Japan Street View - After the Earthquake

Google has updated the Street View imagery in the areas of north-eastern Japan affected by the March 11 earthquake and tsunami. More than 44,000 kilometers of the affected region now has new 360-degree panoramic imagery available through the Street View feature in Google Maps.


Onagawa, Oshika District - after the tsunami


The same view - before the tsunami

Google have also released a special website, called Build the Memory, where you can compare the before and after Street View images of the towns affected by these events.

Build the Memory really is a powerful reminder of the effect of this disaster on the homes, businesses and lives of the Japanese people. Let's hope that in a couple of years Google can update the Street View imagery again to show these towns and communities rebuilt and thriving again.

Via: Google LatLong

Traffic Alerts on Google Maps

During this year‟s floods in Victoria, Australia almost 400 roads were closed across the state. A number of road bridges were also washed away. This experience has encouraged the state to invest $924,000 in a new real-time traffic alert system.

At the heart of the new system, VicRoads - Road Closures and Traffic Alerts, is a real-time Google Map of road closures, crashes and breakdowns.

During major emergencies such as fires or floods the map will include information about all road closures. It also provides traffic alert information during non-emergency times for incidents such as crashes and breakdowns.

Via: All Things Spatial

New Aerial View Imagery for Google Maps

Google Maps now has aerial view imagery in 21 cities. Today Google added new imagery in a number of locations in the U.S. and in Brasilia, Brazil.

The new U.S. locations are:

Albuquerque (west), NM; Benton, AR; Boulder, CO; Eldridge, IA; Boston (east), MA; Centennial (south), CO; GooglePlex, CA; Indianapolis (south), IN; Las Vegas Strip, NV; Montgomery (outskirts), AL; Olathe, KA; Petaluma, CA; Tulsa, OK.

You can check-out my picks of some of the best aerial views on Google Maps in this Aerial View Slideshow.

ZDF Videos on Google Maps

Public-service German television broadcaster ZDF has created a Google Map of geo-tagged videos from their archives. ZDF - Geothek lets users browse a map for video clips from ZDF that cover both current and older events around the world.

As well as browsing the video by location a time-line allows users to browse the video by date. Users can view the ZDF videos directly from the map. The map also includes a geographical quiz and information about countries around the world.

A Street View First Person Shooter Game

Google Shoot View is pretty good fun. In essence the game is just a fire-able machine gun superimposed on top of Google Maps Street View and, to be honest, there isn't much of a game element to this app. But - is is a lot more fun than that makes it sound.

The game is embedded in a fairly accurate reproduction of the Google Maps user interface. So if you want to shoot up a particular location - you know where the search bar is (but do you know where you boss lives?).



(p.s. if anyone from Pool reads this - activate the link tag! The game would be much more viral if users could send a link of a particular location to friends.)

Light Pollution on Google Maps

One of the biggest problems for urban astronomers is light pollution. The Blue Marble Nightlights map is a Google Map that shows this problem worldwide.

Blue Marble Nightlights is a composite map of satellite images taken in 2003. Even if you aren't concerned about light pollution the map provides an interesting insight into urban centres in the first world (many non-first world cities are still relatively dark at night).

Europe and the Eastern USA are lit up like a Christmas tree. In Australia you can just make out most of the coast, whilst the interior of the country remains largely unlit.

Also See

• Earth Lights - another map of the night sky
• Globe at Night - a survey of light pollution

The Google Maps of the Week

Mapitat is a great Google Map's based application for finding properties to rent in Toronto.

It is hard to add anything new to the real-estate mapping market but Mapitat's 'Add to Favorites' is an innovative feature. If you add a property to your favorites in Mapitat list then its map marker is changed from green to red. This allows you to bookmark interesting properties as you search the map and helps you easily find them again when you want to go back and check the details on a property.


Hubii has to be the slickest and easiest to use news map that I have seen yet.

You can use the map to find local news from local newspapers anywhere in the world. You can even select which sections of the papers you wish to read.

Registered users can create their own personalised 'Mapazine'. As they browse the map they can add individual newspapers to their own personalised news reader so that each time they log-in to Hubii they can instantly view their own individual news stream.


Data visualisations have been one of the big trends this year. When done well a data visualisation can really bring dry and staid figures to life. Boston.com's Google Map of towing data in Boston is a great example of a data visualisation done well.

More than 200,000 vehicles were towed away in Boston between April 2009 and October 2011. Boston.com has created a Google Map to show where, why and when cars were towed in the city.

A heat map of the city gives a visual guide to the towing hot-spots in Boston. Users can mouse-over the map to view the total number of tows for any location. To aid users in navigation Boston.com have added to the map the names of major stores around the city.