Penguins on Street View

Antarctica 360 Street View

Google's new release of Street View last week included some stunning shots of Antarctica - and there are penguins!

I've thrown together this little application to show an automatic 360 pan of just one of the Street View images shown. When you load the page the Street View will rotate automatically. If you want to explore using Street View just press the stop button and navigate using the Street View arrows.

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Viewing the Big Picture with Google Maps

Big Picture Small World

The Big Picture Small World is a mashup of Boston.com's The Big Picture and Google Maps. The map uses the Yahoo! Query Language to grab the RSS feed of Boston.com's Big Picture series and to map the pictures on Google Maps.

The locations of the pictures are determined by the image captions and not by any geographical metadata in the images. This is pretty accurate in most cases but does lead to some of the images being mapped in the wrong location.

The picture collections that are mapped include some amazing photographs of the Earth taken from the International Space Station, pictures of India preparing for the Commonwealth Games, photographs from Oktoberfest and many more.

The Yahoo! Query Language is a powerful tool to query and filter data from websites. If you are looking to build a Google Map based on data from websites that don't provide an API but provide reasonable RSS feeds it is well worth having a look at the javascript of this map to see how it works.

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Google Map of the Week

Vodafone Hometown GP

Vodafone Hometown GP builds a 3D racetrack based on your personally designed track and then lets you race against the clock on your very own creation.

The game uses Google Maps to let you build a racetrack anywhere in the world. Just zoom in on a location and you can start building your track by laying it out on the road map of your chosen location.

When you have laid out your track you can decorate it with signs and roadside buildings. Once you have decorated your track you are ready to burn some rubber.

The game lets you race against the clock on your 3D racetrack. The game involves downloading a plug-in but it is worth it for some pretty impressive 3D graphics and some pretty impressive game-play. Don't believe me? Then check out this YouTube video:



When you tire of racing on your track you can save it and share it with the world via Twitter and Facebook.

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Graffiti on Google Maps

Graff Map

Graff Map uses Google Maps to map graffiti locations around the world.

At the moment the map mainly shows graffiti in Melbourne, Australia. Users can submit their own locations to the map so hopefully the map will have wider coverage soon. Graff Map uses Street View where available to show pictures of the submitted graffiti but users can also submit their own photographs.

The developer of Graff Map has plans to add more functionality to the map soon, including, a top 10 list, voting, comments and tags.

Graffiti Maps From the Archives

• StreetArtLocator - user contributed map of street art.
• South Central LA Graffiti Map - graffiti in South Central, LA.
• Legal Walls - map of legal graffiti walls

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Google Map of Foursquare Check-ins

Real Time Check-ins Map

This Google Map displays in real-time the locations of Foursquare check-ins shared via Twitter.

The map displays the locations of the latest check-ins made to Foursquare. If nothing else the map is interesting in that it gives a rough guide of Foursquare's penetration around the world. At the moment Foursquare appears most popular in North America, Europe, South East Asia and Japan. However Foursquare seems to have made little penetration in South Africa.

Another potential use of the map could be to zoom in on your current location and check-out who is logging in on Foursquare around you.

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Find a Cheap Flight with Google Maps

Trabber

Trabber is web service that searches online travel agencies, lowcost carriers, traditional airlines and hotel booking websites to find you the best priced flights and hotels.

Trabber has just added a new feature that uses Google Maps to display airfares. When you search Trabber without specifying a destination you can now view the offers on Google Maps. For example, you can search Trabber for all fares under $100 from New York and view all the possible destinations on a map.

The map markers on the map display the price of the flight. The markers are also color coded to indicate the quality of the offer. The darker the color the higher the discount compared with the mean value.

The map automatically updates the results shown so that when you scroll or zoom to different locations, new offers will appear dynamically around the selected destination.

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Friday Fun with Google Maps

Paris Peripherique Street View Movie

GMapify has created another video using Street View images. This one shows the whole of the Paris Peripherique.

The Fresh Prince's Driving Directions

Whoa Awesome has created driving directions for the title song of The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air.

colorMaps

colorMaps has created a color swatch using a series of satellite images from Google Maps.

GPS Controlled Lawnmower

The Mow by Sat Project have been developing a GNSS based navigation and guidance system to create autonomous lawnmowers.

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