Where Street View Fears to Tread

There are still quite a lot of gaps in Street View's coverage around the world. Luckily a number of other providers have created their own Google Maps based Street View applications to try and plug these gaps.

China - with City8

In China City8 have created extensive interactive 360 degree panoramas in 45 of the country's biggest cities.

MapJack

As well as providing Street View type imagery in the USA, Canada, Singapore and Sweden Mapjack has also ventured where Google Street View has so far feared to tread. MapJack has great coverage in Malaysia, Thailand and Puerto Rico.

Norc

Norc has great coverage in central and eastern Europe, including in Poland and Austria, where Google's Street View cars have yet to drive.

________________

Chinese Google Maps Mashups

Shanghai Taxi Calculator

Here's a really useful Google Maps mashup for anyone who needs to take a taxi in China's largest city. The Shanghai Taxi Calculator help travellers estimate the cost of a cab ride in Shanghai. It allows users to input departure and destination addresses or select from popular spot list and discover the estimated cost of the journey.

All search results are displayed on a Google Map alongside the estimated time of the journey and the estimated cost of the fare at different times of the day. The site also provides other information such as the latest cab rates and a directory of the major cab companies in the city.

Dajiudian.info


Dajiudian.info is the leading provider of multilingual China-wide hotel bookings. The site allows you to search, locate and book over 5,000 hotels across China.

It is possible to search the site by city, hotel name, date and by hotel rating. The results of a search are then shown on a Google Map. If you click on any of the returned map markers you can view further details about the hotel, including room charges and book your hotel directly from the site.

______________

Simulated Chinese Flight Tracking Map

AirCN Map

This Chinese Google Maps mashup is a simulated map of flights in and out of Chinese airports.

Planes are shown on the map with small red aeroplane map markers. Clicking on any of the plane markers opens an information window with details about the flight. The planes shown on the map are also displayed in a map sidebar. Clicking on any of the planes in the sidebar will centre the map on the selected plane.

The site is only in Chinese.

Hat-tip to Ren for pointing out that this is a simulated map and not a real-time tracking map.

_____________

Ditu Maps Chinese Political Prisoners

Ditu MyMap of Chinese Prisoners of Conscience

Someone has created an excellent MyMap of Chinese netizens, lawyers, journalists and others who have been imprisoned in China for their political beliefs.

The individuals are shown on the map with thumbnail pictures and each thumbnail map marker includes a brief description of their alleged crime and a link to their page on Wikipedia.

Ditu is the Chinese localized version of Google Maps. Ditu is maintained on Chinese servers, which are subject to Chinese law (more on this in this Ogle Earth post). Therefore if this map interests you I would check it out quickly, as I'm not sure how long it will remain.

_____________