It might be a subtle shout-out to the local vernacular, but Google’s misspelling of the Delaware River as “Daleware,” is maybe more comical than insulting.

To top it off, the search giant’s current set of Google Maps data mislabels the Schuylkill River as the “Deleware,” and Pennypack Creek is, too, incorrectly titled as the river.

It’s not the first time that Google’s mapping platform has made mistakes. Last month, Time reported that Sunrise, Florida disappeared from the site for about a month.

Reader and GIS guru Michael Miller tipped off Google to the error, using the site’s “Report a problem,” feedback loop. He says the search giant responded in a little less than a week and officials say they’re working on a fix.

After the jump, a shot of the Schuylkill labelled as its Eastern kin.

This 1838 map of Philadelphia from the Historical Society of Pennsylvania didn't make our list of the 10 best maps of Philadelphia.

We love maps.

For hundreds of years, they have helped us better understand our world. That understanding has grown wildly with time and technology, but, still, maps help.

In a place as inwardly focused, we have plenty of maps in Philadelphia. You also may know that we have something of a technology community here.

So there are resources like the Pennsylvania Spatial Data Access, or PASDA, which offers just a wild glut of GIS shape files for mapping geeks. We’ve seen cool mapping tools that are of broader scope though Philly got some love: from the addition of bicycle directions to Philadelphia Google Maps to the Google Building Maker to mapping the homes of those in the U.S. armed services who died in the Mideast this decade and many more.

But we wanted to highlight the coolest maps made for Philadelphia of Philadelphia.

Taking into account our own map obsessions, suggestions and tweeted:

MAPPING ABANDONMENT

Today, city development news site PlanPhilly released this Flash-map tracking the estimated 40,000 abandoned properties in Philadelphia.

It’s part of a major research project funded in part, like PlanPhilly itself, by the William Penn Foundation, that features heavy reporting from former Inquirer City Hall reporter Patrick Kerkstra. Yesterday’s feature includes an even more detailed, though more geographically targeted data-tracking map, seen here.

[Full Disclosure: TP co-founder Brian James Kirk is the Plan Philly web editor and was involved in the mapping development of this project.]

Find it here.

COMMONSPACE

In August, Technically Philly told you about CommonSpace, the web application designed to help uncover new businesses within walking distance of a location, and the excitement hasn’t worn off.

CommonSpace bumps off another similar project from Callowhill-based GIS software company Azavea: the cool, walkability map tool largely built by developer Aaron Ogle called Walkshed, which we’ve also covered.

Find it here.

PHILAPLACE

The dynamic and interactive oral history platform PhilaPlace from has recently unveiled new features and continues to seek more stories.

Find it here.

PHILLY HISTORY

The online home of two million archived photos from an array of city agencies and organizations is one of our greatest assets.

Its mapping feature could use a tune up, but it still offers a location-based search of photos that extend more than a century in age.

Find it here.

PHILADELPHIA SAFETY MAP

An entirely subjective map started by PhillySpeaks user dorydorado, this Google Maps overlay suggests what neighborhoods are safe, what are OK in the day and what should be avoided. …Let the condemnation and controversy continue.

Find it here.

H/T PhiladelphiaSpeaks

REDLINING IN PHILADELPHIA

The previous map brought about conversations on whether labeling some neighborhoods as ones that should be avoided was its own form of ‘redlining,’ the early 20th century practice of banks, insurance companies and other institutions mitigating perceived risk by increasing costs or avoiding service altogether in poorer neighborhoods with greater risk of crime.

Why not check out one of those very redlining maps, like this one from 1936 that is a clear enough example that it’s the image on the very Wikipedia page of redlining.

See it here.

1847 PHILADELPHIA

So, we’re not sure if this is, like, well known, but Philadelphia has something of a reputation for its American history.

It figures, then, that historians, academics, cartographers and hobbyists have more historical maps than we can keep track of. Scour the databases and websites of the Library of Congress, Temple (like MPIP) or Penn, historical societies and the like, and you will find plenty.

It’s hard to choose one to represent this world of maps, but here’s one, a beautifully preserved 1847 map of Philadelphia and its 10 mile environs — which includes most of today’s city because the map predates the 1854 county and city consolidation. Scan and zoom, scan and zoom.

