Google Maps Hacking

June 10, 2005
General Observations

Finally someone is putting Google to good use by marrying it with all kinds of interesting databases that actually help the public stay informed on things that they normally couldn’t.

For example, a guy in Chicago has been mining the Police Department website to locate all crimes and then plotting them to Google Maps. This way, if you want to find a safer train station, you can. If you want to avoid certain districts, that’s possible too.

Google Maps on your TiVo!
Google SightSeeing
Chicago Crime
Florida Sexual Predators
Housing Maps

I knew it was a seedy area when I was going to college in Sarasota, Florida, but I never knew it was this bad. Here’s the local sex offenders by my alma mater!

2 Comments

Join the discussion and tell us your opinion.

David Binkowski
June 12, 2005 at 7:41 pm

Not that it’s helped, but someone merge the Craigslist real estate postings with Google maps as well… Again, not that it’s helped, but our house is listed on there.

mattybinks
July 8, 2005 at 10:51 am

There’s a new hack that combines the satellite and map views with transparency. Fun to see if the map view actually lines up with the sat view (it usually doesn’t!).

Transparent Google Maps