Tom Mangan's
Fun With Google Maps

Track the Space Shuttle Hubble and ISS

With the Space Shuttle safely on the ground, my tracking page has switched over to the Hubble Space Telescope and the International Space Station. The coordinates update once per minute with data from NASA.

Blackbird Spotting

My first Google Maps project. Soon after the API was released, I found myself in need of a project so I could go about breaking maps. As it happened, I had just read about Robb Magley's search for the crash site of one of the Blackbirds and thought it would be fun to find out where all of them are now.

Area 51 Historical Photos

During a late-night jaunt through the tinfoil hat websites a few months back, I found one that's less sensational and more informational. dreamlandresort.com had a series of photos of Area 51 throughout the decades, and I promptly swiped them. I manually rectified the images and overlaid them using GIS software, and after the Google Maps API was released, I thought it would be fun to share the results.

TPhoto API Extension

While figuring out how to lay my own images into the Google Maps interface, I ended up with some pretty useful javascript, so I bundled it up as a tightly integrated extension to the official API.

TLabel API Extension

While I was building the Blackbird project, it bothered me that the info windows were so big, even if I didn't have enough text to fill them. TLabel is my answer to that problem. With it, you can label a point on the map and only take up as much map-space as you need. Now I just need to go back and use it on the Blackbird page.