maps

Don't have a missing iPhone, but want another Twitter-aided tool that can save you from life's annoyances? Check out Commuter Feed, a network of Twitter users tying to help each other avoid traffic backups and accidents faster than some official city transportations systems are able to update.

The system works by having users follow a Twitter bot that in turn follows their direct messages and sorts through the ones including an IATA airport code and incident information. This code designates which city they're posting for and the rest of your message can simply describe what's wrong. … Read more

Besides having some pretty cool TV programming (Smash Lab not included), The Discovery Channel has had some interesting forays into small, standalone Web sites. Just this past weekend I checked out the MythBusters slow motion video clip viewer, and today brings Discovery: Earth Live, a 3D globe that, like Google Earth, can display various layers of information.

There are eight standard layers to choose from that range from cloud cover to rainfall averages. To complement the layers is a listing of featured stories that reference specific time periods and show up as tiny pins on the map. Among the more interesting is one of Hurricane Katrina that lets you track precipitation and the temperature of the sea as the storm developed.

Besides messing about with the layers, users can create their own maps to link to, or embed on blogs. Unfortunately these end up as a pretty, but overly simplified spinning globe widget. There's no way to link to other news stories or control where the story is supposed to show up on the map, you're simply able to show off the various layers (one at a time) to others. I'm interested to see if Discovery ends up opening it up to allow users to create richer, more contextual layers that make use of the push pins a little more. In the meantime, it's a little half-baked, but definitely fun to look at.

You can check out the whole experience here, or click the read more link below to play around with the embedded version.… Read more

Hey, go take a walk, why don't ya? That is, with Nokia Maps 2.0. Nokia announced at GSMA 2008 that its newest version of the mapping and software application is now available in beta form, and it brings a number of enhancements, including more advanced pedestrian navigation. This makes complete sense to me, given that cell phones and smartphones make for better handheld navigators than in-car GPS. Of course, I realize not everyone lives in a place where you can walk to your destination, but for those who do, the new features of Nokia Maps 2.0 are … Read more

Here's an oldie but a goodie if you're a Simpsons fan. It's an interactive map of Springfield, the fictional home of The Simpsons that has been painstakingly recreated based on various appearances throughout the show's 19 seasons.

The map was drawn using locations that were featured on the show, as long as they appeared more than once. Some of the spacing was determined using recent aerial shots (there's a listing here).

The map was started in 2001 by Jerry Lema and Terry Hogan. The current version is about four years old (so there are no … Read more

I bet you didn't know there's an easy way to see what terrorist or suspicious activities are happening around the world, on a map. Are you curious as to where there have been UFO sightings? How would you like to map your photos or, even potentially more useful, find a public toilet near you?

Mike Pegg over at the Google Maps Mania blog has created an entertaining and handy list of 100 things you can do with Google Maps mashups.

The options range from the very convenient, such as how to find cheap gas in your area or … Read more

It's always fun to see people try to map out the internet. The comparison to a spider's Web is apt, as things get a little complicated. While not nearly as humorous as efforts from Web comic XKCD (here and here), design agency Information Architects Japan has taken to the more calculated cartography medium of urban subway systems.

Last year the company created two versions of the map. Both were based on the Tokyo area train map (which is enormous) and organized 200 popular Web sites by neighborhood. This year, the firm ramps the number sites up to 300, … Read more

Comedy troupe The Vacationeers has a new video parodying Google Maps and its Street View feature. Shortly after the introduction of Street View, privacy concerns were raised by several groups regarding the amount of zooming and the capturing of license plate numbers, but nobody's come close to comparing it to a formidable and mysterious opponent the likes of the smoke monster on J.J. Abrams' Lost.

I desperately hope this becomes a series.

[via Digg]

Remember that feature Google rolled out back in November of last year that let users edit location markers? This morning the company's released a new Maps visualization to let you watch a portion of those user edits in real time. Like some of the Flickr and Twitter mashups that have done the same thing with photos and messages, you can glean a certain level of entertainment off watching people's changes, and as long as you're sitting far enough back from your computer monitor you can avoid the Cloverfield-like nausea when the map quick pans to the next location (seriously).

From my time watching the page this morning, nearly all of the changes remained within the United States with just a few trips to southern England. This could mean that either Google's localizing the data feed, or trying to keep the transcontinental panning to a minimum.

Google Maps continues to be one of Google's fastest changing services within the last year. Just yesterday it finally got list reordering as part of My Maps (previously user-created maps would remain in the order of the spot or landmark at the time it was created), and earlier this month it added live Doppler radar and satellite weather reports as a mapplet.

See it in action an animated GIF after the jump.

… Read more

We're always on the lookout for smart travel tools, and World Taximeter is no exception. It's an intelligent mashup, combining directions from Google Maps with local cab fares. It'll let you know how much the ride should cost using local rates by distance and time of day, and combining that with live traffic estimations from Google. Depending on what country you're in, it'll also give you the heads up on any additional charges, like if you're booking it over the phone, or traveling on a weekend. For anyone who's visiting a foreign country … Read more