[Click Here to try out Google Maps animated directions]

What this does is you input a start location and an end destination in the input boxes, press the start button and watch the journey animated with a small van icon.

It will display your current speed, mph, road names & routes as it plods along call it “sat nav” on the cheap…

I have a preset journey leaving from Patrick’s St, Cork, Ireland going to The Square, Blarney, Cork, Ireland but you can change the start and finish locations to your own liking.

What’s also interesting about this map is it will take you across channels e.g. I put Rosslare as start and Swansea as finish and it took me across the proper channel route and then continued on the roads in the UK!

I’d imagine it will take you to anywhere that Google Maps can find….. [Click Here to try it out]

Scrap metal thieves in Khabarovsk, Russia managed to steal a 200-tonne 38ft structured steel bridge without anyone noticing. The criminal scrap metal collectors most likely were interested in four steel pipes which served as the foundation for the bridge. They dismantled the bridge during the night of December 29 and vanished with its parts in an unknown direction.

It was part of the only road leading to a heating plant. Bosses at the company said the cost of replacing the bridge would be ten times the value of the scrap metal that had been stolen.

Local road service crews are currently reconstructing the bridge, they plan to replace the bridge with one made of concrete while police have launched a search for the criminals.

This incident became the third such case in 2007 – the two previous bridge thefts occurred in the Ryazan region and the Primorsky region.

I created this map just for fun but also to play around with ideas on how to code for Google Maps.

Click here to view the map

If you ever get around to having a drink in all of them don’t forget to mention I sent you there…