Lara Croft - Google Maps Raider

Mike Gleason has created two very nice examples of zoomable images created with the Google Maps API. He has also written a step-by-step tutorial explaining how you can create your very own image maps.

To help you create your own map tiles from any image you can use Mike's C# Code - Tiles Generator (a guide on how to install and run the tile generator are included in the tutorial).

The two example image maps include a simple zoomable image of Lara Croft and a more interactive image map with custom controls.

The custom controls in the 'Earth' map include hand drawn looking zoom buttons and some hand drawn buttons which open information windows on the map. The information windows themselves continue the hand drawn theme.

Create Zoomable Images Using The Google Maps API

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Map Channels Adds Fusion Tables Support

Map Channels, the popular Google Maps creation tool, now lets you add data to a map from Google Fusion Tables.

In the four years that Map Channels has been running over 20,000 maps have been created by its users. It has proved popular with casual map makers and with major news organisations., including Fox News and CBC.

You can create a Google Map with Map Channels using data from a KML, a Google Spreadsheet, a GeoRSS feed, tab delimited text and now with a Google Fusion Table. You can see an example of a Map Channels created map with data provided by a Fusion Table in this Wikipedia Events Map.

Map Channels

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Live VoIP Calls on Google Maps

OnSIP, a provider of Voice over IP calls has released a real-time Google Map of calls made using its service.

The map makes nice use of the drop marker animation in the Google Maps v3 API. Each time an OnSIP customer makes or receives a call, a map marker is dropped on the live map, openly displaying call volume peak and trend information. A marker is dropped on the map every time an OnSIP customer makes or receives a call.

Live Call Map - OnSIP

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Worldwide Earthquake Monitoring Network

Many laptops these days are built with accelerometers that are designed to protect your hard drive from damage. The accelerometer detects sudden movement and can switch the hard drive off so that the heads don't crash on the platters.

The Quake-Catcher Network realised that they could create the world’s largest and densest earthquake monitoring system simply by using the data from accelerometers in the world's laptop computers. The Quake-Catcher Network links participating laptops into a single coordinated network that can detect and analyze earthquakes faster and better than ever before.

QCN uses Google Maps to show the data collected from participating laptops and from participating desktop computers with USB sensors. The map also shows the latest USGS reported earthquakes.

Quake-Catcher Network

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5000 Crimes in San Francisco

This Google Map displays 5000 crimes in San Francisco almost instantly on a Google Map. The map was created with the Google Maps API and the Dotter.js, a javascript class that generates data URIs.

The crimes displayed were committed in San Francisco between the 25th April and 25th May 2011. What is really impressive about the map is how quickly the 5000 data points load on the map.

If you want to create your own super-fast map with thousands of data points then the Dotter.js class is available on Github

Dotter Example - San Francisco Crime Map

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The 2010 Brazilian Census on Google Maps

The Instituto Brasileiro de Geografia e Estatística has created an application that allows you to browse the results of the 2010 Brazilian census on a Google Map.

Using the application you can click on a census tract on the map and view demographic information collected in the census. The information includes the population, the percentage of men and women and the percentage of different age groups in the population.

Censo2010

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The Gay Guide to Europe

German website Patroc has created Google Maps for all the major European cities to show the location of gay bars, clubs and events.

Patroc list upcoming gay parties and events for each city. The details for each event include a Google Map of its location. Each city also has its own Gay Map. The individual city Gay Maps display the location of a gay pubs and clubs on Google Maps and list all the venues beneath the map.

Patroc Gay Guide Europa 2011

Also See

• GayBarMaps - find gay bars in the U.S.
• ClubFly - Gay bar and club finder for the U.S.
• GayScout - the international gay travel guide
  

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