Mar

24th 2008

Tellings Stories Geographically

Filed Under Books, Google Maps | Leave a Comment

Penguin Books has launched a new feature entitled “We Tell Stories.“  With the tagline “Six Authors.  Six Stories.  Six Weeks”, the site uses Google Maps to take the reader through the geography of each short stories.  The first week’s offering is a short story called “21 Steps” by Charles Cumming (inspired by the book “39 Steps” by John Buchan.  Each week there will be a new short story played out over Google Maps. 

Seen via Google’s Lat Long Blog

Jan

23rd 2008

Google in hot water with South Korea

Filed Under Google Earth, Google Maps | Leave a Comment

Apparently Google has upset South Korea again with its choice of annotation that mistakenly attributes certain locations in South Korea as being part of North Korea. According to Digital Chosunilbo, a daily news site about Korea:

The controversial areas include Ongjin County under the jurisdiction of the city of Incheon, and some islands in Ongjin County such as Baegryeong-do, Daecheong-do, and Socheong-do.

While close to North Korea, all of these locations are in South Korea. Yet all of them are described in detail by Google Earth as belonging to North Korea. Even Yeonpyeong-do, in whose adjacent waters the 1999 West Sea battle was waged, is described as belonging to the North.

There have been several incidents in the past with Google referring to Seoul (the capital of South Korea) as “under Japanese rule” and labeling some locales with the Japanese name instead of the Korean name.

Read more: Google Under Fire for Flawed Korea Maps - Digital Chosunilbo

Nov

16th 2007

Geo World Bank

Filed Under Google Maps, World | Leave a Comment

The World Bank has teamed up with Google to offer an interactive mapping application that displays financial and demographic statistics by country.  Visitors can either select a country via the drop down list presented or click on one of the markers on the map.  Countries are color coded by markers showing low, middle and high income.  Clicking each country opens up a tabbed window that provides detailed statistics, news items and project information.

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Sep

07th 2007

VeoGeo

Filed Under Google Maps, Travel | Leave a Comment

VeoGeo is a site that mixes a Google mashup, GPS, and video to present user submitted sites of interest around the world.  The site is newly launched so there currently are about twenty videos that have been added to the site.  The main page is a Google mashup showing the location of all submitted travel shorts.  Click on a marker and the video is loaded, showing you the route that was either walked or driven.  If you are zoomed in on the location (unfortunately the site doesn’t zoom in automatically) then you can see the marker move along with the route of the video.  Additionally, zooming in can only be accomplished by clicking the “+” button which can be odious to zoom in from a map showing the world to the location of the video.  The site is clearly still in development but it’s an interesting idea that can grow. 

Aug

28th 2007

Who is Sick?

Filed Under Current Events, Google Maps | Leave a Comment

Bookmark this site for when you come down with the sniffles and, in your misery, want to see who around you shares your company.  Who is Sick? is an epidemiology map created by users who log such information as their illness type, length of illness, gender and age.  Those who have logged an illness are displayed on a Google map.  A running summary on the right hand side provides statistics about the number of illnesses in the current view along with percentages of symptoms.  You can also narrow down the information presented through the search tab. 

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Aug

07th 2007

Make sure you’re decent

Filed Under Google Maps | Leave a Comment

Google’s Lat Long Blog has announced the availability of more Street View level imagery:

We’re excited to announce that Street View is now available in San Diego, Los Angeles, Houston and Orlando. Like the San Francisco Bay Area, San Diego features high-resolution imagery.

 

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Aug

02nd 2007

Global Incident Map

Filed Under Current Events, Google Maps, World | Leave a Comment

If you want some chill with your morning coffee, head over to Global Incident Map. With its ominous blinking icons, this web site scans news items to map out incidents of terror and other “suspicious” activity around the world. The most recent thirty events are listed below the map and further down on the page, incidents are listed in categories ranging from Aviation/Airport events to general terrorism news. Hovering your mouse over an icon brings up a maptip with a brief summary of the location and type of event. Clicking on the icon brings up a detailed page of the event along with a link to the news article as well as a zoomed in satellite map of its location.

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