All stories about "Google Maps"

The Washington Post is hosting a pretty slick Google Maps mashup that calculates route and estimates fare for a DC taxi trip. Not only does it give you the cost under the city's current zone system, but it gives you a trio of estimates (varying by travel time) using the new metered-fare system, which takes effect in April. You can enter addresses or just drag & drop the route endpoints; you can even reverse the route to see how one-way streets affect things. [WP]

Kinda spooky! Google's new "My Location" feature on Google Maps will plot your location based on your cellphone signal -- even if your cellphone has no GPS. The results aren't nearly as precise if you have no GPS, promising to plot you within a quarter mile to 3 miles of your actual location. That's a pretty wide area, but should be sufficient for Google's microwave satellites to incinerate you from orbit.

Though you'll find street carts galore in any major world city, the outcropping of taco and burrito trucks is a phenomenon unique to California. And while these trucks and all the minutiae that surround them (quality of ingredients, location, taste, wait, attitude) are covered extensively online, someone has yet to take a cartographic approach to studying the field. Enter California Taco Trucks, a user-generated Google Map populated with every taco truck from Eureka down to San Diego. Click on any fork and knife icon to find the approximate intersection the truck camps out at, the name of the truck, a brief description, and when possible, a link. To the right of the map, you'll see a news feed with any breaking California taco news, just in case the map alone doesn't satisfy your need for tacoismo.

California Taco Trucks [via Thrillist]

Autumn is smog season in Hong Kong, where environmental groups say air pollution is responsible for the deaths of 2,000 people each year. On Monday, it was widely reported that for the past several days, the city's Air Pollution Index had risen far above dangerous levels. The Hong Kong haze is not only visible in casualty lists and particle counts. Dramatic photographic evidence of this deadly phenomenon that the United Nations Environment Programme calls the "Asian Brown Cloud" can be seen in satellite images visible on Google Maps. The shots that are combined to make up the maps in the program are sometimes taken from different days, and these Google-generated pictures of Hong Kong and the nearby island of Macau that we grabbed demonstrate the dramatic difference between a clear day and a smoggy one in the region.

In a further attempt to conquer all things internets, Google Maps now incorporates data from its Google Transit site, allowing users in a handful of cities to search for public transportation directions in addition to directions by car when they want to get from point A to point B. Google Transit has been around for awhile in the Google Lab, but it looks like the company is finally pushing its functionality mainstream. Currently only about a dozen cities in the US and Japan can use the feature (notably San Francisco, Seattle, Portland, and Las Vegas), but expect them to roll out more cities soon. Check here for the full list.

Public Transit Directions in Google Maps [Google Operating System]

No, that's not a giant prismatic blob attacking the peaceful Dutch fishing village of Noordwijk aan Zee. It's the Google Maps censor-pudding used to obscure the headquarters of the European Space Research and Technology Centre, which happens to reside there. As Google's collection of worldwide maps grows in both depth and detail, so does pressure to censor, hide, obscure, or pixelate anything which might be dangerous, invasive, or commercially objectionable. Who decides what gets censored, and how does it happen? The absolute, unqualified answer: it depends.

As noted by Google Maps Mania, you can now embed Google Maps directly into blogs or other web pages without using one of the various intermediary sites/services that sprang up for the purpose. The process is no more complicated than embedding a Youtube clip; simply click "Link to this page" on any Google Map, and you're presented with the embed code. Light customization of size is available, though there are a couple of cuts (notably the locator window present on fullsize maps). Still nifty.

We're thinking of starting a map o' the week feature to highlight your cartographic excellence. If you have a particularly great Google Map you'd like us to consider, drop a line to tips@gridskipper.com.

Embed your Google My Maps into your blog or website [Google Maps Mania]

It's almost time once again for the annual running of the bulls in Pamplona for the San Fermín Festival, and blogger Inthesity has your pre-insanity guide to the festivities. Check out his suggestions, plus associated Google Map, and a few pics from last year. Starting July 6, get ready to prove your intestinal fortitude by letting an angry bull gore your intestines.

San Fermín Best Places To ... [Inthesity]

Our old pal at Moscow Doesn't Believe in Tears has already taken advantage of Google Maps new address coverage of Moscow to create this excellent Google Map of downtown drinking that doesn't require oligarch levels of funding. More of this Russophillic goodness to come.

Mappin' Around [Moscow Doesn't Believe in Tears]

We last rounded up grassroots Google Mapping courtesy of the then-new My Maps back at the end of April, when citizen efforts were still pretty thin on the ground. Since then, we've launched our own map-crazed format, and others have followed suit. User-generated maps have exploded, increasing dramatically in both quality and quantity. As always, the best resources for checking out what's new are Google Maps Mania and Ongopongo. Full roundup after the jump, from Bushwick ghosts to the Prague subway to the mysterious alphabet of Brooke Shields.

If you haven't already, go play with the new Street View feature on Google Maps. It's a pretty damned amazing use of panoramic photography to give a real sense of street-level city perspective. Coverage so far includes a respectable selection of streets in New York, San Francisco, Las Vegas, Miami, and Denver.

