Maps

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

Companies Near Me is a Google Map of tech companies in the San Francisco Bay Area. The map includes options to filter the companies displayed on the map by location and by sector. The map is primarily focused on the San Francisco Bay Area but the developers say that they have plans to expand the site to include other tech hubs such as New York, Los Angeles and Boston. Made in NI is a Google Map of Northern Ireland's start-up's, tech companies and co-working spaces. Tech maps for individual cities are now being created for many locations around the world. However we don't often see attempts to map entire countries / provinces. Made in NI is a nice attempt to map all of Northern Ireland's burgeoning technology companies. As well as mapping individual companies, Made in NI also maps wi-fi spots, code clubs and learning spaces. Also See Represent Map - a map of tech maps created around the world using the RepresentMap platform Made in NY - New York's digital industry mapped Represent.la - a Google Map of the burgeoning tech scene in Los Angeles Tech Britain - UK tech map Tech City Map - map of the technology companies and startups in east London Cambridge Cluster Map - Cambridge's high-tech sector Madri+d Mapa del Conocimiento - a Google Map of Madrid's research, technology and science companies.

Mapping Texts is a Google Map from Stanford University that plots the language patterns embedded in 232,567 pages of historical Texas newspaper. The app analyses the language patterns found in Texas newspapers from 1829-2008. Using a timeline slider tool you can select any date range and, using the map, you can select from a number of locations in Texas. The results of each search are then displayed below the map. The results show the most common words (word counts), named entities (people, places, etc), and highly correlated words (topic models). The results can be viewed in list view or you can view the results as a word cloud.

Climbing Pic d'Anie is another Neatline interactive map. This Google Map displays a series of photographs taken during an ascent of Pic d'Anie in the Pyrenees. The map displays the route of the climb from the nearby small hamlet of Lescun to the summit. Photographs are indicated on the map by a small blue dot and a thin line. The line shows the direction of the viewpoint in each photo and a rough approximation of the photographer’s range of view.

What did teenagers do before cell phones, video games and the internet? I know - they made maps. At least that what Frances Alsop Henshaw was doing in the 1820's. Henshaw's 'Book of Penmanship Executed at the Middlebury Female Academy' contains a number of hand-drawn maps of nineteenth century America. Neatline.org has used its map timeline tool to create an interactive presentation of Henshaw's beautiful hand-drawn maps. 'Inventing the Map': Frances Henshaw’s Book of Penmanship uses the Google Maps API to overlay Henshaw's nineteenth century maps on today's map of America. The accompanying text for each map places Henshaw's map exercises into the context of her education and the particular influence of educational reformer Emma Willard.

AllWarehouses is a nicely designed Russian real-estate search site for finding warehouse for rent or sale. Users can search for warehouses by location and by size of warehouse. The map includes a simple drawing tool that allows users to closely define their search area by drawing it on the map. Once the search area and criteria have been decided the results are then displayed on a Google Map. Users can click on the map markers of individual properties to view the full property details.

Because of the design changes in the new Google Maps, v4 of the Maps API must be in the pipeline. I expect however that the release is some way off. Inspired by the new index card effect in Google Maps I decided to have a little Sunday hack to see if I could create something similar. Here's the result, Not the New Google Maps. First off to add the new look map base layer it is a simple process to add google.maps.visualRefresh to the javascript for the map. Initially I decided to replace information windows with a slide-down index card. It was simple enough to create a div element for the index card and use jQuery to create a slide-down and slide-up effect for the card. Then it was just a matter of using document.getElementById('divName').innerHTML and a call to open the card index, inside the marker's event listener. After achieving that however I decided to remove the example marker from the finished map. One of the really impressive new features in the new Google Maps is the reverse geo-coding that happens when you click on the map. When the user clicks on a location on the map a card opens showing the location's address and a small thumbnail of the Street View available. So I decided to use my index card design to achieve something similar. When you click on the map I geo-code the location and add a little static Street View to the slide-down index card. If I get the time it should be a simple enough process to add a function so that when the user clicks on the static Street View the map is replaced with the full interactive Street View.

What with Google I/O and the launch of the new look Google Maps, it has been a reasonably quiet week for reviews of new Google Maps apps. At Google Maps Mania our attention has been drawn away by the live streams from I/O and playing with the new look Google Maps. However, some great maps did get featured this week. One map that grabbed my attention this week was from Rough Guide. One feature of the Rough Guide site that I really like is how you can drill down from general reviews of countries, to reviews of individual towns and cities and then search for great individual locations to visit within those towns and cities. As you navigate the Rough Guide website look out for the 'view map' option that allows you to view Rough Guide recommended locations on a map. The drop-down menu above the map allows you to select individual countries and cities. If you select a country or city from the menu then a general introduction to your chosen destination is given beneath the map and all the Rough Guide recommended places to visit are displayed on the map. Another interesting map that came to our attention this week was España en llamas (Spain in Flames), a Google Map displaying ten years of data about the location of forest fires in Spain. The map includes data on 1,508 fires, 699,560 hectares burned, 24 deaths and 191 injuries. If you click on the 'Explora los incendios' link above the map you can filter the data displayed on the map. The filter controls allow the user to filter the results displayed on the map by cause of fire, fires that caused deaths, by location and by the size of the fire. A time-line tool beneath the map also allows the user to explore each of the filtered results by year. One neat feature of this map is the use of relatively sized map markers to show the size of each individual fire.