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Tour de France - Live Tracker 2008

Two days ago I expressed my life’s one desire was for someone to produce a Google Map that tracked the Tour de France and showed the first person view of the riders via Street View. Well I think Ubilabs have succeeded in making my life complete (yes - my life is that sad).

The Ubilabs Tour de France site now has a countdown to the beginning of the race, a Google Map and Street View. If you click on any of the stages on the map the Street View changes to that position. So even though the race hasn’t begun you can already check out the start and finish lines (and any point in between).

Under the Street View there is an instruction that says “follow riders position to update street view”, which suggests that the view is going to update as the rider’s position changes or that you will be able to change the view manually by clicking on a rider during the race.

Now I can’t wait until tomorrow to try this out live. Damn, I’m going to have to.

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Posted by Daniel Ratner, Mechanical Engineer

One of the things I look forward to every summer is the Tour de France. I’m always fascinated when I hear about the hairpin turns and steep climbs. To bring the Tour de France to life and help you experience it stage by stage, we’re very excited to provide Street View for the 2008 Tour de France route.

With this launch, you can now follow the race through each of the 21 stages with just a click of a mouse and enjoy a perspective similar to what your favorite cyclists see as they wind through France’s majestic mountains, vivacious cities, and tranquil countryside. To jump right in and see panoramic imagery at street level for the Tour de France, navigate over to google.com/tourdefrance2008. Or keep reading and I’ll take you on a little tour of the Tour route!

The Tour de France route marks our first launch of Street View imagery in Europe, and we’re bringing with us some of our newly released features such as ground-filling and face blurring, but we’re also introducing some more new features.

First off, we’re now featuring even higher quality imagery — take a look for yourself:

We’ve also been keeping busy since first announcing our the state-of-the-art face detection technology — you’ll see our new license plate blurring technology as you travel through the Tour de France route.

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The Commission for Environmental Cooperation has developed a nice set of KML files which illustrate the range for a variety of both land and marine animals who are of “conservation concern”. Check out the file in GE here . I really like the way they have used the folders in the KML file to select different species and the colored polygons to represent the ranges of each species. And, the same file is also available in Spanish and French.

Here’s a brief description from their file:

The North American Commission for Environmental Cooperation (CEC) developed this map layer to provide range maps and basic information about the North American Species of Common Conservation Concern. These terrestrial and marine species depend on regional action in Canada, Mexico, and the United States for their continued survival and success. Maps for terrestrial species are based on range maps compiled by NatureServe.

The Commission for Environmental Cooperation (CEC) is an international organization created by Canada, Mexico and the United States under the North American Agreement on Environmental Cooperation to address regional environmental concerns, help prevent potential trade and environmental conflicts, and to promote the effective enforcement of environmental law. The Agreement complements the environmental provisions of the North American Free Trade Agreement.

Thanks to a tip from GEB reader Tommy.

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If you’ve been wondering why half of the Internet had gone quiet, then (like us) you might not have realised that today is the 4th of July, and that mean’s it’s America’s Independence Day.

The holiday marks the signing of the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776 - which is today held at the National Archives and Records Administration in Washington, D.C..

Buy what does the National archive store in those white boxes on the roof?

All over America people are celebrating Independence Day with fireworks, parades, barbecues and public displays of patriotism: such as this guy dressed like Uncle Sam in Austin, Texas.

Not wanting to be left out of the party, the Street View Icon Guy has dressed up for the occasion too!

Read the full history of the holiday on Wikipedia.

Locations: District of Columbia, Texas / Categories: Buildings, Street Views

View in Google Earth

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The BBC have a good article online looking at opposition to introducing Street View to Google Maps in the UK. Apparently Google started capturing London this week. The main issue is with the UK’s privacy laws where people cannot be photographed without consent if the output is to be used for commercial gain - as is the case with Google Maps. There is also the issue of privacy in terms of houses

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Google Maps Street View in France (and a tiny bit of Italy) has certainly brightened up my week. However the rest of Europe may have to wait some time for Street View to appear. Well they will if all the Street View car drivers are as keen to win a Darwin Award as the driver who took this image:

Now what possible reason could anyone have to close a mountain road at 2000 metres? I know - let’s drive on and see:

Ah avalanches! That looks fun let’s drive on.

What happened to the road?

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Twitter Weather Map

Everyone loves twittering on about the weather. Wouldn’t it be great to have a map of all those conversations? It may be small talk but this is one big idea from Walter Rafelsberger.

Walter’s map fetches messages from Twitter which contain words about the weather. A KML file is then rendered and displayed on a Google Map. The map is then updated every hour with the latest weather discussions on Twitter.

Currently Austria, France, Germany, Spain, Switzerland, United Kingdom and the United States each get their own dedicated weather map. You can even add the map to iGoogle or Netvibes.

Walter says this is “just a simple example to illustrate the hidden power and possible emergence that lies within social media, presence services and live streams.” He even says he produced the map in just three hours.

Simply genius.

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