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Google Maps Mania
This morning I have been having a lot of fun playing with Darren Wien's new Fly To tool for making animated map GIF's. Using the new Fly To wizard you can easily make your own map fly-thru animations simply by pointing to a starting and ending location on an interactive map. The tool is a great way to create map fly-thru GIFs to illustrate news stories or to enhance blog or social media
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Google Maps Mania
David J. Lorenz's Light Pollution Atlas 2006, 2016, 2020 includes global light pollution layers for three different years. It also includes a layer which shows where light pollution around the world has become better or worse during 2014-2020.This 2014-2020 light pollution trend layer shows that light pollution in most of the UK and France and in the eastern U.S. significantly reduced from
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Google Maps Mania
Did you know that Australia got its name from the Latin australis' meaning 'southern', or that Spain derives its name from a small rodent ('España' coming from 'I-Shpania', meaning "island of hyraxes")?
Thanks to a new interactive map from Le Monde you can now discover the origin of every country's name in the world. If you hover over a country on the map in the article Discover the origin
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Google Maps Mania
From 1866 to 1977 the Sanborn Map Company produced very accurate individual building level maps of U.S. cities and towns. The Sanborn maps provided detailed information about individual city buildings in order to enable fire insurance companies to accurately calculate fire risk. In the 1960s Fire Insurance companies stopped using maps to underwrite fire risk meaning that there was no need to
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Google Maps Mania
In 2023 the Earth's global temperature was 1.05°C warmer than normal. This is extremely alarming as we are quickly approaching what many environmental scientists believe will be the tipping point for global heating. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has identified 1.5 degrees Celsius of warming above pre-industrial levels as a critical threshold. Beyond this point, the risks
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Google Maps Mania
Darren Wiens' new Sea Level Rise Simulation map shows how rising sea levels might effect coastlines around the world. Using the simulator you can adjust the height of the sea around the world to see what level of global heating will turn your town into the next Atlantis.Darren's map uses AWS Terrain Tiles with Mapbox GL's raster-value expression to visualize global sea levels. In very simple
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Google Maps Mania
The combination of the Covid epidemic, inner-city gentrification and austerity has had a hugely negative impact on live music venues and the live music networks of many cities. The Live Music Mapping Project has been launched to help overcome these challenges by creating detailed maps of the local live ecosystem in individual cities. Currently the project has released interactive maps for seven
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Google Maps Mania
SZA's Kill Bill was the most listened to song in New York and San Francisco this year. In Denver and New Orleans the most listened to song was Morgan Wallen's Last Night. While Eslabon Armado y Peso Pluma's Ella Baila Sola was the most popular tune in Los Angeles, Houston and San Diego.Spotify has released a new interactive map which reveals the most listened to songs in cities around the world
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Google Maps Mania
The state of Louisiana likes putting its citizens in jail. Nearly 1 in every 100 Louisiana residents are locked up in a state prison or local jail. The reasons for Louisiana's high incarceration rates are simple. It isn't because Louisiana is full of criminals. It is because of racism and the profits to be made from enforced slave labor.I arrived at this conclusion after reading the Vera
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Google Maps Mania
Trains.fyi is a live interactive map which shows the real-time locations of passenger trains in the U.S. and Canada. The map uses colored markers to show the near real-time positions of trains from a number of different train companies in North America. The arrow on the markers show a train's direction of travel and the colors indicate the transit operators of individual trains. If you
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Google Maps Mania
If the world's population was proportionally represented as 1,000 people then 591 of those people would live in Asia, 185 would live in Africa, 91 in Europe, 75 would live in North America, 55 in South America and the remaining 5 people would live in Oceania. The Visual Capitalist has mapped The World's Population as 1,000 People. On the map each marker (shaped as a human figure)
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Google Maps Mania
This morning I discovered MapTheClouds, which features a whole host of impressive interactive map visuals. I'm sure a lot of the maps featured on MapTheClouds are very useful but as ever I'm drawn to the fun, experimental maps, to the maps that apparently serve no other purpose than they were fun to create and are even more fun to play with.Here are a few links to my personal favorites, but check
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Google Maps Mania
