Maps
I love geography and maps!
So what better way to show my love and appreciation for them beside sharing the most interesting ones that I have found so far across the internet.
Hiking Maps
Pacific Crest Trail - Interactive Map
An interactive map of the Pacific Crest Trail for the folks that aim to take on the challenge. I kind of want to do it!
Appalachian Trail - Interactive Map
An interactive map of the Appalachian trail for the folks that aim to take on the challenge. I kind of want to do it!
History Maps
Old Maps Online
This website is pretty nuts! It gives us access to maps from all over the world and from a plethoras of time-periods.
This has become one of my favorites pieces of maps and history.
Resurfacing the past - 20,000 ships sank during World War II
Really amazing read and maps showcasing where an approximate location as to where most of the ships where sank during WW2. It is really fascinating and my maps and history buff was fill with excitement seeing this interesting map and it puts WW2 in a great perspective as it was a truly global event fought on the sea and the ground.
Historical Topographic Map Explorer
This is by far one of the coolest maps I have seem so far. I love it so much that I might write a blog post about it, as this map uses historical data and modern data to show the differences between the start of the maps collected 1879 to modern maps from 2010 or even more recent ones. This collab between the USGS and ESRI is top notch.
History Maps
The history of different periods in history plus their maps.
The Stanford Geospatial Network Model of the Roman World
Really cool maps that shows the roman empire commercial routes troughout Europe, North Africa and the Middle East.
Building ages in the Netherlands
This map shows 3D renders of many building in the Netherlands and have then color coded to represent in which period this building were constructed and finished. Amazing!
Maps FM
Find places in the maps where people talked about and explain the history of that place. Awesome way to learn about the history of many places but mainly about the US for now hopefully it picks up in other parts of the globe.
Space Maps
LANDSAT
While not a map necessarily, I still loved this idea from NASA and wanted to save it!
Have your name be spelled out in Land satellite photographs of earth.
Sky map
A map of every crater in the moon with a resolution of up to 100 meter which is crazy to think about.
This map possible because we sent a satellite to the moon to take photos of its entire surface 🤯
More details about the mission can be found here: https://science.nasa.gov/mission/lro/
Sky map
This is not a map per-se but it is instead a collection of photos of space that were taken to help us understand better how our universe, and constellations looks.
ISS Tracker with live camera
This page have to be one of the coolest one I have found so far! it is so amazing to see where the ISS is, what it is passing over, and see a live feed of what that looks like.
Princeton Vanderbei Gott Projection maps
Accurate representation of the earth in a 2D space. Great for illustrating the inaccuracies of the maps that we have grown to use and rely on while on high school and college but as the saying says “All maps are wrong”. Here is a poster about it by Johnny Harris and here is a Ted-ED video explaining it.
Heavens Above
ISS Interactive 3D Visualizations
Be in the ISS with the 3D model of it flying over the earth! Pretty dope.
SatCat
Similar space map to Wayfinder and Heavens-Above tracking satellites, payloads, unknown and debris on space.
WAYFINDER
See and track all of the LEO Satellite and all of the debris that we know of and are able to track.
HAM Radio Maps
GPS jamming map
GPS jamming map of all the areas and places that it is jamming radio frequency that prevent from tracking flights live status. Usually Gov, and militaries do this to prevent civilian or spies from tracking, and knowing what is happening.
MeshTastic Map
Map that shows all the nodes that support the meshtastic network. Quite cool if interesting in RF, LoRa and Meshtastic. Same thing as the one below but with a search function.
Meshmap
Map that shows all the nodes that support the meshtastic network. Quite cool if interesting in RF, LoRa and Meshtastic. Same thing as the one above.
KiwiSDR
This website lets you remotely manipulate a radio from a lot of places all over the world and learn about HAM radio.
Wiggle
Map of all the different WiFi, Bluetooth, and Cellular connections that have been scanned and tracked on this website. Pretty cool and kind of scary at the same time.
APRS
Website for people into HAM Radio. This will locate different radio stations, radio antennas, and vehicles transmitting at the time.
Infrastructure Maps
Submarine Cable MAp
A map that showcases the cables that carry our internet connection from one side of earth to a different side of the earth at light speed.
SHADEMAP
Maps that takes the building size and time of day to simulate the shade area of a building! Pretty dope but I think this is definitely meant for the construction industry :)
Operating Nuclear Power Reactors (by Location or Name)
This map maintained by the NRC has every single Nuclear reactor in the US mapped, and it is quite interesting to see. I will try to find how many other types of energy focused maps there are out there :)
Nuclear Stations
After I said that I wanted to find a map with all the global nuclear reactors after finding the map above, someone on Hacker-News posted this map and I am so here for it!
AT&T Long Lines Map
This map shows the network of antennas that the US Gov built during the cold war as backup communications network that used microwaves.
Open Infrastructure Map
Interesting map showing the infrastructure of our world, It is mostly powerlines and energy infrastructure. Really Cool!
Map showing Off-Shore wind farms of Europe
WaterwayMap
A map that tries to document all of the waterways on our world!
New York City Maps
Mapping Early New York
Amazing map that overlays the early map of the dutch colony in “New Amsterdam” with what New York City is now. It cover map data as early as the 1600 hundreds of New York City which is quite cool.
It is also amazing to see how almost everything at the time was thought of as Farm Land, which is so interesting and hard to see now that everything piece of land is cover with concrete.
Election Atlas
This map compares the 2020 and 2024 presidential results by election district across New York City. Move the vertical slider to the left to reveal the 2024 results, and to the right to see the 2020 results.
