Unrest in the Arab World on Google Maps

CNN has created a time-line and Google Map of the unrest sparked by the Arab Spring.



CNN's Unrest in the Arab World allows you to click on individual countries and read an overview of events since the unrest began earlier this year. The time-line presents a chronology of the events from the anti-government protests that started in December in Tunisia up until current events.





Mibazaar's Middle East Protest Tweets Map is a little more immediate. This map lets you read the latest Tweets posted from Libya, Syria, Bahrain, Tunisia, Egypt, Iran and Saudi Arabia.



You can select to view the latest Tweets from the individual countries and sit back and watch as the latest Twitter messages from that country are shown on a Google Map.



________________

The London Riots & Social Equality

In the UK I think it is now illegal to try and connect the recent rioting with social deprivation or economic inequality. The government and the mainstream media has decided that unless you blame bad parenting, social networking sites or a breakdown of moral order for the riots then you should be publicly castigated as a supporter and excuser of wanton criminality.



The Centre of Full Employment and Equity seem to be ignoring this new political orthodoxy by creating a Google Map overlaying the location of riot incidents on top of unemployment data.



The British Local Unemployment and the August 2011 Riots Map includes two layers: the local area unemployment rate range and riot incident data from the UK Guardian Open Data Blog.



The dark blue areas on the map show areas with high employment rates. At the risk of encouraging a visit from the UK thought police I have to say that the areas with high employment rates seem to have been largely unaffected by the recent rioting.



The Guardian themselves have used the riot incident data to create a Riots & Poverty Data Map.







The Guardian says that "The darker reds represent poorer places, the blues are the richer areas. What do you think? Is there a correlation between the two?" I'm going to say it - 'Yes, there is'.



Someone has also taken a KML from the London Riots - Verified Areas map and displayed it on MapTube Map with the Index of Multiple Deprivation (IMD). The IMD is a method of identifying deprived areas across the UK.







Overlaying the locations of the riots and looting on top of the IMD layer reveals that most of the trouble is occurring more in areas with high deprivation than in more affluent locations.



Curating Geodata from Social Media to Map the London Riots:

Whilst we are on the subject of the UK riots Directions Magazine has a good podcast discussion looking at the challenge of using social media as geodata and what journalists, geospatial professionals and the public can learn from these efforts.





OK, with that done we can now get back to blaming the parents and Twitter.



________________

The Rise and Fall of American Newspapers

For the last few years Paper Cuts has been documenting layoffs and buyouts at U.S. newspapers with the help of Google Maps.



This year's map from Paper Cuts already shows over 2,500 layoffs at newspapers throughout the country. As newspaper readership and advertising revenues continue to dwindle I suspect Paper Cuts will become busier and busier mapping the loss of newspaper jobs and newspapers.





Whilst Paper Cuts seems to be mapping the decline of American newspapers The Growth of U.S. Newspapers has created a great map visualisation that documents the growth of newspapers in the U.S. over three centuries.



.



The visualisation from Stanford University plots the growth of newspapers since the publication of 'Publick Occurrences Both Forreign and Domestick' in Boston in 1690. It is possible to filter the data shown on the map by date, language of publication and by frequency of publication.

________________

Local Bay News on Google Maps

The California Newspapers Partnership has released an iPad app that uses Google Maps to present local news for the Bay Area in California. The app presents coupons, events, restaurant and other business listings, and feature stories, photos and video on a Google Map of the Bay Area.

The application includes three main modes. 'On tap' presents the day's local news and local deals. 'Explore' uses Google Maps to present local events. The third mode, 'Find,' allows users to search the application for news, deals and other features.

The app is currently free but there are plans to charge a monthly subscription fee in the future.

TapIn (iTunes link)

________________

An Asian in New York

The latest U.S. census has revealed that for the first time the number of Asians in New York has topped one million. This means that now nearly 1 in 8 New Yorkers are Asian.

This Google Map from the New York Times shows the distribution of the Asian population in New York by country of origin. You can refine the data shown on the map by country and you can also view the New York Times' summary of a number of districts via the links in the sidebar.

Asians in New York City

_________________

Deaths in Afghanistan by U.S. State

Afghanistan Casualties and Deaths by U.S. State

The Guardian has used Fusion Tables to create a map to show the number of casualties and deaths suffered by each U.S. state in the ten years of the war in Afghanistan.

The map lets you click on the map to view the details of deaths and casualties for the selected state. It is also possible to view a heat map for a number of different data sets.

The drop-down menu at the top of the map allows you to select the data for the number of soldiers killed in action, killed not in action, wounded in action and deaths as a percentage of state population.

