Making a map isn't easy. Making a map of streets and land features is hard. Making a map of streets and land features that stays up to date is harder. Making a map of streets, features and places, businesses, services, points of interest is harder still. Making a map of all of the previous that stays up to date is really hard. Making a map with all of the previous, wrapping it up in an app that runs on your smartphone and making it useable is verging on insanely difficult. Yet that's what Google and Nokia have been doing and with the release of iOS 6, that's what Apple is now doing as well. So how is Apple doing?

Yes, it's another map. Yes, it's another map of the London Tube system. But wait ... something's not quite right.

Surely the Piccadilly Line ends at Uxbridge, Heathrow Airport and Cockfosters and not at Seattle, Buenos Aires and St. Petersburg? Doesn't the Northern Line run from Edgeware and High Barnet to Morden and not from Helsinki to Mumbai?

Maybe if the London Underground did take over the world, including 3 tunnels across the Atlantic Ocean, this is what the Tube Map might look like.

Photo Credits: Annie Mole on Flickr.

The rather geotastic James Cheshire and Ollie O'Brien from London's UCL have produced a map of London which is certainly not your average map. The Thames is shown winding through the capital but what really grabs the attention is the fact that the rest of the map shows the population's surnames.

Not all maps are created equal. I've always had a soft spot for maps of the London Underground network ever since I saw one on the back of an old London A-Z street map far too many years ago.

In case you hadn't noticed, London hosted the 2012 Olympic Games a few weeks ago so what could be more natural than a map of the Tube with famous Olympic athletes in the place of the more familiar and geographically correct station names. Maybe Chris Boardman instead of Swiss Cottage, Victoria Pendleton instead of St. John's Wood or Daley Thompson in place of Baker Street?

Hop over to the Transport for London web site and for between £3.99 and £49.00, the Olympic Legends Tube Map can be yours. I certainly want one. Huge amounts of kudos go to my darling wife for spotting this in the first place.

Apropos of nothing in particular, this is the first of an occasional series of posts which contain nothing more than maps that I like as I peruse the Interwebs.

First up is a map of Berlin. In English. So now I can say to myself so that's what Prenzlauer Berg, Tiergarten and Kreuzberg mean; in a literal translation so of way.

Map Credits: Willy Karma on Facebook, via Emmanuel Decitre.

Imagine for one moment that someone gave you in excess of a million lego bricks and four thousand lego building plates. Imagine also that you had around three week's worth of spare time.

What would you build?

To my mind, the first thing that should spring to mind is a massive map of the world. You've got enough bricks so making a map around 12 by 5 meters should do the trick.

Oddly enough, that's exactly what members of the public did on London's Southbank during the London 2012 Olympic Games.

If you want to see it for yourself, head over to the terraces outside the Royal Festival Hall but you'll have to hurry. The map will only be around until August 26th.