The interactive map Israel-Palestine Media Bias visualizes the results of a sentiment analysis of mostly English language media and social media websites to determine whether they have a predominately Israeli or Palestinian bias.Using the map you can explore the Israel/Palestine sentiment bias expressed by the media in individual countries, on different platforms and by the percentage of a
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Google Maps Mania
If you want a little Thanksgiving fun today then you should play TripGeo's State Locator game. State Locator is an interactive map of the United States. A map which you have to assemble yourself based on the shapes of the individual states and a few image clues.At the beginning of the game you are presented with a random state. Your job is to place this state onto a blank map of the United
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Google Maps Mania
When you begin to prepare your Thanksgiving dinner you may wonder about where all that food comes from. Well a new interactive map from CU Boulder and The Plotline, can help show you where. The Food Twin shows you where food is grown and consumed in America and how crops travel from producers to consumers.Click on your county on the map and you will see colored dots flowing into your
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Google Maps Mania
Around half of Americans have been moved into a new plant hardiness zone. If you check out the USDA's new Plant Hardiness Zone Map you have a very good chance of discovering that your home is now in a new hardiness zone.In recent years, like many gardeners, I've discovered that I can successfully sow plants a few weeks before their recommended earliest dates and that I can continue
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Google Maps Mania
Panoramax is an open-source photo-mapping platform that allows users to share and exploit street level photography. It is a free alternative to proprietary services, such as Google Maps Street View, providing a freely available resource for sharing and mapping field photos. The Panoramax platform allows anyone to capture street level photographs and contribute them to the Panoramax database and
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Google Maps Mania
The Sunderland Collection of antique maps has been digitized in full and can now be explored in detail on the new virtual platform Oculi Mundi (Eyes of the World).
The Sunderland Collection was started by Dr Neil Sunderland in the 1990s. The collection now consists of around 130 vintage globes, maps and atlases which date back to as early as the 13th century. The new Oculi Mundi platform takes
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Google Maps Mania
A researcher at UCL's CASA has released a new interactive mapping tool which can help researchers and news agencies "estimate the number of damaged buildings and the pre-war population in a given area within the Gaza Strip". The Gaza Damage Proxy Map is based on an earlier tool which was developed to estimate damage caused by Russia in Ukraine.
The Gaza Damage Proxy Map colors individual
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Google Maps Mania
The Berliner-Morgenpost has visualized the rise and fall of the German rail network from its rapid growth in the 19th Century right up to its 21st Century post-privatization contraction. The German Rail Network from 1835 Until Today uses an interactive map to show all the active rail lines in Germany for every single year from 1835 until 2022.On December the 7th 1835 a six-kilometer rail line
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Google Maps Mania
Following the huge runaway success of Benjamin Tran Dinh's the London Tube Memory Game (which bears an uncanny resemblance to my own London TubeQuiz) it is not that surprising that a number of other map memory games have now suddenly appeared on the scene. US States QuizMy own US States Quiz is similar to the London Tube Memory Game. The only real difference is that instead of having
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Google Maps Mania
The Global Marine Traffic Density Service (GMTDS) map visualizes global marine traffic over the last ten years. The map is designed to support a number of uses, including monitoring fishing activity, monitoring port activity, and environmental and economic activity monitoring.
The GMTDS Map has processed hundreds of billions of AIS signals from over ten years of marine traffic around the world
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Google Maps Mania
If you want an uninterrupted view towards the horizon in all directions then you need to stand on top of a mountain. But not just any mountain. What you need is an 'on top of the world' mountain. On Top of the World Mountains
An "on top of the world" mountain, also known as an OTOTW mountain, is a mountain that is so high that no other mountains can be seen above the horizon from its
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Google Maps Mania
El Diario has released an interactive map which shows how much people earn across the whole of Spain. The map starkly reveals not only the huge income inequality between northern and southern Spain but also the inequality between many urban and rural communities. The map in Rich Neighborhood, Poor Neighborhood uses data from the National Statistics Institute to show the average gross
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Google Maps Mania
This week the European Space Agency released the first full-color images from the Euclid telescope. Euclid is a space telescope (situated in a halo orbit at an average distance of 1.5 million kilometers beyond Earth's orbit) which has been tasked to explore dark energy and dark matter.
