UMapper

I suppose I have always been a bit of a cartography geek, quick and ready to name some obscure capital at parties...  And I have happily traversed the far reaches of internet mapping, behind my desk, fascinated by the sublime visual perspective and the sheer interactive functionality of Google Earth, Bing Maps 3D, and the myriad of applications within each.

So, I was very excited last week when I found UMapper, a brand new, open-source map generation platform, which allows you to create fully customized, user-generated overlays out of all of the major web mapping platforms (Bing Maps, Google Maps, OpenStreetMap, CloudMade, Yahoo.), and export your very own embeddable KML files to use in your blogs, websites, etc.

UMapper also has a really fun “geogame” creator called GeoDart, where you input geographical areas and questions and they will generate a location-based trivia game.  See below for an NYC landmark trivia game:


Pretty cool!

Here is a GeoDart game of Countries and Capitals: