Google Data » elaine

Plan a trip in one click

elaine — Mon, 28 Dec 2009 21:55:00 +0000

Why should trip planning be any more complicated than opening your browser and entering the name of your favourite city? Six months ago we launched City Tours on Google Labs with the goal of making vacation planning as easy as searching the web. After all, Google knows the top sights in many cities around the world and we've been providing directions on Google Maps for years, so Google Labs seemed to be the perfect way to test out a combination of these two capabilities, with our computing power thrown in to sift through the thousands of possibilities.

Though City Tours is still in Google Labs, the purpose was clear and the demo was popular, so we've continued to work on it over the past few months to take into account the hundreds of suggestions from users all across the globe. Now you'll find several handy additions:

Show complete walking directions. Until now, we've simply estimated the travel time between destinations based on the distance between them. Today, we start providing complete pedestrian routing information for every step of your tour, taking road types, bridges and bodies of water into account just like a regular Google Maps walking directions search. We still try to minimise the time you spend walking and we still won't recommend a visit to an attraction when we think it's closed but, now, the suggested tours are a whole lot closer to reality.
Import a My Map as a tour - because we can't always guess what you want to see! Maybe last time before you went on holiday you created a My Map of all the things you wanted to see when you got there. Now, next time you're planning a trip, you can import that My Map into City Tours: we'll try to schedule a visit to every feature in your map, just as if you had entered the city name into City Tours' search box.

Alternatively, maybe the last time you came home after holiday you created a My Map of the best attractions you saw. If you've made your My Map public and listed, once a user has found it they can import it into City Tours with its link and re-live your tour, customised - of course - for the dates on which they're visiting. In the mood for literature in the Big Apple? You'll want to try out this walking tour of New York bookshops.
Finally, we've made a whole bunch of small user interface improvements both to help usability and make City Tours behave just a little more like the Google Maps site you're used to.

We're confident that these additions will make City Tours a whole lot more useful to a whole lot more people, although it should be noted that City Tours remains a Google Labs product and is still far from complete. We hope to continue tweaking and improving it over the coming months, continuing our goal of making planning a trip as easy as doing a Google search.

Posted by Trevor Johnston, Software Engineer, Google Zurich

Indigenous Mapping: A new Google technology workshop for tribal peoples

elaine — Wed, 23 Dec 2009 19:25:00 +0000

Indigenous people worldwide face special challenges in planning, policy and advocacy work. Issues such as cultural preservation, sovereignty, land use management, and handling mineral rights are just a few that they have to tackle. Recognizing this, we're happy to announce that Google and the Indigenous Mapping Network are teaming up to put on a two day workshop on the Google campus to teach people from native communities how to use Google's mapping technologies.

The mission of IMN has been to empower native communities by connecting them with the tools they need to protect, preserve, and enhance their way of life within their aboriginal territories. And they endeavor to bridge the gap between traditional "mapping" practices and modern mapping technologies.

On February 25th and 26th, 2010, Google and IMN will host a workshop on the Google campus for members and staff of indigenous groups who want to learn about Google geospatial and mobile technologies. This hands-on workshop will approach Google technologies with the special concerns of indigenous communities in mind, and will focus on the technical aspects of using Google Earth, Google Maps, Sketchup, Android mobile phones and Open Data Kit, among other technologies. Special attention will be given to:

privacy and security of data
mobile data collection
data conversion from proprietary to open formats
case studies blending geospatial technologies and traditional knowledge (see our previous posts: Tribe Teams with Google to make stand in Amazon, Trading Bows and Arrows for Laptops)
Google Earth as a new storytelling medium: how to create compelling narrative-driven visualizations

We are very excited to be hosting this event, and look forward to a long relationship with IMN. For more information and to register for this workshop, go to the IMN website.

Posted by Mano Marks, Geo Developer Advocate, and Rebecca Moore, Manager, Google Earth Outreach

The Royal Botanic Gardens’ discoveries now in Google Earth

elaine — Tue, 22 Dec 2009 21:35:00 +0000

At the UK's Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew Gardens, you'll find more than 250 plant and fungi species discovered by their botanists, including: giant rainforest trees, gorgeous rare orchids, spectacular palms, minute fungi, wild coffee species, and even an ancient aquatic plant. To celebrate the botanical organisation’s 250th year, they’re making information about these new species available for nature-lovers and curious web explorers via Google Maps and Google Earth. Kew has mapped all 250 of the newly discovered species on this special Google Earth layer:www.kew.org/science/new-discoveries/250-species.kml.

The new species come from a wide-range of fascinating locations, including botanical frontiers such as Ecuador, Madagascar, the Amazon, Cameroon, New Guinea, Mozambique, Amazon, and the heart of Borneo. Nearly a third are believed to be in danger of extinction.

Following in the footsteps of their famous botanical predecessors such as Sir Joseph Banks, Sir Joseph Hooker, and Charles Darwin, taxonomic botanists at the Royal Botanic Gardens continue to explore and study the world’s plant and fungal diversity, making astonishing discoveries every year. Their work involves a combination of fieldwork in remote and exotic parts of the world, and research in the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew’s Herbarium, a vast scientific collection of over seven million dried plants specimens, perhaps the largest of its kind in the world. This work has never been more relevant and pressing than in the current era of global climate change and unprecedented loss of biodiversity – especially as we count down to the UN’s International Year of Biodiversity in 2010.

We spoke to the team at Kew (whose stunning grounds you can also explore on Street View by the way!), and they told us that there is so much of the plant world yet to be discovered and documented – and that by using Google Earth they can highlight this to the public. Steve Bachman, a Plant Conservation Analyst, says he believes Google Earth and Google Maps have revolutionised the way Kew presents this important plant and conservation data to decision makers, scientists and the general public. After all, in order to promote conservation, you need to know what's out there and where it's found.

We’re thrilled to see the folks at Kew sharing their intricate and important work of plant and species identification via our mapping technology and look forward to hearing about more new discoveries we're sure they'll be making in the coming year!

Posted by Laura Scott, Google London

More to see in 3D

elaine — Tue, 22 Dec 2009 14:20:00 +0000

A few weeks ago we released new 3D models with more detailed facades for 5 California cities. Even though we’re based in California, we know there are a lot of beautiful cities with amazing architecture elsewhere around the country, so we’re adding 4 new cities scattered from coast to coast. Now you can fly through Portland, Austin, Chicago, and Philadelphia and see vivid, detailed 3D models throughout the cities.

While the list is quickly growing, some of our favorite spots are Portland’s Pearl District, South Street in Philadelphia, Austin’s 6th Street, and the restaurants along Rush Street in Chicago:

Portland, OR

Austin, TX

Chicago, IL

Philadelphia, PA

For the full effect, you should explore these cities for yourself in Google Earth. As you browse through these cities you’ll also see a number of great buildings creating by users using tools like Sketch-up and Building Maker. Here’s a video preview of the interactive experience:

Posted by Manish Patel, 3D Modeling Team

Finding your way in India with landmarks

elaine — Fri, 18 Dec 2009 01:10:00 +0000

In the past few months, you may have noticed that Google Maps directions have been using some new phrases such as "Take the 2nd right" rather than just "Turn right". We're using phrases like this because they're natural concepts that relate to the way we think about navigation in real life. They're the way a friend might give you directions. This week we're taking this concept further for users in India, using landmarks to help drivers get their bearings.

During a trip to the Google engineering office in Bangalore, our driving directions engineers got a chance to learn firsthand how drivers navigate in India. We discovered that street signs or names tend to be less important than landmarks such as civic buildings and gas stations. A friend giving you directions might tell you to "Turn left at the school" or "Go past the convenience store". In India, we have a lot of great landmark data available through user-entered "Points of Interest" in Google Map Maker.

Our new algorithm determines which of these landmarks are most useful for navigation, based on visibility, importance, and closeness to the turns that you're making. We now combine landmark data, counted turns ("the 2nd right"), intersection names, and road names, and try to use whatever information is most relevant and useful. We're using landmarks in two ways: to identify where users need to turn, and to provide confirmation that they're on the right track. You can read more about the research that went into this feature on the Official Google Blog.

