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

Bookmark Locations App with Google Maps

Everplaces is a really nice new location bookmarking application. With Everplaces you can keep a record of all the amazing places you've been or those you'd love to try out one day.

Everplaces makes it very easy to add locations to your personal collection. You can painlessly import locations that you have saved in Google Maps. The Everplaces bookmarklet lets you easily add locations and venues that you find on other web pages. Everplaces also allows you to 'Explore' the locations added by other users and add those you like to your collections.

Whilst creating your locations collection you can easily share your favourite location finds with your friends via Twitter, Facebook and via the Everplace smartphone application.

Find a TAM Flight with Google Maps

Brazilian airline TAM has released a nice destination finder called TAM Tips. The application allows users to search for vacation destinations based on their personal preferences.

TAM Tips uses Google Maps to show possible vacation locations based on TAM airlines' destinations. The destinations suggested on the map can be refined by selecting categories of interest, for example museums and galleries, sport, music, mountains, beaches etc.

If you click on a suggested destination on the map you can then read a review of the location and view the price of a ticket on TAM airlines to the destination.

Google Maps - Your Vacation Photo Album

Travelogic is an experimental website by Gabe Morton-Cook. Gabe says the project "is intended to bring together three of my passions: Travel, Photography and Interactive Design/Development".

The application plots Gabe's travels on a styled Google Map. If you click on any of the map markers for a trip you can view a selection of beautiful photographs taken at that location and Gabe's blog post about the journey.

The map includes forward and back buttons to help the user navigate through each journey and also includes a handy time-line below the map.

Via: TNW

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Virtual Travel with Google Maps

Wandercast.TV is a travel video website that aims to allow you to "Watch where you’re going before leaving home."



If you are planning a trip you can search Wandercast.TV for great places to visit and view a video of the location before travelling. Alternatively you can of course just browse Wandercast.TV to virtually visit places in the world that you may never get a chance to visit for real.



Each video on Wandercast.TV is accompanied by a Google Map showing the location where it was shot. If you have your own travel videos then you can also upload them to the Wandercast.TV map.



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How Far Can You Fly with Google Maps?

Hungarian Airline Malev has a nice flight finder tool that allows you to select an airport, the amount of money that you are willing to pay and then view on Google Maps destinations that you can afford on your budget.

The travel finder is very easy to use. You can just click on any of the mapped airports to set them as the airport that you wish to fly from. You can set the amount of money you are prepared to pay using the slide control. When you press enter all the destinations that you can afford with Malev Hungarian Airlines are shown on the map (with the cost of flight).

You can even book your flight directly from the map.

Malev Travel Planner

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Swedish Travel Tips with Google Map

ReseEkonomen

This Swedish language Google Map provides advice and tips about the favourite tourist destinations of the Swedish around the world.

As well as providing travel tips from Mattias Varén the map also shows tips sent in by users. The yellow markers on the map indicate tips provided by Mattias and the green markers are those sent in by users of the map.

It is possible to filter the travel tips shown on the map by country and by type of holiday destination. The categories include, Family Travel, Weekend, Backpacking, Cruises and Adventure.

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Google Maps Plane, Train & Boat Directions

rome2rio

Google Maps includes a number of little Easter Eggs with suggestions for your inter-continental travel. For example, if you ask Google Maps for driving directions from Japan to China Google Maps suggests, at step 42, that you 'Jet ski across the Pacific Ocean'.

If you don't fancy jet skiing then rome2rio could be the solution that you are looking for. This Google Maps based travel search engine can help you get to anywhere on Earth with flights, trains, ferry and driving directions.

This introductory video is a great introduction to what rome2rio provides:



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Where in the World is it Safe to Travel?

The Guardian Travel Advice Map

In the UK the Foreign and Commonwealth Office issues travel warnings and advice about countries it is safe to travel to. The Guardian newspaper has used Fusion Tables and Google Maps to create a world map of the 53 countries that the FCO currently has travel warnings for.

Even if you are not interested in travelling the world the map provides an interesting view of countries currently affected by conflict or disaster. Do bear in mind however that where the FCO has issued more localised warnings, for example not to visit Ciudad Juarez in Mexico, The Guardian's map displays the whole country as unsafe.

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Finding the Best Hotels with Google Maps

The Best City Hotels in the World

Last the week The Guardian published a Google Map mapping the newspaper's travel videos, called Video Breaks Around the World. This week they have created a Google Map highlighting the best city hotels in the world.

So far the paper has mapped out the best hotels in 32 cities across the world, 'hand-picked by locals and experts from San Francisco to Beijing'. The Guardian says it has plans to add more cities to the map in the future.

You can select to view a city's hotels from the drop-down menu in the map sidebar. If you then click on the individual hotel markers you can read The Guardian's review.

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Travel Suggestions with Google Maps

Wanderfly

Wanderfly is a new travel suggestion site. Tell Wanderfly where you are leaving from, how much money you have and the sorts of activities you are interested in and it recommends travel destinations based on your preferences.

Wanderfly will recommend flights and hotels. It will also recommend places to see and visit based on your activity preferences. Google Maps is used to show the location of each of your recommendations.

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Travel Videos on Google Maps

Video Breaks Around the World

It is easy to forget what a great mapping tool Google My Maps is. Even without programming skills you can use Google My Maps to create a great Google Maps application.

This map from The Guardian newspaper is a nice example of what can be created with My Maps. The map showcases The Guardian's travel video collection, from taxi driver tours of Buenos Aires to atmospheric backstreet workshops in Istanbul.

The map uses custom map markers and allows you to view The Guardian's travel videos directly from the map. So. if you have a little time this weekend. you can while away the hours with a little sightseeing from the comfort of your own home.

