My favorite Google Maps of the past week were two video maps.

Die Asphaltsurfer is a map of a Californian surfing and skateboarding tour. Whilst the International Olympic Committee's Show Your Best map allows anyone to submit a video of their 'best' performance.

The only non-video map to make it onto this week's round-up is Gemma, another great creation tool from CASA.


Berlin Designers Annette Bruns and Oliver Spies fulfilled the dream of a lifetime by completing a surfing and skateboarding tour of California. Die Asphaltsurfer is a Google Map that documents the tour.

Using the application it is possible to view all the stops on the Asphaltsurfer's tour and view videos of the adventures that the pair experienced along the way.


The International Olympic Committee (IOC) are holding a competition called Show Your Best.

The competition can be entered by anyone aged 13-19. Entrants need to videotape, upload and share their 'personal best' moments. The personal best videos are being showcased and can be watched directly from a Show Your Best Google Map.

The two winners of the competition will win a trip to the London 2012 Summer Games, others will appear in a commercial to be broadcast during the London 2012 Olympic Games.


Gemma (short for Geospatial Engine for Mass Mapping Applications) allows you to create Google Maps with data from a number of different sources.

It is possible to create maps with gemma with layers from MapTube, SurveyMapper, OpenStreetMap and from your own data. Gemma even has an accompanying iPhone app that lets you record observations on the go and then upload them to a gemma map.

Gemma was created by the University College London - Centre for Spatial Analysis. It is not surprising then that it works very well with CASA's own SurveyMapper (a geographic survey and polling tool) and with MapTube.

The Paper Looking Google Map

Iacopo Boccalari has created a very beautiful paper map styled Google Map.

On my first look at Google Maps - Realistic Look I imagined Iacopo must have put together some complicated css styles for the border and then created some z-index layers with different opacities to show the map.



However, if you look at the html, you will see that the page has been put together very elegantly and with minimal complication. The web page uses just one image file to mask the map (presumably with transparent sections where the Google Map can be viewed through the mask).

The World's News on Google Maps

Newsonmap.in is a new Google Maps based application for finding the latest news for any location in the world.

By default the map loads the news based on the user's home country. You can zoom in on an area on the map to get more localised news. To load news for a particular location you can also click on the map or use the search function.

The news for the selected location is automatically loaded into the map sidebar. If you click on the sidebar news headline the full news story will open in a new browser window.

Google Maps & the Time Travel Portals

President Obama lives in the future and only travels back in time to appear on TV now and again.

How else can you explain this Google Maps aerial view image of Air Force One emerging from a secret government time travel portal?



Whilst the president time travels in the relative comfort of Air Force One government officials are forced to travel back and forth in time on the cheap. Here we see them emerging from another time travelling portal, this time by train.

California Dreaming with Google Maps

Berlin Designers Annette Bruns and Oliver Spies fulfilled the dream of a lifetime by completing a surfing and skateboarding tour of California. Die Asphaltsurfer is a Google Maps and video application documenting the tour.

Using the application it is possible to view all the stops on the Asphaltsurfer's tour and view videos of the adventures that the pair experienced along the way. The application is another great creation by experienced German developers Ubilabs in partnership with MonstaMovies for the German media company 3Sat.

Fill the Kettle with Google Maps

The Canadian Salvation Army Christmas Fill the Kettle Campaign is a fundraising effort that occurs each year during the Christmas season. Kettles are found in nearly 2000 locations across Canada and are an opportunity for the public to donate whatever funds they can to support the work of The Salvation Army.

This year the Salvation Army have again created a Google Map showing the location of the nearly 2000 Kettle locations across Canada. Using the map you can find the nearest kettle to your location. And, if there isn't a kettle nearby, you can always donate online.

Polling Results with Google Maps

Danish TV and Radio company DR Forside are using Google Maps to present the results of a poll into gay weddings in churches.

The media company carried out a poll, asking priests if they were in favour or against gay couples being allowed to marry in church. The results of the poll have been overlaid on a Google Map so that readers can see where priests voted yes or no to the question.

The map is a great visualisation of the poll's results but it does need a key. I can work out that a green overlay on the map corresponds to a 'yes' answer and red is 'no' but what does yellow mean? Does it stand for undecided?.

The map reflects the answers to three questions:

1. Homosexual couples should have same marriage rights as hetro couples?
2. If asked, will you give your church blessing to a homosexual couple that have entered into a domestic partnership?
3. Do you think that the Danish church needs a wedding ritual for homosexual couples?

The results were then calculated based on an average of each priest and of all the priests in the 98 municipalities in Denmark.

RED indicates that the priests answered 'no'.
GREEN means they answered 'yes.
YELLOW means they have answered both 'yes' and 'no'.