Did you hear?

A couple of weeks ago, there was an instance reported in the press of thousands of bird deaths all at the same time, all in the same area. Speculation for the deaths at the time ranged from fireworks, to weather phenomenon, to signs from God. It must have been a slow news week, because the media became obsessed with this particular news item. Suddenly, every day brought a new batch of mass deaths of everything from ducks to crabs, to fish, to whatever.

Then the news started reporting that this was a normal occurrence and it happens all the time. Suddenly it was a non-story. Or was it?

A world without borders

Our world is defined by borders. Country borders. City boundaries. Job parameters. It's all about keeping us from one another. But what it those boundaries didn't exist? Could you still function?

Fat Morgana is a term specifically applied to mirages, but is used more generally by Damon Zucconi on this map page in which he has removed all of the normal boundaries, and lines, etc from a Google Map of the world. He's left the city labels, and even the road names, but everything else you expect from a map is gone. You interact with the map just like any other Google Map -- zoom controls, dbl-click to zoom, drag to pan, etc, -- he's just removed the borders.

I'm not sure of his philosophical intent when he created this site, if he had any at all, but it's an interesting exercize in what happens when the borders don't exist. It's a lot harder to navigate like this than you might think.

Though we should live our lives as though there were no boundaries in some situations (ignore the socio-economic, racial, class divides), perhaps some borders are a good thing.

Join me for lunch?

Two quick lunch-time sites for reference today. The first is to help you find a fast food restaurant. I know, I know. Not many people need help with this. Seems like you can't spit into the wind without a little spittle landing in a fast food joint's parking lot (don't ask me where that visual came from). They're everywhere. Well, now they're on the web too -- at Fast Food Maps.

If you can't talk someone into joining you across town for your favorite fast food, how about meeting them halfway using the Mezzoman site. Enter a starting point for you and one for your friend (city will do) and then where you want to meet (Italian, golf course, pizza, a mall, etc) and the site will map (and list) out suggestions for you -- halfway between you and your friend. It'll even give you a link to see the weather at that meeting spot. Pretty cool.

And of course, both of these sites use Google Maps for their interface :-)

These guys love maps!

Although, on second thought, that might be a little bit of an understatement :-)

Happy Valentines Day - From Gelesnjak Croatia

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Driving on Google Maps

Another interwsting mashup of Google's StreetView maps will automatically drive for you. Check out this beta StreetView Driver available at MapChannels.

More Google StreetView Voyeur photos

You can find a lot more photos here if you're a closet voyeur looking for StreetView photos. Street View Gallery has thumb shots of the image as well as links directly to the Google captured image on Google Map's Streetview.

Local News

Why read the local Observer & Eccentric news when you can see it all mapped out on a Google maps interface? :-)

Give mibazaar your ZIP code and it'll find local news and show you where you live on a map.

Blow it up!

Sometimes a full screen view is just better. Bret Taylor thinks so -- at least when he's trying to navigate Google Maps. So, in the spirit of giving back, and statistical probability, he thought someone else might feel the same way and so he made this full screen Google Maps site available for all of us! Thanks Bret!

Locally famous

Tim Allen is famous for inserting local references into his entertainment projects -- his Home Improvement show, The Santa Clause movies, etc each make reference to his home town of Detroit, or to places around there where he grew up. Moviemappr (ala Flickr, remind me to blog about the naming of web sites later) allows you to find movies filmed in your area. You give it a city/state and it'll list all kinds of movies that spent some time filming in and around the area. Live in Cedar Rapids, IA? Did you know that Incident at Oglala, Miles from Home and, perhaps the most famous of the three - Starman were filmed in the area. Oglala might not be the summer blockbuster of 1992, but the others brought someone some money and had famous people involved...

Check out your city. Might be worth renting a movie or two just to see some local hangouts. The database seems pretty complete with movies ranging from the VERY low budget and audience to the most popular titles on the market.

Political Donations

Ever wonder which way your neighbors lean? Do they care enough about a particular candidate to financially contribute to their hopefully successful campaign? The folks over at Political Base have a handy Google Maps mashup that lets you visualize the political contributions to the 2008 US Presidential race. See the money from from each state all the way down to your local neighborhood. You might be surprised.

They also have a section that allows you to see contributions by "famous people." See who your favorite star is supporting. It might make you view them in a whole new light.

Tell Google where you are

Sounds kinda old school to suggest that you should tell Google where you are (and actually they could probably figure it out themselves, but that's another blog.) What I'm talking about is an entry I came across in the Google System Blog that identified a way to tell Google SMS what your default location should be. Looks like this is a new enhancement.

Basically, you send set location [location] (where [location is a ZIP code, City, State pair, etc) to 46645 on your phone. Then the next time you need to use Google's SMS, instead of typing weather 01234, you can just send weather and you'll get the information based on your default location.

Hey! Every few thumb strokes saves helps!

Google Maps knows all...

Ever wonder how to get from here to there? Google knows! Click on the green and red markers for proof!



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