Mashing it up with Google Maps

Craving your mornin’ cup of joe and wondering where to find all the Tim Horton locations in Canada? Heading to Spain and curious about the exact location of all those injured in the yearly Pamplona Bull run? Staying in San Jose, USA and interested in the air pollution data gathered by pigeons?

Look no further. Since the goliath of search engines released Google Maps in February 2005, it has become a hit with web-savvy travelers. In just over a year, this useful - and sometimes not so useful - bit of technology has grown into something larger than the sum of its parts.

Go to maps.google.ca, and type in a search request such as “Outpost Magazine in Toronto.” Google will pull up a zoom-enabled road map of Toronto with the precise location of the request indicated with a little red pin. Click on the pin and a balloon will appear with a bunch of relevant information, including street address, website, telephone number and even driving directions to the destination and estimated time needed to reach it.

The technology can also handle more complex and less specific searches. What if you want to find all Chinese restaurants in Toronto? No problem. Type the request into the search box and Google will display a map with all the results - in case you were wondering, it’ll find 2,100.

Google also offers other features, such as the ability to drag the map with your mouse and the option of three different map views. Street view, satellite view and hybrid view, which overlays a high-resolution satellite image of the area over the street view, showing buildings, fields and roads in detail. All the images shown in Google Maps’ satellite mode are at least a year old and in some places up to five years old.

If that isn’t enough, in June 2005 Google released the Google Maps API (application program interface - basically the software’s building blocks) to the general public, exposing nearly the entire interface to customization. This has led to the creation of so-called “mashups” by geeks the world over. Much the way blogs revolutionized online publishing; mashups are revolutionizing web development by allowing anyone to combine existing data from sources like Amazon.com, eBay and Google in innovative ways. In Google’s case, these “mashups” combine the mapping technology with other online information to create completely new services - everything from the location of crimes in Chicago to the listing of hotels in Rome – all easily clickable from a map.

Yes, there are some that are not so practical as well. Go to Google Maps Mania (googlemapsmania.blogspot.com), the “unofficial” Google Maps blog that tracks websites, mashups and tools being influenced by Google Maps to get your fill. There’s one that locates every public toilet in San Francisco, another that shows all the X-man movie fanatics worldwide, and yet another that displays all the beer stores open at any given minute in Toronto…um, ok, so that one’s pretty useful.

Some maps are not only fun, but may prove invaluable the next time you hit the road. So sit back, relax and let the map do all the work. Here’s some of that’ll help you get away.

World Airport Explorer
Available in English, German and English it displays all primary and secondary airports for all countries around the world. Drill down from continent, area, country then region to view all airports. Primary airports are marked with an airplane marker and smaller airports with colored pins. Each airport includes images.

Venice Google Maps Mashup
Set out and explore the significant historical places of Venice. Each point of interest has details about the location and some include information windows with photos and event listings for that attraction.

Find UK Tourist Information
Timaps (Tourist Information Maps) plots the locations of thousands of visitor attractions including museums, gardens, historic houses, castles, art galleries, cathedrals and theme parks in the UK. Each attraction has been categorized and is displayed on the map as colour coded icons.

Google Siteseeing
Don’t have time to go anywhere. Google Sightseeing features satellite images of interesting natural and man-made landmarks, including unique earth formations. It gives a good overview of places to see before you head out on the open road.

Running with the bulls injuries
Why? Who knows? But this map displays all the injuries suffered in the yearly Pamplona Bull run. It gives you the name, age, nationality and type of injury, for example, broken wrist, the fool sustained.

World Volcano Browser
Only for the adventurous, this map displays the world’s volcanoes. You can click on one of the markers on the map to see more information about the volcano such as summit elevation or select a different region, location or type. There are about 1500 volcanoes in the database and all information is from the Smithsonian Institution, Global Volcanism Program.

Paris Metro Map
As the name suggests, this mashup gives you all the subway stops in Paris. You can search by clicking on the map or by selecting a specific stop from a dropdown list.

Gmaps Pedometer
In a strange city and don’t know the distances for your early morning jog. This mashup gives you the distance in kilometers or miles. Just click on the map to create a starting point and then click again for the ending point and let Gmap do the rest.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, November 22nd, 2006 at 8:54 pm and is filed under Technology. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a comment, or trackback from your own site. Add to del.icio.us.