Friday Fun with Google Maps

Kissing to Petting to F..king

Here are some travel directions that you might want to bookmark. In Germany Google Maps now provides directions to get from Kissing to Petting to F..king. The total journey time is 2 hours and 51 minutes, which is quite fast in my experience.

Street View Over the Rainbow

The Street View cars have captured millions of images around the world. Every few thousand shots or so it comes up with a picture of real beauty. Like this rainbow photgraphed over Dartmoor Forest in the UK.

Yandex Flash Mob

Google isn't the only online map to provide Street View type imagery. For example Russia's map service Yandex caught this weird Flash Mob in the Ukraine.

Two of Our Delivery Vans Are Missing

UK Supermarket giant Tesco track their delivery vans with GPS. Recently when they created a Google Map of their vans' positions they were surprised to find two of them in Poland.

It seems Tesco had sold the vans and forgotten to remove the installed tracking devices. Tesco have now contacted the van's new owners and the devices have been removed.

________________

Google Offers Open for Subscription

Google Offers

Google's new 'deals' sevice Google Offers is now letting you sign up for its launch in Portland, Oregon.

If you visit the Google Offers website you will find a large Google Map and a drop-down menu that will sign you up to receive e-mails for deals from local businesses in a number of US cities.

Currently you can subscribe to receive deals in New York, San Francisco, Portland and Oakland. However, in this beta release of offers, it seems that only Portland deals will be active.

If you can't wait for the e-mail of offers to land in your in-box you can view the deals available in Portland in this Google Offers gadget for your iGoogle page.

________________

Ask the Crowd About the Buzz at a Venue

Localmind

Localmind allows you to ask questions of people at specific locations. For example, if you are thinking of heading out to your local bar you could ask Localmind whether the place is buzzing or not. If another Localmind user is at the bar they receive the question on their phone and can respond in real-time.

If you are Localmind user when you check-in with your favourite check-in service (such as Foursquare, Gowalla, or Facebook Places) you become available to be sent a question about that location. If a fellow user has a question about that location, you receive a notification and can respond in real-time.

Localmind users earn karma every time that they contribute something useful. You earn 5 karma points for checking-in at a venue, and 10 karma points for answering a question at a venue.

The Localmind website uses Google Maps to show you where Localmind experts are currently available to answer your questions. Localmind is also available as an iPhone app, which you will need to get the full benefit of the service.

________________

Tuto : rail booster et rail détecteur Minecraft 1.5

Vous n'êtes pas sans savoir que Minecraft 1.5 propose un nouveau système de rails bien utile. HSZ nous propose une vidéo où il met en application ces nouveaux types de rails : le rail booster et le rail détecteur.

Taking Geo-Games to the Next Level

Dokobots

Dokobots is a free location-based game for the iPhone and iPod Touch. The game is a scavenger hunt that involves finding Dokobots, marking locations and taking photos.

Using the app players can pick up objects shown on a Google Map as they travel around town. Dokobots, batteries and other items can be found with your iPhone as you move around. If you find a Dokobot you can find out all about who has owned it before and add your own record of ownership.

Every Dokobot keeps a detailed record of its adventures in a travel journal. The journal automatically charts its route through the world, tracking map locations, players who have picked it up and user-created photos and notes.

Players can check out the photos taken by each of the previous hosts before adding their own, and a newsfeed keeps players up to date about the latest activities of their favorite Dokobots, highlighting new photos and other entries.

________________

The Royal Wedding on Google Maps

Royal Wedding Tweets Map

Judging by the number of Tweets with the hashtag #royalwedding I'm guessing that some kind of wedding is coming up. Mibazaar has also picked up on this strange trend and has created a Google Map to show all the latest royal wedding chatter on Twitter.

The map displays the latest tweets with the #royalwedding hashtag that have been posted from in and around London. The map animates to show the latest Tweets, so it is possible to just sit back and read how people are reacting to this wedding.

The map is already showing a huge amount of activity. I hope it can cope with the amount of Twitter messages that will be flying around on Friday 21st.

________________

How to Calculate the Cost of a Car Journey

MyPetrolPlace.com

This new Google Maps based application allows you to work out the cost for your car or motorbike journey in India based on the current cost of petrol in your city.

To use MyPetrolPlace.com enter a starting point and a destination. Then add the number of kilometres per kilogram your vehicle normally achieves. The application then calculates your daily and monthly fuel expenditure.

Your journey is also displayed on a Google Map. You can change the displayed route by dragging the markers. All the metro cities and state capitals in India are supported by the application.

________________