Google Maps: It's More Than a Map

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Google has unveiled an impressive new website to highlight the many different types of awesome maps and visualisations that can be created with the Google Maps API.

MoreThanAMap.com includes some great Google Maps API demo maps, an introduction to many of the most impressive features of the API (e.g. Street View, routing, Places) and interviews with Google Maps API developers around the world.

The demo maps are a great introduction to the features available in the Google Maps API and the types of maps and visualisations that developers can create. If you want to hear how other developers have used the Maps API then the 'Developer Stories' include some interesting video interviews with some of the most experienced and successful developers who have used  the Google Maps API.

Hannibal's Journey on Google Maps

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I really like the map used in the Digital Map of the Roman Empire by the Pelagios Project. I decided to play around with the map today and decided to use the map tiles to plot the route of Hannibal's famous journey to Italy from Carthage.

The Hannibal's Journey map shows the (very rough) route that Hannibal took and some of the major battles that he fought with the Roman Empire along the way. I also used the Polyline Symbols function in the Google Maps API to include an animated arrow that provides a little bit of action to an otherwise fairly static map.

Another Look at CartoDB's Torque

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I had another look at CartoDB's Torque library on GitHub today and noticed they have added some new examples of the library in action. A polished example of Torque is available in the amazing Navy of WWI animated visualisation highlighted this week in The Guardian newspaper. GitHub also has three other good demo maps.

Storms uses Torque with Google Maps to animate through 50 years of tropical storm data. The map animates the storm data on a Google Map and really emphasises the stunning speed with which Torque can display data.

Vertnet uses Torque to animates through over two hundred years of data (I'm not sure what the data represents). This demo illustrates how Torque can be used to effortlessly display thousands of data points on Google Maps. 

The USPO Map animates through the opening of post offices in the U.S. between1644 and 1901. 

The Bull's Bollocks on Google Maps

To contact us Click HERE

USE-IT - Torino is a handy Google Maps based guide for the Italian city of Torino. The map's developers say that the map is "made by locals who know what’s going on in the city, and who give no-nonsense inside advice on where to eat, sleep and go out if you’re not a millionaire".

The map displays important points of interest in the city and also offers some useful advice, such as whether you should step on the bull's testicles on the statue outside Caffe Torino (opinion is divided). Users of the map can filter the results shown by category, for example local tips, going out, sightseeing, bars and food.

Share Your Favorite Places with Google Maps

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Placeling is a neat location sharing application that allows users to share locations with friends across different platforms.

One of the neatest features of Placeling is that it allows users to save their favorite locations, create tours and then access and share the created Google Maps via the web, on a smartphone or on a WordPress blog.

Users can bookmark locations anywhere in the world, describe places with notes and photographs and even create their own tours.Locations and tour maps can be viewed or shared on the web, accessed from a smartphone app or even embedded in a blog post.

Placeling also allows users to ask questions about locations, such as "Where can I get the best coffee in Toronto?' or 'Where is the best pizza in New York?' and other Placeling users can help with their answers and suggestions.

Another Look at CartoDB's Torque

To contact us Click HERE

I had another look at CartoDB's Torque library on GitHub today and noticed they have added some new examples of the library in action. A polished example of Torque is available in the amazing Navy of WWI animated visualisation highlighted this week in The Guardian newspaper. GitHub also has three other good demo maps.

Storms uses Torque with Google Maps to animate through 50 years of tropical storm data. The map animates the storm data on a Google Map and really emphasises the stunning speed with which Torque can display data.

Vertnet uses Torque to animates through over two hundred years of data (I'm not sure what the data represents). This demo illustrates how Torque can be used to effortlessly display thousands of data points on Google Maps. 

The USPO Map animates through the opening of post offices in the U.S. between1644 and 1901. 

The Bull's Bollocks on Google Maps

To contact us Click HERE

USE-IT - Torino is a handy Google Maps based guide for the Italian city of Torino. The map's developers say that the map is "made by locals who know what’s going on in the city, and who give no-nonsense inside advice on where to eat, sleep and go out if you’re not a millionaire".

The map displays important points of interest in the city and also offers some useful advice, such as whether you should step on the bull's testicles on the statue outside Caffe Torino (opinion is divided). Users of the map can filter the results shown by category, for example local tips, going out, sightseeing, bars and food.

Some Friday Fun with Google Maps

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Artist Rheinhard King has created a number of prints featuring large cities floating in the sky. The prints transpose cities like New York and London into Laputian like floating islands.


Do you know the way to Sesame Street?
Why yes. Yes I do. 
I have Google Maps.


Halloween has come a little early this year on Google Maps Street View. This indoor Street View of Monster Mini Golf in Marlboro, NJ is not for the faint of heart.

