MIBAZAAR Blog

Hurricane Earl Tweets mapped #googlemaps

Virender Ajmani — Tue, 31 Aug 2010 04:17:17 +0000

The weather service is projecting that hurricane earl which is currently out in the Atlantic is going to affect states up and down the East Coast of United States by this weekend. There is a lot twitter activity related to Hurricane Earl. Here’s a look at the Twitter activity on Google Maps from Eastern United States. The map animates through Tweets every 5 seconds.

Pakistan Flooding Satellite Imagery #geoeye

Virender Ajmani — Sun, 22 Aug 2010 16:03:54 +0000

GeoEye has released this half-meter ground resolution satellite image taken on August 5th, 2010 from 423 miles in space, which shows a portion of Risalpur, located on the Kabul River in the Nowshera District in Pakistan’s Northwest Frontier Province. The image was taken after Risalpur experienced historic flooding not seen since 1929. The image shows standing water, swollen river banks and residual mud. Compare this to the pre-flooding image from Google Maps which is shown below:

GeoEye Satellite Imagery or Risalpur, NW Province, Pakistan

Pre-Flooding Google Maps View Of Risalpur, NW Province, Pakistan

Mapping World’s Happiest Countries #googlemaps

Virender Ajmani — Thu, 19 Aug 2010 12:12:34 +0000

FORBES recently published a list of world’s happiest countries. The scandinavian countries seem to be doing pretty good with Denmark being ranked #1 followed by Finland, Norway and Sweden. United States has been ranked #14 with 57% Thriving, 40% Struggling and 3% suffering.

The list ranks 155 countries which have been Google Mapped here at MIBAZAAR. The map shows information (in information window above the markers) on Population % thriving, struggling and suffering. This Google Map Mashup utilizes Google Maps v3 API and the markers have been generated using Google Charts API.

Journalists killed in line of duty #googlemaps

Virender Ajmani — Mon, 09 Aug 2010 10:54:09 +0000

CPJ (Committee to Protect Journalists) website lists journalists from around the world who were killed in line of duty. There have been 825 journalists killed since 1992. In 2010 alone, 45 journalists have been killed.

Here at mibazaar I have created a map (Google Maps) of journalists killed in 2010. The map has numbered markers which when clicked opens up information window which lists name of journalist, employer, date killed, location killed and a brief description of the incident. The map also has a sidebar which lists names of journalists killed. Clicking on the name of the journalist in the sidebar opens up the corresponding information window above the incident location in the map. The list is sorted by date when the journalist was killed.

Pakistan Floods – Nasa Imagery #googlemaps #googleearth

Virender Ajmani — Sun, 08 Aug 2010 03:52:48 +0000

Heavy rains in northwestern Pakistan during July has led to massive flooding which has claimed 1400+ lives and entire villages being washed away. More than 3 million people have been affected. The extent of the flooding can be seen from this image from NASA of the affected areas. The image on the left shows the INDUS river prior to heavy rains which fell in July. Image on the right shows the Indus River swelling after the rains.

I have taken the image on the right and created kml file which can be viewed in both Google Earth and Google Maps.

Kalamazoo Oil Spill Tweets Mapped #oil #michigan #kalamazoo

Virender Ajmani — Wed, 28 Jul 2010 04:17:51 +0000

With US dealing with its worst environmental disaster in history (Gulf Oil Spill), news comes of Mid West’s worst environmental disaster. Now Michigan is dealing with Oil Spill. Yesterday a oil pipeline ruptured in the Kalamazoo area, sending about 870,000 gallons of oil into a creek in Kalamazoo county which is making its way into Kalamazoo river. More details at mlive.com.

So how are folks in Michigan reacting to the oil spill?. Twitter is a great tool in gauging the reaction. Here’s a map I put together quickly of tweet locations from around Michigan related to oil spill in Kalamazoo.

Lake Delhi Dam in Eastern Iowa fails #googleearth

Virender Ajmani — Sun, 25 Jul 2010 05:01:07 +0000

The Lake Delhi Dam in eastern Iowa failed on Saturday (7/24) as a result of “massive rain”. Approximately 10 inches of rain had fallen in a 12-hour period. The dam failure resulted in major flooding of nearby communities. CNN is reporting that as of late Saturday, water has started receding. (more at CNN). Here’s a Google Earth View of “Lake Delhi Dam” and surrounding communities.

CityNewsGlobe – a new way of browsing International News

Virender Ajmani — Mon, 19 Jul 2010 04:11:18 +0000

Check out Ian Wojtowicz’s cool new project titled CityNewsGlobe. Its a new way of browsing International News. It focuses on cities and highlights those cities where news is increasing. Each city is portrayed as an extruded block whose height represents the city’s population density. Moving your mouse over the globe reveals each city’s top news story. The color orange attracts attention to cities whose news is currently increasing, relative to each other.

In the image shown below I moved the mouse over Chennai, India and the top news from that city is shown.

So what software did Ian use to create this cool mashup project? Quoting Ian:

The software on the front end is Flash, using Papervision for 3D and on the back end it is a combination of PHP and Java. The data is derived from Google News, but modified in a way that is unique to this system. You won’t find the same data by surfing through Google News without spending a few hours navigating from search to search.

Cloud Computing Tweets Mapped!!

Virender Ajmani — Wed, 07 Jul 2010 12:00:21 +0000

Lately there’s a lot of talk about “Cloud Computing”. So what is Cloud Computing?. Quoting Wikipedia

Cloud Computing is Internet-based computing, whereby shared resources, software, and information are provided to computers and other devices on demand, like the electricity grid

Google Trends is a great tool where you can see when “Cloud Computing” started gaining in popularity. Here’s a image grab from “Google Trends” which shows, that from late 2007, “Cloud Computing” searches have started increasing. Why “late 2007″?. Is this when the downturn in our economy started?

Twitter is another tool where you can see “Cloud Computing” popularity. This Google Maps Mashup maps out “Cloud Computing Tweets” from across United States and Western Europe.

GeoEye Satellite Imagery of Flagstaff fires #satellite #geoeye

Virender Ajmani — Fri, 02 Jul 2010 12:26:20 +0000

GeoEye’s IKONOS Satellite has captured spectacular image of the recent fires in Flagstaff, Arizona. The Schultz fire, north of Flagstaff, Arizona had burned approx 14,800 acres and was 40% contained on June 22nd when GeoEye’s IKONOS Satellite captured the image. This 1 meter resolution image was taken from 423 miles up in space.

Aerial Firefighting Helicopter fighting Flagstaff fires.

Schultz Fire, Flagstaff, Arizona