You can find it here, as part of the David Rumsey Map Collection, where reproductions are sold.

PHILADELPHIA GEOHISTORY MAP OVERLAY

As suggested in the previous section, there are too many cool historical maps to see them all, so sometimes it’s best to get a bunch together and see how they compare.

Like how the Greater Philadelphia GeoHistory Network allows you to see more than a dozen maps in action.

Play with it here.

Also check out their specific maps, like this 1930 aerial survey of the city. The Free Library also has a very cool online map overlay collection of its own.

NBASE NEIGHBORHOOD MAP

The Cartographic Modeling Lab at Penn Design has a ton of interesting maps, none of which might be as controversial as one project breaking down the neighborhoods of Philadelphia.

Just like you won’t, Technically Philly can’t say we agree with all of the distinctions but, then, would it be fun if we did?

Find it here.

MAPPING DUBOIS

At the end of the 19th century, legendary historian and sociologist W.E.B. DuBois famously led a research project on behalf of the University of Pennsylvania to create a deep census of the 7th ward, then one of the densest collections of black Philadelphians of varying education and social levels.

More than 100 years later, Mapping DuBois was launched, bringing his research and 1900 U.S. census data to the friendly confines of web maps.

Find it here.

-30-

This is a semi-regular department we may or may not call Top Ten Tuesdays. There’s no judging in brainstorming. See others here.

Update: April 1, 12:39 p.m.: Historical Sociey of Pennsylvania spokesperson Lauri Cielo clarified with us that though a lack of funding may affect the possibility of new features and expansion to other neighborhoods, the Web site will remain available to users and staff is budgeted to keep the project going with story uploads and maintenance. Project Director Joan Saverino makes note of these clarifications in her comment below.

Funding is running dry for an online historical project that is a powerful example of the intersection between forward-thinking technologists and history-minded academics.

Organizers of the Historical Society of Pennsylvania‘s three-year, $500,000 PhilaPlace project, an interactive documentation of “beyond the bell” 19th century ethnic and immigrant working-class history, are seeking new grants and innovative ways to keep the project sustainable.

The news comes as impressive new features were unveiled last week, coordinators tell Technically Philly.

Adjacent to PhilaPlace’s historic Google Map overlays that show the city’s dense development at the turn of the century, the site now features a “Streets” section that details ethnicity, land use, occupation and population, showing rapid change over time in several prominent Philadelphia neighborhoods.

Based on census and land-use data, users can see, for example, the rapidly changing ethnic diversity of 9th Street, commonly referred to now as the Italian Market, between 1880 and 1920. Or, they might have a look at Wallace Street in Northern Liberties—once known as Paschall’s Alley—where there was a concentration of free blacks before the Civil War. The new section also shares with users the intricate communities displaced by the building of I-95 along the Delaware riverfront.

Working on the project with University of Pennsylvania‘s Department of City and Regional Planning graduate students, the features were unveiled on Friday. But a lack of funding could mean the end of the continued exploration and innovative online sharing of this kind of research.

“If we’re able to secure more funding we’ll be able to do some more of this work. We’re hoping to expand into other neighborhoods,” Project Coordinator Joan Saverino said in a telephone interview. Currently, the project focuses on Northern Liberties and South Philadelphia, conditions of the initial project grants.

Saverino says that since launching in December, the site has has far exceeded expectations. The site has been visited 17,000 times, on track to beat traffic goals by more than two months. And, according to internal metrics, users are spending an average of four minutes on the site.

The Historical Society is working on forming strategic partnerships to sustain and continue research. It is already deepening partnerships with universities and other neighborhood and grassroots organizations to do just that, Saverino says.

And as PhilaPlace coordinators made clear from day one—they’re still looking for historical stories from users. “We’d love to see more people contribute stories,” Saverino says.

Google Maps new biking directions feature shows safe-to-ride bike paths in green. It's not the path we'd take to Citizen's Bank Park, but hey, Google does no evil, right?

You could say we’ve been welcoming of spring and the onset of the 2010 Grapefruit League. A bike ride down to Citizen’s Bank Park in a few weeks? Count us in. But how best to get there?

