Google Maps Virtual Weekend Breaks

Last Saturday Google Maps Mania posted a virtual 3D Tour of Tokyo. The post proved quite popular, so this week I thought I'd point you towards two other virtual weekend breaks - Budapest and Rome.

Budapest

EarthSwoop have a large collection of Google Earth Browser plug-in tours. One of my favourites is this tour of Budapest. The tour includes the 3D buildings of the Buda Castle, Heroes Square, the Saint Stephen's Basilica and many more of Budapest's wondrous sights.

Rome

This tour of the buildings of Rome takes in the Colosseum, The Vatican, the Trevi Fountain and all your other favourite sights.

Both of these 3D tours use the Google Earth Browser plug-in and at the moment only work in Windows.

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Friday Fun With Google Maps

Google Maps Wallpaper
The Universal Maps Downloader is a tool that downloads the tile images from Google, Yahoo, or Microsoft maps. So if you wanted Google Maps wallpaper in your bedroom (or perhaps just on your desktop) this could help. Although you may be breaking a few copyright laws in the process. I know of at least one Google Maps wallpaper site that was asked to voluntarily close.

If you are into Google Maps satellite imagery (and honestly who isn't?) you should check out this Wired post. It has the first photo taken by GeoEye-1, the world's highest-resolution commercial satellite (CNET have a zoomed in portion from the same image). GeoEye will be providing imagery to Google for Google Maps and Google Earth as part of an exclusive partnership. So apart from sneak previews on Wired you won't see this imagery on any other maps.

Google may also have a cheaper plan for capturing aerial imagery. This video from a Google event in Japan may reveal a Google Maps plan to replace outdated satellites:



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However I can't confirm whether this Japanese ballonist was responsible for this Google Maps satellite image:

Via: StreetViewFun

Google Maps on Android
This video from Google shows how Android phones can view maps, satellite imagery, street view, local search and driving directions.



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Air Traffic Around the World
This video shows the aircraft movements of the world over a 24 hour period. Wow!


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Google Maps Mania Word Cloud

A website called Wordle produces beautiful word clouds from RSS feeds. Here is a word cloud from the Google Maps Mania feed.

What Are You Drinking?
Mibazaar has found another fun use for his Google Maps and Google Trends mashup engine. This time he is using the mashup to show who is searching for particular types of alcohol.

This leads to some interesting discoveries. For example, the residents of Mountain View search for the word Heineken more than any other town in California (so that's where all the Google profits go). Whereas the residents of Rancho Santa Margarita search for Margarita more than any other Californians. I wonder why that could be?

Arcades on Google Maps

ArcadeFly

Here's a Google Maps Mashup that I would have appreciated in my youth, one that helps gamers find arcades to play any game. For instance, the latest craze (I am told) has been Street Fighter 4 and Arcade Fly has a map showing arcades that have the game.

ArcadeFly is a social community website and the aim is to bring gamers together to play and have fun, whilst also providing a one stop place for arcade and game locations across the world. The site includes charts of the most popular arcades amongst its users and the most popular games.

Searching for arcades is very simple. The users enters an address in a search box and ArcadeFly generates a map of your nearest arcades. The sidebar lists the arcarde and provides information about the distance to your location, the number of games in the arcade and how many times it has been made a favourite by a site user.

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Photo Density Google Maps

Panoramio Photo Density Maps

Alexander Tchaikin has an interesting project on building density maps based on Panoramio photographs. The project's goal is to show on Google Maps the number of photos geo-tagged at particular locations. For example, the two screen shots above show the areas being photographed most in Moscow (unsurprisingly Red Square is a very popular spot with photographers).

Alexander explains how he created these photo density maps on his project website. He also has a number of kml files, so you can review the results of his analysis on Google Earth.

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Google Maps Out Loud

Woices

Woices is a free internet service that allows people to create, share and consume audio records which are linked to specific geographical locations. Each audio record created is displayed on, and can be accessed via, a Google Map.