Landmarks now appear in both desktop and mobile directions. As a result, we hope that our users in India will have an easier time getting to their destinations using directions in Google Maps -- and you can improve our directions by adding more POIs in Google Map Maker!

Posted by Dave Walker and John Leen, Software Engineers

Google & Audi take Google services in a car to the next level in the new Audi A8

elaine — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 02:20:00 +0000

Nowadays, it seems like everything is connected to the Internet: mobile phones, laptops, netbooks, portable game consoles, personal navigation devices. Think of how applications such as Google Maps for mobile have changed the way you find locally relevant businesses or addresses, or real-time traffic along your route. We can even get online from 35,000 feet while on an airplane, or while traveling at 300 km/h on a train. Google has worked with the automotive industry to bring services like Local Search into cars in the past - now we're teaming up with Audi to bring an entirely new type of technology into the car: Google Earth.

With their newly unveiled Audi A8, Audi is the first car manufacturer to bring Google Earth directly into the vehicle and to combine that with a set of useful Google services. We've worked closely with them to create a compelling in-car experience integrated with the Audi navigation system. You'll be able to enjoy 3D satellite imagery, terrain information and a wealth of additional geo information relevant to your current location: layers like Wikipedia to learn more about your surroundings or Panoramio images to get another view.

To help you figure out where you want to go and how to get there, we've also brought Google Maps and Local Search into the A8, and linking it to your desk. You can send business listings directly from Google Maps to your car: search for an address at your desk, send it to the car, and by the time you go to the parking lot your car will know where to go. While in the car, you can use Google Local Search in the same rich quality as at your desk. Imagine you get hungry on the way or want to find a cinema – simply perform a live Google search on your car navigation system and immediately get up-to-date, rich and relevant results.

Ghirardelli Square, San Francisco - Send popular destinations directly from your desk into your car

Google Earth has come a long way from when it received "oohs" and "aahs" during its demonstration for Googlers and the public in 2005: it has now been downloaded over 500 million times on the desktop, is available in 41 languages, and has a mobile version for iPhone. As Germans, with a natural born passion for cars, we're very excited about this newest milestone and we hope that drivers will have that same "ooh" and "aah" reaction when exploring Google Earth from the Audi A8.

Cabo da Roca, Portugal - Pushing your car navigation display to the next level

Our mission to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful is paid into by the efforts of Google's automotive team - they always are trying to find new ways to make relevant information accessible and useful - now also in your car.

Herzlich willkommen, Audi!

Posted by Jens Redmer, Principal, New Business Development and Wieland Holfelder, Engineering Director; Google Germany

Map Maker’s Global Mapping Competition

elaine — Wed, 16 Dec 2009 19:30:00 +0000

Let the mapping begin! Google's first Global Mapping Competition runs from December 15 - January 31, 2010. During this period, the mapper who adds the most universities, schools, hospitals, and medical clinics with high quality into Google Map Maker will win a $50,000 UNICEF donation to benefit the country of their choice for work empowering young people through technology. Google Map Maker is available in more than 170 countries and allows users to become "citizen cartographers" by adding and editing map features. To foster participation from coutnries around the world, we have versions of the site in several languages: English, Spanish, French, Russian, Romanian, and Vietnamese.

"We are delighted that Google is supporting UNICEF's efforts to

help build a world fit for children. We know that mapping is a proven method to enhance community development. Google Map Maker is a powerful tool to create better situational awareness for both young people and communities at large. It will enable organizations like ours to better deliver services, respond to crises and adapt to change," said Gerrit Beger, leader of UNICEF's innovation drive focusing on youth.

For your mapping additions to get published on Google Map Maker and eventually make it into Google Maps, other users will have to moderate (approve or deny) your changes. You will, in turn, moderate others' changes, which is why it's often helpful to map with a partner or in a small team. Moderation quantity and quality are also an important criteria for judging competition entries so don't forget to moderate as much as you map.