The telescope is capturing highly detailed astronomical images across a large area of the sky. The first five
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Google Maps Mania
According to Population.io I can expect to live for another 26.9 years. This calculation is based on my age, sex and country of birth. I am lucky I don't live in the United States. If I did I'd have 16 months less to live. Mind you if I lived in Japan I'd be able to look forward to living an extra 7 months.Enter your date of birth, country of birth and sex into Population.io and it will tell
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Google Maps Mania
In March 2022 Russian troops invaded the Ukrainian village of Yahidne. During their month long occupation of the village the Russian army locked the villagers in a school basement. 360 people, including children and the elderly, where forced to live together in cramped and unsanitary conditions. There was so little space that people had to sleep standing up, people had to use buckets for
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Google Maps Mania
Thanks to the Netherlands Board of Tourism you can now visualize how your street might look if you were able to get rid of all the cars & the ugly road, and replace them with a bike lane, a few trees & some beautiful flowers.
It is a matter of great sadness to the Dutch people that people in the rest of the world are not able to live in cycle-friendly environments. Therefore the
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Google Maps Mania
The Pathfinding Visualizer is an interactive pathfinding tool that allows you to discover the most direct route between any two points in the world, using a number of different pathfinding algorithms.
A map pathfinding algorithm is a way to find the shortest or most efficient route between different points on a map. It helps you find the best path to go from one location to another, considering
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Google Maps Mania
The University of Freiburg has redesigned the transit maps of every city in the world. Zoom in on any location on the university's LOOM Global Transit Map and you can view the local transit network mapped using your choice of four different transit map projections.In every city in the world you can view the local transit map in either a geographical, octilinear, geo-octilinear or orthoradial
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Google Maps Mania
When Elan Ullendorff moved to South Philadelphia this summer he realized that he knew very little about the recent history of his new neighborhood. So he decided to change that. The result is Love Letters to Places I'll Never Meet, an interactive map which summons up the recent past of South Philadelphia by creating an interactive map of some now shuttered stores. To create his love letter to
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Google Maps Mania
If you live in a town or city and you want to observe the true astronomical splendor of the night sky then you need to plan an evening away, somewhere away from the bright lights of the city, somewhere where there is very little light pollution. Luckily there is a new interactive map that will not only help you find locations with reduced light pollution but will also show you the locations of
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Google Maps Mania
The Sea Level Map is an interactive globe which visualizes global sea level and ice sheet interactions over the past 135,000 years. Using the map you can discover in which eras of Earth's history your home might have been under water.The date control at the bottom of the map allows you to adjust the sea level and ice sheets displayed by date. Using this control you can adjust the date shown on
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Google Maps Mania
Over the last three weeks news organizations around the world have produced many maps in their efforts to help explain the 2023 Israel-Hamas war. Many of these have been curated in the Data Vis Dispatch. Unfortunately the paywalls of many of the major news websites make a lot of these maps inaccessible to many.The current attacks on the Palestinian people by Israel are in response to the events
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Google Maps Mania
The United States is a very scary country. The Scariest Place Names in the US is an interactive map which plots some of the most frightening sounding locations across America. You've probably already heard of the towns of Hell in Michigan and Tombstone, Arizona. But have you heard of Transylvania, Louisiana and Slaughter Beach, Delaware. You can find many, many more spooky sounding locations on
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Google Maps Mania
There are many haunted locations that you might want to visit (or avoid) on this All Hallows' Eve. Mashed World has released an interactive map which maps haunted locations across the world identified by the ChatGPT AI.Haunted Locations plots 37 locations in countries around the globe. These haunted locations include the Tower of London (the site of many historical executions), Bran Castle (
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Google Maps Mania
I shall be eternally grateful to my local community's book sharing box. As an avid reader being able to borrow and read secondhand books during lock-down kept me from becoming completely stir crazy. Since lock-down my nearest book-sharing box has almost fallen into disuse. Which is why I'm delighted to have found the Little Free Library World Map.The Little Free Library World Map is an
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Google Maps Mania
MapsFM is an interactive map which can help you find and listen to podcasts produced around the world. Listening to location based podcasts could be a great way to learn more about a planned travel destination or even to learn more about your local neighborhood or town. Now you can easily find and listen to location based podcasts by using the MapsFM map of the podcast world.Simply share your
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Google Maps Mania
You can now explore the fantasy world of J.R.R Tolkein on a three dimensional globe. The Middle-earth 3D Map is a wonderful interactive map of the lands of the Shire, Mordor, Rohan and Gondor. A map that allows you to soar over the Misty Mountains, gaze upon the White City of Minas Tirith, and wander through the ancient forests of Lothlórien in a way that has never been possible before.Unlike
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Google Maps Mania
Spaniards like living in apartments. In fact Spain has one of the highest percentages of apartment dwellers in the world. Only in South Korea do more people live in collective dwellings. There are historical reasons why so many Spaniards live in apartment buildings.
