The 2011 Canadian Census on Google Maps

More data from the 2011 Canadian Census was released today. Global News has acted quickly to update its 2011 Census Google Maps, in particular adding new data about sex and age.


Global News has created census maps for a large number of Canadian cities. The new data allows users to explore the median age in different neighbourhoods, find out which areas are getting older and which areas have the most men or women

Climb Every Mountain with Google Maps

The Guardian newspaper has published a visualisation by data scientist Robert Mundigi exploring the world's 50 highest peaks.



Climb Every Mountain features a clickable (non Google) map of the 50 summits that is synchronised with a Google Map to show the satellite images of each mountain. The visualisation also features data about each mountain's prominence and elevation.



All the different data panels in the visualisation are interlinked so that the Google Map always displays the mountain whose data is currently being explored.

Tracking Ice Cream Vans on Google Maps

Summer wouldn't be summer without the unbridled joy of the ice-cream van.



Summer also wouldn't be summer without the occasional disappointment of hearing the bells of the ice-cream van, running indoors, scrambling around trying to find your money, running out onto the street again, only to see the ice-cream van disappearing around the corner.



Thanks to Google Maps the sight of small children crying in the street whilst they stare disconsolately after the missed ice-cream should be a thing of the past.



For the Ben & Jerry's Fair Ice Tour 2012 a Ben & Jerry's ice-cream bus is driving around Germany, Austria and Switzerland giving out free ice-cream. To help avoid disappointment the van can be tracked in real-time on a Google Map.



You can even request that the Ben & Jerry ice-cream van visits somewhere near you by making a request on Ben & Jerry's Facebook fan page.

Building Bridges with Google Maps

As part of the celebrations for the Golden Gate Bridge’s 75th anniversary why not help create the longest bridge in the world with Band of Bridges?



Using Band of Bridges it is possible to virtually connect bridges from around the world to the Golden Gate Bridge. Using the application you can find a bridge on Google Maps and connect it to all the other bridges added by other users. To add a bridge you just need to find its location on Google Maps, click on both ends of the bridge and then enter its name.



The bridge will then automatically be connected to the Band of Bridges chain of bridges.



Once you have added a bridge you can post a link to your bridge on Google+, Twitter or Facebook and your followers can then click on the link to view the bridge you added in the Band of Bridges chain.



Via: Google Lat Long

The Inaugural Data Journalism Awards

Pedestrian Crashes in Novosibirsk is one of the six winners of the inaugural Data Journalism Awards.



Pedestrian Crashes in Novosibirsk uses the Google Maps API to map and analyse pedestrian road accidents in Novosibirsk, Russia in 2011. The jury of the award said that the map is a,



"good interactive visualisation of what can be very dry data, with intuitive navigation, in an interface that invites readers to engage with the information. The pre-packaged pullout ‘stories’ also efficiently relay information at a glance – while allowing readers to zoom in to get customised or personal detail."



The slide control above the map can be used to filter the results shown by month. The 'pullout' stories allow the user to explore the data by gender of the driver, gender of the pedestrian, age of driver and pedestrian, and to show those accidents that caused a fatality.

Modern Land Art on Google Maps

The Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA) is currently holding an exhibition on Land art, "capturing the simultaneous impulse emergent in the 1960s to use the earth as an artistic medium and to locate works in remote sites far from familiar art contexts". The exhibition runs until September 3rd.




Even if you can't get to MOCA to view the exhibition then you can still view an accompanying interactive application that maps key artworks in the exhibition. Ends of the Earth: Land Art to 1974 uses Google Maps and Google Street View to pinpoint the original locations of the featured artworks.



For each artwork it is possible to view a satellite image, or a Street View image where available, of the artwork's location. It is also possible to view a photograph of the work of art in situ overlaid on top of the Google Map or Street View.

Introducing Google World Wonders

World Wonders is a new project from Google that allows you to take a virtual trip around 132 of the World's most famous historical and cultural sites. The sites includes historically important locations, such as Stonehenge and Pompeii and also natural wonders, such as the sandy dunes of Australia’s Shark Bay and the rock domes of Yosemite National Park.



Google World Wonders uses Google Maps, Google Street View and Google Earth 3d models to explore these 132 historical locations. Each location also includes YouTube videos and photographs from Getty Images. Information about each location is also provided by the UNESCO World Heritage Centre.



Google World Wonders also includes a great Education section with downloadable resources for history and geography students and guides for primary and secondary school teachers.




Via: Google: Official Blog

Brazillian Real-Estate on Google Maps

These days I rarely get excited by real-estate maps but I do love Epungo. This Brazilian real-estate map truly is a thing of beauty.



The map includes a radial and polygon search tool that allows the user to closely define the area that they wish to search for properties. The search results can also be refined by using the slide controls to define the price, number of rooms and the floor area.



None of these features are exactly new to real-estate maps but Epungo has brought them together in one gorgeous package. I also really like the step-by-step walk-through of the search tools that the site offers when you first load the map. 

The Geography of Incarceration

Josh Begley, a graduate student studying Interactive Telecommunications at New York University has created a website showing the satellite images of correctional facilities in the U.S.. The page shows the satellite images of around 700 U.S. prisons (which is about 14% of the total number of prisons).



Prison Map is a great resource for anyone who is interested in the geography of incarceration. For example it would be interesting to analyse the images to see how many of the prison buildings were influenced by Jeremy Bentham's Panopticon designs.



Josh used the Google Static Maps API with a little self-written hack to save each map tile as an image file.



To find the locations of the prisons Josh used Prisoners of the Census' Correctional Facility Locator 2010, which allows you to search for and view on Google Maps all correctional facilities counted in the 2010 Census.

Italian Prisoner Deaths on Google Maps

Italian journalist Jacopo Ottaviani (twitter.com/jackottaviani) has been investigating the deaths of prisoners within the Italian justice system. You can read Jacopo's report in Il Fatto Quotidiano (Italian) or in the Guardian (English).




Using a Google Map Jacopo has plotted nearly a thousand prisoner deaths from 2002 until 2012. At different zoom levels you can view pie charts on the map showing the percentages of the causes of death in that region. The figures show that over half of the deaths in Italian prisons are the result of suicide.



In the Guardian Jacopo explains how he created the map. The "Data was scraped using ScraperWiki and refined with Google Refine; the resultant tables were merged using Google Fusion and finally visualised through Batchgeo."

New 45° Imagery for 26 Cities

Wawel Royal Castle, Kraków





Google Maps has new 45° imagery for 16 U.S. and 10 international locations, including the first 45° imagery for Poland and Ireland.



The full list of updated cities:



US: Albany, GA (outskirts); Atascocita, TX; Clarksville, TN;
Columbia, MO; Corpus Christi, TX; Fayetteville, NC; Fort Collins, CO;
Fort Smith, AR; Greensboro, NC; Jackson, TN; Lafayette, LA; Plaquemine,
LA; Pueblo, CO; Santa Fe, NM; Texarkana, AR; Tyler, TX



International: Bern, Switzerland; Cracow, Poland; Dublin,
Ireland; Gdansk, Poland; Lugo, Spain; Ourense, Spain; Poznan, Poland;
Warsaw, Poland; Wroclaw, Poland; Zurich, Switzerland



You can check out some of my favorite 45° views in this Aerial View Slideshow. 



Via: Google Lat Long