This global competition comes on the heels of the Latin America mapping competition that ended yesterday. More than 50 teams from all over the world registered for the Latin America mapping competition, and we've seen more than 500% mapping activity increases for several Latin American countries during the competition period. We're very excited about this participation level and are looking forward to announcing the competition winners on January 8, 2010.

The Global Mapping Competition, kicking off this week, was first announced the Global Mapping Competition at an event organized jointly by the United Nations and Google at Google's office in New York. During that event, 80 United Nations delegates from more than 20 UN agencies, including UNICEF, met with various Google product teams to explore how Google's wide array of products and services can further the UN mission and help foster innovation and new thinking.

We invite mappers everywhere to register for the competition and map for a good cause over the holidays and into 2010.

Posted by Jennifer Mazzon, Maps Community Organizer

Mapping India on Google’s Internet Bus

elaine — Wed, 16 Dec 2009 00:40:00 +0000

Throughout December, Google Map Maker team members are touring around India with Google's Internet Bus to show people how to create maps of their local villages and towns. The Internet Bus Project is an initiative to educate people about the Internet, and how it can be beneficial to their lives. The customized Internet-enabled Google bus travels to towns and cities across India and takes the Internet experience to the people.

interior of the bus

When the Google Internet Bus last week made its grand entrance into the province of Kerala (after having completed the journey through Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka), the paradise of waving palms, sprawling backwaters and wide sandy beaches, bus visitors were able to view their home and neighborhood and use Google Map Maker to map their home towns and favorite destinations.

You can see other pictures of this leg of the Internet Bus tour here. The bus is traveling through the following cities throughout December:

Kochi/Ernakulam - December 5, 6, 7, 8
Allapuzha - December 10, 11
Kollam - December 12, 13
Thiruvananthapuram - December 14, 15, 16, 17
Thrissur - December 19, 20
Pallakad - December 21, 22
Kozhikode - December 23, 24, 25
Thalassery - December 26, 27

If you are from Kerala or visiting Kerala during this time, hop along for the ride and discover the art of map making on the Google Internet Bus!

Posted by Ajith Kumar, Google Map Maker Program Manager

Go beyond just a few stars: See what makes a business shine

elaine — Tue, 15 Dec 2009 21:35:00 +0000

Today, we launched a new feature to rank and show distinguishing aspects for businesses on their Place Pages. By taking a look at a Place Page, you can quickly get a better sense of what people are saying about a business and view relevant snippets about each specific aspect (say, the price, the service, or the infamous deep dish pizza) from all over the web. You can then dive deeper by going to the source and reading the full reviews. The new color-coded bars will give you a simple numeric overview of the how the business rates on each feature.

Let's say your in-laws are visiting over the holidays and you want to take them to a nice dinner while they're in town. You've heard that a new restaurant has great steak, but you want to be sure the ambiance and decor meet your standards for a special occasion.

You can check Peter Luger Steakhouse Place Page to see what reviewers are saying:

Or what if you want to get your sister a spa day for the holidays -- you may want to know if the spa specializes in massages, facials, or pedicures -- and of course, you want to make sure it rates very high on service to make sure she's pampered.

Here's what people are saying about Kabuki Springs and Spa:

Looks like a great place to get a stone massage!

In order to help you find the best of what people are saying, we've improved our ability to find reviews of places, searching more quality sources of information from across the web. We look for pages that talk about particular places and analyze content on those pages that express a sentiment (i.e., a positive or negative comment) about that place. We display snippets of the sentiment to help you discover the best sources of information about the specific topic of interest.

Place Pages help to organize and make accessible all the world's information about a particular place. We hope that these sentiment snippets will help make your browsing - and maybe even your holiday planning - a little easier.

Posted by Andrew McCarthy and Diego Nogueira, Local Search team

More information, fewer clicks

elaine — Tue, 15 Dec 2009 18:05:00 +0000

Earlier this year, we proclaimed that "1000 is the new 10" when we began showing small dots on the map for all your local search results. This has been a great way to get a better understanding of the density of certain listings - for example, figuring out where the theater district is in a city you want to visit - but sometimes you may realize that one of the dots seems to be in the exact spot you'd like to go. We've now added the ability to hover over items on the map to quickly get more information about a place without clicking.

