Track Your C##p With Google Maps

Flush Tracker

Apparently today is international Toilet Day. In celebration of this glorious occasion Domestos have released this Google Map that allows you to track your 'flush'.

To use the application you simply need to enter a postcode and the time of your flush. You can then watch in real time as the map shows an animation of your flush from your home, through your local sewage network to its final destination.

Flush Tracker currenty works in the UK, Ireland, Poland and South Africa.

Happy Toilet Day!

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Real-Time German Buses Map

Real-Time Reutlingen Buses Map

This real-time Goggle Map shows the current location of every bus in the German city of Reutlingen.

The map shows the city's bus routes with coloured polylines. The location of each bus-stop on each line is also clearly shown. The location of all buses on the network is shown in real-time with animated bus icons. If you click on any of the bus icons you can receive information about the bus' number and its current destination.

In the future the developer plans to add a real-time traffic overlay and live tracking of regional trains.

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Fusion Tables

Spatial Queries

The spatial queries that were recently added to Fusion Tables mean that it is now very easy to create a very powerful Store Locator using just Google Maps and Fusion Tables. If you have a Fusion Table that contains your store data you can easily create a Google Map that will load the stores within a defined area or load the nearest stores to a given location.

Using the bounding box spatial query you can load points within a predefined area. You can also use the 'distance' query to load the stores nearest to a given point.

Load Nearest Points

We can use the getCenter function to get the latitude and longitude at the centre of the map. It is then possible to load the nearest points of interest in our Fusion Table to this point. The following function will load the ten nearest points to the current centre of the map.

function loadNearest() {
layer.setQuery("SELECT Country FROM 188044 ORDER BY ST_DISTANCE(Country, LATLNG( " + map.getCenter().lat() +', '+ map.getCenter().lng() + ")) LIMIT 10");
}

We can then add a button to the map to call the function with

onclick="loadNearest()"

Bounding Box

It is now also possible to easily create a bounding box with Fusion Tables. Using a bounding box we can define an area on the map and load in all the points from a Fusion Table that fall within that area.

function boundingBox() {
layer.setQuery("SELECT Country FROM 188044 WHERE ST_INTERSECTS(Country, RECTANGLE(LATLNG(35.77, -12.57), LATLNG(66.6, 37.3)))");
}

We can add a button to the map to call the bounding box with:

onclick="boundingBox()"

This Spatial Queries demo shows the bounding box in action. To add the 'ditance' query just add the code I have outlined above.

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Street View Expands in Germany

Street View has expanded in Germany to cover 20 cities.



The cities that now have Street View coverage on Google Maps in Germany include the capital Berlin, Dresden, Bonn, Essen, Frankfurt, Cologne, Hamburg, Hannover, Munich and Stuttgart.

Mapcrunch

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It's Street View but Is it Art?

The Nine Eyes of Google Street View


Artist Jon Rafman was so inspired by Google Street View that he put together this collection of images found by scouring Google Maps.

The collection showcases some of the beautiful images he has found but also exploers the more seedy side of life that can sometimes be found on Street View. Of course Jon Raffman isn't the first artist to be inspired by Street View.

Apres Garde

There are quite a few websites that collect fun and interesting finds from Google Street View. None of them however find quite so many beautiful shots as Apres Garde.

Matt Bucher recently wrote a guest post for Google Sightseeing explaining the rationale behind his personal choice of Street View images. He certainly does seem to have a good eye for the artistic shots captured by the Street View cameras.



I'm sure Apres Garde would be a great source of inspiration to the Street View artists out there. Such as Lehel Kovács, an Hungarian designer uses Google Street View as the starting point for his cityscapes.



Similarly, if you wish to take part in Bill Guffrey's Virtual Paintout I'm sure Apres Garde will get your creative juices flowing.


The Virtual Paintout is a blog that encourages the use of Google Street View as a resource for virtually travelling the world to find interesting locations and subjects to paint. Each month Bill sets a location and participants have to find an appropriate Street View from that location and paint the found image.

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Skiing with Google Maps

SnowTrax

SnowTrax is a ski destination search engine that uses Google Maps to show you the location of ski accommodation.

Using SnowTrax it is possible to search ski resorts by price, date and location. It is also possible to search five mountains at the same time allowing you to find the best deal.

SnowTrax can suggest resorts based on terrain style, snow quality, the après ski scene, and more. You can also compare hotels based on their proximity to ski lifts and bus stops. Each individual hotel is displayed using Google Maps so you can even check out the location for yourself.

Interactive Resorts

Interactive Resorts is a Google Maps mashup that allows users to search for chalets, ski lift information, lift pass offices, ski school meeting points and tourist information centres in major European ski resorts.

Accommodation for each ski resort is listed in the map sidebar and can be sorted by price, number of rooms and by rating. Clicking on a property's map marker opens an information window with details, photographs and price and availability information.

Estim Friends
Estim Friends is a ski and snow resort guide. The site includes a Google Map mashup that allows users to search for ski resorts around the world.

The map loads details for different levels of zoom, giving a continental or a country overview. At the country level individual ski resort are displayed on the map. Clicking on a map marker will load an overview of conditions at that resort.

theholidaylet.com

It is possible to search the 1,700 holiday rentals listed on theholidaylet.com via a handy Google Map. You can refine a search by property type, various options (Internet access, pets permitted etc) and by date.

The map uses marker clustering to ensure the fast loading of the 1,700 properties. Clicking on a map marker opens an information window with a photograph and brief description of the property and a link to the full details.

HotelByMaps.com
HotelbyMaps.com lists over 95,019 hotels worldwide. To use the site just enter your desired location into the search box and HotelsByMap.com returns a Google Map of the location showing all the available nearby hotels.

The hotels are also listed in the map sidebar. It is possible to list the hotels by cheapest or nearest to your chosen destination. The map markers contain hotel details, photographs and even a booking form.

Via: Mapperz

Previously Featured

• FlexMappers - Ski resort videos, webcams, statistics, weather, blog and driving conditions by US state.
• Ski Bonk - SkiBonk graphically displays snow depth and new snow for ski resorts throughout the world.
• RiderTech - Ski resorts (and other action sports venues) from around the world.
• RideSoCal - Southern California Snow Sports Community map. A Google Map mashing up the Ridesocal.com member database and ski resort information.
• Wintersporters.nl helps you find European ski destinations on Google Maps.
• Ski Alberta Live - Ski Resort mashup for the province of Alberta.
• Canadian Ski Resorts - Map of Canadian ski resorts, current news on the Canadian ski scene, stats for the hills and links to accommodations at resorts across Canada.
• Maine's Snow Report
• Cross Country Skiing in the Finger Lakes

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Google Hotpot

Hotpot

Google have released Hotpot - a local recommendation engine that you can share with your social network.

With Hotpot, Google are making local search results for places on Google more personal and relevant. When you visit Hotpot you can view nearby places, search for local businesses and restaurants and read reviews. What makes Hotpot new for Google is that it has some great social networking options.

With Hotpot you can share your favourite places and your ratings with your friends and see the places they’ve recommended. So, for example, if you want to go to a restaurant you can see at a glance which restaurants have been recommended by your firends.

Hotpot works across Google services. In search results, you can see recommended places by using the new Place Search and clicking on the “Places” filter. You can also see recommendations when searching on Google Maps, Google Maps for Android or when checking the Place pages for a specific business.

Via: Google LatLong

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