parity shows when major metropolitan areas are likely to be able to beat grid prices by using solar power. The map includes an animated timeline that adds the metropolitan areas to the map when they are likely to reach the tipping point of solar power being cheaper than grid prices.

This map includes the 30% federal tax credit for solar power. If you want to see when areas will reach grid parity without taking into account the federal tax credit you can use the original Mapping Solar Grid Parity Map.

Poverty Maps of the U.S. & UK

Last year The Guardian newspaper created a US Poverty Map.

Using data from the 2010 U.S. census the map shows the percentage of people living in poverty in each state. The map also includes layers to display the number of workers in each state earning below the minimum wage, those without medical insurance and the median wage in each state.


Today The Guardian has created a similar Poverty Map of England. The England Map, using data from credit ratings company Experian, displays poverty indicators for each of the 326 local authorities.

The map includes layers to view child poverty, the risk of long-term unemployment and low income in each authority.

Pumps About Town with Google Maps

Shoes About Town is an inspired promotional campaign from New York shoe salon Bergdorf Goodman.

The promotional campaign encourages people to take an Instagram photo and then to post it on Twitter with the hashtag #BGSHOES. The photos of the shoes then appear on a great looking custom map, created using the Google Maps API.


I suspect that the inspiration for the design of the hand-drawn type zoom controls on the Bergdorf Goodman map and the idea for the map may owe something to Mike Gleason's tutorial Create Zoomabable Images with the Google Maps API.

Mike's tutorial explains how you can create a Google Map replacing the normal Google Maps map tiles with your own image.


The promotional campaign may also have been partly inspired by Zappos, the online shoes retailer. In 2009 Zappos created a real-time map of orders placed on the Zappos website called Zappos Map.

Zappos add photographs of their product being brought in real-time on a Google Map of the United States. If you click on any of the photographs on the map then you are taken to the web page for that product (and Zappos presumably hope you will be tempted to buy the product yourself). This is a little trick that the Bergdorf Goodman map is missing at the moment.

If I was Bergdorf Goodman I would add links from the photos of their shoes on the map to the product's page on their online store,

Recycling Google Maps Directions - Chicago

Recycle City Chicago helps citizens of the windy city find the closet recycling drop-off center from their location.

The application was the winner of the Green Opportunities Award in the Apps for Metro Chicago competition and it easy to see why. If users enter their address into the Google Map they can get turn by turn driving directions to their nearest recycling center.

If you click on a recycling center's marker on the map you can view the opening hours and the materials that can be recycled at the center.

How Good is Your Congressman's Vocab?

Words with Reps: Map of Vocabulary on the House Floor is a map to display the breadth of vocabulary of each of the nation’s 435 voting Representatives based on their speeches in the House.

The map shows each Representative's 'SQPD Ranking', measuring their usage of 3,393 different words that might be found on the SAT. The Congressional Record, the official record of the proceedings and debates of the United States Congress, was used for the textual analysis of each Representative's vocabulary.

So how does your Representative rank?

Not a Google Map

Very, very rarely an on-line map that doesn't use the Google Maps API is so beautiful that I have to write about it on Google Maps Mania.

This wonderful Flash built map from Envisioning Development falls into that category. The map allows users to select New York City neighborhoods and view a bar chart of the number of families in each income group displayed at the bottom of the map.


I liked this map visualisation so much that last year I tried to create something similar using the Google Maps API. My U.S. Population Map is nowhere near as accomplished as the Envisioning Development map but I think it does point towards how a similar interface could be built using the Google Maps API.

The Cartography of Safe Sex

The Where Did You Wear It map from Planned Parenthood of the Great Northwest is designed to promote safe sex. Users of the map are asked to check-in and report where they last used a condom. Reported check-ins (adjusted for anonymity) are then added to the map.

The map will hopefully prove useful in promoting the issue of safe sex but I'm guessing it could also prove useful to Planned Parenthood in targeting their support.

Users are asked to give a few details such as age, sex, the nature of the sexual encounter and the reasons why they used a condom. This data coupled with the location data could prove useful to Planned Parenthood in targeting their sexual health campaigns.

Hat-tip: Street View Funny

The Google Maps API as a GIS

The Kentucky Land Use Map is a very impressive Google Map from The University of Kentucky College of Agriculture. It is another great example of the Google Maps API being used as a fully functioning geographic information system.

The map allows the user to view a number of land use data clouds directly on the map. The layers include soil boundaries and flood zones. It is also possible to click on the map and view the NRCS soil survey data for the chosen location.

Google Maps of Phytophthora Infestans

Phytophthora infestans causes the serious potato disease known as late blight or potato blight. The organism can also infect tomatoes. The IPCC Tomato-Potato Smith Late Blight Map shows the current conditions for the disease throughout the United States.

The map uses three colors of map marker to show where there are currently low conditions for the disease, where spores are forming and where infection is possible. The map is updated daily and it is possible to view the daily maps produced going back to 2009.