Video Map of Syrian Uprising

The Syrian Uprising 2011 Information Center has created a Google Map of videos shot by activists during Monday’s protests.



To view a video you need to click on a map marker and click through to watch the video on YouTube. The map markers themselves are colour-coded to show towns with reported protests, towns on strike and towns under attack or besieged.



Syria Monday 15/08/2011



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Virtual Travel with Google Maps

Wandercast.TV is a travel video website that aims to allow you to "Watch where you’re going before leaving home."



If you are planning a trip you can search Wandercast.TV for great places to visit and view a video of the location before travelling. Alternatively you can of course just browse Wandercast.TV to virtually visit places in the world that you may never get a chance to visit for real.



Each video on Wandercast.TV is accompanied by a Google Map showing the location where it was shot. If you have your own travel videos then you can also upload them to the Wandercast.TV map.



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One Day on Google Maps

On 10.10.10 One Day on Earth asked people around the world to create a video of their world. The goal of the project was to "create an open shareable archive and documentary film of the world on 10/10/10."

Whilst you wait for the finished full-length film to be released you can browse and watch the thousands of videos that were contributed around the world on this Google Map.

If you click on a map marker you can watch the selected video in the map sidebar. For each video you can view details, such as where and when it was shot and who by.

One Day on Earth

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New York Videos on Google Maps

MyBlockNYC is a Google Maps based application that allows users to upload and explore videos documenting the life and culture of New York City.

The site already boasts nearly 1000 videos and videos representing 734 New York City blocks. The blocks that have videos are displayed on the map with yellow roads. If you click on a yellow line you can watch the video directly from the map.

As well as exploring the videos by location you can filter the results by category, by time of day and season, and by the age and sex of the film-maker.

MyBlocNYC

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Boris' Cabs on Google Maps

This certainly qualifies as the strangest map I've seen for a while. The map creates the scenario of the user wanting to catch a taxi from a famous London landmark to the ICC London Excel conference centre.

The map displays a number of videos of London mayor Boris Johnson moonlighting as a London taxi driver. Each of the videos contains a brief description, by Boris Johnson, of a famous London landmark. When you click on one of the landmarks you can watch the appropriate video and, at the same time, a route is displayed on the map from the landmark to the ICC London Excel conference centre.

There seems to be a little bug in the map that stops the video displaying properly in FireFox but it worked fine for me in Chrome and Internet Explorer.

Take me there Boris!

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Mornington Crescent on Google Maps

Mornington Crescent is a turn-based strategy game which, in its simplest form, can be picked up quite quickly but does take years to truly master. The rules of Mornington Crescent can appear very confusing when you first start playing the game. The almost infinite number of rule variations, such as "Trumpington's Variations" or "Tudor Court Rules", means that even seasoned players often get confused.

As an aide to novice players I have created this animated map of one particular notorious game when a novice player managed to beat two of the game's most famous players.

The game itself was recorded and luckily someone has uploaded it to YouTube. All you have to do is load the webpage and the video will start playing automatically. When the game begins the map will animate to show each of the players' moves.

If you want to learn more about the game then NF Stovold’s book 'Mornington Crescent: Rules and Origins' comes highly recommended.

Mornington Crescent

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Guided Video Walks with Google Maps

Walking the Edit

Walking the Edit is an innovative iPhone app that allows you to create a mapped video. It is a great way to create a guided video walk or a video about your neighborhood.

Using the app you can take a walk through a neighborhood and the iPhone app tracks your progress and stores the location of the videos that you take on your journey. When you have finished your walk the app then creates a Google Map of your route with your synchronised video.

The videos are displayed on your automatically created map by small map markers. The size of the marker represents the duration of the video at that location. When you play the video the map view synchronises to the location of the video.

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Street Video on Google Maps

MyStreet

MyStreet is a UK project where anyone can make a short video about the street they live in. The result is a really interesting snapshot into life in the UK and what people think is important about their neighbourhoods.

The site features a Google Map of all the films submitted so far. If you click on any of the map markers you can watch the film about the location and view a brief description.

If you want to take part submit your video before May 26th and you will also be eligible for the 2011 Open City, London Documentary festival.

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Time Travelling with Google Maps

There and Then

Why not let Google Maps take you back to the bygone days of the pre-digital world? This app I've put together superimposes historical YouTube videos on top of Street View to help transport you to a different age.

Using the chromeless video player, available in the YouTube API, I've tried to match a number of vintage films with the same view as seen in Street View today. The videos are mainly of 1920's Britain but there are few turn of the Twentieth Century U.S. videos in there as well.

To navigate to the different videos you just need to click on the thumbnail images at the bottom of the page.

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The Universe in Motion

Google Sky & Chromeless Videos

We don't nearly see enough maps created with the amazing Google Sky. Here is my latest effort, and it's pretty impressive, even if I do say so myself.

This Sky Map overlays a number of celestial animations on top of Google Sky. I've used the YouTube API to show the videos in a chromeless player. The effect is pretty cool, creating an almost seamless overlay of the video on the map.

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Exploring with Videos & Google Maps

VMAP

Exploring the world on Google Maps and being able to watch a video of the locations you discover is endlessly fascinating. One of the problems, however, of using the YouTube API to create a video map is that many of the geotagged videos on YouTube are of very poor quality.

