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Dimensions Puts Important Events and Structures in Your Backyard

by Terrence O'Brien on August 18, 2010 at 04:30 PM

Dimensions of the Great Wall

If It Was My Home brought the tragedy of the BP oil spill to your backyard by laying an outline of the environmental disaster over a Google Map of your own neighborhood. Dimensions, an experiment created in partnership with the BBC, may have been conceived before the debut of the oil spill-specific site, but they use the same trick to put world and historical events into perspective.

Dimensions, which is parked at HowBigReally.com, puts the outlines of important events and structures over a map. You can see the Gulf oil spill swallow your neighborhood, but you can also see how the Colossus of Rhodes would easily straddle your street, or how the International Space Station would more than cover a square block of your town. The current selection of maps is just the beginning. According to the site's FAQ, Dimensions will continue to grow and add new features in response to user feedback. The BBC calls Dimensions a "prototype," meaning either that this could be the end of the project, or that it might continue to evolve. All we know is we'll keep imagining the Great Wall running down the middle of Broadway to get our kicks today. [From: Dimensions, via: BERG]

Tags: bbc, dimensions, google, google maps, GoogleMaps, history, maps, top, visualization, web

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