You can learn more about the historical causes of Spain's vertical living in El Diario's story map Spain lives in flats: why we
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Google Maps Mania
A very simple chart designed by a French railway engineer in the 19th Century has helped save millions of lives. Charles Ibry's train schedule, originally developed to timetable and schedule trains on the Paris - Le Havre line, is an extremely effective tool for timetabling and visualizing train traffic on a railway line. Perhaps most importantly it provides railway companies with a powerful
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Google Maps Mania
I think I've started a new mapping trend. At the beginning of October I released my TubeQuiz map. Since then I have spotted three other new map games which also require players to name all the stations on the London Underground network. The latest incarnation of a London Underground station memory game is I Know The Tube. I Know The Tube follows the now well known format of a map memory
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Google Maps Mania
On the evening of Monday October 16, a man drew a gun and opened fire on Swedish football fans in the streets of Brussels. The terrorist attack left two people dead and one injured. The suspect, Abdesalem Lassoued, fled the scene. Soon after the shooting a video was posted on social media in which Abdesalem claimed responsibility for the attack. The next morning the terrorist was tracked down,
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Google Maps Mania
This animated map shows the growth of built-up areas in San Francisco from 1860-1930. It visualizes the rapid growth of the city following the California gold rush in the second half of the 19th Century.This animated GIF was made using the interactive map Historical Built-Up Areas, 1810 - 2015. This amazing map uses data from the HISDAC-US: Historical Settlement Data Compilation for the United
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Google Maps Mania
Musing appears to be an ephemeral version of Twitter. You might well argue that under Elon Musk the social media site 'X' itself appears to be disappearing into the ether at an alarming rate. But when I say that Musing is an ephemeral social media platform I mean that the social media messages themselves are short-lived, not the platform itself.Confused? Well don't be. Just open the Musing
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Google Maps Mania
Global heating has doubled the area of Europe which has a very high risk of wildfire. Civio has mapped the Copernicus Climate Change Service's meteorological forest fire risk index for every year since 1971. The map shows that The territory of Europe at high risk of fires has doubled in the last 50 years.
Europeans living in the Canary Isles, Greece, Sicily and the Algarve - which all
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Google Maps Mania
Sunday's Parliamentary Election in Poland saw the far-right PIS party win the most seats (194 seats) in the new parliament. However the opposition parties, consisting of the Civic Coalition (157 seats), Third Way (65 seats), and The Left (26 seats) achieved a combined share of 54% of the vote and are expected to now form a coalition government.Thanks to the growing trend among newspapers to
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Google Maps Mania
History is written by the victors. Which may be why the ruling classes, composed as they are by the wealthy and powerful, have always been more interested in promoting their own history and perspectives than in giving a voice to the lives and achievements of the working class. As a result our history lessons and textbooks always focus on the exploits of kings, politicians, and other elite
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Google Maps Mania
Do you know which ancient civilization created the earliest known map of the world? If you do then you might be able to beat Mashed Word's History of Maps quiz. Mashed World has developed a number of online quizzes (including one on the History of Maps) which have all been written by the ChatGPT AI. To create each quiz Mashed World gives ChatGPT an input in this general format:Create a quiz
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Google Maps Mania
Tokyo Live is an amazing real-time animated map of the trains on Tokyo's rapid transit and metro networks. The map allows you to track and watch in real-time all of Tokyo's trains as they navigate and move around the city. All on top of an impressive 3D map of Tokyo.
I can't help thinking that Tokyo Live was probably inspired by the equally impressive Mini Tokyo 3D, which is a 3D animated map
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Google Maps Mania
Fuzzy Maps is a new interactive map which uses AI to provide intelligent walking, cycling or driving directions. Unlike directions in Google Maps you can ask Fuzzy Maps to provide you with directions which include custom conditions or requirements.Fuzzy Maps provides a number of example searches that you might want to use, such as:
Bike directions to a nearby history museum, avoid going over
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Google Maps Mania
The Washington Institute's Lebanese Hezbollah is an interactive map dedicated to tracking the activities of the Islamist political party and militant group Hezbollah around the world. The purpose of the map is to serve as a repository of open-source information about Hezbollah’s global activities. The map is also intended to shed light "on the full geographic and temporal range of Hezbollah
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Google Maps Mania
The Straits Times has published a fantastic visualization of how burning peatlands in Indonesia can lead to hazy conditions and dangerous air pollution in Singapore.
In Why the Haze has Reached Singapore's Shores Again the Straits Times has created a stunning computer simulation of the 2019 haze which affected Singapore. The simulation uses an animated smoke layer to illustrate how burning
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Google Maps Mania
Can you name the four countries which border Greece? If you can then you should head straight over to Neighborle.Each day on Neighborle you are shown a different country on an interactive map. Your daily challenge is to name all the countries which border that day's highlighted country. Every time you name a correct bordering country it will be shown in green on the map. If you enter an
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Google Maps Mania
Brody Smith has written a couple of useful tutorials on how you can customize lighting, building and terrain shadows, and fog settings in Mapbox GL powered maps.
In Mapbox Lighting, Shadows, and Fog - Part 1 Brody looks at how lighting can be used to change the visual appearance of a map. In Mapbox Lighting, Shadows, and Fog - Part 2 Broady explores how tinkering with a map's fog settings can
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Google Maps Mania
The Barassi Line is an imaginary line across Australia that approximately divides areas where Australian rules football or rugby league is the most popular football code. The line is named after Ron Barassi, a former player and coach in Australian Rules Football. The term the 'Barassi Line' was first used by historian Ian Turner in his 1978 Ron Barassi Memorial Lecture. The Barassi Line
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Google Maps Mania
X-Rain is an interactive map which visualizes the average amount of rainfall around the globe. The precipitation data used on the map is derived from historical satellite observations. This remote sensed data is not as accurate as data recorded by rain gauges but it is able to provide a more global view of precipitation levels as it is not limited to only those locations with rain gauges.The
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Google Maps Mania
The London Underground consists of 269 stations. I bet you can't name them all.London Underground Names is an easy map game which simply requires you to name all 269 stations on the London Underground network. Naming all 269 stations is a little tricky so I've provided you with a couple of aides to help you remind you of some of the station names. Due to my personal commuting history I can name
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Google Maps Mania
We all have our own ideas about what the ideal weather conditions actually are. myPefectWeather is an interactive map which can help you find the locations in the United States which most closely match your own preferred temperatures, precipitation levels and /or amount of snowfall.If you select the 'options' button on the myPerfectWeather map menu you can begin to discover the locations
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Google Maps Mania
The Fall Foliage Map 2023 is an interactive fall foliage map which is updated daily to provide you with both an accurate progress report of fall colors and a forecast of how fall colors in the United States are likely to change over the next ten days. According to Explore Fall the main factors influencing fall colors are the temperature and daylight. The Explore Fall predictive fall color model
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Google Maps Mania
The Insider ('fully committed to investigative journalism and to debunking fake news') has created a new interactive map which exposes the 'fake experts' around the world that are spreading pro-Kremlin fake narratives and Russian propaganda. The Insider claims that what "unites the individuals featured on this map is their attempt to portray Putin's policies positively while disseminating
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Google Maps Mania
In 12 days time people in North, Central, and South America will be able to experience a solar eclipse. On Saturday, Oct 14 an annular solar eclipse will occur which will be visible in some areas of the United States, Mexico, and a number of countries in Central and South America.
