Examples of Web Maps

Question

As part of an internal "learn at work month" program, myself and a colleague have volunteered to do a presentation: "The Wonderful World of Web Maps".

To this end, we're now looking for examples of wonderful, weird, functional, beautiful, and just plain awesome web maps that are out there. Any online map that is either interactive or dynamically updates itself would qualify.

Part of this question is already answered with the What Makes a Map Beautiful? question which has some-web maps as does What Makes a Map be classed as Badly Designed? but we're more interested in a diverse range of maps rather than just the beautiful and bad.

I've done a little searching and come up with a couple (that just happen to have a transport theme) like:

The Live Ship Map

Flight Tracker (Heathrow Airport)

What other web-maps are out there that might warrant demonstrating or could use wider exposure?

Answer 1

In the category plain awesome I vote for this one that I discovered just today (thanks @celenius for introducing me to it):

http://kartograph.org/showcase/italia/

Tip: note the tiny ship shuttling back and forth.

Answer 2

National Geographic have produced an interactive map where you are the cartographer.

It is designed for children but have a play and you will find there is some good content all in one place and very easy to use!

You can add your own theme base map (10 background maps).In addition you can switch on and off many themes such as climates zones, earthquake, volcano layers to create nice visuals for you map. Earthquakes/Volcano activity is feed live by and rss feeds from USGS.

You can customise by:

Adding Markers (click and drag on the the map from the legend) Change Markers sizes (3 defaults)

Add Polygons with simple controls (line thickness/opacity)

Add labels/annotation with the font button with many web colours.

Importantly you can save as and XML or PNG files.

http://education.nationalgeographic.com/mapping/interactive-map/?ar_a=1

Answer 3

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I did the same thing at work some weeks ago, showed a lot of Norwegian ones, but these are relevant anywhee i guess:

http://maps.stamen.com/#toner/12/37.7747/-122.4966

http://www.giscloud.com/map/284/africa

Answer 4

I like this interactive map that shows how the numbering works for zip codes (5 digit postal codes) in the US.

Answer 5

Google's animated wind map is an amazing accomplishment in the world of web mapping. Although this is not an interactive map, it is constantly updated with publicly available wind speed data.

Answer 6

When I need to relax and just look at a simple animated yet beautiful map I click on the EarthWindMap, with Temp overlay looks even better! (I know it's an old question but beautiful maps are always a current topic)

Answer 7

I like webgl Rich Internet Applications like Cesiumjs and Terriajs. you can check out my site http://mapsdata.world