Via:  Street View Funny

'Facebook for Animals' Tested On Wild Great Tits

To contact us Click HERE
How animals associate in groups can have important consequences in terms of the health and survival of both individuals and whole populations; influencing factors such as the spread of disease and the ability to find food or mates.
But revealing the networks underlying animal societies is a challenge when a large amount of fieldwork data consists of a long stream of automated observations of the times and locations of individuals, leaving scientists to try and reconstruct the 'big picture' of how individuals are connected.
The new approach can automatically identify periods of intense social activity within a large number of observations -- in this example around one million observations of wild great tits (Parus major). This makes it possible to examine these periods in greater detail and calculate which individuals are real 'friends', rather than random passers-by, and even which are looking to pair up and mate.
A report of the research is published in this week's Journal of the Royal Society Interface.
'If you think of the data about you in Facebook it records things like who you are friends with, where you've been, and what you share with others,' said Ioannis Psorakis of Oxford University's Department of Engineering Science, who led the research. 'What we have shown is that we can analyse data about individual animals, in this case great tits, to construct a 'Facebook for animals' revealing who affiliates with who, who are members of the same group, and which birds are regularly going to the same gatherings or 'events.''
They team tested the new technique on data from two breeding seasons of wild great tits (August 2007-March 2008 and August 2008-March 2009). The data came from transponders attached to thousands of birds and sensors that logged when individuals appeared at any one of 67 bird feeders spread throughout Wytham Woods, Oxford.
The researchers found that their predictions from this data about which birds were 'friends' that regularly foraged for food together, as well as which birds were starting the process of pairing up or were already in a pair, matched visual observations made by zoologists.
'What we've shown is that our technique can extract information about the networks that bind individuals together by sampling and analysing their mobility patterns,' said Ioannis Psorakis. 'Our approach makes it possible to look at huge amounts of data without having to decide what time resolution is best to extract meaning -- the model evaluates this automatically. This is just the first exalple of how zoologists are beginning to use our method to explore social networks of animals in a 'big data' context.'
Early results from the work with great tits suggest that individual birds do not participate in flocks at random, but have a bias towards other members of the population they interact with. The majority of networks extracted using the approach are strongly clustered, and in such tight bird communities, individuals forage together and interact with their current or future mating partner.
This approach is being used not only in great tits, but also in a mix of wild-bird social networks, exploring the animal sociality at an inter-species level. Some of the most important future steps in this work are to combine the 'social' information available through this method, with other types of information: for example combining it with genetic data is enabling researchers to explore the genetic basis of sociality: do genetically similar individuals attract each other, or is it the other way round? Can we find specific areas of the genome that account for gregariousness?
The work could also help researchers understand how information spreads through animal populations. Tits are a famous exemplar of social learning: for instance, the habit of pecking open milk bottles on doorsteps to get access to cream spread rapidly through England in the mid 20th Century. The new approach is helping scientists to test how specific social structures help or hinder the spread of novel information from individual to individual.

Simple Mathematcal Pattern Describes Shape of Neuron 'Jungle'

To contact us Click HERE
Neurons look remarkably like trees, and connect to other cells with many branches that effectively act like wires in an electrical circuit, carrying impulses that represent sensation, emotion, thought and action.
Over 100 years ago, Santiago Ramon y Cajal, the father of modern neuroscience, sought to systematically describe the shapes of neurons, and was convinced that there must be a unifying principle underlying their diversity.
Cajal proposed that neurons spread out their branches so as to use as little wiring as possible to reach other cells in the network. Reducing the amount of wiring between cells provides additional space to pack more neurons into the brain, and therefore increases its processing power.
New work by UCL neuroscientists, published recently in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, has revisited this century-old hypothesis using modern computational methods. They show that a simple computer program which connects points with as little wiring as possible can produce tree-like shapes which are indistinguishable from real neurons -- and also happen to be very beautiful. They also show that the shape of neurons follows a simple mathematical relationship called a power law.
Power laws have been shown to be common across the natural world, and often point to simple rules underlying complex structures. Dr Herman Cuntz (UCL Wolfson Institute for Biomedical Research) and colleagues find that the power law holds true for many types of neurons gathered from across the animal kingdom, providing strong evidence for Ramon y Cajal's general principle.
The UCL team further tested the theory by examining neurons in the olfactory bulb, a part of the brain where new brain cells are constantly being formed. These neurons grow and form new connections even in the adult brain, and therefore provide a unique window into the rules behind the development of neural trees in a mature neural circuit.
The team analysed the change in shape of the newborn olfactory neurons over several days, and found that the growth of these neurons also follow the power law, providing further evidence to support the theory.Dr Hermann Cuntz said: "The ultimate goal of neuroscience is to understand how the impenetrable neural jungle can give rise to the complexity of behaviour.
"Our findings confirm Cajal's original far-reaching insight that there is a simple pattern behind the circuitry, and provides hope that neuroscientists will someday be able to see the forest for the trees."

