Do You Know Your 'Hood?

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How well do you know the neighborhoods of your city? Click that 'Hood will test your local knowledge with a fun little neighborhood quiz.

The game presents you with a Google Maps satellite view of your city with all the neighborhoods outlined on the map. You then have to click on the correct neighborhood when prompted by the app. You have to get 20 right in the shortest possible time.

Currently there are 16 American cities to play. Click Your 'Hood also includes instructions on how you can create your own neighborhood quiz. All you need to do is get the shapefiles for the neighborhoods in your city and follow the simple instructions.

Asteroid 2012 DA14's Path

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Asteroid 2012 DA14 will pass the Earth on Friday. At around 7.30pm GMT it will be as close as 17,200 miles to the Earth.

The asteroid will be very faint, it will be thousands of times fainter than Jupiter and 250 times fainter than the stars of the Plough. However if you live in a part of the world where it is dark enough at the time the asteroid passes you should be able to see it with a good pair of binoculars or a telescope.

To find out where the asteroid will be in the night sky then check out the HeyWhatsThat: Close Asteroid Approach. The app uses two Google Earth plugins to show the path of the asteroid. You can set your location on one Google Earth plugin and the asteroid's location will be shown on a map of the night sky. A time-line beneath the map allows you to check the asteroid's position at different times.

Plan An Ad Campaign with Google Maps

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UK software company Beacon Dodsworth has used Google Maps to create an outdoor advertising research and delivery system for the Netherlands.

The Outdoor Delivery System Map includes the location data of the Netherlands' over 85,000 outdoor advertising panels. The map allows advertisers to view heat maps of an advertising campaign's coverage and easily identify specific locations to target.

Advertisers can even identify specific regions in the Netherlands and zoom in to see the location of all the outdoor advertising panels. The panels are displayed on the map with colour-coded markers that indicate the contractor who owns each panel.

One of the main advantages of using the Google Maps API over other on-line mapping platforms is Google's extensive Street View coverage in the Netherlands. The availability of Street View allows advertisers to target specific outdoor advertising panels and to remotely view the panel's position and visibility using Google Maps' interactive panoramic imagery.

Meteor Impact Sites on Google Maps

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What with tonight's pass of Asteroid 2012 DA14 and a meteor crashing into the Chelyabinsk region of Russia early this morning I've been spending way too much time Googling celestial bodies today.

My searching on Google did turn up this informative post from the Google Earth Blog about meteor craters. The post includes a link to a Thinklemon.com KML file of 172 meteor impact sites, with a size indicator for the largest ones. You can use Google Maps or Google Earth to browse the KML file. Here's a link to view the list using the Google Earth browser plug-in inside Google Maps.

Also See

• HeyWhatsThat: Close Asteroid Approach - a sky map of Asteroid 2012 DA14's pass of the Earth for later today.
• Impact Calculator. a Google Maps app that allows you to view the potential size of an impact crater, caused by different sized asteroids, at different locations around the world.
• 3d Asteroid Orbit Space Simulation - an amazing WebGL simulation that shows a view of our solar system, with over 580,000 asteroids mapped.

Twitter Activity on Google Maps

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Despite the ugly name Twaps is a useful app for finding what people are saying on Twitter around a specific location.

If you share your location with the app you can view the latest Tweets posted around you. If you want to find out what people are saying around a different location you can just enter a place-name in the search box to move the Google Map to that location.


Twitterfall is an interesting map visualisation of real-time geolocated Tweets being made around the world.

When anyone sends a Twitter message a map marker will fall onto the Twitterfall Google Map. The map is therefore an interesting visualisation of current Twitter activity around the world. However, as the markers begin to accumulate on the map, you might see some drop in performance.

Silicon Fen on Google Maps

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The Cambridge Cluster (also known as Silicon Fen) is the name given to an area in and around Cambridge, England where a large number of high-tech businesses are located.

The Cambridge Cluster Map is a Google Map showing the locations of the companies that contribute to Cambridge's high-tech sector. The size of the map marker used for each company represents the number of employees in the company. The size of the circles around some of the companies' markers represent the size of the company's revenue.

Asteroid Impacts on Google Maps

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Tomorrow Asteroid 2012 DA14 will narrowly miss hitting the Earth. The asteroid will pass so close to the Earth that it will actually pass underneath our communications satellites. The asteroid is about 160 feet across, which isn't particularly large, but if it did hit the Earth (I repeat - it won't) it would cause a huge amount of damage.

You can view the Meteor Crater in Arizona on Google Maps Street View. The Arizona meteor crater was caused by an asteroid which was almost exactly the same size as Asteroid 2012 DA14. The crater is 4,000 ft in diameter and 570 ft deep, and using Google Maps you can actually take a virtually walk right to the center of the crater.


If you want to know what kind of damage an asteroid this size would do to your town then chack out the Impact Calculator. This app allows you to view the potential size of an impact crater, caused by different sized asteroids, at different locations around the world.

The app uses the Google Earth browser plug-in to give you a 3d view of the potential size of an impact crater caused by different types of asteroid. 


If this has whetted your appetite to learn more about asteroids then have a look at Asterank's 3d Asteroid Orbit Space Simulation.

The simulation is an amazing WebGL application that shows a view of our solar system with over 580,000 asteroids mapped. It is possible to rotate, zoom and pan the simulation. It is also possible to refine the asteroids shown by most valuable and most accessible (just in case you have plans to get into a little asteroid mining).