NASA's 2023 Solar Eclipse Explorer is a new interactive map which visualizes the path of the solar eclipse on Oct
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Google Maps Mania
Ramesses I was the founding pharaoh of ancient Egypt's 19th Dynasty. Ramesses burial tomb was rediscovered in the Valley of the Kings by Giovanni Belzoni in October 1817. The tomb is decorated with the Book of Gates. The Book of Gates tells the story of how a newly deceased soul travels into the next world by passing through a series of 'gates'. It is believed that the depiction of this journey
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Google Maps Mania
If you have ever traveled by bus then you have probably experienced the frustration of discovering that your seat is in the direct glare of the sun and that you will now have to spend the majority of the journey squinting and attempting to shade your eyes from the sun's blinding rays.If you are a normal person you could avoid this problem simply by checking the sun's position in the sky and
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Google Maps Mania
This month New South Wales in Australia has been experiencing temperatures up to 16C above the Sepetember average. This is likely the start of El Niño's grip on the country. In an El Niño year Australia typically experiences drought conditions. In July the the World Meteorological Organization said there is a 90% likelihood of El Niño conditions developing this year. They say that it likely to
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Google Maps Mania
On Saturday 2 Feb 1297 three Oxford University students decided to celebrate the festival of the purification of the Blessed Virgin Mary by going on a frenzied rampage. On the evening of the festival John de Skurf and his two friends Michael and Madoc ran through the streets of Oxford with swords, bows, and arrows "attacking all passers-by". One John Metescharp was shot with an arrow by
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Google Maps Mania
Gibraltar (left) compared to Central Park (right)Same Scales is an interactive map which allows you to compare two different locations side-by-side at the same scale. Comparing locations on the same map can be difficult because of the distortions caused by map projections. Same Scales helps you compare two different locations by showing each at the same scale on two different maps placed
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Google Maps Mania
Forever chemicals are almost everywhere. If you search for PFAS contamination in any country, continent, or wildlife species around the world, the chances are you will find it. This revelation comes after a massive analysis of data by the Environmental Working Group (EWG) has exposed the global scale of the PFAS problem. PFAS or toxic "forever chemicals" are harmful substances that pollute the
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Google Maps Mania
One result of global heating is that nearly every summer most of us spend some time thinking about places we can go to avoid the oppressive heat. In recent years a number of interactive maps have been released which can help you find shady places to relax and escape the direct sun. These include popular shade maps such as JveuxDuSoleil, ShadeMap and Shadowmap.
Now a new interactive map goes a
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Google Maps Mania
The right to protest is being restricted in countries around the world. Amnesty International's new interactive map, called Protect the Protest, highlights the growing numbers of human rights violations which are being committed by countries around the world aimed at removing the rights of citizens to legally protest. The Protect the Protest map sheds light on the types of repression that are
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Google Maps Mania
There are eight Royal Parks in London. The parks are owned by the Crown and managed by the Royal Parks charity. The parks originated from land that the royal family once used for recreation and hunting. Over time, these lands were enclosed and became known as the Royal Parks. The public can enter and use the parks for free but public access to the parks remains at the grace and favor of the
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Google Maps Mania
In both American and European politics immigration has become one of the most centrally contested issues. However, according to the authors of World’s human migration patterns in 2000–2019 "a global-scale, high-resolution quantification of migration and its major drivers for the recent decades (has) remained missing" from this political debate. They have therefore created their own global
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Google Maps Mania
Around the world life expectancy could be raised on average by 2 years and 3 months if air quality was improved to meet the World Health Organization guideline. In countries with really high levels of fine particulate pollution (such as India & Bangladesh) life expectancy could be increased by over 5 years. The Air Quality Life Index looks at air quality levels around the world and calculates
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Google Maps Mania
Brisbane has been awarded the 2032 Olympic and Paralympic Games. One of Brisbane's goals in hosting the games is to be “more equal and accessible”. In order to analyze how accessible the Brisbane games will actually be the data consulting firm Smash Delta has been visualizing current travel times to two of the Brisbane games stadia and exploring how those travel times will be improved thanks to
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Google Maps Mania
In July Europe witnessed its largest wildfire in 23 years. The Dadia forest fire in Greece burned 97,000 hectares and killed 20 people. The large number of wildfires in Europe this year follows the even larger number of fires last year, a year which saw the second largest total burnt area this century. So far.Czech news website Aktuáln?.cz has analyzed satellite data of European Union wildfires
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Google Maps Mania
Gapminder's Dollar Street is an amazing project which has photographed and documented 264 family homes in 50 countries around the world. The resulting pictures provide a truly fascinating insight into the everyday lives of people around the world.