Time Travelling with Google Maps

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Let me take you on a journey, back through time, to the France of the 18th century. In the coastal town of St Tropez news that The Sun King Louis XIV has just arrived and the people ... 

Actually forget me - let La France en Relief transport you back to 18th century France instead.

La France en Relief is an amazing collection of historical relief maps of French towns.That in itself would be enough to get map fanatics like me excited. However La France en Relief has gone even further and have taken a number of the featured relief maps and turned them into full 3d cities. In loving detail the city's buildings have been recreated in 3d, allowing users to immerse themselves in the France of the 18th and 19th centuries.

So far eight towns have been created in 3d, including St Tropez, Toulon and Mont Saint Michel. The 3d map of Mont Saint Michel is worth the ticket price on its own - except there is no ticket price and there are also seven more 3d towns to explore.

Google Maps for Cognition

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I do like it when developers use custom images with the Google Maps API. However a lot of attempts to use the Google Maps API to navigate custom images don't really take advantage of the many features of the API to add interactivity to otherwise static images.

That isn't true of this map of the human brain that includes a number of options to add custom polylines on top of the brain to illustrate a number of cognitive processes.

Cognitive Consilience is a Google Map that was created to accomapny a Frontiers in Neuroanatomy publication "Cognitive consilience: Primate non-primary neuroanatomical circuits underlying cognition", by Soren Solari and Rich Stoner.

The map uses a custom image in Google Maps to help show cortical circuits in the brain. The map includes a number of overlays that can be added to the brain diagram to show the processes involved in consolidated long-term declarative memory, short-term declarative memory, working memory/information processing, behavioral memory selection, behavioral memory output, cognitive control and cortical information flow regulation.

Also See

• The KESM Brain Atlas - maps of mouse brains that can be viewed using the Google Maps interface.
• Brain Neural Maps - Brown University's two-dimensional neural image maps of the brain
• NYU School of Medicine Virtual Microscope - the Virtual Microscope uses the Google Maps API to display and navigate scanned slides of microscopic images
• Genome Projector - a searchable database browser that uses the Google Maps API to provide a zoomable user interface for molecular biology
• Zygote Body - a body browser that uses a Google Maps type interface to explore the human body

The Biggest Street View Update Yet

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Catherine Palace

Google Maps has today announced its biggest Street View update ever, adding over 250,000 miles of panoramic imagery to roads around the world.

New Street View imagery has been rolled out in Macau, Singapore, Sweden, the U.S., Thailand, Taiwan, Italy, Great Britain, Denmark, Norway and Canada. Special Collections of off-road imagery has also been added in South Africa, Japan, Spain, France, Brazil and Mexico.

The Google Lat Long blog has picked out some highlights, including the Catherine Palace and Ferapontov Monastery in Russia, the Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall in Taiwan, or Stanley Park in Vancouver. You can even walk through the urban jungle of Singapore's Fort Canning Park, without ever leaving home.

There are obviously going to be a lot of surprises in this new release of Street View. In the US I think the Street Views in Six Flags Magic Mountain, Six Flags St Louis, and Kings Island (Cincinnati) are new. In the UK Shepperton Studios and Pinewood Studios now also have Street View.

Time Zones for the Google Maps API

Google has also added today a new Time Zone API to the Google Maps API Web Services. The API returns information about the time zone of any location on earth. The response contains information such as the IANA Time Zone ID, long form name, offset from UTC and any offset due to daylight savings.

Developers can access the API up to 2,500 requests per day, while Google Maps API for Business customers make 100,000 requests. Full documentation is available on the Google Developers website.

