Sunday, December 11, 2011

The Google Maps of the Week


Mapitat is a great Google Map's based application for finding properties to rent in Toronto.

It is hard to add anything new to the real-estate mapping market but Mapitat's 'Add to Favorites' is an innovative feature. If you add a property to your favorites in Mapitat list then its map marker is changed from green to red. This allows you to bookmark interesting properties as you search the map and helps you easily find them again when you want to go back and check the details on a property.


Hubii has to be the slickest and easiest to use news map that I have seen yet.

You can use the map to find local news from local newspapers anywhere in the world. You can even select which sections of the papers you wish to read.

Registered users can create their own personalised 'Mapazine'. As they browse the map they can add individual newspapers to their own personalised news reader so that each time they log-in to Hubii they can instantly view their own individual news stream.


Data visualisations have been one of the big trends this year. When done well a data visualisation can really bring dry and staid figures to life. Boston.com's Google Map of towing data in Boston is a great example of a data visualisation done well.

More than 200,000 vehicles were towed away in Boston between April 2009 and October 2011. Boston.com has created a Google Map to show where, why and when cars were towed in the city.

A heat map of the city gives a visual guide to the towing hot-spots in Boston. Users can mouse-over the map to view the total number of tows for any location. To aid users in navigation Boston.com have added to the map the names of major stores around the city.

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