Maps

Map of the Week: Cambridge Cluster Map Why we like it: The Cambridge Cluster Map is a simple, visually appealing map that shows off the power of using a map to make a meaningful data visualization. According to their site, “The Map is designed to open the Cambridge technology cluster to the world. Through visualisations, reports and directories the Map paints a vivid picture of the business community that’s grown up over forty years.“ The map uses Circles, custom icons, InfoWindows, and Styled Maps to show data in various data sets, including fast growing companies, billion dollar companies, spinouts from Cambridge University, and much more. One interesting feature is the use of circles, which the map places under a marker to show the amount of revenue generated in that location. The bigger the circle, the bigger the revenue. The custom icons serve double purpose, showing both the number of employes and the kind of building, with multiple companies or a single one. All in all a beautiful map which also manages to convey a lot of information. Posted by Mano Marks, Maps Developer Relations Team

Map of the Week: Planefinder.net Why we like it: Planefinder uses all three Google Maps API platforms, web, Android, and iOS to enable beautiful visualizations of flight routes. And recently they used the visual refresh to update their map to the latest look and feel. They use our WeatherLayer to show clouds and weather forecasts, and offer a Styled Map background to make the planes stand out. The mobile apps use the Google Maps Android API v2 and the Google Maps SDK for iOS. They use Markers to update the location of the planes, and Polylines to show their routes. This is a great use of all three platforms for the Google Maps API to show a compelling visualization of planes in flight. Posted by Mano Marks, Maps Developer Relations Team

The New York Times have created two evocative custom Street View images of the devastion caused by the tornado in Moore, Oklahoma -Before and After: 360° Views From Moore. The custom Street Views were captured on Tuesday and have been synced with the Google Maps Street Views that were captured in December 2007. If you pan either Street View both the before and after image moves so you can compare the images around the whole 360 degrees. The Times captured two custom Street View images, one at South Avery Drive, between Southeast 4th and 8th Street, and the other at Southeast 4th Street and Heatherwood Drive.

I've long been a fan of Vasile Cotovanu's polygon masking effect that allows you to highlight a particular area on Google Maps. Vasile has now released a wizard app that can quickly create the GeoJSON, KML, or Google Maps API polygon code needed to create your own polygon mask. Geomask allows you to simply draw around an area on Google Maps and just press a button to generate the polygon to create this neat masking effect. You aren't even restricted to one area and you can highlight as many areas as you want on the map. The tool is really easy to use. I created a polygon mask to highlight the London Olympic Park and then created a map with the mask in under two minutes using Geomask (you can see the result in the screenshot at the top of the post). Using a polygon mask is a very effective way to highlight a specific area on a Google Map. Here are a couple of Google Maps applications that have used a similar polygon masking effect to highlight regions on the map. Der Bayerischer Wald is a great Google Maps guide to hiking routes, accommodation and events in the Bavarian Forest region in Germany. Ourense en Verde is using the Google Maps API to map the natural beauty of the Ourense region in Galicia, Spain.

As Google often does after horrible events like the tornadoes in Oklahoma this week, Google has created a Crisis Response Page to assist with the relief effort.  The map includes a wealth of information including shelter locations, church and school closings, storm reports, a preliminary tornado track and much more. In addition, the +Google for Media page has created 3D models of Plaza Towers Elementary School, Briarwood Elementary School and Moore Medical Center for use as needed.  You can download the models here. Another source of mapping information is the BBC, which has a detailed map of the tornado, along with a variety of before/after pictures. While the residents of Oklahoma will certainly value your thoughts and prayers, financial assistance is often the best way you can help.  We strongly encourage you to donate to the American Red Cross to support their efforts. The post Moore, Oklahoma in Google Earth appeared first on Google Earth Blog.

National Geographic, some years ago: a melancholy piece about the emptying of the Dakotan prairie, illustrated with pictures of pension-age waitresses in doomed diners in dying towns, and of the wind playing with dolls in windowless farmhouses, abandoned long ago.  Same location, same magazine ...Read More

Street Food App is a desktop, iOS and Android app for finding food trucks in a number of US and Canadian cities. Currently the Street Food App can help you find nearby food trucks in Boston, Calgary, Edmonton, Halifax, Ottawa, Toronto, Vancouver, Columbus and Victoria. Each city includes an option to view the current location of the food trucks on a Google Map. Each truck is displayed on the map with a green or red map marker, green markers indicate the trucks currently open for businesses and the red markers indicate that they are currently closed. Users can click on each food truck on the map to view a small review and the truck's hours of business. Also See Tweat It - Google Map of food vendors in New York Food Truck Maps - tracking food trucks in Los Angeles truXmap - real-time location map of food trucks in Los Angeles

The Google Art Project is an amazing collection of museums, art galleries and works of art that can all be viewed with Google Maps Street View. Today Google has added 20 more museums, 1,500 new high-resolution artworks and 16 Gigapixel images to the project. The Gigapixel images include “The Scream” by Edvard Munch. The new museums include the Fondation Beyeler Museum in Switzerland and the Monastery of St. John the Theologian on the Greek island of Patmos

Pareidolia is a psychological phenomenon that leads us to see familiar objects in random patterns. For example, when we look at aerial imagery of the Earth we might think we recognise faces in the topography. onformative has created a computer program, called GoogleFaces, that scans Google Maps satellite imagery looking for patterns that humans might believe are human faces. GoogleFaces scans through one satellite image after another on Google Maps, sequentially along the latitude and longitude of the globe. After scanning around the world it then switches to the next zoom level and starts all over again. As it scans each satellite imagery the GoogleFaces face detection algorithm records the latitude and longitude of any 'faces' it finds. The onformative website has a few examples of the faces already found on Google Maps, including the one above, found in the satellite imagery of Russia.

Just found out about Chet Van Duzer's Sea Monsters on Medieval and Renaissance Maps, a new book out this month from British Library Publishing, which explores the monsters drawn on maps from the 10th to the 16th century. From the publisher: The sea monsters on medieval and Renaissance maps, whether swimming vigorously, gambolling amid the waves, attacking ships, or simply displaying themselves for our appreciation, are one of the most visually engaging elements on these maps, and yet they have never been carefully studied. The subject is important not only in the history of cartography, art, and zoological illustration, but also in the history of the geography of the 'marvellous' and of western conceptions of the ocean. Moreover, the sea monsters depicted on maps can supply important insights into the sources, influences, and methods of the cartographers who drew or painted them. I may have to get this. Buy at Amazon • publisher's page • Goodreads • LibraryThing