MONDAY MASHUP: Open a real time window on the Great Lakes from your home or office

Editors note: Welcome to Echo’s first Monday Mashup. Each week we’ll feature an information and geography mashup relevant to the Great Lakes. Readers can nominate mashups they’ve seen elsewhere or create their own. Got a good one? Contact Monday Mashup editor Rachael Gleason at greatlakesecho@gmail.com

By Rachael Gleason
Nov. 9, 2009

Pleasant Weather combines a Google map with real-time camera shots of weather in more than 400 locations around the Great Lakes in the U.S. and Canada. Click on the icons at places like Gurnee, Ill., to find out if it’s raining or shining. Move the window in the right hand corner of the site to find cameras throughout the region.

And if you’re missing a glimpse of the Great Lakes themselves, make sure to check out the cameras along their shores. A few examples:

See Superior from the Keeweenaw Peninsula, check out Lake Michigan from Ludington, spy on Huron from Kincardine, watch Erie from North Perry and observe Ontario from Grimsby.

You can add to the webcam weather database by uploading a live stream of their backyard or corporate cameras. Pleasant Weather also offers reports and storm-tracking mashups.

Win a prize if you’re the first to suggest or create a Great Lakes mashup used on Echo’s Monday Mashup. What’s the prize? Well, it’s not a Great Lakes cruise.  But we’ve got stress balls shaped like polar bears and bats (stress bats?), pocket knives, mini-backpacks, flashlights, water bottles and other items of similar fine value lying around the Echo Chamber. We’ll send you something AND publicly acknowledge your contribution in MONDAY MASHUP. Send it to Monday Mashups editor Rachael Gleason at GreatLakesEcho@gmail.com.