google maps

The south of Britain has today seen its first proper snow fall in quite some time.

While London is experiencing its fair share of it, we - along with the rest of the UK - are having the snowfall mapped out courtesy of Twitter users and the short weather reports they are tweeting.

This is a good example of Twitter being used in situations where an idea has grown organically into a way of collecting structured data from the masses, and where someone has taken the idea and run with it to map the data out. It's the kind of thing that I think would really help in disaster relief situations, if enough people had access to Twitter still, and in fact the attacks on Mumbai showed that Twitter was used widely to spread eyewitness news of what was happening.

Check out Paul Clarke's writeup for a great rundown on how all this progressed (more than the passing comment this post gives). Great to see there are smart people at the heart of the UK government's web strategy - Paul is working on making Directgov a better place.

(map courtesy of Google Maps and the #uksnow mashup)

Did you know that you can list your business for free on Google Maps and have it highlighted to people who are searching the map for businesses like yours within a certain area?

When I was building the Cronk-e-Dhooney Cottage B&B website a few months back, I was looking for ways to promote it. I added it to TripAdvisor to give it some visibility in the world of travel (and it's recently had its first glowing review) and then tried to add it to Google Maps using the Local Business Center.

Trying to add it, I stumbled when it came to entering the address (which doesn't have a street name, and has a Manx postcode, which wasn't recognised by Google). Without a working address, there wasn't a chance of getting it listed.

When I saw today's release of Google Maps for the Isle of Man, I thought I'd give the process another shot this evening, and try once again to add Cronk-e-Dhooney Cottage to the map. This time it worked much better (though not painless, as it still didn't like the postcode) and I've managed to get the information (and a couple of the photos I could get it to accept) onto the map. For the extended profile that pops up on the map, you can add photos and a wealth of information about your business.

Now, do a search for bed and breakfast in the Isle of Man and you'll see the cottage come up in pole position. With free publicity like this, can you afford not to have your local business on the map?

Tip: When adding the address, type it all out except for the postcode, click the link to change the location of the pin on the map, move it to pinpoint your property, and only then add your postcode. That's the only way I could get it to accept the address.

It's taken quite some time, but it's great to see that Google Maps now has a map of the Isle of Man to go with the imagery they added a little while back. Thanks Google!

Just one day after I write about CloudMade announcing that they are donating their map of the Isle of Man to the OpenStreetMap project (see my post from yesterday), I notice today that Google Maps has added the Isle of Man to their list of places they have map coverage for (though no official announcement I can see on their LatLong blog as of yet).

I had my suspicions that there may have been an imminent release of maps for the Island when I noticed that it wasn't possible to add map data on the Island through their new MapMaker tool that allows you to add your own data to unmapped regions.

It's a shame that this data isn't editable like the CloudMade data that I'll soon be importing into OpenStreetMap though. Zooming into Castletown for a quick close-up look, I've already spotted an error (typo) in the naming of a road: check out Abrory road (should be Arbory Road) running into Castletown. If that was an error in OpenStreetMap data, it'd be a simple job to go in and fix that up so other users could benefit from correct data.

Update: In some places, it's just plain wrong, e.g. this main road in Ballasalla (A34) that has been re-routed down a footpath before joining up with itself again.

After a long wait, Google has updated their aerial imagery to include high resolution imagery of the Isle of Man. The imagery is available through both Google Maps and Google Earth.

You can now explore the Island's towns (e.g. Castletown, Douglas or Ramsey), glens (e.g. Silverdale Glen, Glen Helen and Glen Maye), historic monuments (e.g. Lady Isabella or the Laxey Wheel, Corrin's Tower on Peel Head, Peel Castle, Castle Rushen in Castletown and Derby Fort on Fort Island, Langness) and the only mountain (Snaefell) or anything else that can be seen from above.

Unfortunately there still isn't any name data, so it's much easier if you know what you're looking for when exploring.

Update: I see from the Isle of Man Newspapers website - Improved Isle of Man images on Google Earth - that the imagery being included in Google's database is dated 2006 and is the result of "months of negotiations involving the Department of Local Government and the Space Commerce Division of the Treasury."

A colleague of mine commented the other day on the 3D buildings that Google had introduced in St Paul, Minnestota and sounded suitably impressed. It reminded me of when I first heard about the introduction of building outlines, and then the extrapolation of them in some places to give a 3-dimensional effect. Since then I had intended to give a quick tour of the way Google represents places around the world using differing cartographic styles in different countries, largely to reflect the map conventions that people are used to in those places.

So, here goes, with a sample of places I've selected from around the world, starting with perhaps the most unique styles I've seen so far in Google maps and generally working westwards:

Shanghai, China

The Chinese maps (available through maps.baidu.com, Google's Chinese subsidiary, not through other Google Maps portals) show business locations such as KFC, with a handful of other markers used to highlight different services, each named respectively.

There are very few building outlines included and, as in most places, the streets are simple lines, many of which appear to be unnamed.

Update: I confused Baidu (not a Google business) with Ditu, the Chinese version of Google Maps. The maps of Shanghai are quite similar to the Baidu ones I described, though seemingly without commercial entities like KFC on there.

Tokyo, Japan

The maps of downtown Tokyo seem to be very pedestrian-centric, with prominent stores and landmarks being represented, sometimes with a logo (e.g. 7-Eleven and am/pm stores) and sometimes with a red dot and the name of a building. Some of the larger buildings are depicted in 3D though for others, just the outlines are included.

In addition, streets are shown not just as lines, as they are in most other Google cartography I've seen, but actually as they are laid out on the ground, with pavements and crossings clearly marked.

St Paul, Minnesota, United States

The downtown area of St Paul, MN is covered by 3D buildings, including all of the skyways that link together to form a vast indoor network above the ground. Further from the centre of the city, there are very few buildings to be seen.

Other than this network of pedestrian walkways, the rest of the map could be considered very vehicle centric, with no public transport information (surely there are some bus stops at least?).

New York City, United States

Downtown Manhattan Island in New York has a more extensive coverage of 3D buildings and also has public transport information included, with both stops/stations and the services that run through them. With so many tall buildings in the downtown area, especially around the central business district, it can be difficult in places to make out roads in between buildings.

Google has been extending its transit information to all sorts of new places, providing easy access from within their maps wherever possible.

London, United Kingdom

London has no building outline data, though Google has tried and failed to obtain the the information. Google and the Ordnance Survey never reached an agreement, so the excellent data sources that were built up from OS data as part of the Virtual London project aren't (yet) available to be used outside of academic circles.

The London maps also show transport information, but few other landmarks (Covent Garden Market being one).

Moscow, Russia

Moscow's map depicts building outlines and their (street) numbers as well as Metro stops, though there is no embedded transport information there as of yet.

One thing I find interesting about Moscow is the delineation caused - presumably - by combining different datasets, showing stark differences in the levels of foliage in and around Moscow compared to its surrounding areas. Is that due to different ages of datasets, an actual difference in coverage up to a physical boundary, or a desire to show Moscow as being a greener city than it actually is? (Having never been there, I'm not sure which of those is most likely).