Google has launched a beta and buggy version of its new bike-friendly Maps features, including directions that utilize Philly bike paths and landmarks of local biking facilities, the Bicycle Coalition of Greater Philadelphia reported this morning.

The route Google provided in a directional search from Fishtown to CBP, though it’s not quite the route we’d opt to take, may be one we ought to try. The directions provide fairly accurate time estimations based on an 8-10 mile-per-hour jaunt.

As the coalition points out, it’s difficult to map the intricacies of biking a city like Philadelphia�that awfully bumpy ride North on Third street above Chinatown might appeal to riders looking to avoid traffic, or the busy but easy-cruising Columbus Boulevard might attract those who appreciate a bike path with their high-speed vehicles. But Google is tracking faulty recommendations down to individual street intersections.

We’re looking forward to those bike-suitable paths through New Jersey, which are all-but-absent from Google’s maps, yet. Like baseball, we couldn’t be more excited about the Shore, either.

So where do you begin? Google Building Maker was released yesterday for 50 cities, including Philadelphia.

Google is offering up Web-based tools to citizens that would help move forward the company’s ambitious plans to have 3D representations of every building in the world.

Philadelphia is one of 50 cities worldwide and just 21 in the United States that are part of the first wave of Google Building Maker, as the program was described in a company release from yesterday. Building Maker is a way to create geo-located 3D models of buildings that would be visible in Google Earth, with the intention of creating an impressively detailed Web atlas, though criticism already surrounds, as always, the heavy reliance on free citizen labor.

After navigating to Building Maker on a computer with the latest version of Google Earth installed, the user chooses any building from one of those 50 cities where modeling is currently possible, a total that also includes Atlanta, Seattle, Denver, San Francisco and Chicago. Whether the building already been created or not, the user matches Google’s ‘smart blocks’ to create the most accurate representation of the structure, as seen from Google-offered images taken from a variety of different aerial angles.

When those blocks are matched with the building’s images, Building Maker generates a photo-textured 3D model of that building for Google Earth. If the user deems his model worthy enough, it can be saved online in the Google 3D Warehouse, to be reviewed for use in Google Earth, where, if approved, it would appear in the 3D Buildings layer with a credit given. Users need a Gmail account to submit to the warehouse.

Naturally, some of the dialogue has already circled around a common complaint of crowdsourcing: free labor. Google is creating an awe-inspiring, interactive Web atlas — allowing anyone with highspeed Internet to see every corner of a Center City highrise — but is intending on doing so with a great deal of help from its user base.

A screenshot of SEPTA's new integration with Google Maps

Let’s face it — SEPTA isn’t exactly quick on adapting new technologies.

It took a group of determined Web developers and some HTML scraping to make the delightfully useful iSEPTA iPhone application, SEPTA has repeatedly delayed the implementation of smart cards and many stations (*cough* Tioga *cough*) still do not sell tokens or make change.

But for all of its feet-dragging and delaying, the area’s transit system has finally accomplished its long-requested integration with one of the Web’s most used tools for travel planning.

SEPTA Watch is reporting that SEPTA will announce its transit schedules will be made available via Google Transit and Google Maps. Google Maps would previously disregard the option to take public transit. So if you were to, say, punch in a trip from 30th Street Station to Fishtown, it would tell you to stretch your legs and get walking as the Market-Frankford line travels along your route under your feet.

Google will now factor in SEPTA buses, subways and Regional Rails in its directions, making our fair city much more navigable for tourists and new residents. The new functionality translates to the “Maps” application the iPhone as well.

SEPTA had taken its sweet time handing over the data to Google, as the it acknowledged the lack of Google Transit support in an October 2008 survey on its Web site where availability on Google Transit was tied for the most requested new feature among regular riders.

Though maybe the reason for the delay was because the new feature on Google Maps easily makes SEPTA’s “Trip Planner” more obsolete that it already was. Google Maps carries the same functionality while displaying the data in well-designed map that most Internet users are already familiar with using.

As a SEPTA Watch reader points out, the partnership is not without its huccups. Google Maps mistakenly refers to trollies as “light rails.”

Also, in other news, the El is now referred to as “the love train.”