360Cities has posted five amazing and shocking 360 degree panoramas of Hiroshima in Japan, taken just six months after the USA dropped an atomic bomb on the city.
Panning the photos around 360 degrees and viewing the total destruction as far as you can see powerfully conveys the effect that the bomb had on the city. According to Wikipedia '4.7 square miles (12 km2) of the city were destroyed (and) Japanese officials determined that 69% of Hiroshima's buildings were destroyed and another 6–7% damaged.'
The panorama taken by Shigeo Hayashi clearly shows what is now the Hiroshima Peace Memorial. Last week Google released imagery of the Peace Memorial that allows you to view the interior of the memorial on Google Maps Street View.
Historypin Historypin isn't a new map exactly but this week's release of some exciting new features is enough to make it my favourite map of the week.
There is a new Historypin mobile app. The mobile app and the desktop version have a new augmented reality view in Street View that dispays thumbnails of nearby photographs. If you click on one of the photographs you are immediately transported to that photo superimposed on the present day view in Street View.
Even more excitingly you can now view historical video clips superimposed on Street View. For example you can watch a 1903 film of the opening of the Williamsburg Bridge in New York superimposed over the Street View of the bridge.
Another great new feature is the ability to create your own tours. You could create a tour of photographs of San Francisco taken before the 1906 earthquake. Alternatively take a tour created by others. For example this tour of photographs of Gandhi's visit to Britain in 1931.
InstaEarth InstaEarth lets you discover and view beautiful Instagram photography taken around the world on a Google Map.
If you log into InstaEarth with your Instagram account you can also view your own feed and your friends' feeds on the Google Map. You can also view Instagram photos taken close to your current location and view Instagram photos that you have 'liked' directly on the map.
Mapstagram Mapstagram is a super-fast real-time Google Map of photos taken with the Instagram iPhone app.
When the Mapstagram map first loads it displays the most recent photos from a number of U.S. cities. After the initial photos have loaded Mapstagram goes into real-time mode. As photos are uploaded by users in these cities, they are immediately displayed on the map in real time.
Gramfeed Gramfeed uses the Instagram API to present the best photos from Instagram on Google Maps. It also allows users to view their own photos, a time-line of those they follow, read comments on photos and Tweet about photos and much, much more.
Last year Hitorypin launched in beta in London. Its use of historical photographs with Google Maps and Street View proved instantly very popular. Today it has officially launched with a new mobile app and global coverage.
As well as the new mobile app the desktop version has a number of exciting new features. When you a view a historical photograph superimposed on Street View in Google Maps now you can also pan the Street View around and view thumbnails of nearby photographs. If you click on one of the photographs you are immediately transported to that photo superimposed on the present day view in Street View.
Even more excitingly you can now view historical video clips superimposed on Street View. For example you can watch a 1903 film of the opening of the Williamsburg Bridge in New York superimposed over the Street View of the bridge (view the film here on Historypin) .
Another great new feature is the ability to create your own tours. For example you could create a tour of photographs of San Francisco taken before the 1906 earthquake. Alternatively take a tour created by others. For example this tour of photographs of Gandhi's visit to Britain in 1931.
All-in-all Historypin 2.0 is a massive achievement. Take a look. I don't think you will be disappointed.
The Photographer's Ephemeris The Photographer's Ephemeris is a free sun and moon planning tool for outdoor photography. The application is available as a free download for the desktop (Adobe AIR required) or as an iPad app.
The application uses Google Maps to show sunrise and sunset times and indicates the current direction of the sun based on your location. The application includes some really advanced features, including automatic time zone and elevation detection, correction for atmospheric refraction and height above the horizon.
Photographers can use this invaluable tool to plan the best times that they should visit a location to get the best light for the shot required.
SunCalc SunCalc is a great Google Maps based tool for finding the position of the sun and the sunrise and sunset times for any location on the Earth. The application auto-detects your current location but you also can drag the marker or use the search function to move to a different location.
A really great feature on this app is the time of day slider. The slider lets you view the position of the sun for any time during the day. You can even change the date to see the sun's position at different times of the year.
I can see this map being very useful for photographers, who may want to know the sun's position at different locations and at different times of the day. I also think this is a great tool for house buyers, who can check out when gardens and different rooms in a house will get direct sunlight.
Yesterday was the anniversary of D-Day. On the 6th June, 1944 the Normandy landings commenced when Allied troops began Operation Neptune.
Google Sightseeing has posted a special round-up, called D-Day: The Monuments of the Normandy Landings. The post looks at the Google Maps satellite imagery and Street Views of the five main beaches where the landings took place, codenamed Juno, Gold, Sword, Utah and Omaha.