For example, if you search for "blueberry pancakes in san francisco", you'll find that there are a lot of options available. Hovering your mouse over these results now gives a tooltip, giving you enough information to let you decide if you want to click to investigate further. When hovering over a cluster of multiple results, a list of everything underneath the mouse pointer is shown, including the number of stars for a business listing. This makes exploring large sets of search results quicker and easier.

Here's some information about an option in Russian Hill:

And here are two options next to each other near Lombard Street:
This also works for many other things on the map, including transit stations, photos, and more. Next time you're searching, just hover and discover!

Posted by Michael Bürge, Software Engineer

Exploring climate solutions: One tour at a time

elaine — Mon, 14 Dec 2009 17:25:00 +0000

As part of the lead-up to COP15, we have been releasing a series of Google Earth tours that illustrate climate change issues and solutions. Many of these include tours created by NGOs, which guide you through their efforts to tackle some of the impacts of our changing climate on human life, wildlife, and our environment.
Recently, we have added six new tours to the series, and they cross a wide breadth of issues, including climate change science, human health, renewable energy, wildlife migration and ocean conservation.

View them now at www.google.com/cop15.

In Projecting Future Climate Change, Stephen Schneider, climate scientist and professor at Stanford University, introduces us to the factors that affect future climate change, how scientists make projections, and what we can do to prevent the worst impacts.

In Climate & Health in Africa, the International Research Institute for Climate & Society (IRI) guides us through some of the work they are doing to project where meningitis may impact humans in the future under a changing climate, and illustrates their work with groups on the ground in Africa.

In Harnessing Coal River Wind in Appalachia, the Coal River Wind Project describes a more renewable energy option -- wind farms -- in the Appalachian Mountains that they are fighting for as an alternative to mountaintop removal for coal mining.

In Greenfreeze and SolarChill, Greenpeace describes Greenfreeze, a market-proven, revolutionary environmentally-friendly refrigeration technology that doesn't release greenhouse gases. The SolarChill project brings solar-powered fridges to Africa for food storage, and a refrigeration method that meets the WHO standards for vaccine storage.

In Protecting the Arctic Ocean, Oceana guides you through the problems that the Arctic Ocean is facing due to climate change, and introduces you to the positive changes that have been made due to policies protecting certain parts of the Arctic from commercial fishing and other activities.
In Saving North America's Wildlife in a Warmer World by Freedom to Roam, learn about wildlife corridors for some of the continent's flagship species to enable them to migrate north and to higher altitudes as the globe warms.

Get started now - go to www.google.com/cop15 and pick a tour.

Posted by Karin Tuxen-Bettman and Tanya Keen, Google Earth Outreach

Where on Earth? Place Pages for Google Earth

elaine — Tue, 08 Dec 2009 19:45:00 +0000

When I'm exploring my neighborhood or planning a trip, I often find places I want to know more about. That's why I love using Place Pages for Google Maps to see lots of great information about a place on a single page. I can browse photos of the Royal Botanic Gardens in Sydney, write a review of a favorite restaurant in my neighborhood, or learn about popular places in Lucerne, Switzerland.

Starting today, you can see the same rich Place Page content in Google Earth, while browsing the world in 3D. You can see a summary whenever you click on a business or place of interest, and then click the View more information » link if you'd like to see more. Today, I explored some of the landmarks in Dubai:

You can also expand individual sections to see more reviews, photos, web pages, or user content. When I noticed a beautiful user-contributed 3D model of the Florence Cathedral, I wanted to see photos of the interior so I browsed through the photos section of the Place Page:

If you're a business owner, you can update your details in our Local Business Center, to ensure we're showing the most accurate information to people searching for your business in both Google Maps and Google Earth. We hope you enjoy exploring the new Place Pages in Google Earth and find them to be a helpful way to learn more about all the interesting places you see during your virtual browsing

Posted by Matt Holden, Associate Product Manager, Google Earth Team

Changing your perspective

elaine — Tue, 08 Dec 2009 13:00:00 +0000

As an avid travel planner or discerning house hunter, you might always be looking for another view of a location before you make your final decision. On the Google Maps team we're always looking for ways to make search experiences like this more useful for you. This is what inspired our plans to provide a new type of mapping imagery.