Anyone can add an audio record about anything they want, from history, art or curiosities to personal memories, advice or even poems. Users can record an audio record very easily without the need of any third-party software. Alternatively, they can upload mp3 files.

To listen to the audio records users can use the web, download them as mp3 files or listen to them through an internet enabled mobile phone.

Other features of Woices include walks and user groups. But don't take my word - listen to this audio introduction of Woices:

Other Sound Maps

• Sound Seeker Google Map - A map of sounds from around NYC
• Puget Soundscape - A map of recorded whale sounds
• Terrasound - 'soundwalks' in Portugal, Turkey, Switzerland and California
• GeoGraffiti - a 'free verbal message board'
• MyVox - add your own voice to Google Maps
  

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Beer and Wine on Google Maps

Stag Night Wizard

Stag Night Wizard is a Google Maps mash-up designed to help the best man plan a great stag night or weekend. Currently the site offers a route planner for stag nights in Manchester or London in the UK but has plans to add Barcelona, Nottingham, Blackpool and Dublin soon.

Registered users of Stag Night Wizard are presented with a map of their chosen city with layers for bars, hotels, night clubs, strip clubs, casinos and comedy clubs. Each of the map layers is selectable so it is possible, for example, to view just bars and clubs. Each bar and club comes with an address and a user rating.

If you like the look of a particular bar or club you add it to your stag night itinerary by clicking on its plus sign. As you add venues to your itinerary Stag Night Wizard works out your route. When you have finished planning your night Stag Night Wizard presents you with a map of all your venues and lists the establishments in a sidebar.

It is possible to invite friends to your stag night by adding the e-mail addresses of your guests to your account. Your invited guests will then be able to log onto Stag Night Wizard and view the planned route of the stag night.

Sonoma Uncorked

Sonoma Uncorked is a website dedicated to the wineries of Sonoma County in the US. To help visitors to the county get the best from their visit Sonoma Uncorked have produced a great Google Map.

As you would expect the map shows the location of all the wineries in Sonoma County but it also contains so much more. In fact you can use the map to find: food events, wine events, art events, music events, restaurants, farms, farmers markets, wineries, wine tours, galleries, golf courses, parks, beaches, gardens and a whole lot more.

In fact, even if you have no interest in wine, if you are thinking of visiting Sonoma County you should visit Sonoma Uncorked first.

Malt Maps

Malt Maps is a simple but attractive looking Google Maps mash-up that shows the location of 197 distilleries that produce malt whiskey. The site includes extensive search capabilities, that lets users search the distilleries by country, owner, status or whether it is has a visitor centre.

Each of the distilleries is shown on the map with a marker and is also listed in the map sidebar. Clicking on a marker opens an information window containing the address of the distillery, the distillery's owners and also the page number of its listing in the Malt Whiskey Yearbook.


Some Other Beer & Wine Related Maps Mash-Ups

• Beer Mapping Project
• All-Things Beer Map (US)
  
• All-Things Beer Map: London (UK)
  
• Ontario Beer Hunter (Canada)
  
• Oregon & Washington Brew Maps (US)
• Tokyo Beer Bars, Brewpubs and Retail
• America's Drunkest Cities
• NYC Wine Shops
• Chicago Wine Map
• Oregon & Washington Brew Maps
• DrVino NYC
• Winegeeks Map
• More Beer and Wine Mashups

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Map Maker for Africa

Google have added 45 African countries to Map Maker. Map Maker is a service that allows anyone to add map information to areas that currently have poor map data in Google Maps.



This addition should greatly improve Google Maps in Africa, which is great news. Hopefully many more areas will soon have as much map detail as Nairobi, Kenya, where Google MapMaker has been working on a project in partnership with a team of seven students from three Kenyan universities to improve the area's Google Map data.

Via: Google LatLong: Let's map Africa

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