VMAP have decided therefore to crowdsource video selection for their map of videos about places. Registered users of VMAP help organise the video collection by adding videos to the map, adding tags to existing videos, and voting on the ones that deserve better visibility. This ensures that the videos are representative of their location and of good quality.

Users of the map can browse the videos by location and by category. It is also possible to view the most recently added videos.

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Travel Videos on Google Maps

Video Breaks Around the World

It is easy to forget what a great mapping tool Google My Maps is. Even without programming skills you can use Google My Maps to create a great Google Maps application.

This map from The Guardian newspaper is a nice example of what can be created with My Maps. The map showcases The Guardian's travel video collection, from taxi driver tours of Buenos Aires to atmospheric backstreet workshops in Istanbul.

The map uses custom map markers and allows you to view The Guardian's travel videos directly from the map. So. if you have a little time this weekend. you can while away the hours with a little sightseeing from the comfort of your own home.

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The Indiana Jones Map Effect

Spirit of Indiana

Do you remember the travel/flight sequences in the Indiana Jones movies?

Hacks.mozilla.org remember them so fondly that they decided to recreate the effect with Google Maps and a YouTube video. The result is pretty awesome as you can see in the video above or see for yourself on the demo page.

Now you've seen it I bet you want to recreate it yourself. Luckily help.mozila.org have also written up a full tutorial on how they created the application.

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Toronto Video Guide on Google Maps

My City Lives

Here is your personal video guide to the city of Toronto. My City Lives is a platform that allows people in Toronto to share their experiences of the city’s public spaces and organizations by posting videos to a Google Map.

The submitted videos are represented on the map by thumbnail images of the videos. To watch a video you just have to click its thumbnail.

It is possible to refine the videos shown on the map by 'Most Viewed', 'Food', 'Coffee', 'Date Ideas', 'Missed in Connection' and 'Nuit Blanche'. It is also possible to refine the results by a custom search.

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It Gets Better with Google Maps

It Gets Better - Worldwide

In response to a recent increase in bullying of gay and lesbian school students in the USA the It Gets Better project are compiling a video archive to tell the stories of gay men and women. The aim of the videos is to show school students what the future could be like as openly gay adults.

Flo Apps Ltd have created a Google Map showcasing some of the videos created around the world as part of the It Gets Better campaign. Users of the map can find videos from their own countries and watch the videos directly from the map.

At the moment many countries are not represented on the map. If you have created a video or know of the existence of a video that is missing from the map you can submit it by completing a short form.

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Virtual Tours with Google Maps

youVR

YouVR is a website that allows you to build embeddable virtual tours using photographs, videos and Google Maps.

Using youVR it is possible to create an online tour consisting of a Google Map with interactive hotspots that include photographs and/or videos. When you have created a tour you can an embed it in a website or blog by cutting and pasting a short piece of code.

You can also browse other users' tours on the Most Recently Added page on youVR.

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Watch News Videos on Google Maps

Mapeas

Mapeas lets you watch news videos from around the world directly from Google Maps. Using the map you can browse and watch video news by location. So, for example, if you want to watch news videos of the Chilean miners' rescue you can just zoom into Chile on the map, where there is a large cluster of news videos of the rescue.

The videos are categorised into Business, Entertainment, General, Science and Sport. You can view all categories on the map at one time or select to only show videos from one category.

To view a news video just roll-over a map marker and click on the video thumbnail.

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Interactive Video Coming to Google Maps?

Quiksee

When I first saw Quiksee in action last year I was blown away. It seems that I was not the only one as TechCrunch say that Google is now buying Quiksee.

Quiksee allows anyone to create their own video tours and add them to a Google Map. The results are very impressive. Play the video above to get an idea of what the results look like when embedded on Google Maps.

It will be interesting to see what Google do with this new acquisition. Will we soon see a new option added to the Google Maps 'more' button? At the moment it is possible to view crowd-sourced geo-tagged photographs and videos on 'Google Maps' from Panoramio and YouTube. My guess is that we might soon have the option to view geo-tagged interactive videos submitted to Quiksee directly on the main Google Maps page.

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A Google Maps Based Music Video

The Wilderness Downtown

This impressive Google Chrome experiment combines video, Google Maps and Google Street View and choreographed multiple windows to help demonstrate what is possible with HTML5. The experiment is an interactive interpretation of Arcade Fire's song "We Used To Wait" and was built entirely with the latest open web technologies, including HTML5 video, audio, and canvas.

The Google Map tiles used in the experiment are rendered, zoomed, and rotated in a scripted 3D environment. Animated sprites are composited directly over Google Maps satellite and Street Views. The animated sprites include flocking birds and animated trees.

The Google Maps API is also used for fetching dynamic routes to user chosen destinations and checking Street View content at points along the route. With so much going on the experiment is very processor intensive. It took about ten minutes to load on my desktop but the wait was definitely worth it.

Hat-tip: Street View Funny

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Video Tracking with Google Maps

Kinomap

Kinomap allows anyone to create video tracks of their drives, bike rides or even of their dog running. After users have recorded a video track they can then upload it and view their video in synchronisation with Google Maps.

You can download the Kinomap Maker for the iPhone or Android phones. Kinomap Maker records video and your GPS coordinates each second. After you have uploaded your track you can playback the video on Kinomap. As the video plays a Google Map animates to show the location in synchronisation with the video.

Hat-tip: Street View Funny

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