'Facebook for Animals' Tested On Wild Great Tits

To contact us Click HERE
How animals associate in groups can have important consequences in terms of the health and survival of both individuals and whole populations; influencing factors such as the spread of disease and the ability to find food or mates.
But revealing the networks underlying animal societies is a challenge when a large amount of fieldwork data consists of a long stream of automated observations of the times and locations of individuals, leaving scientists to try and reconstruct the 'big picture' of how individuals are connected.
The new approach can automatically identify periods of intense social activity within a large number of observations -- in this example around one million observations of wild great tits (Parus major). This makes it possible to examine these periods in greater detail and calculate which individuals are real 'friends', rather than random passers-by, and even which are looking to pair up and mate.
A report of the research is published in this week's Journal of the Royal Society Interface.
'If you think of the data about you in Facebook it records things like who you are friends with, where you've been, and what you share with others,' said Ioannis Psorakis of Oxford University's Department of Engineering Science, who led the research. 'What we have shown is that we can analyse data about individual animals, in this case great tits, to construct a 'Facebook for animals' revealing who affiliates with who, who are members of the same group, and which birds are regularly going to the same gatherings or 'events.''
They team tested the new technique on data from two breeding seasons of wild great tits (August 2007-March 2008 and August 2008-March 2009). The data came from transponders attached to thousands of birds and sensors that logged when individuals appeared at any one of 67 bird feeders spread throughout Wytham Woods, Oxford.
The researchers found that their predictions from this data about which birds were 'friends' that regularly foraged for food together, as well as which birds were starting the process of pairing up or were already in a pair, matched visual observations made by zoologists.
'What we've shown is that our technique can extract information about the networks that bind individuals together by sampling and analysing their mobility patterns,' said Ioannis Psorakis. 'Our approach makes it possible to look at huge amounts of data without having to decide what time resolution is best to extract meaning -- the model evaluates this automatically. This is just the first exalple of how zoologists are beginning to use our method to explore social networks of animals in a 'big data' context.'
Early results from the work with great tits suggest that individual birds do not participate in flocks at random, but have a bias towards other members of the population they interact with. The majority of networks extracted using the approach are strongly clustered, and in such tight bird communities, individuals forage together and interact with their current or future mating partner.
This approach is being used not only in great tits, but also in a mix of wild-bird social networks, exploring the animal sociality at an inter-species level. Some of the most important future steps in this work are to combine the 'social' information available through this method, with other types of information: for example combining it with genetic data is enabling researchers to explore the genetic basis of sociality: do genetically similar individuals attract each other, or is it the other way round? Can we find specific areas of the genome that account for gregariousness?
The work could also help researchers understand how information spreads through animal populations. Tits are a famous exemplar of social learning: for instance, the habit of pecking open milk bottles on doorsteps to get access to cream spread rapidly through England in the mid 20th Century. The new approach is helping scientists to test how specific social structures help or hinder the spread of novel information from individual to individual.

Simple Mathematcal Pattern Describes Shape of Neuron 'Jungle'

To contact us Click HERE
Neurons look remarkably like trees, and connect to other cells with many branches that effectively act like wires in an electrical circuit, carrying impulses that represent sensation, emotion, thought and action.
Over 100 years ago, Santiago Ramon y Cajal, the father of modern neuroscience, sought to systematically describe the shapes of neurons, and was convinced that there must be a unifying principle underlying their diversity.
Cajal proposed that neurons spread out their branches so as to use as little wiring as possible to reach other cells in the network. Reducing the amount of wiring between cells provides additional space to pack more neurons into the brain, and therefore increases its processing power.
New work by UCL neuroscientists, published recently in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, has revisited this century-old hypothesis using modern computational methods. They show that a simple computer program which connects points with as little wiring as possible can produce tree-like shapes which are indistinguishable from real neurons -- and also happen to be very beautiful. They also show that the shape of neurons follows a simple mathematical relationship called a power law.
Power laws have been shown to be common across the natural world, and often point to simple rules underlying complex structures. Dr Herman Cuntz (UCL Wolfson Institute for Biomedical Research) and colleagues find that the power law holds true for many types of neurons gathered from across the animal kingdom, providing strong evidence for Ramon y Cajal's general principle.
The UCL team further tested the theory by examining neurons in the olfactory bulb, a part of the brain where new brain cells are constantly being formed. These neurons grow and form new connections even in the adult brain, and therefore provide a unique window into the rules behind the development of neural trees in a mature neural circuit.
The team analysed the change in shape of the newborn olfactory neurons over several days, and found that the growth of these neurons also follow the power law, providing further evidence to support the theory.Dr Hermann Cuntz said: "The ultimate goal of neuroscience is to understand how the impenetrable neural jungle can give rise to the complexity of behaviour.
"Our findings confirm Cajal's original far-reaching insight that there is a simple pattern behind the circuitry, and provides hope that neuroscientists will someday be able to see the forest for the trees."

Another Look at CartoDB's Torque

To contact us Click HERE

I had another look at CartoDB's Torque library on GitHub today and noticed they have added some new examples of the library in action. A polished example of Torque is available in the amazing Navy of WWI animated visualisation highlighted this week in The Guardian newspaper. GitHub also has three other good demo maps.

Storms uses Torque with Google Maps to animate through 50 years of tropical storm data. The map animates the storm data on a Google Map and really emphasises the stunning speed with which Torque can display data.

Vertnet uses Torque to animates through over two hundred years of data (I'm not sure what the data represents). This demo illustrates how Torque can be used to effortlessly display thousands of data points on Google Maps. 

