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

Video Tracking with Google Maps

Ubipix allows anyone with a smartphone to capture, tag, upload and share video or photo collections and view the submissions on a Google Map.



Using the Ubipix application on your phone allows you to capture video alongside a GPS track. Once you have captured your video (or photographs)  you can view and share the video on the Ubipix website. The video is automatically synchronised with a Google Map, so as you watch a video you can also view the location of the camera and its direction during the video's capture.



Below the video and the Google Map you can also view other data, such as the speed and distance travelled whilst shooting the video.

Creating Heat Maps with the Google Maps API

HeatmapTool is a service for easily creating heat maps with the Google Maps API.



To create a heat map with HeatmapTool the user simply needs a comma separated values file (CSV) of their location data. The tool includes a number of options to customise the colors used, the size of the spot radius and the opacity of the heat map overlay.



The free version of HeatmapTool allows the user to create heat maps with up to 100 data points and allows for 500 hits per day.

How Bad is Fructose? David Despain Interviews Dr. John Sievenpiper

In my article "Is Sugar Fattening?", I discussed a recent review paper on fructose, by Dr. John Sievenpiper and colleagues (1).  It was the most recent of several review papers to conclude that fructose is probably not inherently fattening in humans, but that it can be fattening if it's consumed to excess, due to the added calories.  Dr. Sievenpiper and colleagues have also written other papers addressing the metabolic effects of fructose, which appear to be fairly minor unless it's consumed to excess (2, 3, 4, 5).  The senior author on these studies is Dr. David Jenkins at McMaster University.  David Despain, a science and health writer who publishes a nice blog called Evolving Health, recently interviewed Dr. Sievenpiper about his work.

It's an interesting interview and very timely, due to the recent attention paid to fructose in the popular media. This has mostly been driven by a couple of high-profile individuals-- an issue they discuss in the interview.  The interview, recent papers, and sessions at scientific conferences are part of an effort by researchers to push back against some of the less well founded claims that have received widespread attention lately.

Read more »

Rebuilding L'Aquila with Google Maps

In 2009 an earthquake in the Italian city of L'Aquila caused the death of 308 people and damaged many of the town's historically important buildings. Noi L'Aquila is a Google Map developed by Google in partnership with the City of L'Aquila, the ANFE (Associazione Nazionale Famiglie Emigrati), the University of L'Aquila and the architect Barnaby Gunning.



The map aims to capture the memories of the citizens of L'Aquila and help speed up the reconstruction of the city. It provides a means for the town's inhabitants to record their memories of the town and at the same time to inspire the future of L'Aquila visualising its reconstruction with 3D models.



Users of the map can submit photographs and videos to a Google Map and also contribute text about their memories of locations throughout the town. The map also includes an option to view the town with the Google Earth browser plug-in. In the Inspire the Future section of the site users can contribute 3d models to help visualise and shape the reconstruction of the town.

German Bike Routes on Google Maps

Naviki is a German bike route application. The application uses Google Maps with OpenStreetMap cycling route data to help cyclists find the shortest or most cycle friendly route between two locations.



Users just need to add a starting location and a destination and select whether they want the shortest or the most bike friendly route. The bike friendly route takes into consideration altitudes and congestion in calculating a route optimised for cyclists.



The calculated route is displayed on a Google Map alongside an elevation profile and details such as the distance of the route and an estimated time for the journey. The waypoints of the calculated route can also be downloaded for GPS units.