Five Great Fusion Tables and Google Maps Examples

WikiEDdata - Mapping Poverty in Washington School Districts
 
The most powerful maps allow users to quickly understand the significance of large amounts of data. Using Fusion Tables, polygons representing school districts and poverty levels are rendered and colored based on their assigned values in the tables. 

Clicking on a district polygon will bring up an infowindow containing a poverty line data chart, dynamically generated through the Google Chart API. 

Reporting Road Potholes in Spain
 
Fusion Tables makes crowdsourcing easy. Using Fusion Tables, Otrobache.com allows Madrid citizens to log on and report the location of potholes. The newly reported potholes appear on the map in real time (as soon as the map is refreshed). 

The Telegraph - UK Charities Map
 
Fusion Tables is a great way to store and quickly render large amounts of data. The Telegraph used Fusion Tables to catalog and map literally tens of thousands of charities throughout the UK. 

Analyzing Concealed Handgun Licenses in San Antonio
 
From San Antonio Express-News, "The Texas Tribune analyzed a Department of Public Safety database that tracks concealed handgun licenses in Texas. The Tribune's analysis found that the number of gun permits in an area often correlates with income and political beliefs." 

Fusion Tables is used here to overlay the data with boundaries and view possible correlations. The implementation also makes use of Gradient styling. Gradients allows developers to specify a color ramp and a number range; features will be displayed in the color appropriate for where they belong in the range. Much like the built-in Intensity map visualization, but now you can change the colors and use your own boundaries! 

Boris Bikes on Fusion Tables
 
Using geometry styling controls in Fusion tables, this implementation is a live visualization of London Cycle Hire Rank availability using data from the Boris Bikes API. 

five scientists and Google Maps/Earth

Back in December of 2009, five leading scientists from the American Geophysical Union trekked to the remote Google office in downtown San Francisco. So, for the first time ever, we present, the Lost Archives of the Google Geo Developers Series

• Jeffrey Cardille of Universitie de Montreal discusses GeoSearch, a new virtual globe application for the submission, storage, and sharing of point-based ecological data.
• Thijs Damsma of Deltares discusses his use of KML to visualize coastal data.
• Ross Beyer of NASA and SETI discusses his work visualizing Mars data and imagery using Google Earth.
• Tyler Erickson of Michigan Tech Research Institute discusses his tools for to visualizing 4-D atmospheric carbon monitoring data using KML and Google Earth
• Yaxing Wei of Oak Ridge National Lab discusses his Spatial Data Access Tool which enables visualization and access of geospatial data using OGC services and Google Earth.

new Distance Matrix service; Google Maps AND Google Fusion Tables.

Thanks to the new Distance Matrix service, which we are launching today, I can now relive these moments from my youth. The Distance Matrix service is a simple and efficient way to obtain the travel distance and time between many locations when you do not need the full route details for any individual pair. The below applications generates a distance matrix for walking from major London railway stations to several London landmarks. Roll your mouse over the matrix cells, or tap a cell, to see the relevant route.

The Distance Matrix service is also useful for sorting or filtering search results. For example, let’s say your Maps API application enables users to find nearby grocery stores and you want to present the results sorted by drive time. The locations are stored in a spatial database such as Google Fusion Tables, which can return all stores within a given straight line distance. Using the Distance Matrix service you only need one more query to obtain the drive time from the user's location to each of those stores in order to sort them accordingly.

The Distance Matrix service is available for use directly in the JavaScript Maps API as well as a web service returning JSON or XML. To get started, take a look at the Maps API services documentation, and the Distance Matrix API web service documentation.

two styled maps at the same location; google maps

Justin O’Beirne joined us onstage to talk about map styling and how even the most subtle changes to the map can drastically change the user's experience. Below is an example of what can be achieved by using styled maps. The two maps are at the same location and have the same data points but the map on the left has had a custom style applied.

Drag the bar to show more or less of each map

By removing the map labels and decreasing the saturation and lightness we are able to emphasise the importance of the data, make it more visually appealing and build a application that is truly our own. If you would like to play more with map styling check out the styled map wizard.

Check out the slides and make your map application user experience rock!

Business icons; POI point of interest; interactive maps; google maps

If your application does not specify a specific version of the Maps API to load these icons will appear on the map by default from early next week, unless you are a Maps API Premier customer. The business icons will be classified with the poi.business Styled Maps feature type. If you would prefer that your Maps API application not include these icons, you can remove them ahead of next week’s release by setting visibility:off on the labels element of poi.business for your map. Maps API Premier customers who would like their maps to include these icons can enable them today by setting visibility:on.

You can preview these icons, and the InfoWindow that is shown when they are clicked, on the map below:

In order to allow you to control visibility of these icons, and other features, across all the default map types, you can also now specify styles for your map in MapOptions. This enables you to selectively restyle roads, labels, and other features on Hybrid and Terrain maps in addition to Road Maps. Note however that the base satellite imagery (for Satellite and Hybrid maps) and base relief imagery (for Terrain maps) cannot be restyled.

Animated transitions between 45 degree headings;google maps

Take our new animated transitions for a spin! Simply load the below map using Chrome or Safari, and click the Rotate button. For extra spininess, click twice, then zoom out!

