Google Maps Mania
googlemapsmania.blogspot.com · Personal blog · on HN since 2008
A long-running blog that showcases maps and mapping projects built with Google Maps and other mapping tools.
What HN saysHN commenters link it as a source of map mashups and standout posts, such as Amsterdam during WW2 and Kandinsky-style Mapbox maps.
34HN people shared it
12linked it in comments
37stories submitted
800story points
4 months agolast shared
2008people per year2026
Most-shared posts
- 1Data Scraping Wikipedia [w/ importHTML in Google Spreadsheets]2 people · 6 points · first shared 2008 · discussion on HN
- 2The Illegal Map of Swedish Art1 people · 356 points · first shared 2016 · 95 comments on HN
- 3AI your home on street view1 people · 257 points · first shared 2024 · 61 comments on HN
- 4Mapping and Seizing the Oligarchs' Assets1 people · 75 points · first shared 2022 · 181 comments on HN
- 5Maps Mania: How the World Powers Itself1 people · 47 points · first shared 2024 · 4 comments on HN
- 6Maps of the Russian-Ukraine Conflict in Real Time1 people · 8 points · first shared 2022 · discussion on HN
- 7Pay to Have Your Logo on Google Maps1 people · 6 points · first shared 2010 · 1 comments on HN
- 8Major Google Maps Redesign1 people · 3 points · first shared 2008 · discussion on HN
- 9Google Mug Maker1 people · 3 points · first shared 2014 · discussion on HN
- 10Google Map + Animation + CSS Transform1 people · 2 points · first shared 2014 · discussion on HN
- 11Mapping an Alien Invasion1 people · 2 points · first shared 2023 · discussion on HN
- 12Google Maps Mania: Google Maps Removes Buckingham Palace1 people · 2 points · first shared 2011 · discussion on HN
- 13Animated Heat Maps of Twitter Trends1 people · 2 points · first shared 2013 · discussion on HN
- 14IRL Streaming Map1 people · 2 points · first shared 2026 · 1 comments on HN
- 153D Flight Tracker1 people · 2 points · first shared 2025 · discussion on HN
What HN people wrote when they linked it
Zenst · 2019-08-18
Very much worth viewing in relation to the effects of WW2 http://googlemapsmania.blogspot.com/2014/04/amsterdam-during-war.html
with https://maps.amsterdam.nl/woii/ being the one you want.
pella · 2015-01-29
my favorite - Kandinsky styled maps .. ( not javascript )
"Mapbox Studio, More Kandinsky than Matisse"
http://googlemapsmania.blogspot.com/2014/09/mapbox-studio-more-kadinsk…
map: https://api.tiles.mapbox.com/v4/gmapsmania.6e688409/page.html?access_t…
chippy · 2014-05-29
From the post:
"Tomorrow I'm going to feature the very last Google Maps on Google Maps Mania,
The blog now gets 10% of the Google search traffic it did just 18 months ago. With Google attempting to kill off Google Maps Mania it would be like a turkey voting for Christmas for me to continue to promote Google Maps and the Google Maps API.
Last week I came very close to giving up completely. But despite Google I still think there is an audience for the blog. So from Wednesday Google Maps Mania will be featuring maps created with Open Street Map, Map Box, Leaflet and other map providers.
If you have any Google Maps you want promoting you have about 24 hours left to submit them to Google Maps Mania."
----
The blog is at: http://googlemapsmania.blogspot.co.uk/
mejackreed · 2014-03-23
I would like to add that @mourner, Leaflet creator, gave a great talk last week in San Francisco about why he started Leaflet and how the open source community developed around it. Talk is here (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bQAl43Aj_B0&feature=youtu.be).
One thing that I think is missing from this article is the communities around these projects and release cycles. Leaflet by far has the most active community around it. Where Open Layers 3 has been chugging along without a release for a while, and Google Maps API has remained pretty stagnant. A great post from Keir Clarke (http://googlemapsmania.blogspot.com/2014/01/the-slow-death-of-google-m… that is spot on.
shavenwarthog2 · 2011-03-24
blog of Google Maps mashups. Sometimes they don't need much programming
http://googlemapsmania.blogspot.com/
dedicated apps:
http://www.appbrain.com/app/beer-map/net.chrislehmann.beermappro
http://www.androidtapp.com/where/
http://www.yelp.com/yelpmobile
I second matomesc's point: learning Javascript will let you write your own mashup, which gives you more customization.
adrianwaj · 2010-07-09
The article mentions 100,000 recommendations made on Nextstop. Great. Chance has it, but I came across http://www.geckogo.com/ via http://googlemapsmania.blogspot.com/2010/07/get-up-go-with-geckogo.htm… today and it has about 975,000 discoveries and 200,000 reviews. Seems like the Plenty of Fish for travellers, and I'll be examining it for why it has become that way.
stardenburden · 2022-10-24
Berlin uses a different system in the older parts of the city
https://googlemapsmania.blogspot.com/2016/04/the-berlin-house-numbers-…
jaclaz · 2021-09-28
There is a kind of maps where the territory is deformed according to time employed by this (or that) connection, I think they are called "time cartograms"[0], probably in the case of France it wouldn't be so extreme, but I remember one made of Italy where the country was very short north-south and very large west-east, because most of the high speed railway connections go in the north-south direction, and actually crossing the country from the Tirrenic to the Adriatic coast takes nowadays the same (or more) than before world war II.
[0] http://googlemapsmania.blogspot.com/2017/12/how-time-can-bend-space.ht…
gmapsmania · 2014-03-03
I've listed 25 start-up maps that I know about here. I'm sure there are many others.
http://googlemapsmania.blogspot.com/2014/03/25-start-up-maps-from-arou…
mistermann · 2010-11-30
Most every option is documented here:
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2861/options-for-html-scraping
You'll likely find this tool handy once you choose your framework:
http://www.selectorgadget.com/
Another quick and dirty way:
http://googlemapsmania.blogspot.com/2008/10/data-scaping-wikipedia.htm…
limmeau · 2009-11-01
Apparently they used to buy that data from the big two.
http://googlemapsmania.blogspot.com/2008/09/google-maps-drop-navteq.ht…
asmithmd1 · 2009-01-16
Pretty cool; but amateurs can do almost as well with Google maps and Google Earth:
http://googlemapsmania.blogspot.com/2009/01/short-flight-of-1549-on-go…
Teterboro must have been really tempting, a successful ditching is anything but a sure thing, if one of the wings had caught the water before the other the plane would have started tumbling at over 100mph.