Follow you, follow me

Buck found something very cool: A Twitter/Google Maps mashup callled twittervision.

Street with a (point of) view

Google’s Street View feature has captured private moments before, but “Street with a View” is the first example of public art we’ve seen that was designed specifically to be documented by Google’s roving cameras, and viewed online through Street View.

For “Street with a View,” artists Robin Hewlett and Ben Kinsley enlisted the help of a full cast of artists and performers to set up a series of tableaux—including a parade, a sword fight, a rooftop escape, and a perplexing giant chicken—along Sampsonia Way in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. They then invited Google to drive through the scene and immortalize it in its Street View feature.

GOOD magazine: The Most Exciting Street In The World (10 November 2008)

Related: "Street With a View" project

Free topographical maps

Kevin Kelly @ Cool Tools:

The easiest way [to obtain free topo map data] is to download a free nifty app for Google Earth, called the Topographical Overlay, that will add a KMZ "layer" of official US topo maps on Google Earth. Once installed you can toggle it on or off. When on, the Topo Overlay displays the standard 7.5 minute topos as one seamless map of the country. This makes it very easy to center your interest in the middle of your custom map. (You can buy a similar service on a not-cheap set of CDs from National Geographic, but you get the same thing here for free.) For browsing, this arrangement is hard to beat. You can zoom in, or out, and scroll forever. Its major drawback is printing. I have not been able to get the displayed map to print larger than one half of a standard letter page.

[...]

...You can download, for free, a high resolution PDF file of any US topo map made. These are the same maps that the Google Earth app is using, but here they are dished out one by one in PDF format. Go to the USGS Map Locator page, and search for the quad you want. You can type in an "street" address just like in Google. Click on the appropriate miniature map and then choose which scale map of the area you want to download. The PDF files of the standard 7.5 minute topo map will be between 6 and 16 megs. You'll need Photoshop or equivalent to crop and size them. Be prepared to use some heavy duty processing power. These are big, very detailed maps.

Service Journalism 2.0

San Diego public radio station KPBS FM was knocked off the air when the wildfires raging in their area burned down the power lines feeding their transmitter.

But they're not only broadcasting again over another area station, they're leveraging technology to create superb, computer-enhanced situational awareness for people in the area.

I've seen the future and it works.

KPBS is maintaining an incredibly useful Google Maps-based data site for people in the area, and also offering regular status updates via Twitter (which can send information to a variety of platforms, including mobile phones.)

This must be a complete godsend for anyone who's trying to keep up with the latest news and understand how it might affect them.

(Here's the link to the KML file if you want to view the area in Google Earth.)

Tour de France 2007 - Live Tracker

A great Google Maps mashup, with rider positions and telemetry updated in real time:

Watch the exact position and additional data (heart rate, cadence, speed, power) of the racing cyclists on an interactive map.

More fun with Google Maps

Courtesy of the new My Maps feature, a few of my favorite New York City places.

Click to visit.

17. Swim across the Atlantic Ocean (3,462 mi)

How to get from my house to a favorite little hotel in Paris, via Google Maps.

Drill-down demographics

It's Neighboroo.

Slice and dice demographic information and view via a Google Maps interface.

Not just for politics, of course, but:

My ZIP, your ZIP, red ZIP, blue ZIP.


Um... my ZIP.

Neighboroo.

Hat tip: Gothamist.