Starting today, developers will have access through the Google Maps API to high-resolution overhead imagery that is presented in a new aerial perspective. This is currently available in 2 spots in California: San Jose and San Diego. This new perspective gives users the ability to tilt their view of the world. In addition to seeing hotel rooftops like in our current "satellite" view, users can now see both the rooftop and sides of the hotel at an angle. In fact, users can rotate around all the sides of a hotel to get 4 different views from back to front.

While the imagery is great to look at, we wanted to make sure it was also a useful tool for users. Consequently, we decided to stitch thousands of images together so that users can smoothly pan across the map in perspective. This makes it especially easy to maintain context while viewing what buildings look like from the ground and where they're located.

Since it's often easier to show than tell, a few of our travel and real estate partners have added this imagery to their Google Maps implementations. Whenever you're checking out this new feature, be sure to rotate the ring around the compass to see all the various perspectives of the property.

Orbitz uses this new aerial imagery within its search experience for hotels. Search either for San Diego hotels or San Jose hotels, then click on the "Map" link within any individual hotel card and zoom in from the Satellite view. You'll quickly see how valuable this will be for your next hotel booking:

Online real estate brokerage Redfin presents an "angled" view of their properties with an embedded Google map that utilizes this new aerial imagery to help home buyers get a much better sense of an entire lot and neighborhood. They include it within the property details for homes in San Diego and San Jose (scroll down to the map and select "Angled"):

Trulia integrates this new imagery on profile pages for all real estate listings, recently sold homes, and property records in San Jose and San Diego. They present this as "Perspective view" for these homes to complement photos, which you'll find located below the default map for each property:
We're very excited about how these new perspectives on a property will help to improve your geographic searching, whether it's for a new home, a great hotel for your next trip, or any of the other cool uses that developers come up with.

If you're a geo developer, please read our the Geo Developers Blog or review the implementation documentation that will explain how to quickly add this to your Google Maps API implementation. What's great about this new imagery is that all of your existing data and Google Maps services like driving directions can be displayed on your map with no extra work. This is a result of a lot of code and computing power that reprojects the imagery to make it easy to overlay data on the map given lat/lon locations like in any other Google Map type. The result is a great user experience together with easy display of data on the map.

In the coming months, we'll be working hard to improve the existing imagery and release more cities. We can't wait to see what creative mashups and tools the Maps API development community creates with it!

Posted by Randy Wilson and Manish Patel, Google Imagery Team

Find what’s nearby and try Labs features with Google Maps for Android

elaine — Mon, 07 Dec 2009 19:24:00 +0000

Just before Thanksgiving we made Google Maps Navigation available on Android 1.6 (Donut). Before we head out for the holidays, we wanted to launch one more update to Google Maps for Android-powered phones to help you get around during your holidays. With today's release of Google Maps 3.3 for Android, you can now easily find out what businesses are nearby, try several experimental Labs features, and report problems with map data right from your phone.

What's nearby?
If you're visiting an unfamiliar place, you can now easily see what businesses are nearby. Just long-press on the map, tap on the bubble, and look for "What's nearby?" in the menu.

The menu item shows a nearby business, and you can click on it to see more nearby places. You can also access this feature from the My Location menu or from address search results. When you're meeting friends, it's a great way to find the nearest shops, cafes, or other places to get out of the cold.

Google Maps for mobile Labs
We hear a lot of feature requests for Google Maps for mobile, and we're constantly brainstorming ideas, too. To help us innovate faster and experiment with new features, we're following in the footsteps of Google Labs and Gmail Labs by introducing Labs to Google Maps for Android.

To access Labs, just press the menu key, then "More", and then "Labs".