NYC Biking maps, rules, and laws
Interactive map
DOT PDF
NYC Playgrounds
NYC Bagel shops reviewed and mapped
NYC Subway Sheds
This is a pretty simple website it shows how far away your train station is from other train train stations. Great for people that live or are NYC curious.
Cities and Country Maps
Bike Share Map for different countries and systems
The link is specific to New York City but feel free to select your own city, country or system on the toggle on the upper left 😄
What will climate feel like “In the selected city” in 60 years
Really cool map that tries to showcase how the climate in different cities will feel like in 60 years or 2080. Really interesting piece of information that shows the impact of the climate in a tangible way.
Tokyo Convenience store battle
Tokyo 3D Maps with live trains tracking
3D map of Tokyo with real-time train data, CCTV of different busy Tokyo intersections among other things. Great to kind of see the scale of Tokyo from your computer.
Switzerland 3D Map
The swiss government went out of their way to map every single house and address in Switzerland in this 3D map… That is amazing and crazy and I love it!
Duplicate cities
Find similar cities that share similar road networks, really cool to see this mind map!
similar-cities
anvaka • Updated Dec 18, 2024
Cool city roads
Render all the roads and streets of any city in a beautiful way.
city-roads
anvaka • Updated Dec 20, 2024
European power grid
This is a map of the European electrical transmission network. Each dot is a connection point where all the consumption from nearby settlements connects to the network, as well as all electricity generation from nearby power plants. → taken from their page
Transit Maps
Deflock
Website that shows where the Automated License Plate Readers (ALPRs) cameras are located. ALPR are cameras that capture images of all passing license plates, storing details like the car's location, date, and time. These cameras collect data on millions of vehicles—regardless of whether the driver is suspected of a crime. While these systems can be useful for tracking stolen cars or wanted individuals, they are mostly used to track the movements of innocent people.
Not All Cameras are Law Enforcement ALPRs
Not all cameras near roads are ALPRs operated by law enforcement. Many people mistakenly assume that every traffic camera or intersection camera is an ALPR, but the reality is more nuanced.
Trains FYI
A live, real-time map of passenger train locations in the United States and Canada.
Flight Aware
A real time commercial flight tracker of all the passanger flights happening out there right now.
Globe ads Exchange
Globe ads uses the ads system that planes have to keep taps of each other give you a more advance view of all the flights happening now commercial, or not. It is a pretty powerful yet cool maps app.
Vessel Finder
Another vessel and container ship tracking page just like Marine traffic.
Marine Traffic
Ships tracking website, the same as Globe ads but for ships. This website was amazing during the suez canal blockage in 2021? 2022? to see how that blockade stopped the world trade.
MISC & Other maps
The rendition project
The rendition project map represents the world's largest set of public flight data relating to those aircraft suspected of involvement in the global network of renditions, secret detention and torture. The interactive here has been produced in collaboration with Craig Bloodworth from The Information Lab, and allows us to search for, and visualise flight routes.
Map of Github
This is a map of 400,000+ GitHub projects. Each dot is a project. Dots are close to each other if they have a lot of common stargazers.
What our cellular connections reveal?
Mobile phones track our movements and activities in detail. The detailed cellular data can be used to create a comprehensive profile of a person's life.
World Poverty Map
People in the world living in extreme poverty nowadays.
World Population Map
World population separated by country of every entity of our planet.
Hotel List
The first HONEST hotel booking site without rating inflation and manipulative selling and using AI Vision to rate hotels (made for @lexfridman, by @levelsio). This hotel website reviews data from Google, yelp, expedia, and other sources and turns them into a more accurate review or give a better idea of how the hotel actually is without being disingenuous.
Mapping out online communities
How economical is your local Taco Bell? USA
Interesting website that maps and shows the price of different Taco-bell combos!
What Is the World's Emotional Temperature?
A Gallup survey in which they ask individuals in many countries questions in the following topics:
1. Experienced Anger
2. Experienced Sadness
3. Experienced Stress
4. Experienced Worry
5. Experienced Physical Pain
6. Experienced Enjoyment
7. Feel well-rested
8. Learn Something
9. Smile or Laugh
10. Treated with Respect
Levels fyi - US Software Engineer Pay Heatmap
Map of Cancer-Causing Industrial Air Pollution in the U.S
last updated in August 2023
ProPublica’s analysis of five years of modeled EPA data identified more than 1,000 toxic hot spots across the country and found that an estimated 250,000 people living in them may be exposed to levels of excess cancer risk that the EPA deems unacceptable.
The Opportunity Atlas
The opportunity Atlas shows how every zip-code affects the income level of some of those people that are being raised or were raised there. This could be because of lack of opportunities, failing infrastructure dis-investment on education poor housing among other things.
Language World Map
Simple map app. You input which languages you speak, the maps shows which countries have that language as one of the official languages.
Air Pollution Map
Air pollution tracker. The embed is setup for north America but this would work in any country that is supported on the map which is most of them.
Light Pollution Maps
Light pollution map. This is great for when I want to try to get some beautiful photos of the night sky and I want to prevent as much as possible the interference of human-made lights :)
Game Maps
Geocaching game
This is a treasure game were you download an app and try to find the item that was hiding. simple and cool.
Old School Runescape Map
If you love runescape you would love this. Every game has their own cool website map but I am not trying to fill this website with only maps of the games that I have played. but here are a few other that I really enjoy :)
My own plug!
I created this simple app to help track the places that I want to go, and have been with a little review about them and different icons to make it easy for me to find later!
Conclusion
While this might seem like a lot of different site there is still a lot more websites out there that I don’t know about, or that are not easily accessible.
Some honorable mentions for some other sites would be: