Meet Language Explorer: Google’s New Open-Source Linguistic Atlas / / No Comments Google Research’s Language Explorer, is a new interactive map that anyone can use to explore the world’s languages.Mapping the World’s TonguesThe interface of the Language Explorer is built around a highly responsive interactive map. Users can dive into the data in several ways:Spatial Discovery: You can use the map to zoom into a specific region – like the Highlands of Papua New Guinea or the Maps Mania… more → Posted in: Interactive Maps Tagged with: atlas, Explorer, Google's, Language, Linguistic, meet, opensource
Subways Built by Slime Mold / / No Comments Subway Sim: Watching a City Think In 2010, researchers in Tokyo ran a slime mold experiment on a map of the city.They placed oat flakes on a map of the Greater Tokyo Area, positioning each flake over a metropolitan center. Then they released a slime mould – Physarum polycephalum – at the location of Tokyo itself.Slime moulds are single-celled organisms with no brain, no nervous system, Maps Mania… more → Posted in: Interactive Maps Tagged with: Built, Mold, Slime, Subways
How Big is Big? / / No Comments META is building a massive (AI)-focused data centre in northeast Louisiana. The site footprint is 2,250 acres of land – making the Hyperion Data Center one of the largest data-center construction sites ever attempted in the United States. It is a nearly five-mile-long, one-mile-wide tract of land that is being developed to power Meta’s AI ambitions.It is hard to understand the true scale of a Maps Mania… more → Posted in: Interactive Maps
Make a Map Poster / / No Comments Ankur Gupta has created an impressive Map Poster Generator. The code for which is available on GitHub.While the original repository is fantastic for developers, it also requires a local Python setup, terminal commands, and the installation of geospatial libraries like OSMnx and GDAL – which can be intimidating if you aren’t a coder.I’ve therefore adapted the core logic into a Google Colab Maps Mania… more → Posted in: Interactive Maps Tagged with: Poster
Did You Win the Global Lottery? / / No Comments Are you feeling lucky? You probably should be. Based on where most Maps Mania readers are located, there’s a good chance you’ve already won the birth lottery.The Birth Lottery map makes global inequality tangible by illustrating how much our quality of life depends on chance. With a single spin, the map randomly “re-births” you somewhere in the world based on real statistics. It poses a simple Maps Mania… more → Posted in: Interactive Maps Tagged with: global, Lottery
War Atlas: Mapping 3,500 Years of Conflict / / No Comments War Atlas is an interactive, web-based map that visualizes 8,500+ historical battles spanning from around 1500 BC to the present day – providing users with a guided historical tour of human conflict.At its core, War Atlas is an interactive timeline-driven map. Users can select a specific war, explore through time using a slide control or through inputting a specific year, and see battles Maps Mania… more → Posted in: Interactive Maps Tagged with: 3500, atlas, conflict, Mapping, Years
Where are the Most Expensive Houses? / / No Comments Homes Are Expensive is an interactive map that can help you find the cheapest and most expensive places to buy a property in the United States. The house prices are based on data from Zillow listings.The map visualizes property prices across the USA using data scraped via hasdata.com in November 2025, and provides a comprehensive look at the 1.85 million homes currently on the market. What makes Maps Mania… more → Posted in: Interactive Maps Tagged with: Expensive, Houses, most
A New Year’s Flight Around Planet Earth / / No Comments On New Year’s Day, I released a small virtual fireworks show to celebrate the start of the year. The Swiss newspaper Neue Zürcher Zeitung then put my effort to shame by publishing an impressive orbital tour of the entire planet on the same day – recorded by the International Space Station.Illuminated Cities and Northern Lights: A New Year’s Flight around the World around the World is a guided Maps Mania… more → Posted in: Interactive Maps Tagged with: around, Earth, flight, Planet, Years