“Of my 11 years of doing Web development, Spring 2005 was the most interesting and exciting time. When Google Maps launched -- with maps assembled client-side, in JavaScript! -- I was one of the band of tinkerers around the globe who poked at Google's obfuscated code until we figured out how to embed their maps in our own pages. It was a ton of fun, not only doing the reverse engineering, but seeing the various discoveries and hacks other people were making: embedding multiple maps in a single page, swapping out the map tiles, using custom map markers, making markers move, loading real-time data onto maps... New discoveries were being made on a seemingly daily basis, and the best ones built on the other ones, which led to a sense of a community contributing to a greater understanding.

“These days, it's hard to fathom a Web without embeddable maps. Wasn't it always that way? To Google's eternal credit, instead of shutting these hacks down, they recognized the demand and legitimized it in the form of their mapping API.

“And the rest is... well, kind of boring in its simplicity, now that reverse engineering isn't involved. There was something raw and pure about those original hacks, like hunting and skinning your own food, living off the land, a digital self-sustainability. I feel like an old man yelling at kids to get off my lawn: ‘Back in my day, I had to reverse engineer Google's obfuscated JavaScript to get embeddable maps on my pages!’ You don't know how good you have it.”

• As the Local Business Center is now Google Places, enhanced listings are now called Tags. We think the new name better reflects the idea of adding a personalized line to a business listing.

• Originally offered in San Jose and Houston, Tags is now available in Atlanta, Austin, and Washington DC as well. Over the next couple of weeks we will add San Diego, Seattle, Boulder, Chicago, and San Francisco. You can fill out this form to be notified when Tags comes to your area.

• We’ll soon be offering a new type of Tag called “Posts.” Google Places recently introduced the ability to post to the Place Page, giving a business owner a way to enter a short, current, free-form message about their business that customers will see when they visit the business’ Place Page. In the next couple of weeks we will be launching these Posts as a Tag type in addition to the currently available options: photos, videos, website, coupons, directions, menu or reservations. A business will be able to highlight something special happening at their store - a sale, an upcoming event, or freshly baked banana bread. Potential customers will see this message as an extra line under the business listing in search results, giving them customized relevant information and inviting them to choose that store.

Algeria, American Samoa, Angola, Anguilla, Antigua and Barbuda, Armenia, Aruba, Azerbaijan, Bahamas, Bahrain, Barbados, Belize, Benin, Bermuda, Bhutan, Bolivia, Botswana, British Virgin Islands, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Cameroon, Cape Verde, Cayman Islands, Central African Republic, Chad, Comoros, Congo, Cook Islands, Costa Rica, Cote d'Ivoire, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Djibouti, Dominica, Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Faroe Islands, Fiji, French Guiana, Gabon, Gambia, Ghana, Greenland, Grenada, Guadeloupe, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Guyana, Haiti, Iceland, Iran, Jamaica, Kyrgyzstan, Laos, Liberia, Libya, Madagascar, Malawi, Maldives, Mali, Malta, Marshall Islands, Martinique, Mauritania, Mauritius, Mayotte, Montserrat, Morocco, Mozambique, Namibia, Netherlands Antilles, Niger, Nigeria, Niue, Northern Mariana Islands, Palau, Papua New Guinea, Paraguay, Peru, Qatar, Reunion, Rwanda, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Samoa, Sao Tome and Principe, Senegal, Seychelles, Sierra Leone, Solomon Islands, Somalia, Sudan, Suriname, Swaziland, Tajikistan, Tanzania, Timor-Leste, Togo, Tonga, Tunisia, Turkmenistan, Turks and Caicos Islands, Uganda, Uzbekistan, Vanuatu, Wallis and Futuna, Western Sahara, Zambia and Zimbabwe.

• At the Google booth, we’ll be doing demos of Google Maps, as well as plenty of other Google products.
• In the Google Teaching Theater, you can meet engineers who built biking directions and hear all about how it was created (see the schedule here).
• On Saturday, we’ll be hopping on our bikes to take part in Bike Hugger’s Mobile Social. Along the way we’ll be handing out some fun bike-related schwag, dishing more about how we built biking directions, and getting feedback directly from the cyclists.

• Bike trails: Our maps contain over twelve thousand of miles of biking trails. First, we had to figure out where trails are, so we worked with the Rails-to-Trails Conservancy to get much of our trail data. Once we had trails mapped out, the next task was to incorporate them into our routing algorithm. The algorithm is weighted to strongly prefer routing on these trails rather than roads open to automobile traffic, so your directions will try to put you onto a trail as long as it won't take you totally out of your way. On our bicycling layer (found under the 'More' button), these trails show up in dark green.

• Bike lanes: For more than 150 cities in the US, we know which streets have dedicated bicycle lanes. These are also prioritized when coming up with a routing suggestion. On the bicycling layer, you’ll see these roads indicated in bright green.

• Recommended routes: For many cities we also provide information on streets that have been designated as good for cyclists, so we them into account in our algorithm. These roads are indicated with dashed green lines on our bicycling layer.

• Uphill slopes: l don't know anyone who enjoys biking up a hill, especially when you're trying to get somewhere you need to be. Going uphill is worse than simply being much slower; it's also exhausting and can take a toll on the rest of your ride. Our biking directions are based on a physical model of the amount of power your body has to exert given the slope of the road you’re biking on. Assuming typical values for mass and for wind resistance, we compute the effort you’ll require and the speed you’ll achieve while going uphill. We take this speed into account when determining the time estimate for your journey, and we also try hard to avoid routes that will require an unreasonable degree of exertion. Sometimes the model will determine that it's far more efficient to make you ride several extra blocks than to have to deal with a massive hill. My teammates in San Francisco were relieved to see that this does indeed work!

• Downhill slopes: Many cyclists will tell you that going downhill is annoying for a different reason: you may have to ride your brakes all the way down. All else equal, we try to avoid routes that require a lot of braking. Of course, in some cities, including my hometown of Seattle, this isn’t always possible! And if you feel like you need a big workout and want to climb some hills, or if you just love that wind-in-your-hair feeling of a long downhill (you better be wearing a helmet and staying safe!), you can always turn on the terrain layer to check out the hilliness of an area for yourself.

• Busy roads: Cyclists often tend to prefer to stay off of fast roads, and not even cross them unless it's necessary. This is roughly the inverse of driving directions, where you want to stay on arterials and freeways, so we had to rework a lot of those fundamental calculations when coming up with our biking directions algorithm.

• Busy intersections: We try to avoid making you cross busy streets with a lot of car traffic and long wait times.

1. Log in to Local Business Center with your Google account (or create a new one) at google.com/lbc
2. Enter information for your business listings and verify that you are the business owner or authorized business listing manager by 12am PST on March 1. This means that you need to enter the PIN number that you receive by mail or by phone call by this deadline. You should allow 5-10 business days for your pin to arrive by mail - so get going now! If you are given the option to verify your listing by phone, the PIN will be delivered to you by an automated phone call within seconds. (Be sure to be ready to write it down).
3. If you're identified as a Favorite Place, expect your decal with custom QR code to arrive within a few weeks. We'll let everyone know when the mailings have started to go out. You can learn more about the selection process here.