The Met Office (Google Maps) Weather

The Met Office (Google Maps) Weather

The Met office are experimenting with the Google Maps API - this is a very interesting move. The results are quite impressive and this is a potentially a bold move and a great way to represent weather forecasting on the web.
This includes animating the weather for the next 24hrs using the time bar above the map.


Google Maps API with Meteorological Data overlayed to represent very visually the foretasted weather for the UK. Animation is controlled by the 'Play' Button.

Not only is rainfall overlayed but isobars representing the pressure is also animated.


Isobars (Barometric Pressure) overlay on Google Maps

There is Temperature, Winds(strength/direction) missing currently, this is planned for the future and will be very useful for users.

This is an impressive experiment and greatly improves the very static generated images that currently dominated the Met Office Website.

Well done to all involved, this is what the public want.

The Met Office Google Map (Experimental)

Currently the BBC have Temperature and Winds [Flash required]
http://news.bbc.co.uk/weather/forecast/10209

Suggestions - Opacity Control - current radar blocks the background map.
Temperature and Winds layers would be very handy.
5 day forecast possible?
An a final request on the raw data - it possible to have a basic GeoRSS feed for budding developers to create weather overlays for their own maps
GeoRSS weather warnings?

New Google Map API Ad Icons (Experimental)

New Google Map API Ad Icons (Experimental)

Google Maps API are rolling out some changes with the Ad Manager.


You can now have a maximum of 10 'Advert Icons' on your custom map.

"Over the coming weeks, we're going to making a few changes to the
style of the ads rendered by GAdsManager.

Starting in version 2.119, we're going to be making two small changes. "
Mike(Google Employee)

(make that 3)

1. replacing the current white pushpin style with a new style where the ads will appear to be flat "on the map. see example image
2. "nudging" the ads slightly, so that ads will no longer ever sit on top of any text rendered in the map tiles.
3. also starting to serve ads outside the USA

Mapperz can show an example that is working in the UK.
http://mapperz.googlepages.com/ads_manager_test.html
(If you don't see new icons displayed - try zooming once or panning the map - please remember that it is experimental!)

The one issue that you can clearly see at present is the icons still overlap text on the map tiles.
(this is due to the the tiles being rasters, to solve this google would new to vectorize the text as a bounding box and buffer the vector rectangles to create 'avoid ad/text clashing polygons'.
A tip from cartographic text placement there.)
VectorMagic does a very good job (Sample)

Here is an new icon
http://pagead2.googlesyndication.com/pagead/imgad?id=CIXc9e63iK6PywEQEBgQMggWzfQHA9oWTQ
and another
http://pagead2.googlesyndication.com/pagead/imgad?id=CPOInt6BsJf1IhAQGBAyCGKbz0m-eFN1
(looks like each ad has its own id for adwords purposes.)

How do you enable?
Not everyone wants to have 'Google Ads' on there maps so it's an option to include it.

 var map = new GMap2(document.getElementById("map")); //Add the Map
map.addControl(new GLargeMapControl());//Add the Large Control
map.setCenter(new GLatLng(37.423148, -122.084874), 13);//Centre on LatLng
var ads_opts = { //Add Ad Options
 mode: "experimental", //Mode:Experimental -Subject to change
 maxAdsOnMap: 10 //Maximum number of Ads (10 is Max)
};
var adsManager = new GAdsManager(map, "google", ads_opts);
adsManager.enable();

"google" will be where you put your adsense id so any click through would be registered
to your account



Official Example
http://gmaps-samples.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/
adsmanager/adsmanager_new.html

Source:
http://groups.google.com/group/Google-Maps-API/browse_thread/thread/12534906310673ff#
Mapperz New UK Version
http://mapperz.googlepages.com/ads_manager_test.html