MapChannels writes to announce a few new features:
Holiday Maps: Create an embeddable Google Maps window with the option for additional information layers:
- Panoramio photos
- Geo-tagged Wikipedia articles
- Google Street View
- Traffic Layer
- Weather Information
- User-defined KML or GeoRSS Layers
- Index sidebar
- Hotel search using the Map Channels Hotel Directory
- Google search
- Slide Show
- Google Earth 3D (note: currently buggy, doesn’t work for me in Firefox 3)
MapChannels For Virtual Earth: Create an embeddable Virtual Earth window with KML or GeoRSS feeds (an analogue to Google Maps’ MyMaps feature, also supported by MapChannels in embeddable format).
StreetCities: New tools to combine Google’s Street View with a second view in the Google Earth plugin. This doesn’t work in Firefox 3, either.
A nice list of “50 Cool Things You Can Do With Google Charts API“. Four links on the mapping side:
- Making maps with Google Chart API
- Easy legend generation for the Google Charts API map chart type
- Highlight a specific country
- Thematic Mapping with the Google Charts API-A Brief Tutorial
Via Remote Sensing Tools.
Here’s a slick little online geographic tool called DishPointer. Enter your position (latitude/longitude), or your address, then select from a list of broadcast satellites in geosynchronous orbit. DishPointer will bring up a Google Maps display showing the proper orientation for your dish antenna for optimal reception from the selected satellite:
Check the box marked “Show obstacle”, and you can move the marker to show the maximum height an obstacle (like a tree or a neighbor’s house) can have without blocking your satellite dish’s line-of-sight view.
Click on the Google Earth icon, and have the line-of-sight to the satellite shown in 3 dimensions:
If your view of the satellite is blocked by terrain, that will be visible in Google Earth; if there are 3D buildings for your area, you’ll also be able to see whether your view is blocked by adjacent buildings as well.
Via OgleEarth.
I’ve posted several times about HeyWhatsThat, a website that shows:
- A panorama of what’s visible from that location, marking the position of peak geographic landmarks
- A list of the peaks, and the ability to show their position relative to your location on Google Maps
- Terrain profiles (elevation versus distance from the location to any point on the map)
- A plot all the areas visible from that location in red on Google Maps (aka the “viewshed” or “weapons fan”)
- Contour lines (zoom in for these)
- Google Earth export of position, viewshed, horizon line and horizon extent.
- Horizon terrain profiles in Google Sky
Well, the mobile version of HeyWhatsThat just placed 2nd in NavTeq’s Global LBS Challenge with a version of HeyWhatsThat for mobile phones. Have a 360 panorama with the labeled peaks of your current location delivered to your cellphone. There’s also a version for the Google Android platform, and an API for low-volume non-commercial use by websites/mobile phones.
Congratulations to Mike Kosowsky and his co-conspirators.
Host of few features for Microsoft’s Virtual Earth, including new imagery, new 3D buildings, direct support for MapCruncher, movie capture, export to KML and GPX files, and more. Announcement at Virtual Earth / Live Maps, good roundups at Mapperz and Google Earth Blog.
