Tracking Ice Cream Vans on Google Maps
Summer wouldn’t be summer without the unbridled joy of the ice-cream van.
Summer also wouldn’t be summer without the occasional disappointment of hearing the bells of the ice-cream van, running indoors, scrambling around trying to find your money, running out onto the street again, only to see the ice-cream van disappearing around the corner.
Thanks to Google Maps the sight of small children crying in the street whilst they stare disconsolately after the missed ice-cream should be a thing of the past.
For the Ben & Jerry’s Fair Ice Tour 2012 a Ben & Jerry’s ice-cream bus is driving around Germany, Austria and Switzerland giving out free ice-cream. To help avoid disappointment the van can be tracked in real-time on a Google Map.
You can even request that the Ben & Jerry ice-cream van visits somewhere near you by making a request on Ben & Jerry’s Facebook fan page. 
Building Bridges with Google Maps
As part of the celebrations for the Golden Gate Bridge’s 75th anniversary why not help create the longest bridge in the world with Band of Bridges?
Using Band of Bridges it is possible to virtually connect bridges from around the world to the Golden Gate Bridge. Using the application you can find a bridge on Google Maps and connect it to all the other bridges added by other users. To add a bridge you just need to find its location on Google Maps, click on both ends of the bridge and then enter its name.
The bridge will then automatically be connected to the Band of Bridges chain of bridges.
Once you have added a bridge you can post a link to your bridge on Google+, Twitter or Facebook and your followers can then click on the link to view the bridge you added in the Band of Bridges chain.
Via: Google Lat Long
The Inaugural Data Journalism Awards
Pedestrian Crashes in Novosibirsk is one of the six winners of the inaugural Data Journalism Awards.
Pedestrian Crashes in Novosibirsk uses the Google Maps API to map and analyse pedestrian road accidents in Novosibirsk, Russia in 2011. The jury of the award said that the map is a,
”_good interactive visualisation of what can be very dry data, with intuitive navigation, in an interface that invites readers to engage with the information. The pre-packaged pullout ‘stories’ also efficiently relay information at a glance – while allowing readers to zoom in to get customised or personal detail._”
The slide control above the map can be used to filter the results shown by month. The ‘pullout’ stories allow the user to explore the data by gender of the driver, gender of the pedestrian, age of driver and pedestrian, and to show those accidents that caused a fatality.
Modern Land Art on Google Maps
The Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA) is currently holding an exhibition on Land art, “capturing the simultaneous impulse emergent in the 1960s to use the earth as an artistic medium and to locate works in remote sites far from familiar art contexts”. The exhibition runs until September 3rd.
Even if you can’t get to MOCA to view the exhibition then you can still view an accompanying interactive application that maps key artworks in the exhibition. Ends of the Earth: Land Art to 1974 uses Google Maps and Google Street View to pinpoint the original locations of the featured artworks.
For each artwork it is possible to view a satellite image, or a Street View image where available, of the artwork’s location. It is also possible to view a photograph of the work of art in situ overlaid on top of the Google Map or Street View.
Introducing Google World Wonders
World Wonders is a new project from Google that allows you to take a virtual trip around 132 of the World’s most famous historical and cultural sites. The sites includes historically important locations, such as Stonehenge and Pompeii and also natural wonders, such as the sandy dunes of Australia’s Shark Bay and the rock domes of Yosemite National Park.
Google World Wonders uses Google Maps, Google Street View and Google Earth 3d models to explore these 132 historical locations. Each location also includes YouTube videos and photographs from Getty Images. Information about each location is also provided by the UNESCO World Heritage Centre.
Google World Wonders also includes a great Education section with downloadable resources for history and geography students and guides for primary and secondary school teachers.
The incredible 3D buildings of Istanbul, Turkey
There are a lot of cities with amazing 3D building coverage, but one you may not have seen yet is Istanbul, Turkey. Thanks in large part to the work of a company called 3DLocationEarth, the 3D buildings in Istanbul look amazing! 
Another great example is from a little cafe; notice the detailed 3D tables and chairs outside. 
3DLocationEarth has over 5,000 models in the Google 3D Warehouse, though the Warehouse will only show you 2,500 of them. You can view them here. You can learn more about them on their Google profile page.
To check out these buildings in Istanbul for yourself, you can use this KML file
to fly there and explore them.
Google unveils the World Wonders Project
There are a lot of amazing sites around the world, and thanks to Google’s various technologies such as Street View and Google Earth they’re easier to explore than ever. Google has now taken 132 historic sites from around the world and put them together into a single showcase called the World Wonders Project. 
The project covers major sites that we all know about, such as Stonehenge and Pompeii, and also covers lesser-known sites that are quite amazing, such as the Historic Villages of Shirakawa-go and Gokayama. This video shows a bit more about how it works:
The sites all include Street View imagery (much of which was captured using a Street View Trike), photos, videos, and 3D models in Google Earth.
I wasn’t able to find a KML file to simply view the locations and 3D models in Google Earth, but I expect someone will create one at some point. In the meantime, check out the full World Wonders Project for yourself, or learn more at this blog post on the Official Google Blog.
New Google Earth Imagery - May 30
Two weeks after their previous update, it appears that Google has just pushed out some more fresh imagery to Google Earth. Thanks to ‘hhgygy’ for letting us know about it! 
As is almost always the case, you can use Google Maps to determine for sure whether or not a specific area is fresh. This new imagery isn’t in Google Maps yet, so you can compare Earth vs. Maps to see what’s new; the fresh imagery is already in Google Earth, but the old imagery is still in Google Maps. If you compare the two side-by-side and they’re not identical, that means that you’ve found a freshly updated area in Google Earth!
So far it appear to be a rather small update, and the imagery seems to be rather dark, but see if you can find any other updated areas.
Hungary: Budapest (just west of the city)
If you find any other updated areas, please leave a comment and let us know!
New 45° Imagery for 26 Cities
Wawel Royal Castle, Kraków
Google Maps has new 45° imagery for 16 U.S. and 10 international locations, including the first 45° imagery for Poland and Ireland.
The full list of updated cities:
US: Albany, GA (outskirts); Atascocita, TX; Clarksville, TN; Columbia, MO; Corpus Christi, TX; Fayetteville, NC; Fort Collins, CO; Fort Smith, AR; Greensboro, NC; Jackson, TN; Lafayette, LA; Plaquemine, LA; Pueblo, CO; Santa Fe, NM; Texarkana, AR; Tyler, TX
International: Bern, Switzerland; Cracow, Poland; Dublin, Ireland; Gdansk, Poland; Lugo, Spain; Ourense, Spain; Poznan, Poland; Warsaw, Poland; Wroclaw, Poland; Zurich, Switzerland
Via: Google Lat Long
The 2011 Canadian Census on Google Maps
More data from the 2011 Canadian Census was released today. Global News has acted quickly to update its 2011 Census Google Maps, in particular adding new data about sex and age.
Global News has created census maps for a large number of Canadian cities. The new data allows users to explore the median age in different neighbourhoods, find out which areas are getting older and which areas have the most men or women