Google Sightseeing also take a look at some of the monuments that have been created to commemorate all those who lost their lives in the D-Day landings.
Historypin Google Sightseeing also Tweeted today that Historypin has a few colour photographs of the landings, which you can view superimposed on the modern view of the beaches in Street View.
360verse 360 Panorama is an iPhone app that lets you create 360 degree panoramas with your phone's camera. 360verse is the app's website where users can showcase their captured interactive panoramas on a Google Map.
The map does a good job to show the location where panoramas were taken. Strangely however there is no way to explore the submitted panorama's geographically. The only way to explore the panoramas is chronologically via the map's 'previous' and 'next' buttons.
Why present the images on a map if you don't allow the user to select to view the panoramas by location? Looking at the map I can see that someone has submitted 360 degree panoramas of Cambodia but I can't view them except by repeatedly clicking the 'next' button until I get to them.
This map has the potential to be a great showcase for the 360 Panorama iPhone app but it still needs a little work on the user interface.
Twixt Aire and Calder Historical Photos The Twixt Aire and Calder Project in the UK have updated their Google Map that showcases historical photographs of the area. The map has been updated to use v3 of the Google Maps API and makes good use of the Styled Map feature to provide an appropriate sepia tone to the map.
Images from the Twixt Aire and Calder archive have been plotted on the map close to the location where they were taken. The photogrpahs have been grouped by date and it is possible to select to view photographs on the map by various date ranges.
Each photograph also has an option to view an historical Ordnance Survey map from the same date (or as close as possible) as when the photograph was taken.
Sydney Sidetracks - a map of audio, video and photographic records of Sydney's past
HistoGrafica - historical photographs on Google Maps
Virtual Time Travel - archive film of locations. One of my own old mashups. Some of the videos may now have been removed from YouTube but there are still enough old films here to make it worth a visit.
SellersPhoto - Tornado Damage Map SellersPhoto have taken a series of aerial photographs of the damage caused by the recent North Alabama tornado. You can view the photographs directly on this Google Map of the area.
The map markers point in the direction that each photograph was taken. If you click on a marker the picture is displayed in an information window. You can click on the picture to view it in a larger size in a new browser window.
It is also possible to purchase prints of any of the individual photographs. A portion of the proceeds will go to the victims of the tornado.
Street Mosaic Street Mosaic is a great new photo sharing / travel guide app. I liked the app so much that I asked Rich Yang of Street Mosaic to write a guest post for Google Maps Mania introducing the application.
He kindly agreed, so here it is:
Maps and travel go hand-in-hand. Travel, from day trips to gap years, is best when you have the opportunity to experience local flavor and find serendipitous discoveries. However, even the experienced traveler can have difficulty with maps, from orientation to location identification, especially in a new destination. Not to mention traditional paper guidebooks are outdated and horrible with maps.
Street Mosaic reduces time spent mapping so that you can quickly get back to your travel exploration. By integrating the social interaction and photography element of travel, users of Street Mosaic can simply take a picture of their discovery, write a caption, and share with the travel community. Our mobile app is also location aware and guides you to the discovery.
See something exciting? Take a picture and share with your friends and community your serendipitous discovery. Or simply explore around you or across the globe to get an idea for your next travel adventure.
Street Mosaic is still in developing and testing and open for product testers. Look for our free app in the iTunes App Store, twitter us @streetmosaic or on the web at streetmosaic.com.
This imaginatively named website allows you to ask the crowd where a photograph was taken.
If you have a picture and you are unsure of the location depicted you can upload it to Where the F##k is This and, if you are lucky, someone will know and show you its location on a Google Map.
Each picture is displayed with a Google Map. If you know the location depicted you can click on a Google Map to show the exact location and leave a comment.
The website includes a What's Hot section and a section for pictures that have already been located.
London Olympics Site Today it has been gloriously sunny in London, so this afternoon I decided to take a stroll to the site of the 2012 London Olympics. I had my phone with me so I took a few photographs on my walk.
After uploading the photos to Picassa obviously the first thing that I thought of was to create a Google Map. There is nothing overly exciting about this map but I thought there might be some interest in having a look at the site of next year's London Olympics.
The satellite imagery on Google Maps for the Olympics Park was updated last month - so that's another reason to have looksie.
Dayton Flood 1913 - Postcards Map In 1913 Dayton, Ohio was hit by three major storms in a matter of a few days. The rainfall caused the Great Miami River watershed and its tributaries to overflow. As a result downtown Dayton experienced flooding of up to 20 feet deep.
