A Map Mapping Maps

To celebrate the fifth birthday of the google Maps API on the 29th of June, Kier Clarke, the map loving soul behind Google Maps Mania, has built Google Maps a map, mapping maps, apps., mashups and sites that use their API. He's called it Mappy Birthday.

Kier started with 300 mashups but obviously there are thousands of sites that use the API, so if you know of one that's missing from the map you can add a pin for it.

Zeroing in on Australia there are quite a few interesting offerings, but there's one that stands out in particular. It's called Black Saturday and it was made by the ABC, about the bush fires that savaged Victoria in February 2008. They've mashed up their own footage, both video and audio, with images, reports and more footage submitted by people whose lives were touched by the lick of flames.

It's both interesting and gets the tone right. 173 people died in the fires and lots of people lost their homes and land, so this way of bringing all the personal experiences in one place is a fitting tribute, and presenting the elements on a map with a time line helps to give people using it awareness about how quickly things escalated and how challenging it must have been for those involved.

Someone is bound to make a film or TV drama about it, if they haven't already, but this site is far deeper way to learn about what happened because it's interactive.

Posted by Kat Parr Mackintosh

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A Map Mapping Maps

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