GeoWhisperer – See How the World Has Changed / / No Comments Since 2012, the London Legacy Development Corporation has gradually transformed the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park from an essential local green space into a high-density residential hub driven by foreign investment. The before-and-after aerial imagery above provides a striking illustration of how the landscape of the Olympic ‘park’ is being built over. This before and after image was created in a matter of seconds by GeoWhisperer. GeoWhisperer is a new tool from Henk van Ess that attempts to take some of the guesswork out of comparing satellite imagery. Designed for OSINT researchers, journalists and visual mappers, it automatically searches historical satellite imagery and uses... more → Posted in: Interactive Maps Tagged with: Changed, GeoWhisperer, World
It’s only a decade late, I’ll learn TypeScript! / / No Comments I’ve been a bit worried lately. Of course, my friends will tell you that’s my norm. But more specifically, I’ve been worried about my coding skills. As I use AI to generate more and more code, and it does that job well, I kinda miss actually writing code. I’ve also had a bit of writer’s block in terms of topics to cover, and especially in the area of the web platform. A few days ago it occurred to me – I’ve never really dug into TypeScript. Sure, I’ve used it, many times, in the fourteen or so years it’s been out, but many times I kinda guess at what I’m doing and it was never my default for projects. Partly that’s due to my philosophy... more → Posted in: JavaScript Tagged with: Decade, I'll, it's, late, Learn, only, TypeScript
170,000 Movies – One Interactive Map / / No Comments I recently reviewed the Movie Scene Map, an interactive map that makes it easy to find which iconic movie scenes were filmed right around the corner from your house. However, the fact that a film was shot near you doesn’t necessarily mean that the movie is set in your neighborhood. In many cases, filmmakers use one location to stand in for another, either because it’s cheaper, more convenient, or simply looks the part. For example, Stanley Kubrick’s Eyes Wide Shut, while set almost entirely in the moody, nocturnal streets of Greenwich Village and Manhattan, was shot almost entirely in London. Even more astonishingly, London was also used to create some of the iconic, sweat-soaked... more → Posted in: Interactive Maps Tagged with: 170000, Interactive, Movies
PIxel City Maps Are Here / / No Comments Isometric NYC has definitely started a new trend for developing pixelated interactive city maps. In the last few weeks it has inspired Isopolis in San Francisco and London, drawn in London. Now a new project is taking the idea to Brazil – and suggests that we could soon be seeing a lot more of these pixelated cities. EARTH TO PIXELS earthToPixels has now transformed aerial imagery of João Pessoa, a coastal city in northeastern Brazil, into a sprawling, SimCity-style isometric pixel-art map. Like the earlier maps, the pixelated map of João Pessoa is a joy to explore. Buildings, roads, parks and coastline are transformed into a giant isometric pixel-art landscape that you can... more → Posted in: Interactive Maps Tagged with: City, Here, maps, Pixel
New York’s 1.67 Million Buildings Colored by Age / / No Comments The craze for ;building age maps seems to have faded in recent years, which is a shame because I think they can reveal a surprising amount about how a city has grown and changed over time. When you map the age of every building, patterns of development, expansion and redevelopment can suddenly become much easier to see in a way that is hard to grasp from standard historical records. New York in 1.67 Million Buildings is bucking the trend and is also a particularly impressive example of a building age map. The map colours New York’s buildings according to the decade in which they were constructed, creating an extraordinary colorful patchwork of the city’s architectural history. Zoom... more → Posted in: Interactive Maps Tagged with: 1.67, Buildings, Colored, Million, York's
Geography and Genetics / / No Comments How closely related are the world’s populations? The Genetic Distance Map offers a fascinating way to explore that question by putting genetic similarity onto a map. Click on this map and the surrounding areas are then colored according to genetic distance. The result is a visual landscape of genetic similarity, with similar colours indicating populations that are genetically closer to one another. For most populations, the Genetic Distance Map displays smooth, concentric rings radiating outwards. In many locations, geographic distance mirrors genetic distance (e.g., clicking on central France highlights neighboring regions in Western Europe). As you might suspect populations that... more → Posted in: Interactive Maps Tagged with: Genetics, Geography
Building a Document Q&A System with On-Device AI / / No Comments Every now and then I build a demo for a presentation and think to myself – this deserves its own blog post. I then promptly forget to actually do that. Even better, I completely forget to even show the demo in the presentation. A few weeks ago I made my first presentation at RenderATL and gave my talk on Chrome’s on-device AI technology. I’ve been blogging about this particular set of APIs for a few years now and I’ve given talks on it at numerous conferences. While these APIs are still evolving, many of them (and the ones I’m using today in particular) are now fully GA for Chrome. For this demo, I put together a few things I’ve done before into one cohesive... more → Posted in: JavaScript Tagged with: building, Document, OnDevice, system
MapDraw: Take the Scenic Route / / No Comments MapDraw I use Organic Maps every day. Currently, I’m using it to follow the London Loop, with the route loaded as a GPX track on the map. I often get annoyed with the London Loop route – particularly when it takes me along a busy road when I can see what looks like a much more pleasant alternative just a few metres away. What I need is a simple tool that will allow me to draw my own alternative routes for the sections I don’t like and save them as GPX files, which I can then add to Organic Maps. Welcome to MapDraw. MapDraw is a browser-based map editor that allows you to import, draw and edit geographic data. So, if I decide that the official London Loop route has made a terrible... more → Posted in: Interactive Maps Tagged with: MapDraw, route, Scenic, take