Big News: Google Maps Street View [Google Maps Mania]

-- Chris Mohney

Years of writing for a Walt Disney World guidebook taught me how obsessive Disney fans can be, and I suppose it was only a matter of time before that obsession met with Google Maps new My Maps and spawned a child. Hence this insanely detailed Google Map of Disney World, including details and links for every attraction, restaurant, and restroom in the four Disney World theme parks. Almost too much info to be readily useful -- and good luck downloading the monster onto your PDA -- but a testament to how much info one can pack into these maps, with the time and inclination.

Retlaw's Walt Disney World [via Boing Boing]

-- Chris Mohney

With the recent advent of Google's My Maps, users netwide have created all kinds of customized Google Maps mashups without entering a line of code. Though there's indeed been a flood of maps, most are of minor utility or for amusement only. A good way to check up on the latest noteworthy uses of My Maps is via sites like Google Maps Mania (general news and notable examples) or Ongopongo (a bulk directory of Google Maps mashups). In this first generation, we found several user-created My Maps worth a look. Some are useful, some informative, some illustrative, and some just worth a slight chuckle. If you have examples of good My Maps -- crafted by others or by your own hand -- let us know. After the jump, we got burgers, salsa, Grand Theft Auto, and exploding tanker trucks.

Those Google Maps pranksters have built a bit of tomfoolery into their "Get Directions" code. If you were to ask for directions from New York to Paris, for example, you're given astute driving directions to Boston, then told to "swim across the Atlantic Ocean." Assuming you comply, you'll stagger ashore at the Terminal Grand-Bretagne in Le Havre, France, before renting or stealing a car and resuming your trip to Paris. Trans-oceanic instructions for other bodies of water worldwide have yet to be included, but one assumes that traversing the Arctic (on voyages from, say, Detroit to Helsinki) will not be out of the question in future.

New York to Paris [Google Maps]

-- Chris Mohney

Who Is Sick may not be the best source of empirical data, but it's a morbid kick to look around your city and examine the incidence of recent flu-type symptoms. Each plotted case is broken into pie slices for runny nose, cough, muscle ache, headache, fever, and stomach ache, giving you a clue of just how your neighbors and colleagues might be suffering. It's also an excellent way to back up your fake illness when playing hookie from work, given you a better idea of what fictitious illness has more local verisimilitude at any given time.

Who Is Sick [via Google Maps Mania]

-- Chris Mohney

The maposphere is abuzz this morning with the launch of My Maps, the Google Maps customizer that answers similar services like Wayfaring and Platial, not to mention Windows Live Local. Users can create map points complete with text, images, and video, not to mention draw routes, lines, and other shapes on the maps. Sharing within Google Maps and via KML is also supported. For a few early examples, see this oral history of Route 66 or a map of fields for the cricket World Cup.

My Maps [Google]

-- Chris Mohney

It's a subtle but discreet continuum when a man's hobby becomes his passion and when his passion transcends into something generally useful. You can be sure when Eric Schrepel "discovered" the joys of espresso and roasting his own, he was the bane of his friends' existence, forcing them to down cup after cup of the stuff. But somewhere along the way he chose to make a Google Map of the best espresso in the US and at that moment, his private annoying passion became an asset to mankind. Now, this is one man's opinion and of course highly subjective but Julia Child's French Cooking was just one woman's recipes.

Espresso Map

Previously: Cafe Ludwig: That's Not A Darlek: That's A Coffee Machine, Google Map Guide to Picking Up Dorks, Monmouth Coffee Company: Fighting the Good Fight, I'll Have A Tits. I mean Boobs. Sex. Erection. Latte

GeoIQ/Google Maps allows you to map a multitude of factors onto Google Maps that take the form of heatmaps. Thanks to this API, we've gotten to the bottom of the perplexing question why Midtown is such a shit storm. As one can see from this map, the area holds the highest concentration of single men whose unbridled libido and exuberant use of cologne and roofies to score tail no doubt form the necessary conditions of douchiness. Interestingly, the highest concentration of single women is found in the Upper East Side, which explains the air of desperation that permeates the air up there.

GeoIQ

Previously: Gawler's Own Smells of the Subways, Schadenfruede Google Maps of the United States, MTV Killed the Google Map Star, Farmer's Market Mashups

That's bring your own bottle not bullets--they've got plenty of those. GoPhila.com just launched a BYO Google Map for Philly restaurants. Ho-hum news if a) it weren't very well done and b) didn't include the nearest liquor store listings as well, an element too often missing in these BYO mashups. Other neato features include a by neighborhood and by cuisine search and, as soon-to-be launched send to cell phone option.

BYOB Map [GoPhila]

Previously: You Can Make A Difference: Get Shot in Philly, Philadelphia Falls For the Gehry Conspiracy, Metropolis Mag's 25th Anniversary, Frank Gehry: Hot or Not, 97 Reasons to Visit Philadelphia, Own A Piece of the Divine, Toynbee Tiles

Obsessed with all things consumed, Consumerist tipped us off to Dr. Vino's handy BYOB map of Chicago. Combined with Dr. Vino's excellent wine store map, never get another bottle of marked-up crap Chianti for 20 bucks again.

Chicago BYOB Google Map [via Consumerist]
Chicago Wine Shops Google Map [Dr. Vino]

Previously: Hear ot Darkness: Horror at the Conrad, Chicago's Ugliest Buildings, Chic-A-Go-Go, She Can Tiramisu Anytime She Wants, Chicago Myths Debunked