Jun

29th 2007

New tool in Google Maps for directions

Filed Under General | Leave a Comment

google4.jpgGoogle has added a new tool to their popular Google Maps directions tool.  Once you’ve created your driving directions, you can change the route by grabbing the blue line marking the route and dragging it to a new location to mark a stop.  When you drag and drop to your new route, the driving directions automatically update themselves. Because  tool allows you to create “stops” along your route, it is helpful if you are traveling to multiple locations and need directions along the way.   If you’ve designated additional stops, the driving directions will be broken down by stops as well.  Clicking on one of the stopstop.jpg icons on the driving directions list and a box pops up on the map zoomed in to that location.  It’s easy to remove a stop by right-clicking and selecting the “Remove this designation” option on the menu. 

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Jun

28th 2007

More Urban Dwellers by 2008

Filed Under Current Events, World | Leave a Comment

The United Nations Population Fund has released their report entitled “State of the World Population 2007“:

In 2008, the world reaches an invisible but momentous milestone: For the first time in history, more than half its human population, 3.3 billion people, will be living in urban areas. By 2030, this is expected to swell to almost 5 billion. Many of the new urbanites will be poor. Their future, the future of cities in developing countries, the future of humanity itself, all depend very much on decisions made now in preparation for this growth.

The report concludes that the majority of the change to urban dwelling will occur in Asia and Africa with 81 percent of all of the world’s population living in urban areas by 2030.  Read more

Jun

27th 2007

Presidential Campaign Finance Map

Filed Under United States | Leave a Comment

presidential.png The Federal Election Commission has created a mapping interface on their site to show the contributions overall and individually to each presidential candidate.  Visit the site to map data by party, candidate, state and the first three digits of a ZIP code. Hover over each state and a maptip shows the amount contributed.  Clicking on the state drills down to more details at the ZIP code level.  If you select a candidate and then click on a ZIP code location, a table of contributors over $200 is returned.  “You can see very quickly how the sources of financial support for these candidates are distributed,” FEC press officer Bob Biersack said in article on  GCN.com. 

Jun

26th 2007

Budget and ‘My Wonderful World,’ a National Geographic-led Campaign, Team Up to Promote ‘Geo-Literacy’

Filed Under Education, Press Releases | Leave a Comment

PARSIPPANY, N.J., June 25 /PRNewswire/ — As summer approaches and families prepare to travel, Budget is helping promote geography education among America’s children by providing fun and informative road-trip activities for kids, while also offering ways for parents to save money while on vacation. Now through August 15, 2007, customers who rent from participating Budget airport and neighborhood locations will receive a free copy of the Budget “Best Trip Ever” money-saving coupon booklet, which includes great deals and special offers on a variety of products and services, such as:

– Discounts on Budget car rentals at airport and neighborhood locations — Discounts on Budget Truck rentals — Kids games and activities, courtesy of My Wonderful World, a National Geographic-led campaign to help boost kids’ global geography knowledge, or “geo-literacy” — Dollars-off coupons for Dunkin’ Donuts — Buy-one, get-one-free offers and dollars-off Baskin Robbins coupons — Special offers on breakfast, kids’ meals and dessert at Perkins Restaurant and Bakery. Read more

Jun

25th 2007

Five Million Using Outdated Maps

Filed Under Europe, Mapping, Travel | Leave a Comment

A survey by Trafficmaster, a travel information company based in the United Kingdom, has found that nearly 5 million drivers in that country use maps created before the year 2000.  One percent (138,000) of drivers use, astonishingly enough, maps created before 1950!  Three percent of the 2,196 adults surveyed said they could not read maps, while one in five have now ditched their road atlas in favor of other technologies such as online mapping directions and GPS systems. 

Jun

24th 2007

Google Maps on Jet Blue

Filed Under Google Maps, Travel | Leave a Comment

On June 5, Google announced that real-time access to Google Maps would become a regular in-seat experience to travelers on Jet Blue.  While entoute, passengers will be able to track the progress of their flight location, altitude, and air speed.  To celebrate this new venture, JetBlue is holding a photo contest. The best in-flight photo between June 4 and September 3, 2007 will win two round trip tickets to anywhere that JetBlue flies. 

To celebrate, the low-fare, high-frills airline is launching a “JetBlue Point of View” photo contest(a), inviting customers to share their own summer travel routes on a Google Maps mash-up on www.jetblue.com/google.

Customers can enter the contest by visiting www.jetblue.com/google and submitting their favorite photo taken from the window of any JetBlue flight scheduled between June 5 and September 3. One photo can be submitted per email address along with the date of travel, origin and destination cities, and the approximate location of where the photo was taken in-flight. As an option, customers can also submit the name of the JetBlue plane that flew them to their destination. JetBlue will post customer photos to a Google Maps mash-up, where customers can vote on their favorite shots at the end of the summer. Based on customer votes, the top 10 photographers will receive roundtrip travel for two to any of the airline’s 54 destinations.

Jun

24th 2007

Animated map of homes

Filed Under Microsoft Virtual Earth, United States | Leave a Comment

Trulia (a real estate search site) has built an animated map showing the growth of various homes around the United States.  Click on one of the highlighted labels on the map of the United States to see a flash application.  As the time interval changes, color-coded points flash on the map to show the development of the neighborhood.  Use the darken/brighten slider to play with the background aerial.  Yank the slider all the way to the right to see only the dots against a white background and conversely, yank it all the way to the left to see the dots against a black background.  The map application is built against Microsoft’s Virtual Earth.  The mapping application is part of the Trulia Blog where posted commentary and some sumamry background information on each of the locations can be found. 

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