Friday, July 03, 2009

Live shipping map

One of my sad chums sent me this, as he thought I'd be interested. I am!

How cool is this? A live world shipping map. You get a Google map style interface littered with graphics denoting ships in real time. Hovering your mouse over one of the ship icons tells you the name of the vessel, speed and direction. Clicking one brings up an archive photo of the vessel, displays the flag it's registered under, and details such as breadth, length, speed, direction, status (underway etc), destination, ETA, draught, and links to open further details.

There are different graphics for ferries, cargo vessels, tugs, high speed vessels, yachts etc. It also shows navigational points of interest such as oil platforms, and VTS (vessel traffic services) stations (I just Googled that, I didn't know it!)

Absolutely fascinating. I spent a good hour or so last night clicking around the worls to look at stuff, especially close to home around the Welsh coast (not much apart from a few ferries and tankers!).

If you like stamp collecting (I don't), you'll love this!

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