Around six years years ago Anna Rosling Rönnlund began sending photographers to visit families in all corners of the world. In each visit to a
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Google Maps Mania
This ridgeline plot map visualizes the population density of Germany. The map was made using Baryon's Population Density Ridgeline Plots for Every Country in the World. Type your county name into this app and you can see your country's population density visualized as a ridgeline plot.
The most famous Ridgeline plot (or joy-plot - as they are sometimes called) appears on Joy Division's famous
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Google Maps Mania
Bioregions 2023 is an interactive map which visualizes the Earth as 185 discrete bioregions. A bioregion is a geographical area defined not by political boundaries but by ecological systems. It is a geographical area that encompasses a unique set of interconnected ecosystems, landforms and watersheds in which a broad community of plants and animals are adapted to specific climatic conditions.
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Google Maps Mania
I really like the game SF-Street-Names, which I reviewed Monday in the post The Streets of San Francisco Game. In fact I liked SF-Street-Names so much that I immediately started trying to see if I could replicate the game for a different city. The result is the Streets of Winchelsea. In this very scaled back version of the SF-Street-Names game you have to name all of the 17 streets of the small
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Google Maps Mania
Over the weekend Map Channels sent me a link to a new virtual tour of Bagnoles de L'Orne in Normandy, France. Bagnoles de L'Orne is a beautiful spa town set beside a pretty lake and the Andaines Forest. The Map Channels virtual tour takes you on a guided Street View walk around some of Bagnoles de L'Orne's most picturesque locations.The Bagnoles de L'Orne virtual tour was made with Map Channels
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11:19
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Google Maps Mania
I know the names of nearly 1/5th of the streets in San Francisco. Which is incredible - especially when you consider I've never been to San Francisco. Luckily my hitherto unbeknownst knowledge of the names of San Franciscan roads makes me a God of SF-Street-Names. SF-Street-Names is a surprisingly fun map game in which your only requirement is to name streets in the Golden City. SF-Street-Names
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11:25
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Google Maps Mania
I don't think I've posted a link to a 'find a nearby restaurant' interactive map in over ten years. Today I'm breaking my unconscious embargo on restaurant maps with a link to the superb Map of the Best. Map of the Best is an incredibly well designed interactive map which uses data from a number of different restaurant rating organizations to show you great places to eat near your current
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8:57
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Google Maps Mania
The investigative journalists at Bellingcat have been developing some important tools and methodologies for geolocating images. On Wednesday they applied their investigative geolocating powers to identify the location of General Sergey Surovikin.
On September 4th a photograph of Surovikin was posted online, accompanied by the message "General Surovikin has emerged. He’s alive and well, home
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15:18
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Google Maps Mania
RIP the Wikipedia layer. Killed ten years ago by Google Maps.Every August I hold a day of remembrance for the sad demise of the Wikipedia layer on Google Maps. Younger readers probably won't remember the glory days of Google Maps when you could simply click on the Wikipedia layer in Google Maps to discover more about all the interesting POI's around any location in the world. For some reason
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9:10
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Google Maps Mania
In 2014 around 3,438,482 Americans lived within 1 mile of a mass shooting event. That number is very high - especially when compared to most other countries around the world. However because of America's complete failure to control gun ownership that figure has now grown to a frightening 41,930,273. This means that in 2023 over 12% of Americans live within one mile of a mass shooting. These
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8:45
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Google Maps Mania
OSM River Basins is an interactive map which uses OpenStreetMap data to visualize all the river basins of the world. A river basin is an area of land drained by one river system and its tributaries. It includes all the land where rainwater or melted snow drains into the river, either directly or through smaller tributary streams and rivers. River basins can be incredibly large - covering
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10:21
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Google Maps Mania
100 years ago yesterday, on September 1st 1923, the Great Kant? earthquake struck Japan. The earthquake struck near midday, at a time when many people were cooking lunch. In Tokyo, during and after the earthquake, fires spread across the city. In the 46 hours after the quake around 40% of Tokyo burned to the ground. Japanese newspaper Nikkei has marked the 100th anniversary of the Great
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8:32
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Google Maps Mania
The Allen Institute's Satlas interactive map uses AI to create high resolution images of the world, even when only low resolution satellite images are available. The Allen Institute has also trained the AI to identify the location of wind turbines, solar farms and tree canopy coverage around the globe.Satlas uses satellite imagery from the European Space Agency’s Sentinel-2 satellites. The
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9:00
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Google Maps Mania
The David Rumsey Map Collection has unveiled its new amazing Text on Maps feature which allows users to search one of the world's largest collections of digitized maps by text. The David Rumsey Map Collection contains over 57,000 geo-referenced vintage maps. Using the new Text on Maps feature you can now search for where any word appears on any of those 57,000 maps.