The Dayton Metro Library 1913 Flood Postcard Collection contains over 60 postcards that show images of the flood. Geoslideshow has put together this Google Map of the postcards showing the locations of the scenes depicted.
Where is the Picture? Do you have any digital photographs that you aren't quite sure where they were taken? If so you can upload the photos to Where is the Picture and see the location of shooting on a Google Map.
You can upload any picture with GPS information to Where is the Picture, which includes photos taken from most smartphones and digital cameras. Where is the Picture will then extract the location information from the photograph and show you where it was shot on a Google Map.
Mapstagram Mapstagram is a super-fast real-time Google Map of photos taken with the Instagram iPhone app.
When the Mapstagram map first loads it displays the most recent photos from a number of U.S. cities. After the initial photos have loaded Mapstagram goes into real-time mode. As photos are uploaded by users in these cities, they are immediately displayed on the map in real time.
Gramfeed Gramfeed uses the Instagram API to present the best photos from Instagram on Google Maps. It also allows users to view their own photos, a time-line of those they follow, read comments on photos and Tweet about photos and much, much more.
Gramfeed Gramfeed, the excellent web application that showcases Instagram photos, has now added a Google Maps interface. Instagram is an iPhone application that allows users to share their photographs with friends and family.
Gramfeed uses the Instagram API to present the best photos from Instagram and allows users to view their photos, a time-line of those they follow, read comments on photos and Tweet about photos and much, much more.
Since Gramfeed launched it has been getting a lot of favourable press and I've been a frequent visitor to the site because it regularly features excellent photos taken using Instagram.
Every time I have visited Gramfeed, however, I have wondered why there is no way to browse the photographs by map. I was therefore over the moon when Gramfeed contacted me today to promote their new Google Maps based visualisation of Instagram photos.
Yes, that's right, using the Gramfeed map you can now search for the latest Instagram photographs by location.
Time Shutter Time Shutter is another great Google Maps based website that allows people to see how cities used to look and how they have changed. Users can upload historical images to the site and browse through the images submitted by others.
Currently the site is concentrating on historical images of San Francisco but images for New York will also soon be added. The site includes many postcards of San Francisco from around 1900 and includes a historical map overlay featuring the Chevalier Commercial, Pictorial and Tourist Map of San Francisco from 1903.
Time Shutter is also available as a free iPhone application.
What Was There What Was There uses Google Maps to show historical photographs in their modern physical context.
Anyone can upload a photograph to What Was There with two straightforward tags to show the pictures location and date. The fun however really comes from browsing the uploaded photographs superimposed on the modern view in Street View.
What Was There includes a slider that allows you to adjust the transparency of the photograph. This really helps in allowing you to compare the photo to the current Street View.
Historypin This joint effort from Google and We Are What We Do allows anyone to add historical photographs to Google Maps.
Historypin includes a great interface allowing users to superimpose a photo on the Street View of the location shown in the picture. When users upload photographs to the site they are invited to tell the stories behind the pictures. This makes browsing the uploaded photographs a fascinating experience.
SepiaTown SepiaTown is a website that geo-tags historical photographs on Google Maps.
You can search the map by location and the thumbnails of available historical photographs will be displayed on the Google Map. You can click on a thumbnail image to see a larger version with file and credit information, as well as notes and commentary.
If you have your own historical photographs you can add them to the map.
LookBackMaps LookBackMaps is a collection of historical photographs that can be compared to the same current view as seen on Google Maps Street View.
The photographs are geotagged and displayed on a Google Map. Users of the map can select a date range for the photographs that they wish to view. To view a photograph alongside the current Street View just click on any of the pictures inside the information windows.
To add your own historical photographs to the map you just need to register with LookBackMaps.
HistoGrafica HistoGrafica is an on-line community whose aim is to show in pictures how the world has changed through time. In essence HistoGrafica is an archive of old photographs and pictures tagged on a Google Map.
'There and Then' is my attempt to create a map based portal to view some historical films, uploaded to YouTube, superimposed over their current Street View.
When you select to view a particular Street View you need to use the buttons beneath the map to control the embedded video.
Panedia - Brisbane Flooding Panoramas I've been watching the news reports about the current flooding in Australia but nothing I have seen has quite had the emotional impact of this Google Map of 360 degree panoramas shot in Brisbane today.
The map includes 40 interactive panoramas of the flooding in Brisbane that can be viewed directly from the map. The flood has affected more than 25,000 properties in the Brisbane area. Queensland Premier Anna Bligh says it is "the worst natural disaster in our history and possibly in the history of our nation."
These interactive panoramas give a first person view of the floods and are therefore able to convey incredibly effectively the impact that the flooding has had on the city.
