Belgium Votes to Demolish Royal Palace

Le Batiment Le Plus Laid de Belgique

Here is a really cool Google Map from Belgium demolition company Jan Stallaert. The map let users submit and vote on the ugliest buildings in Belgium. Jan Stallaert promised to demolish the winning building with glee.

However Pascal Laureyn from Belgeoblog tells me that the competition didn't exactly go as planned. Instead of voting for Belgium's ugliest buildings many users just voted for the building that they most wanted to see destroyed. Popular buildings to be demolished were the Royal Palace, the headquarters of Belgium's political parties and the stadiums of a number of football teams.

This is a great first story from Google Maps Mania new Belgium contributor Belgeoblog.

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Annotating Street View Panoramas

Mapsicle

Mapsicle is a new Street View annotation library. The library allows you to easily overlay content, such as markers and information windows onto Street View.

Using the Mapsicle library you can:

• Create and show markers at various locations on Street View
• Show markers that are outside of the field of view
• Create information windows at locations

The library is available in the Maps Util library with a developer's guide, reference section, and examples that show how to implement custom infowindows, markers, and map integration.

As a demonstration of the new library the developers have created a street tagging website.

StreetTag

As the name suggests StreetTag lets you tag Street Views. You can search for any location in the world (that has a Street View) and tag the Street View with an appropriate comment.

It is possible to search for previous tagged locations by destinations and by category. It is also possible to vote for tags submitted by other users.

Via: Google Geo Developers Blog

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Find a School With Google Maps

okSchool Explorer

The okSchool Explorer is a Google Maps mashup to help parents find and decide on a school for their children. The map is an entry into the MashUpAustralia contest.

To use the map just click on one of the school map markers. This will load a beautiful looking chart describing how family dense the towns are. Green describes a town filled with families, while red describes a town with less.

A series of connections is displayed in the chart to other schools via emergency services. Family related statistics are then compared to the average across the region. You can filter schools using the colour chart key. Charts usually display statistics when rolled over. Where possible, they are also broken down by gender.

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Google Geo Are Hiring

Mano Marks (http://twitter.com/manomarks) from Google has contacted me to say that Google have some positions available in the Geo Developer relations team.

Here's the information that he sent me:

We're excited to announce that we have some positions on our Geo Developer relations team. Geo Developer Relations helps developers outside of Google build on our Geo platforms, Google Maps and Earth. Our team is passionate about the web and web technologies. We have two positions available:

Developer Advocate: These are our technology evangelists. You'll be working directly with partners companies, executives and engineers, to help them put their Geo content on the web. And you'll advocate on their behalf with the Maps and Earth teams at Google. You will use your strong and well-rounded coding skills in a wide range of web/AJAX technologies along with excellent writing and presenting skills. And you have a passion for all things Geo.

Developer Programs Engineer: It's your job to help spread Geo into the Web. You will help group the Google Geo Developers community by helping 3rd party developers put their content into Google Earth and Maps. You will work with Google Geo engineering teams to improve Maps and Earth and make them even better for developers to work with. You're a driven team player with strong web application development skills who loves troubleshooting challenging coding issues and is passionate about developer communities. And you have a passion for all things Geo.

Link: http://sites.google.com/site/googdevreljobs/

Street View Type Map for Buenos Aires

Fotocalle

Fotocalle have released a Street View type service for Buenos Aires, Argentina. The site stitches together a number of interactive 360 degree panoramas of the city. The panoramas, just like Street View, include links to adjacent panoramas.

Fotocalle uses Google Maps as a navigation tool. Again like Street View the roads on the map with panoramas are coloured blue and it is possible to drag the map marker to view the panorama at a location.

Fotocalle use Nikon Cameras with Segways and cars to capture their panoramas. Unlike Street View they also provide interior interactive photos of to connect the outside with the inside of buildings.

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Turkish Earthquakes Google Maps Widget

Sondeprem.net

Sondeprem.net have created an embeddable widget that shows the latest Turkish earthquake news on a Google Map. By cutting and pasting a short piece of code you can add the map to your own website or blog.

The map itself animates through the latest earthquake news in Turkey. Map markers show the location of the news and a short headline is displayed at the bottom of the map.

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Google Maps & Mashups Blog for Belgium

Belgeoblog
Belgeoblog is an excellent source for information and news about Google Maps and Google Earth related developments in Belgium. The blog also has a number of interesting Google Maps mashups.

Typisch Belgisch

Typisch Belgisch is a collection of interesting Belgium satellite views from Google Maps. The views are categorised into a number of categories, 'Special Attractions', 'Useless Work', 'Flying Objects', Military' and 'Photogenic Phenomena'.

Brussels in 1953

This map displays a collection of historical photographs of Brussels. Most of the photos are from 1953, but the map also contains a number of older photographs of the city.

Brussels Metro Map
A map that shows the Metro lines of Brussels.

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