5 great Chrome apps using Google Maps API; TripTrace; Wikihood World Browser: By organizing Wikipedia articles geographically;Breadcrumbs is a great GPS management tool; Weatherbug let’s you view your weather and get the latest local current conditions, traffic information.

Many of these Chrome Apps are utilizing the Geo APIs. 

 5 great Chrome apps using Google Maps API.

 TripTrace

TripTrace organizes all the important places that you’ve been to or think you might want to visit; perfect for local exploration or vacation planning. Photos, events, and news are merged with your personal address book, check-ins, bookmarked web pages and more.

 Wikihood

Wikihood World Browser gives users with a unique way to browse and discover knowledge. By organizing Wikipedia articles geographically, users can quickly find information about a given location on the map. Wikihood makes browsing even easier by providing a short synopsis of an article on the left side when the article’s geolocation is selected on the map.

 Breadcrumbs

Breadcrumbs is a great GPS management tool. Users can visualize, organize, edit, and share GPS data collected from any GPS enabled device (including Android devices!). Breadcrumbs is also integrated with the Google Earth API for 3D visualizations.

 Delta Embark

Whether you’re planning your next vacation, trying to find a restaurant on your next business trip, or just looking for some travel inspiration this Chrome optimized travel guide is a delight to use. Travel planning made fun and easy, brought to you by Delta Airlines!

 Weatherbug

Don’t be late to Grandma’s this holiday season! Weatherbug let’s you view your weather and get the latest local current conditions, forecast, traffic information, and more for thousands of locations around the world. 

To learn more about adding your apps to the Chrome Web Store, check out our developer documentation about apps and the store. 

Ref.

http://googlegeodevelopers.blogspot.com/2010/12/5-great-chrome-web-store-apps-maps.html

google maps, fractals; fractal renderer in HTML 5; it is now possible to render in a browser fractals like Julia sets almost instantly;

Google launched (Jan 2011)  Julia Map on Google Labs, a fractal renderer in HTML 5. Julia sets are fractals that were studied by the French mathematician Gaston Julia in the early 1920s. Fifty years later, Benoît Mandelbrot studied the set z2 − c and popularized it by generating the first computer visualisation. Generating these images requires heavy computation resources. Modern browsers have optimized JavaScript execution up to the point where it is now possible to render in a browser fractals like Julia sets almost instantly.

Julia Map uses the Google Maps API to zoom and pan into the fractals. The images are computed with HTML 5 canvas. Each image generally requires millions of floating point operations. Web workers spread the heavy calculations on all cores of the machine.

We hope you will enjoy exploring the different Julia sets, and share the URLs of the most artistic images you discovered. See what others have posted on Twitter under hashtag #juliamap. Click on the images below to dive in to infinity! (Supported on Chrome 8, Firefox 3.6, Safari 5 and above).

http://juliamap.googlelabs.com/

See the world through a lens with the Panoramio Layer; google maps

Applications can listen for clicks on the photo thumbnails and obtain information about the thumbnail concerned, which can then be used to load the photo using the Panoramio Widget API. Secondly, applications can also restrict the thumbnails shown to those of a particular user, or those with a particular tag. This allows you to only show thumbnails for photos that you have uploaded to Panoramio, or only show photos relating to a specific subject, such as beaches. You can try experimenting with different tags in the example below:

For more information on using the PanoramioLayer, please take a look at the Maps API documentation.

5 Great University Campus Maps; google maps, google earth;CustomOverlays;

http://www.northeastern.edu/neuhome/aboutnortheastern/maps.html

Northeastern University’s campus map is great example of a highly immersive Google Maps and Earth experience. Using the Google Earth Plug-in, users can ‘fly’ in animated 3D from one building to another. The entire campus is custom modeled in 3D (which can easily be done using Google SketchUp). The map also features custom icons, integrated directions, custom balloons with pictures, and even a page where users can see the locations of Northeastern students studying abroad.
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http://www.washington.edu/maps/

This map is a great example of a seamless custom imagery overlay (http://code.google.com/apis/maps/documentation/javascript/overlays.html#CustomOverlays) on top of the Google Maps baselayer. Buildings on the custom UW map are clickable and clicking on one of the buildings brings up a custom styled info window with links to departments held within the building. UW also provides a shortened URL for the building for easy sharing. On the left hand side of the map there is a navigation bar for noteworthy locations such as computer labs, parking, or libraries. Selecting one of the categories will populate the map with a corresponding custom icon. Extra credit points for a custom styled and easy to use UI, both in and around the map.
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http://www.uottawa.ca/maps/
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http://ucsdbus.com/
UC San Diego Shuttles
Waiting on your bus can sometimes be huge time sink, which is especially troublesome if you happen to be in the middle of finals. The University of California - San Diego has taken the guess work out of campus transportation by tracking the real time location of all their shuttles on a Google Map. Using the map above, students can see route maps, travel times, and shuttle locations. There’s also an integrated trip planner to help students get around the greater San Diego area.
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http://map.nd.edu/#/placemarks/1028/zoom/16/lat/41.69826290628501/lon/-86.23395323753357
In addition to being a great looking and easy to use full screen map, the University of Notre Dame has added filtering tools to highlight the relevancy of certain buildings at a given time. For example, clicking on the “Game Day” overlay button will highlight Notre Dame stadium (where the games are played) and Bond Hall (where the marching band plays traditional game day concerts), as well as a few other buildings active on game day.