Wednesday, December 2, 2009

Augmented Reality Flu Shot Finder

Niobium Labs Flu Shot Finder

The Flu Shot Finder is a free iPhone 3GS and Android augmented reality application that shows you where you can get a flu shot. The application is based on Google's Flu Shot Locator.

The application provides information on where to find both seasonal and H1N1 flu vaccinations. It also provides dates, times, addresses and phone numbers for clinics offering flu shots near your current location.

You can see the results in both an augmented reality view and on a Google Map. In addition you can be redirected to your state health institution committee web site to review availabilities of the vaccines.

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Kew Gardens Street View Competition

The Kew Gardens Street View Competition

To help celebrate the addition of Street View imagery, Kew Gardens are holding a competition to win free annual membership for two people to the gardens (and some other goodies). Kew have hidden two treasure chests within the grounds of the garden that can be found in Street View.

If you find the chests you need to send the link to Kew Gardens. There is also another clue that you will have to solve, which will be posted on the Kew Gardens' website later today.

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Singapore & Stonehenge on Street View

Google have today released another big update of Street View imagery. For the first time Street View is available in Singapore. In the UK Google have added imagery from the winners of the UK Street View trike competition, including Stonehenge, Warwick Castle and Kew Gardens.

In Canada, Edmonton, Hamilton, London (Ontario), Saskatoon, St. John’s, Sudbury, Winnipeg and Victoria now all have Street View imagery.

There also seems to have been a huge increase of Street View in France, more cities added in Japan and some new imagery taken by the Street View trike, including Pompei, the Palace of Versailles, and Sea World San Diego and Orlando


Sea World, Orlando


Sea World, San Diego


Stonehenge


Raffles Hotel, Singapore


The Esplanade, Singapore


The Pagoda, Kew Gardens


The Angel of the North, UK


Warwick Castle, UK


The Eden Project, UK


Manitoba Legislative Bldg, Winnipeg


BC Parliament Buildings, ‎Victoria


Pompei, Italy


Palace of Versailles

Update: News of the latest Street View update has now been released on the official Google LatLong Blog.

Hat-tip to Mapperz

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Tuesday, December 1, 2009

Christmas on Google Maps

The NORAD Santa Tracker
Google have again teamed up with NORAD, the North American Aerospace Defense Command, to bring you the NORAD Santa Tracker. Each year NORAD tracks Santa's gift-delivering journey from the North Pole to your chimney on both Google Maps and Google Earth. The Santa Tracker itself goes live on Christmas Eve.



In the meantime the official NORAD Tracks Santa website has a Christmas countdown and a number of Christmas themed games to keep you amused.

Coca Cola Christmas Lights

Coca Cola's Christmas map allows you to decorate your house on Google Maps with Christmas lights. See how I've tastefully decorated my pied-à-terre in London in the screenshot above.

Decorating your own house in this way is very easy. Enter your address in the search box and the map will centre on the satellite image of your home. You can then decorate your house with rope lights or choose from a number of pre-designed Christmas lights, like a reindeer, a star etc.

Once you have saved your Christmas decorations Coca Cola will send you a link to your house that you can then send to family or friends.

Shelter - Bling Your House
UK housing charity Shelter have created an amazing Street View site that lets you decorate your house with some Christmas bling. Once you enter your postcode and find your house you can choose from a number of Christmas decorations to give your house that Christmas glow.

I Feel Christmassy

If you live in London, New York or Toronto you can find some great things to do this Christmas by visiting I Feel Christmassy. Whether it is going ice skating at the Rockefeller Center in New York or visiting the famous Hamley's toy store in London this Google Maps mashup is a great way of finding and sharing fun things to do at Christmas.

Events and locations are shown on the map with a Christmas tree icon. If you know of a great Christmas event that is missing from the map you can even request an invite and add it to the map.

US Towns/Cities with holiday season names
There are apparently many places named Christmas and Santa Claus in the US. There even some towns named Rudolph, Antlers, Holly, Jolly and yes, even North Pole. This mashup will help you locate all of these places and more!

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Twitter and Google Maps Location Game

Localiz.me

Localiz.me is a new Twitter and Google Maps 'find the location' game. The game allows you to set a clue about a location that you can then Tweet to your followers or share on Facebook. Your followers can then try to find your hidden location on localiz.me by zooming in on a Google Map.

You can try to find locations sent to you by your friends or you can try to find any of the locations hidden by localiz.me users. When you zoom in close enough on the correct location a map marker will appear informing you that you have found the correct location.

Here's one to get you going - 'Napoleon's railway journeys to the English capital always end here.' - http://localiz.me/maps?mapid=30

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Google Maps of Australian Crime

At the recent MashUpAustralia event one dataset that generated quite a lot of interest amongst developers was New South Wales Crimes, which allows access to the data by offence type, month and Local Government Area (1995-2008).

All Things Spatial has taken a look at some of the Google Map mashups created with this crime data and has allowed Google Maps Mania to repost some of the highlights.


NSW Crime Explorer

The NSW Crime Explorer presents crime statistics in tables, graphs and on Google Maps as thematic overlays (only 2008 data).

A drop down list of all Local Government Areas enables easy navigation between locations of interest. The Google Map shows 2008 crime data, ranking incidents standardised by population (ABS data) for each NSW Local Government Area (LGA). The map offers a selection of overlays for each crime type and clearly shows where the offences were committed.

NSW Crime Map

This site demonstrates yet another approach to presenting crime statistics with Google Maps and Google Visualisation tools.

The number of crimes committed in major NSW regions, in any given month, is represented as dots on the map. The size of the dots is proportional to the number of committed offences. Different crime types are selectable from a list next to the map and dates can be selected with a slider tool.

A dynamic graph under the map displays monthly counts of incidents between 1995 to 2008.

How Safe Is Your Suburb

How Safe is Your Suburb is an application created with commercial software integrated with Google Maps and Flash graphics.

Crime data is presented in four different ways: based on geographic distribution (thematic map with data table), as a cross tabulation of offence by type and year (pie chart and data table), as a cross tabulation of year of the offence and type by Local Government Area (with line graph and data tables) and as summary statistics highlighting the most dangerous regions in NSW.

NSW Crime

This site provides a very simple mashup presenting crime data in two columns and a Google Map with location points depicting user selected Local Government Areas.

The first data column contains a list of LGAs and counts of all crimes committed in those areas. The second column lists various types of offences and counts for a selected LGA. There is also an option to specify a time range for calculating statistics. Although this is a simple Google Maps mashup it shows a wealth of information.


Cross posted from All Things Spatial

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Twitter & Augmented Reality Application

Twitter 360

Twitter 360, for the iPhone 3GS, is a new application that enables you to visualise your Twitter friends via an augmented reality view using the iPhone camera.

When you look through your iPhone camera with Twitter 360 you can view information windows superimposed on the screen showing the direction and distance away of your Twitter friends. Twitter 360 also shows arrows on the screen that, as you move around, uses the iPhone's in built compass to point you in the direction of a chosen Twitter friend.

Twitter 360 is one of the first iPhone applications to use the new Twitter’s Geotagging feature to geotag your tweets. The application includes a Google Map view, that geotags your Twitter friends and shows their location using their Twitter avatars.

Download from the iTunes Store

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