Maps

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.

This week saw the 70th anniversary of the World War II Dambuster raids. On 16–17 May 1943 an attack on German dams, carried out by Royal Air Force No. 617 Squadron, subsequently known as the "Dambusters", used a specially developed "bouncing bomb" invented and developed by Barnes Wallis. The BBC has put together an interactive map that retraces the mission. The interactive uses a hand-drawn map from the official June 1943 British Air Ministry report on the Dambusters raid. The map shows the routes taken by the planes, the location of the planes that crashed and the location of the German dams. The MapBox Blog has this week been showing off the power of their MapBox Streets with vector tiles. Using vector tiles ensures the speed and scalability of MapBox maps. It also allows for some amazing styling of the map tiles. Using MapBox anyone can make "a totally custom branded map, of the entire globe, that is lighting fast on every device." The blog post includes a number of beautiful examples of styled maps. I think my favourite is the hand-drawn map style (shown in the screenshot above).

FlyfotoArkivet LW1944 is a Google Map of Denmark overlaid with historical aerial imagery of the country taken by the Luftwaffe, under occupation, in 1944. Just over 75% of the country is covered by this collection of historical aerial photographs; including Copenhagen, Aarhus and Odense. Other Historical Aerial Photo Maps The New Jersey State Atlas - aerial photography of the entire state taken in the 1930's Neighborhood Change in Connecticut - aerial photos from 1934 Catbus - 1947 aerial imagery of Montreal Old Maps of Moscow - a large collection of historical maps & aerial imagery from the 1940's Other Collections of Aerial Imagery The Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Scotland has one of the world's largest collections of historical aerial photographs. The WWII Aerial Photos and Maps website has a large collection of Aerial photos taken during the Second World War.

Ubilabs have been testing out the new look base map layer that is now available in the Google Maps API. They have created a simple demo that allows you to compare the new look that is available if you add google.maps.visualRefresh to your code. If you mouse-over the demo map you can switch between the old and new designs. So far Ubilabs have confirmed the following design changes in the new base map and map controls: No shadows for markers Markers are slightly bigger Simplified InfoWindow Smaller MapType toggle Smaller Google logo (bottom left) Smaller TOS bar (bottom right) Tweaked zoom slider Saturated map color State borders show up in higher zoom level Buildings show up in higher zoom level Icons for all POI places in a small circle Major streets in cities are desaturated New font (Roboto) used in InfoWindow New colors for directions (route & markers) Some area labels are light grey Mapperz has also been playing with the new design. He created this JSFiddle page so you can play around with the code yourself and check out how things look with the new Google Maps design.

Have you ever wondered what the 19th century version of Street View would like? No. Well I've found out anyway. Today I was rummaging around in the back of the internet's attic and came across this early prototype of Street View from 1876. Vintage Street View is an album of some of the oldest ever Street Views. You can view the album in any browser you like but you won't get the full sepia effect unless you view the album in Chrome. If that inspires you to take an even deeper look into the past then why not have a peak at There and Then as well. There and Then is a collection of historic vintage movies superimposed on top of the same view as seen now in Google Maps Street View.

During and after the Spanish Civil War General Franco created 541 forced labour battalions. Frankismoan Preso Batailoiei is a Google Map showing where Franco's forced labour battalions were put to work in the Basque region of Spain. The map shows the locations where prisoners were used as slave labour to build roads, work in factories and /or on other construction projects. If you click on a map marker the information window provides details on the type of work the prisoners were forced to undertake, the number of prison staff and the dates of each forced labour project. The map is in the Basque language.

Last September we showed you the first set of amazing underwater Street View images that Google had released.  They were absolutely stunning, as you can see in the example here: TechCrunch recently spoke with Google about their Ocean Street View program, and came away with some amazing insights, including: …the cameras his team uses for this project are very different from those used by Google’s other Street View vehicles. The team had to use wider-angle lenses, for example. Google’s underwater Street View camera has three cameras on its front and takes images every three seconds. One of the cameras points downward, because that’s how images during reef surveys have traditionally been taken. The back of the scooter features a tablet that can control the cameras. During a typical dive, the divers cover about 2km and take 3,000 to 4,000 images per camera, and the team does three dives per day, each of which lasts about an hour. In total, the team has taken about 150,000 images so far, and Vevers expects this number to grow exponentially over the next few months. In the long run, the team hopes to create diver-less systems that can stay underwater for 12 hours or more. The technology is already available, but it needs to be adapted to the kind of camera system needed for Street View. The systems cost around $50,000 each, and they’re already testing 3D cameras to begin to capture that kind of imagery soon. It’s quite an amazing article, and it offers some great details into how this system works.  Check out the full article, then explore our previous post on underwater Street View to visit some of these areas for yourself. The post How underwater Street View works appeared first on Google Earth Blog.