The Banff Triathlon on Google Maps

Banff Triathlon Course Map

Banff Hotels has used Google Maps to create this Subaru Banff International Triathlon route map. The triathlon is being held on September 11th.

The map shows the route of the bike and run routes and the starting locations for the running, biking and swimming stages. The bike and run stages are shown in different colours.

In satellite view the map does a great job of showing the spectacular Canadian Rockies setting for the race.

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Google Maps Go Pop

Europopped: On the Map

Not since Soren Johannessen's Eurovision Song Contest 2010 Map has so much terrible music been assembled in one place. Google Map guru Pamela Fox has created this music map to showcase the wonderful awfulness of Europop.

The map includes a large number of embedded videos of Europop songs garnered from the Europopped blog. If you click on a map marker an information window opens in which you can watch some terrible Europop videos from that country. You can also click through to read the related blog post about the song on the Europopped blog.

All joking aside, there are a couple of really interesting things going on under the hood in this map. First off, the numbered map markers (representing the number of videos mapped at that location) are created using the Google Chart API.

Secondly, instead of using the default Google Maps API information windows Pamela has used a centerbox javascript class. This custom information window opens centred in the browser window and optimises the space to display the embedded videos.

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Check Your Social Status with Google Maps

ihood

Here is a useful site for anyone house-hunting in Germany. ihood is a website that can help you find out about a German neighbourhood. It can also help you check out the social status of your neighbours.

ihood uses Google Maps to help users explore the social environment of an area, such as purchasing power, education levels and professional status. The map also contains local points of information with user reviews.

When you search for an address with ihood.de you are shown the location on a Google Map. The map includes small markers over every house. If you click on an individual house you can view the house's social status on the ihood social thermometer.

There is obviously great fun to be had here in checking out how ihood rates the social status of your neighbours. Are you brave enough however to check out your own ihood social ranking?

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Tripline's Use of Google Geo APIs

Tripline

The Google Geo Developers Blog has a great guest post from Byron Dumbrill, Founder & CEO of Tripline. Tripline was one of my Maps of the Week last month.

Tripline allows anyone to easily create an embeddable interactive Google Map of a journey or trip. I particularly like how the map uses animated lines to connect each stage of a user created trip. In the Geo Developers Blog post Byron discusses how Tripline decided to use the Google Maps API for Flash as the best platform to combine the maps, the animations and soundtrack elements in Tripline.

Byron says that another advantage of using the Google Maps API for Flash is that it makes the created maps easy to share. One of the great features of Flash files is that they are easily embeddable (e.g. YouTube videos). The embedded Flash files also contain a full-screen option that can also greatly enhance the user experience.

The lesson for other Google Maps developers is that if you want your users to be able to embed your maps then you should seriously consider using the Google Maps API for Flash.

Via: Google Geo Developers Blog

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Tracking Hurricane Earl with Google Maps

iMap Weather

iMap weather is tracking the path of Hurricane Earl. The map also includes a great animated radar layer that shows the extent of the hurricane.

Hurricane Earl Tweets

Mibazaar has used his Tweet mapping template to produce a Google Map of Tweets about Hurricane Earl. As the hurricane progresses north along the east coast today I expect this map could get very busy.

Ibiseye
Ibiseye use Google Maps to show the path of Hurricane Earl. One very useful feature of Ibiseye is that users are able to click on points along the projected path of the hurricane and find out how close it will be, at that point, to the nearest towns and cities.

StormAdvisory
StormAdvisory use Google Maps to show the track and projected track of hurricanes. The map currently shows Hurricane Earl as an H4 category storm. StormAdvisory also features a news ticker of the latest hurricane news.

Wundermap
Wundermap are also using Google Maps to show the path of Hurricane Earl.

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Friday Fun with Google Maps

I Will Kick Your Head Off

Street View in Montreal has captured this friendly warning to potential graffiti artists.

Rainbow Nation Airforce One

Google Maps has managed to catch for prosperity the inaugural flight of the Rainbow Nation's Airforce One in satellite view.

North Korea on Google Maps

Google Maps is rather blank when it comes to map data in North Korea. College Humor has decided to help Google out by filling in the gaps.

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Over the Rainbow with Google Maps

OMG Rainbows!

♪♫ Google Map's the only thing / To take you over the rainbow to the land where cartography is King. ♪♫

I love discovering new uses for Google Maps and I'm pretty sure that this is the very first rainbow predictor to feature on Google Maps Mania.

The map uses the regularly updated National Weather Service radar mosaic to find where rain is falling and combines that with current solar elevation and azimuth to show areas that have a high potential for rainbows. The areas that have a potential for rainbows are shown in red on the map.

You can quickly zoom into an area marked in red or you can use the search engine to look for rainbows near your current location. And who doesn't want to search for rainbows?

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