The USPO Map animates through the opening of post offices in the U.S. between1644 and 1901. 

The Bull's Bollocks on Google Maps

To contact us Click HERE

USE-IT - Torino is a handy Google Maps based guide for the Italian city of Torino. The map's developers say that the map is "made by locals who know what’s going on in the city, and who give no-nonsense inside advice on where to eat, sleep and go out if you’re not a millionaire".

The map displays important points of interest in the city and also offers some useful advice, such as whether you should step on the bull's testicles on the statue outside Caffe Torino (opinion is divided). Users of the map can filter the results shown by category, for example local tips, going out, sightseeing, bars and food.

London Wards on Google Maps

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The Greater London Authority has released a Google Map providing demographic and related data for each ward in Greater London.

The Ward Atlas allows users to explore demographic data in each London ward area by population, diversity, households, life expectancy, housing, crime, benefits, land use, deprivation, and employment. It is possible to select the data displayed on the map using the map sidebars and to select individual wards on the map to view the data in that area.

All the data used in the map is also available for download from the London DataStore.

Indian Railways Live on Google Maps

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There are a lot of real-time Google Maps of train systems around the world. Now we have one for the largest democracy in the world.

RailRadar allows users to view the entire Indian rail network on a Google Map. The map shows the live locations of all trains on the Indian railways in real-time. The map updates about every five minutes so the exact position of the trains may be a little out.

If users click on an individual train map marker they can view the train's starting point and destination and also the train's next scheduled stop. The map also displays the overall status of the network, showing the percentage of trains on the network running on time and the percentage that are currently delayed.


Tagkarten is a real-time animated map of the Swedish rail network.

Green map markers show trains that are currently running on time and red markers indicate trains that are running late. If you click on a train's marker you can also view its starting point and destination.


Stops.lt is a real-time animated map of buses in Vilnius, Lithuania.

This map uses numbered map markers so users can tell at a glance the location of any bus. Users can also click on bus-stop markers to view which buses they can catch from a stop and find out when the next buses are scheduled to arrive.

Water Quality Displayed with Google Maps

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APEL Carte Interactive uses Google Maps to visualise water quality data in the watershed of the St. Charles River, Quebec.

Water quality is displayed on the map using different colors (blue for good, red for bad). If you click on a map marker two graphs load in the map sidebar illustrating annual and monthly trends at that location. A menu at the top of the map allows users to also view the results of different water quality readings, such as fecal coliform, phosphorous etc.

Tracking Birds with Google Maps

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Birdfeeders.com are using Google Maps to crowdsource the tracking of migrating Hummingbirds. The Hummingbird Migration Map allows anyone to add a sighting of a hummingbird to the map to help build a picture of the birds' migratory patterns

Users of the map can refine the map by species of hummingbird and also select a date range to view on the map.


The British Trust for Ornithology have tagged a number of cuckoos and have created an animated Google Map for each bird showing its migratory journey.

The maps show each of the cuckoo's journeys from the UK to Africa and help to reveal the birds' stop over points on their migrations to and from the UK.

In the UK the RSPB are also using Google Maps to track osprey chicks as they migrate to and from Africa to the Scottish Highlands. A number of birds have been tracked since 2008 and you can view the individual tracks of each bird directly on the RSPB Google Map. 

The Bull's Bollocks on Google Maps

To contact us Click HERE

USE-IT - Torino is a handy Google Maps based guide for the Italian city of Torino. The map's developers say that the map is "made by locals who know what’s going on in the city, and who give no-nonsense inside advice on where to eat, sleep and go out if you’re not a millionaire".

The map displays important points of interest in the city and also offers some useful advice, such as whether you should step on the bull's testicles on the statue outside Caffe Torino (opinion is divided). Users of the map can filter the results shown by category, for example local tips, going out, sightseeing, bars and food.

Find a Vacation Apartment with Google Maps

To contact us Click HERE

HouseTrip.com allows users to search for and book holiday rentals around the world.

Using the application it is possible to search for properties by location and by the date of your trip.The results of a search can then be viewed in a list or on a Google Map. In both views you can refine the results displayed by the number of bedrooms, the price per night, the type of property and by the facilities offered.

If you select a property's marker on the map you can view extra details about the property and, if you like what you read, submit a request to rent the property for your trip.

