What with all these fires around, and with UAV’s being the hot topic of the moment (excuse the pun), it’s not surprising that talk of using them to rapidly monitor the progress of fires has cropped up. The Australian ran a piece last week talking of the possibility. However, it’s followed up that story this week with the news that CASA has been slow to approve their use in this scenario. Here’s hoping that that will change soon.

The always interesting The Conversation has a post talking about Google’s new ‘crisis map’, which has served us New South Welshmen (and Welshwomen) so well during this crazy time. Specifically, it mentions that the map can be quickly adapted to suit crises of different types, and will also support traffic and other information in the future.

A really cool map for all the carto/horror nerds in the crowd (of which, I must confess, I am one) – The Smithsonian and Esri have created a map that charts where 200 of the most iconic horror movies of all time took place – showing that, no matter where you are, you’re never safe.

Continuing on the horror trend for this upcoming Halloween, the ever-wonderful Strange Maps blog has put together a collection of Zombie Maps, perhaps to aid us during the impending zombie apocalypse.

Google Maps Mania highlights a handy tool that allows anyone to create a handy ‘how to find us’ map to embed on their website. The map will contain just a loan marker (which you can use a custom image for), making your location suitably unambiguous.

Also on Google Maps Mania is a particularly interesting random story generator, which combines a random Street View image with some text randomly pulled from the dreambank.net database to create a computer-generated, illustrated story. Very cute – if a little silly.