Sunday, January 23, 2011

The Sunday Best

The weekly round-up of the best Google Maps to feature on Google Maps Mania in the previous week:

OpenFile

Look out newspapers - local collaborative community news sites just keep getting better. Canada's OpenFile, currently reporting on Vancouver, Hamilton, Toronto and Ottawa, is one of the best crowdsourced local news sites to enter the field.

One reason for its success is the use of Google Maps to visualise local data sets.

Fish Fight MackMap

In the UK broadcaster Channel 4 are backing a campaign to persuade Britain's fish & chip shops to put mackerel on the menu alongside the traditional cod & chips.

The site is a great example of how Google Maps can be used to support a national campaign,

LikeOurselves

The Location Based Social Networking market is very crowded now. New startups have to carve out a niche in a market already dominated by Foursquare, Gowalla et al.

LikeOurselves just might succeed in competing with the big players, where others have failed, by concentrating on the networking aspect of location sharing. LikeOurselves seems to be much more focused on helping users connect with others and finding other users who share the same interests than other location based social networks.

MDG Maps

MDG Maps is a Google Maps based geovisulisation tool for the Millennium Development Goals.

The Millennium Development Goals are indicators which were agreed by leaders from 189 nations to ensure: a world with less poverty, hunger and disease, greater survival prospects for mothers and their infants, better educated children, equal opportunities for women, and a healthier environment.

What really impresses me with this Google Map is the huge amount of data that can be visualised.

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