Consider this. You have reached the cinema hall a little early and the movie will start in about 45 minutes from now. Since there’s nothing else to do, you decide to explore the nearby area on foot but how far can you can in that time duration?

Enter Cartoo, this is a simple Google Maps based mashup that may give you a rough idea on how far should you travel in a certain amount of time. Put your current position (starting address), the mode of transport you are taking - car, bicycle or will you be walking – and the time you have at your disposal.

It then draws an area on the Google Map that you can possibly cover in the given time.

The developer hasn’t specified how the region is calculated but I assume they take an average speed of your mode of transport and mark the farthest point in the map that can be reached at that speed in the given time. The Google Maps API can return driving directions between any two points so they probably make use of this data as well. [via]