Easiest way to create a dynamic heatmap of the United States - google-maps

thanks for all the help the last few days. I'm hoping someone knows this one.
I'm looking to dynamically create a heatmap of data based on user input, then color certain states based on the response. Like a poll for voting, for example. I'd like to do something like this...
http://www.trulia.com/home_prices/
What is going to be the easiest way to do this?

The Google Chart API also offers maps.
Here's a (completely made up) example:

Another very easy solution is OpenHeatMap.com. They support pegging data to a variety of map shapes, including US states.

OpenLayers is a javascript library for displaying tiled maps and related elements (polygon, line, etc) on top of these tiles.
It supports a number of back-ends for map data, including google's data.
Samples are available here

Related

How can I make a heatmap like the price heatmap of Housing.com

I have been trying for some weeks to come up with a price map. My inspiration is the heatmap found on the website of Housing.com . The link to the map is:
https://housing.com/dsl/heatmaps/mumbai/buy
I have tried:
Google maps Javascript API 3
heatmap,js library
and many other websites.
The resulting map that I am getting is visually less appealing.
Have they defined boundaries for very small regions and then introduced the gradient(which, again I am unaware how to implement.)
Any thoughts on how it might have been implemented are welcomed.
They don't use Google Maps Heatmaps Layer in the application, or any other library for creating heatmaps. You can see that between the requests the webpage makes are images like this, this and also more for bigger zoom levels. They just render these images over custom styled google maps as tiles.
More on how to render custom tiles over google maps, check this part of docs. For more information how to style the map below the heatmap to look like in the example, check this parts of docs.
Creating tiles images to render over your google maps can be troublesome, there are some tools, like this one which should be able to help you, but is paid. I don't know of any free solutions, you can create it manually although it might take some time.
Hope this helps you to better understand the implementation techniques behind the referenced map.

How to combine table/chart with (Google) Maps (stats)

I want to use Google Maps or another Map like Openstreetmap to make an interactive site where people can see the stats of crime in their own area... I want to put in these stats by myself via the backend. The front-end must be something like this:
http://www.police.act.gov.au/crime-and-safety/crime-statistics.aspx
Where do I start with this? Is this a polygon? I have read the Google Maps API but I could not find a clue to make something like this. How did they put the stats in it? How can I color the area's and divide them? What did they use? Any direction would be very welcome.
PS: I want to have a detailed map. So no countries or cities, but the area's in a certain city have to be highlighted.
What I can suggest is that first study the developer documentation thoroughly for Google API v3.Basics will help a lot.
For pointers to your needs, you can get help in defining polygons and coloring them at this link https://developers.google.com/maps/documentation/javascript/overlays#Polygons and also check out the demo examples in the code.
For a 3 point polygon, here is an example https://google-developers.appspot.com/maps/documentation/javascript/examples/polygon-simple
You can define your polygons by adding points around your area. There are many tools available to find your pointer locations like http://martinove.dk/maptools/polytool/
In order to potray data, you can use markerclusterer. These examples can help:
http://google-maps-utility-library-v3.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/markerclusterer/examples/

How do I obtain the coordinates along GMaps directions?

I want to create an online map for a hiking trail, and I have been using my smartphone to collect coordinates from it.
I have many questions regarding what's good practice when it comes to making such tracks, but for starters: it would look much neater if I could edit the readings so that they are right on top any roads in Google Maps. How can I achieve this?
EDIT: I want to find the coordinates that will make a track along a road look exactly as if I'm using snapping/directions even when I'm not.
I've tried tools such as QLandkarte GT and Viking, and with the latter I was able to manually remove excess coordinates and move the remaining ones so that they're exactly on top of roads (inside Viking, using OpenStreetMap). However when I load the edited .kml-file in Google Maps, the roads seem to be in slightly different places and the result is hardly better than before editing.
I tried using the hack that exports GMaps directions as .gpx, thinking I could insert Google's own coordinates along the roads. But the exported file only had coordinates at the turning points with straight lines between these.
QLandkarte GT supposedly has a snap-to-road feature (see answer in link), but I haven't found it and I also don't know how to obtain a vector map of the area.
Then there's Google Earth which people seem to use for this, but again I can't find any track editing features (in the free version).
In short:
How do I edit my existing tracks so that they match roads in GMaps...
OR
How can I obtain new tracks representing roads in GMaps...
...so that the resulting track is as smooth as Google's own directions or other professional GPS-data, when displayed in GMaps?
It seems like it's possible to get these coordinates from Google Maps after all, exporting the directions polyline. I'm not sure how, it seems to involve adding the parameter output=dragdir to the link.
Anyway there's a tool called GPS Visualizer that can create a .kml-file with the wanted coordinates.
Edit: Will accept my own answer as long as it's the only one, but I would still like to know more.

Zoomable political world map

I'm looking to add an map to my application, which would have a world map with different coloured countries, States (in the US) and Provinces (in Canada). The user should be able zoom in to see details, as the scale for seeing the whole world isn't suitable for seeing details in Europe say. The colours would need to be programmed from my application, so a simple image map isn't appropriate.
Obviously the first place to look was Google, but Google Maps doesn't seem to be able to colour code countries. Google Charts can, but produces a single image, which isn't zoomable.
Am I wrong about google, or is there another way that I can use to produce a suitable map? It's a ruby on rails app, so anything which is ruby specific is fine, but ideally not any other language though if it's the only way, then it's the only way.
I developed jVectorMap for such visualizations.
Django has geo-django; If you want to do feature rich GIS web apps with Rails, you’re gonna have to assemble the pieces yourself.
Google maps is a good client, you can use overlays. You need the GIS data to generate the overlay polygons.

Can I style a Google Map?

How much control do I have regarding the styling of a google map?
Can I make it more closely resemble a site's colour scheme or are we stuck with pastels?
Controls
There is a decent description of the process to override the set of builtin Controls. So you have total control over the UI elements overlaying the map.
Map Tiles
I don't agree with the previous answers that you are out of luck if you want to change the images in the map itself.
The range of map types available give you a few options outside the pastel default map:
G_NORMAL_MAP, G_SATELLITE_MAP, G_HYBRID_MAP, G_PHYSICAL_MAP, G_MAPMAKER_NORMAL_MAP,
G_MAPMAKER_HYBRID_MAP, G_SATELLITE_3D_MAP, G_DEFAULT_MAP_TYPES, G_MAPMAKER_MAP_TYPES
Obviously, this only works if you are willing to create the tiles, but Custom Tilesets are quite well supported by the Google Maps API and there a few good examples out there:
World of Warcraft tileset
Batmud tileset
Tower of the Hand tilset
Update
Google recently announced support for Styled Maps in the Google Maps API. You can extensively customize the color scheme used by Google Maps. So you can customize the look of your mashup, without resorting to custom tilesets.
You can probably change around all the controls, perhaps by making your own or subclassing the google default versions. You won't be able to change the colors on the map itself without generating all new map images, at which point you are probably better off using something other than google. If thats what you want, you should consider OpenStreetMaps.
I've looked into this before. From what I've found is that the styles of layers/overlays on the map are pretty much determined by Google (minus a few size option for some overlays). What I have found is that you'll either need to subclass the existing overlays or create entirely new overlays that mimic the existing functionality, which in some cases can be painful given their complexity (such as street view and others).
Last I checked, you were stuck with the colors you were given (this was a year ago). You can check http://code.google.com/apis/maps/ for more info.