_________________

Animal Cruelty on Google Maps

Factory Farm Investigations Mapped

Animal Visuals has used Google Maps to show the locations of factory farms that animal protection groups have exposed for cruelty to animals. The map displays farms where animals have been found to be living in filthy conditions,intensively confined for their entire lives and other 'criminal acts of animal torture'.

The map also highlights the states that have drafted agriculture gagging legislation, that if passed will impose criminal penalties for creating audio or visual recordings of agriculture operations.

If you click on any of the animal map markers you can click through to view the video of the undercover investigation carried out by animal protection groups at that farm.

________________

Death Inequality on Google Maps

Her bliver du ældst

Danish newspaper Ekstra Bladet has created a Google Map to highlight death inequality in the country.

As in many countries, where you live in Denmark can affect how long you live. For example, in Hørsholm Kommune the average age of death is 80 years old whilst in Lolland the average age of death is five years less at 75 years old.

Ekstra Bladet has created a choropleth map to highlight the average age of death in each Danish municipality. The redder the shade then the lower the life expectancy in that area. If you live in an area shaded green then you have a better chance of having a long life.

Hat-tip: microformats.dk

_________________

UK Ethnicity on Google Maps

Ethnic Breakdown for England and Wales

In the UK the Office for National Statistics has released data showing how many people from each ethnic group are estimated to live where across England and Wales. The Guardian has used the data to create this Google Map.

It is possible to select the ethnic group you wish to view on the map from a drop-down menu. The map then updates to show the percentages of that group living across England and Wales.

The Guardian received a lot of negative comments for it's Google Map of the UK Alternative Vote Referendum a couple of weeks ago. Readers were very unimpressed that the AV map didn't have a map key. The Guardian seem to have listened to the criticisms and for this map have provided a key that updates automatically for each ethnic group selected.

_________________

Open Local News with Google Maps

n0tice

n0tice is an open community platform using Google Maps to help bring you local news, events and listings.

When you first load n0tice the application asks to detect your location. If you agree to share your location a Google Map will open showing nearby news. You can then zoom in or out to see more general or more precise news to your location.

You can use n0tice to post your own news, events and listings and the first person to post in a particular city becomes the Editor of that city. You can also become the Editor of a city by becoming the most active poster in the city.

Users can add links to any story or post a photo or embed a video to improve the post. n0tice also comes with both read and write API's.

_________________

Bin Laden's Compound - Updated

Abbottabad, Pakistan

The location of Osama Bin Laden's compound in Abbottabad has been identified by local sources. The compound, that is described as having 4m-6m (12ft-18ft) walls and being eight times larger than other homes in the area, is to the south-east of a Pakistan Military Academy. The satellite imagery shown on this Google Map clearly matches photographs of the compound released by the Pentagon (pdf link from ABC).

Abbottbad resident and Twitter user Sohaib Athar (@ReallyVirtual) Tweeted what he says was the location of the crashed helicopter in the American attack on the compound. The helicopter is being reported as having crashed because of 'technical failure'.

The New York Times describes the compound as being "a large mansion on the outskirts of the town center, set on an imposing hilltop and ringed by 12-foot-high concrete walls topped with barbed wire."

Big hat-tips to Ogle Earth and the Google Earth Blog.

________________

The YouTube Royal Wedding Map

The Royal Wedding Channel on YouTube

If you somehow managed to miss the almost blanket coverage of today's royal wedding you can watch all the video highlights on YouTube's Royal Wedding channel.

YouTube have created a Google Map of the wedding route and are adding video highlights of the royal procession and the wedding. The map also includes videos of some of the landmarks on the wedding route.

If you wish you can even leave your own video message for the royal couple.

________________

The Royal Wedding on Google Maps

The Guardian's Royal Wedding Map

Left leaning UK newspaper The Guardian has gone all gooey eyed and created a Google Map for the Royal Wedding.

The map features the latest news, photographs, videos and auido interviews from journalist Adam Gabbatt as he braves the flag waving crowds along the royal wedding route.

The map has been created using new map creation tool Kerouapp. Kerouapp is currently in closed alpha testing but from this embedded map on the Guardian we can see that it will provide a cool way to create a Google Map of a trip, with an animated time-line of your photos and videos.

Google Earth Tour

If you really don't have anything better to do today you can check out the royal wedding route in 3D with the Google Earth browser plug-in. Google have created a tour of the royal wedding route from Buckingham Palace to Westminster Abbey.

Following the tour in 3D is almost as bad good as being there yourself. Google also have a Mr & Mrs Pegman decked out in wedding gear if you check out central London in Street View on Google Maps.

Royal Wedding Tweets Map

Mibazaar has created this Google Map to show all the latest royal wedding chatter on Twitter. The map also displays the royal wedding route from Buckingham Palace to Westminster Abbey.

The map displays the latest tweets with the #royalwedding hashtag that have been posted from in and around London. The map animates to show the latest Tweets, so it is possible to just sit back and read how people are reacting to this wedding.

________________

The Bay's Data on Google Maps

The Bay Citizen is another news organisation getting into data journalism in a big way. You can browse a number of apps created by The Bay Citizen on its new Data Library.

Here are two of the apps that use Google Maps to help visualise data relevant to Bay area readers.

2010 Census

The 2010 census revealed that the Bay Area is seeing slow growth in its population. This Google Map allows you to view population growth in the Bay Area since 2010 by county, city or by census tract.

The Bay Citizen's analysis of the data also reveals some interesting shifts in the race / ethnicity demographics in the Bay area.

Bike Accident Tracker

The Bay Citizen's Bike Tracker uses Google Maps to visualise two year's of bike accidents in San Francisco on Google Maps. The map also shows all San Francisco bike routes.

Using the map The Bay Citizen have been able to identify accident hot-spots in the city. It is also possible to click on any of the map markers to read the full details of each accident.

________________

Google Map of the World's Richest

Forbes Board
The Mapize team has created a nice visualisation of the Forbes Rich List.



As you can see the visualisation includes a fully interactive Google Map showing the location of the world's billionaires. You can filter the map to show the richest and the 'poorest' billionaires.

________________

Fusion Friday

Newspapers in particular seem to have embraced Fusion Tables as the data backend for Google Maps.

In the UK The Guardian seems very keen on Fusion Tables, especially on its Data Blog. The Guardian's Data Blog is a great source for data and the paper itself often creates Google Maps of the data.

A good example is this Google Map showing the carbon emissions for public buildings in England and Wales. The energy performance of more than 40,000 schools, hospitals and government departments are shown on the map.


The Carbon Footprint of Public Sector Buildings

In the USA The LA Times and The Texas Tribune have both used Fusion Tables to create maps to report on the 2010 Census.

The LA Times has produced a Google Map to show the 2010 census counts by California’s congressional districts. The map shows how many residents the 53 congressional districts are above or below the target 702,905 population.


2010 Census Counts by California’s Congressional Districts

The Texas Tribune, on the other hand, has created this Google Map to visualise the Texas population by race and Hispanic origin. The map displays the totals for each district, with darker colours representing higher rates of total population growth by race or Hispanic origin.


Texas Population By Race, Hispanic Origin

________________

Crisis Mapping the Libyan Civil War

Libya Crisis Map

The UN OCHA’s Information Management unit in Geneva has asked the CrisisMappers Standby Task Force to provide a live map of reports of the current crisis in Libya generated from Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, YouTube and mainstream media sources.

The CrisisMappers Standby Task Force was established in response to the Haiti earthquake. The Task Force partners include CrisisMappers, CrisisCommons, Humanity Road, ICT4Peace, Open Street Map and MapAction.

The Libya Crisis Map uses the Ushahidi crowdsourced crisis reporting system to map the latest news from Libya, as gleaned from social media and traditional news sources. The map has also pulled in the data collected by Arasmus, who has been using Google My Maps to map Twitter reports from Libya.

If you want to learn more about CrisisMappers the Standby Task Force blog is very informative.

________________

Location Based Stories on Google Maps

Broadcastr

Broadcastr has created iPhone and Android applications that allow users to record geotagged audio stories. The recorded stories can then be browsed on a Google Map on the Broadcastr website.

Using the apps users can post audio restaurant reviews, oral histories, guided walks or any other sound recording. The Google Map on Broadcastr provides a great means to browse the submitted recordings. It is possible to browse the postings by location or by category.

If you click on a map marker you can listen to the recording directly from the map. It is possible to create a playlist from your favourite users or from featured recordings and the map will automatically play the entire playlist.

________________

More Google Maps of the Egyptian Protests

Locating the Protests in Cairo

The New York Times has created a Google Map of some of the locations where protesters rioted and clashed with the police in Egypt on Friday.

The map includes brief summaries of the events and a number of photographs of the unfolding events.

Egypt Protest Videos

Mibazaar has created a video map of the events in Egypt. This Google Map includes the latest videos submitted to YouTube covering the protests.

The videos themselves are a mixture of reports from the world's news agencies and amateur videos shot by protesters themselves.

______________

Google Map of Egyptian Protests

Aljazeera: Mapping Egypt's Day of Wrath

Aljeezeera are using Google Maps to provide up-to-date information about the geographic spread of today's protests in Egypt.

The website of Aljeezeera is displaying two maps, one that shows the location of protest locations in Cairo and the other showing the protests being held elsewhere in the country.

The maps are also accompanied by the video above which also uses Google Maps satellite imagery to provide some context about the locations of the protests.

______________