Filed under: Developer, Fun, Internet, Web services, Google
Track flights with a Google Maps Mashup
Have a friend that's coming in for a landing and want to see exactly where they are at the moment? Or if you just like watching planes, check out the GMaps Flight Tracker. This Google Maps mashup tracks the status of inbound flights scheduled to land in Atlanta, Boston, New York's JFK, LA, Miami and San Francisco. Pick your city, and a list of the arriving flights are displayed. Click or mouse over the airline flight number of plane icon and the altitude, speed and heading coordinates are displayed as well as flight trail waypoints so you can check out the travel path.
The inbound flight schedule refreshes every 40 seconds so flight statuses are ensured to be at their most accurate. Data is provided from fboweb.com and based on the position reports for each aircraft once per minute, and sometimes once every 20 seconds in high traffic areas. Want to check things out in 3d? Download the GE kml file and check out past flights and height profiles in Google Earth.
I don't know if this is a labor of love or merely the brainchild of four very gifted games designers, but Level Up is a really weird mash-up of gaming elements that you have probably never seen in a Flash game before.
Let's start with the premise itself: Groundhog Day meets Memento. The game experience revolves around 'days': you explore the world and the clock slowly ticks towards the evening. You bounce around picking up gems and talking to the denizens of 'Level Upland'. Eventually you feel tired and head back to ...
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Dorv said 10:38AM on 9-04-2007
Where's the ge file?
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Chris Gilmer said 10:54AM on 9-04-2007
If you see the 'Download GE kml'link when viewing flights, right click and save as. This is only available for select flights.
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zkam said 11:31AM on 9-04-2007
Note that this doesn't seem to work right in FireFox with Adblock Plus enabled.
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zkam said 11:31AM on 9-04-2007
Oh, and if you download the KML and add it to Google Earth, you get to see the flight path with elevation too (i.e. it's in 3D - rotate down to see planes at different altitudes). At least that's how it was when I did this a year ago.
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Allen said 12:52PM on 9-04-2007
Cool - I just did a video review:
http://www.centernetworks.com/video-review-google-maps-mashup-tracking-inbound-flights
I'm not sure we need this type of tool.
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Evren said 3:41PM on 9-04-2007
I reviewed this service 2 days ago on http://www.bilgiselhayat.com/index.php/google-maps-firtinasi-1/
You can check my review and some other cool mashups. Yes, I am a fan of downloadsquad. And yes, my site is Turkish. :)
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thehack said 11:56PM on 9-05-2007
Excellent a new tool to make stalking people so much easier. With Facebook and Spock and now this tool soon all the gaps will be closed.
http://geekwonk.com/
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