'Facebook for Animals' Tested On Wild Great Tits

To contact us Click HERE
How animals associate in groups can have important consequences in terms of the health and survival of both individuals and whole populations; influencing factors such as the spread of disease and the ability to find food or mates.
But revealing the networks underlying animal societies is a challenge when a large amount of fieldwork data consists of a long stream of automated observations of the times and locations of individuals, leaving scientists to try and reconstruct the 'big picture' of how individuals are connected.
The new approach can automatically identify periods of intense social activity within a large number of observations -- in this example around one million observations of wild great tits (Parus major). This makes it possible to examine these periods in greater detail and calculate which individuals are real 'friends', rather than random passers-by, and even which are looking to pair up and mate.
A report of the research is published in this week's Journal of the Royal Society Interface.
'If you think of the data about you in Facebook it records things like who you are friends with, where you've been, and what you share with others,' said Ioannis Psorakis of Oxford University's Department of Engineering Science, who led the research. 'What we have shown is that we can analyse data about individual animals, in this case great tits, to construct a 'Facebook for animals' revealing who affiliates with who, who are members of the same group, and which birds are regularly going to the same gatherings or 'events.''
They team tested the new technique on data from two breeding seasons of wild great tits (August 2007-March 2008 and August 2008-March 2009). The data came from transponders attached to thousands of birds and sensors that logged when individuals appeared at any one of 67 bird feeders spread throughout Wytham Woods, Oxford.
The researchers found that their predictions from this data about which birds were 'friends' that regularly foraged for food together, as well as which birds were starting the process of pairing up or were already in a pair, matched visual observations made by zoologists.
'What we've shown is that our technique can extract information about the networks that bind individuals together by sampling and analysing their mobility patterns,' said Ioannis Psorakis. 'Our approach makes it possible to look at huge amounts of data without having to decide what time resolution is best to extract meaning -- the model evaluates this automatically. This is just the first exalple of how zoologists are beginning to use our method to explore social networks of animals in a 'big data' context.'
Early results from the work with great tits suggest that individual birds do not participate in flocks at random, but have a bias towards other members of the population they interact with. The majority of networks extracted using the approach are strongly clustered, and in such tight bird communities, individuals forage together and interact with their current or future mating partner.
This approach is being used not only in great tits, but also in a mix of wild-bird social networks, exploring the animal sociality at an inter-species level. Some of the most important future steps in this work are to combine the 'social' information available through this method, with other types of information: for example combining it with genetic data is enabling researchers to explore the genetic basis of sociality: do genetically similar individuals attract each other, or is it the other way round? Can we find specific areas of the genome that account for gregariousness?
The work could also help researchers understand how information spreads through animal populations. Tits are a famous exemplar of social learning: for instance, the habit of pecking open milk bottles on doorsteps to get access to cream spread rapidly through England in the mid 20th Century. The new approach is helping scientists to test how specific social structures help or hinder the spread of novel information from individual to individual.

Simple Mathematcal Pattern Describes Shape of Neuron 'Jungle'

To contact us Click HERE
Neurons look remarkably like trees, and connect to other cells with many branches that effectively act like wires in an electrical circuit, carrying impulses that represent sensation, emotion, thought and action.
Over 100 years ago, Santiago Ramon y Cajal, the father of modern neuroscience, sought to systematically describe the shapes of neurons, and was convinced that there must be a unifying principle underlying their diversity.
Cajal proposed that neurons spread out their branches so as to use as little wiring as possible to reach other cells in the network. Reducing the amount of wiring between cells provides additional space to pack more neurons into the brain, and therefore increases its processing power.
New work by UCL neuroscientists, published recently in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, has revisited this century-old hypothesis using modern computational methods. They show that a simple computer program which connects points with as little wiring as possible can produce tree-like shapes which are indistinguishable from real neurons -- and also happen to be very beautiful. They also show that the shape of neurons follows a simple mathematical relationship called a power law.
Power laws have been shown to be common across the natural world, and often point to simple rules underlying complex structures. Dr Herman Cuntz (UCL Wolfson Institute for Biomedical Research) and colleagues find that the power law holds true for many types of neurons gathered from across the animal kingdom, providing strong evidence for Ramon y Cajal's general principle.
The UCL team further tested the theory by examining neurons in the olfactory bulb, a part of the brain where new brain cells are constantly being formed. These neurons grow and form new connections even in the adult brain, and therefore provide a unique window into the rules behind the development of neural trees in a mature neural circuit.
The team analysed the change in shape of the newborn olfactory neurons over several days, and found that the growth of these neurons also follow the power law, providing further evidence to support the theory.Dr Hermann Cuntz said: "The ultimate goal of neuroscience is to understand how the impenetrable neural jungle can give rise to the complexity of behaviour.
"Our findings confirm Cajal's original far-reaching insight that there is a simple pattern behind the circuitry, and provides hope that neuroscientists will someday be able to see the forest for the trees."

Hannibal's Journey on Google Maps

To contact us Click HERE

I really like the map used in the Digital Map of the Roman Empire by the Pelagios Project. I decided to play around with the map today and decided to use the map tiles to plot the route of Hannibal's famous journey to Italy from Carthage.

The Hannibal's Journey map shows the (very rough) route that Hannibal took and some of the major battles that he fought with the Roman Empire along the way. I also used the Polyline Symbols function in the Google Maps API to include an animated arrow that provides a little bit of action to an otherwise fairly static map.

Another Look at CartoDB's Torque

To contact us Click HERE

I had another look at CartoDB's Torque library on GitHub today and noticed they have added some new examples of the library in action. A polished example of Torque is available in the amazing Navy of WWI animated visualisation highlighted this week in The Guardian newspaper. GitHub also has three other good demo maps.

Storms uses Torque with Google Maps to animate through 50 years of tropical storm data. The map animates the storm data on a Google Map and really emphasises the stunning speed with which Torque can display data.

Vertnet uses Torque to animates through over two hundred years of data (I'm not sure what the data represents). This demo illustrates how Torque can be used to effortlessly display thousands of data points on Google Maps. 

The USPO Map animates through the opening of post offices in the U.S. between1644 and 1901. 

Share Your Geo Data via Google Maps

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MapProvision is a free online tool that allows you to easily display and share geo data. Using MapProvision you can quickly create a Google Map to display data which allow users of your created map to perform customised analysis on the data using thematic overlays, animation, and charting.

MapProvision can represent spatial data in a number of unique layers such as multi geometry (points, lines and polygons), interpolation, videos, raster grid, circles, density, and using your own customisable image sets. It also includes visualisations to chart trends in your data using scatter plot, histogram, and data tables.

Here is an example of a MapProvision data visualisation in action.

European Geocoding with Google Maps

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GeoCoder Europa is a useful Google Maps application for retrieving the latitude and longitude, and the full postal address of any location in Europe.

Users can search the map by address or by simply clicking on the map. The app then returns the latitude and longitude at that point. GeoCoder Europa can retrieve the latitude and longitude for any location in the world but in Europe the app also returns the full postal address.

Mexican Drug Homicides on Google Maps

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Map of the Drug War in Mexico is using the Google Maps API to map drug related homicides in Mexico.

The map uses custom map markers to display the number of homicides in different locations within Mexico. The size of the markers corresponds to the number of homicides at that location. If the user selects a marker they can view a graph showing the number of homicides over the last eight years.

It is also possible to use the provided drawing tools to search a custom area on the map.

Chilean Motels in Street View

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Here's the first app I've seen that uses the new Street View (released last week) in Chile. I'm not exactly sure what the purpose of Pillando.me is, but it seems to be a collection of Street Views of motels in Chile.

The sidebar includes links to a number of Street Views of motels and if you select a link from the sidebar the Street View automatically moves to that location. The sidebar also includes a nice scroll effect that spins the links as you scroll up or down.

Hat-tip:  Street View Funny

Japan Real-Time Public Transit Map

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Tetsudo Now is a real-time Google Map of the Japanese public transit network. The map simulates the current locations of buses and trains in Japan's largest towns and cities.

The position of the vehicles on the map are animated based on the transit timetables. Users can select which city's transit map they wish to view from a drop-down menu. They can also select the time of day they wish to see simulated on the map from another drop-down menu.

Google Maps: It's More Than a Map

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Google has unveiled an impressive new website to highlight the many different types of awesome maps and visualisations that can be created with the Google Maps API.

MoreThanAMap.com includes some great Google Maps API demo maps, an introduction to many of the most impressive features of the API (e.g. Street View, routing, Places) and interviews with Google Maps API developers around the world.

The demo maps are a great introduction to the features available in the Google Maps API and the types of maps and visualisations that developers can create. If you want to hear how other developers have used the Maps API then the 'Developer Stories' include some interesting video interviews with some of the most experienced and successful developers who have used  the Google Maps API.

Hannibal's Journey on Google Maps

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I really like the map used in the Digital Map of the Roman Empire by the Pelagios Project. I decided to play around with the map today and decided to use the map tiles to plot the route of Hannibal's famous journey to Italy from Carthage.

The Hannibal's Journey map shows the (very rough) route that Hannibal took and some of the major battles that he fought with the Roman Empire along the way. I also used the Polyline Symbols function in the Google Maps API to include an animated arrow that provides a little bit of action to an otherwise fairly static map.

Another Look at CartoDB's Torque

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I had another look at CartoDB's Torque library on GitHub today and noticed they have added some new examples of the library in action. A polished example of Torque is available in the amazing Navy of WWI animated visualisation highlighted this week in The Guardian newspaper. GitHub also has three other good demo maps.

Storms uses Torque with Google Maps to animate through 50 years of tropical storm data. The map animates the storm data on a Google Map and really emphasises the stunning speed with which Torque can display data.

