Mapnificent LondonI have for a while called out for some new cartographic approaches to communicating information which make use of the radically different capabilities of electronic displays compared to paper. To be fair I suppose the palette of tools available to the online cartography have been limited, and the state of the art was probably some of the renderings of OpenStreetMap data developed over the last year or so.
With the release at Google I/O this year of the V3 Maps API and styled maps functionality these tools are becoming more accessible, and one of the early results is a beautiful map produced by Stefan Wehrmeyer in Berlin. His Mapnificent London map uses the styled map API to show London by night, and then with full credit to the famous mapumental map, dynamically displays journey times if you used the extensive London night bus network.
The dynamic aspect makes this map really interesting by simply dragging a time slider bar you are presented with a great deal of information is a clear and simple way, something which would be difficult to achieve with traditional static cartographic techniques.
Hopefully the first of many new dynamic maps..
Written and submitted from the Google Offices, London (51.495N, 0.146W)