Old maps are an invaluable
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9:39
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Google Maps Mania
Hurricane Idalia is expected to make landfall in Florida early Tuesday morning. Overnight the hurricane developed into a powerful Category 3 storm and it is now forecast to become a dangerous Category 4 hurricane. NOAA's National Hurricane Center has produced a number of maps showing the forecast track of Hurricane Idalia, the wind speed probabilities, storm surge warnings and rainfall
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9:38
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Google Maps Mania
In July the German government introduced a draft bill to legalize cannabis for personal use. However, under the draft bill, the consumption of cannabis will remain prohibited within a 200-meter radius of schools, children's and youth facilities, playgrounds, publicly accessible sports facilities, and in pedestrian zones between 7 am and 8 pm. According to the Berliner Morgenpost these
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9:19
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Google Maps Mania
This morning I've been helping create a satellite map of a world that doesn't exist. Thanks to the combined forces of the human imagination and the cutting-edge power of AI technology, I've been able to contribute to a new digital landscape that is being created in real-time. That's right people - today I helped terraform the metaverse! This Map Does Not Exist is an AI generated satellite map
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10:31
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Google Maps Mania
In East London you can usually tell where German bombs fell in World War II by the age of the buildings. For example in my street the majority of houses were built in the Victorian age. All the homes built in the later half of the 20th Century were all built on homes destroyed by falling bombs during the war.The Economist has added a new factor to my bomb site detection observations - building
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9:52
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Google Maps Mania
If you need to find a shaded oasis in the concrete jungle of New York City then you can use Cornell University's new Tree Folio NYC interactive map. Tree Folio NYC uses data from a 2021 New York LiDAR survey and the 2015 New York Street Tree Survey to map the shadows cast by buildings and individual tree canopies in New York at any time of day and on any day of the year.
If you zoom-in to any
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9:12
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Google Maps Mania
If you've ever wanted to look inside someone's brain then you might like the European Commission's new 'Google Map' of the human brain. This new 3D map allows you to take a look inside a human skull and explore atlases of the brain's regions and neural connections.The European Brain Research Infrastructure (EBRAINS) is funded by the European Commission to accelerate brain research and
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11:25
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Google Maps Mania
Recently Google added Google Lens to Bard, its AI chatbot. Today I decided to test how good Bard is at identifying locations in photographs by giving it a few screenshots of random locations from Street View and seeing how accurate Bard is at geolocating the actual locations shown.
Let's start with an easy one. I showed Bard the above picture of Tower Bridge in London and asked it 'Where was
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9:32
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Google Maps Mania
As well as having an insatiable passion for maps I also really enjoy browsing old photographic collections. Like maps vintage photographs have the power to transport our imaginations to completely different times and places. For example Yale University's Photogrammar collection can instantly take you back to the bygone era of mid-20th Century America. Photogrammar provides access to a huge
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8:56
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Google Maps Mania
Last week the Washington Post reported on a new analysis from the World Resources Institute which found that half of the world's population already experiences water stress at least once every year. According to the WRI's analysis 25 countries around the world are now exposed to extreme water stress and the global demand for water is now exceeding what there is available.The Post's article
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9:56
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Google Maps Mania
According to the interactive map Deeplomacy the "relationship between Iraq and the United States has been turbulent, complex, and marked by periods of conflict and cooperation." Deeplomacy also informs me that the relationship between Russia and Ukraine has recently "drastically worsened".Deeplomacy is a new map tool which can explain the historical and current diplomatic relationships between
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9:09
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Google Maps Mania
After last week's post on the growing number of interactive map games called City Guesser I was contacted by DoudouOSM on Mastodon, who pointed me towards GeoClash, an alternative to GeoGuessr built on Mapillary panoramic images and Leaflet rather than Google Maps.
GeoClash, like GeoGuessr requires you to identify locations based on 'Street View' type images. To play GeoClash you first need to