Vertnet uses Torque to animates through over two hundred years of data (I'm not sure what the data represents). This demo illustrates how Torque can be used to effortlessly display thousands of data points on Google Maps. 

The USPO Map animates through the opening of post offices in the U.S. between1644 and 1901. 

Good News on Google Maps

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If you live in Taiwan and you need cheering up you should read the happy tales posted to Cover Story. Corner Story is a Taiwanese Google Maps based application that enables anyone to post a good news story to a map.

If you have a heart warming tale or some good news to share then you just need to connect a Facebook account to Cover Story and you can post your own good news to the map. Alternatively you can just browse the map and click on the map markers to read the stories of human warmth that have already been added by others to the map. 

Google Maps: It's More Than a Map

To contact us Click HERE

Google has unveiled an impressive new website to highlight the many different types of awesome maps and visualisations that can be created with the Google Maps API.

MoreThanAMap.com includes some great Google Maps API demo maps, an introduction to many of the most impressive features of the API (e.g. Street View, routing, Places) and interviews with Google Maps API developers around the world.

The demo maps are a great introduction to the features available in the Google Maps API and the types of maps and visualisations that developers can create. If you want to hear how other developers have used the Maps API then the 'Developer Stories' include some interesting video interviews with some of the most experienced and successful developers who have used  the Google Maps API.

Hannibal's Journey on Google Maps

To contact us Click HERE

I really like the map used in the Digital Map of the Roman Empire by the Pelagios Project. I decided to play around with the map today and decided to use the map tiles to plot the route of Hannibal's famous journey to Italy from Carthage.

The Hannibal's Journey map shows the (very rough) route that Hannibal took and some of the major battles that he fought with the Roman Empire along the way. I also used the Polyline Symbols function in the Google Maps API to include an animated arrow that provides a little bit of action to an otherwise fairly static map.

Another Look at CartoDB's Torque

To contact us Click HERE

I had another look at CartoDB's Torque library on GitHub today and noticed they have added some new examples of the library in action. A polished example of Torque is available in the amazing Navy of WWI animated visualisation highlighted this week in The Guardian newspaper. GitHub also has three other good demo maps.

Storms uses Torque with Google Maps to animate through 50 years of tropical storm data. The map animates the storm data on a Google Map and really emphasises the stunning speed with which Torque can display data.

Vertnet uses Torque to animates through over two hundred years of data (I'm not sure what the data represents). This demo illustrates how Torque can be used to effortlessly display thousands of data points on Google Maps. 

The USPO Map animates through the opening of post offices in the U.S. between1644 and 1901. 

A Million Photos on Google Maps

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Woophy is a photo sharing website whose members have already posted over one million photographs around the world.

Woophy features a prominent Google Map on its home page that enables users to search for photographs by location. When a user clicks on the map, or searches for a location via the map's search box, the photos for that location are displayed beneath the map.

Woophy has also used the Google Maps Styled Maps feature to create a map that complements the color scheme of the rest of the website.

World Space Week on Google Maps

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Today is the start of World Space Week, so here are a few space related Google Maps.

It often surprises me that a lot of people still haven't discovered Google Sky, Google Moon and Google Mars.

Developers can even access the map tiles from these three Google Maps with a little hacking. If you want to add these planetary map types to your maps then check out this GitHub.


The Star Movie Map uses the Google Sky map tiles to present animations of astronomical events posted to YouTube on top of a Google Map. The map also includes links to some of the best imagery that can be found in Google Sky.


The HeyWhatsThat site makes good use of the Google Earth API to create simulations of solar eclipses. Currently HeyWhatsThat is displaying a simulation of November's solar eclipse. Using the app you can find the best places to view the eclipse and even view a simulation of what the eclipse will look like from different locations on the Earth.


I hope that has whetted your appetite for World Space Week. If it has piqued your interest then you can check out what Space Week events are happening near you on the World Space Week's own Map of Events.

Ancient Rome on Google Maps

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The Pelagios Project has released Roman Empire map tiles that can be used with the Google Maps API. They have released a demo map, Digital Map of the Roman Empire, which shows how the map can be used with the Google Maps API.

The demo is just a basic map which replaces the Google Map tiles with the Roman Empire map tiles. If you want to search the map for ancient world place names then you should check out the Pleiades website. Pleiades is a great resource for anyone interested in the history and geography of the ancient world. The site is a community based and open-sourced gazette of ancient places.

If you search Pleiades for a Roman place name you can view the location on a map. On the displayed map you need to select the 'Imperium' map layer to view the Roman Empire map tiles.

Also See 

Omnes Viae: Itinerarium Romanum - a Roman Empire route planner