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A Google Maps Guide to Hotels in Lima

Hospedate.pe

Here is the first ever Peruvian Google Maps mashup to feature on Google Maps Mania. Being one-eighth Peruvian myself I hope it is only the first of many.

Hospedate.pe is a Google Maps based guide to hotels in Lima. The map allows you to search for hotels by location and order the results by price or by the hotel's rating.

If you click on a hotel's map marker you can get details about the services provided, the address of the hotel, a link to the hotel's website and view the hotel's rating.

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Share a Travel Journal with Google Maps

Traveljournals.net

Traveljournals.net provides a simple means for travellers to share their journeys and travel photographs with their family and friends. Registered users of the site can upload their travel journals and pictures and get a unique URL that they are free to share with anyone they want.

Traveljournals.net provides a simple Google Maps interface to the journeys uploaded to the site. The map displays markers around the world where stories have been submitted. If you roll-over a map marker you can view statistics about the number of stories submitted in that region,

If you click on a map marker you will be taken to the dedicated page for the selected country / region where you can then browse the shared travel journals and photographs.

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The Hitchhikers Guide on Google Maps

Hitchwiki Maps

This isn't quite the Hitchhikers Guide to the Universe but Hitchwiki does want to be your hitch-hiking guide to the Earth. Hitchwiki is a Google Maps based wiki that allows hitch-hikers to share good and bad hitching places.

If you are planning to hitch-hike anywhere you should check out Hitchwiki before setting out to find the best places to get lifts. Good hitching locations are shown on the map with thumb icons. If you click on an icon you can dicover the spot's rating and a brief description.

Using the 'Add Place' tab anyone can share their favourite hitchiking spots on Hitchwiki. You just need to click on the location of your spot on the map, rate the location and provide a short description.

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Low Carbon Travel Ideas with Google Maps

Loco2 Low Carbon Travel

Loco2 is a new website featuring low carbon holiday and travel ideas. Currently the site is concentrating on travel routes and holiday ideas for Europe.

The Loco2 Journey Planner uses Google Maps to show the location of submitted destinations. If you click on any of the destinations you will be taken to the details of the journey. On the journey plan site for each destination you will find a Google Map that shows the steps on your journey, the estimated time of the journey and the carbon footprint.

The journey planner explains each step on the journey and also provides information for each of the locations that you pass through. The information on locations includes links to travel articles from The Guardian, 'things to do' from Qype and details about hotels and hostels.

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Share Your Travels with the World

Travellerspoint Trip Maps

Travellerspoint is an attractive and easy to use application for creating a map of your travels. Using Travellerspoint you can quickly create a Google Map to showcase a trip that you are planning or have made. The application can also be used to show all of your trips on one attractive map.

Using Travellerspoint you can quickly create a trip map, simply entering your destinations. Travellerspoint will then create a map of your trip and automatically provide background information about each of the destinations on your journey from travellerspoint's own wiki travel guide.

If you want to plot separate journeys on one map you can do that. Separate colours are used for each trip and the user can control which colour each trip gets. You can add information about each stop and you can add photographs from your trip. You can even control the curve of each trip line.

You can embed your finished map on external sites and you can share the map with your Facebook friends.

Travellerspoint currently has over 1,000,000 trip stops mapped in its system.

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Travel Warnings on Google Maps

UDBloggen

Sweden's Foreign Ministry has started a website of blogs by ministry employees. By hosting a number of personal blogs written by people working in the ministry the department hopes it will reach out to individuals and the media and keep them better informed about Swedish foreign policy. The hope is that the ministry's bloggers will lead to a more informal and faster communication of daily foreign policy work.

The new website includes a prominent Google Map of current content that is linked to a geographic area. The map shows the location of the ministry's bloggers who have recently posted,the location of embassies and any current advice about travelling to specific countries.

The content shown on the map can be refined by clicking on one of the tabs above the map. You can select to view the bloggers' posts, current travel advice or embassies. If you click on a map marker you are shown the title of the blog post, the date posted and a link to read the entry in full.

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Google Maps - Your Personal Travel Guide

Nile Guide

Nile Guide is a great trip planner and personal travel guide. The site lets you explore areas you might like to visit for hotels, restaurants and other points of interest and create your own personalised travel itinerary.

To start planning your trip with Nile Guide you just need to enter your destination. Nile Guide will then give you an overview of your destination and allow you to view Hotels, Things to Do, Restaurants, Nightlife and Events. The points of interest are even displayed on a Google Map.

To add a place you want to visit you just need to click on the 'Add to List' link and it will be added to your 'My Guide'. Once you have added a number of destinations to your travel itinerary you can then organise your guide. You can drag and drop your different picks on to different days of your trip and you can view the locations of your choices on a Google Map.

When you have completed your personal travel guide if you press 'Print my guide to go' Nile Guide will create a printable version of your very own travel itinerary.

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Guide Books on Google Maps

GuidebookPlus

GuidebookPlus is a Google Maps based index for travel guidebooks.

GuidebookPlus maps the page numbers of all the places in guidebooks, such as those published by Lonely Planet and Rough Guide. For example is you choose 'Lonely Planet: Italy' from the drop down menu and zoom in on Italy you can see the page numbers on the map relating to each location.

GuidebookPlus includes a number of other functions. If you want to buy a guidebook for your travels you can use GuidebookPlus to find which guidebook has the most places described in a certain area.

As well as quickly finding the location of places mentioned in guidebooks you can get the driving directions from one location to another, find accommodation, read Wikipedia articles and show only places of a given type of interest.


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