You'll find several stocking stuffers under Labs. You can now:

display a scale bar on the map, to get an idea of how far apart things on the map are
show a terrain layer, to help plan your hike or cross-country ski trip
search for popular categories, so you never have to type in "Vietnamese restaurant" or "bowling alleys" again
turn the blue My Location dot into a compass arrow that shows the direction you're facing when stationary
add a Layers button to the screen so you can quickly toggle layers like Traffic, Satellite, Latitude, and Transit Lines

Report problems in Maps

One of the advantages of using Google Maps on your phone is that you automatically use our latest map and business data downloaded over your phone's Internet connection. But keeping up with real world changes is a challenge, and sometimes our data isn't up-to-date.

If you find that what's shown on your phone doesn't match what's on the ground, you can now report a problem to Google. For problems like getting the wrong number when you call to order a pizza, or finding that the store you were going to is now out of business, just click on "Report a problem" in the listing menu. For problems you can see on the map, like a newly built street that's missing or a road with the wrong name, first long-press near the spot on the map. Then just tap on the bubble, click on "Report a problem", and type in a description of the problem. If you want, we will even e-mail you to let you know when it's resolved! (Reporting map problems is available in the United States; see Your world, your map for more information.)

You can download Google Maps with these new features from Android Market on Android-powered phone, as long as it has Android 1.6 (Donut) or higher. If you have a Droid from Verizon or a T-Mobile myTouch 3G or G1, then this means you!

Happy holidays!

Posted by Elliot Schwartz, Software Engineer

UNESCO World Heritage sites in Street View

elaine — Thu, 03 Dec 2009 17:00:00 +0000

If like me you're an avid traveller (of the virtual or standard variety) you'll probably know that in the last few months the Street View team has been working with tourist agencies, the public and partners from across the world to bring a new kind of imagery to Street View, focusing on putting tourist spots and iconic cultural landmarks on the map in all their 360 degree beauty.

As part of this effort, we're delighted to be announcing a global alliance with UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization) to put imagery of World Heritage sites into Street View. To whet your appetite we've released new imagery for 19 UNESCO sites around Europe, including places in Czech Republic, France, Italy, Netherlands, Spain and the United Kingdom. You can explore the sites directly in Google Maps, or visit the microsite to learn more.

In the coming months Google will work with UNESCO to select additional World Heritage landmarks, in countries where Street View imagery is being collected, which will be photographed for the project. The aim is to collect imagery from diverse regions throughout the world including Australia, Brazil, Canada, Japan, Mexico, South Africa, US and many countries throughout Europe. With permission from the site manager/owner such places look set to one day be available to millions of people around the world who may never have the chance to visit them in person.

Fancy a little tour of your own? Why not start with a walk alongside the Seine. From the Louvre to the Eiffel Tower, from the Place de la Concorde to the Grand and Petit Palais, the evolution of Paris and its history can be seen from its banks. The Cathedral of Notre-Dame and the Sainte Chapelle are architectural masterpieces while Haussmann's wide squares and boulevards influenced late 19th- and 20th-century town planning the world over.with a virtual walk.

View Larger Map

If you fancy going a little further back in time you could swoop over to Italy to explore the ruins of the Roman towns of Pompei, engulfed by Vesuvius eruption in AD 79. These have been progressively excavated and made accessible to the public since the mid-18th century and are now available for all with a simple click of a mouse.

Visualizzazione ingrandita della mappa

Personally, I couldn't resist going one step further back in time by visiting Stonehenge, in Wiltshire, one of the most famous groups of megaliths in the world. The circles of menhirs are arranged in a pattern whose astronomical significance is still being explored, and the site has captivated acheologists for hundreds of years.

There are plenty more sites you can visit too - like the Mill Network at Kinderdijk-Elshout in the Netherlands, the old town of Cáceres in Spain and the historic Center of Prague in Czech Republic. Check them all out here.

We work in partnership with landmarks and attractions all over the world to put them on the map and the Street View partnership programme is now available in the following countries: France, Italy, Spain, the United Kingdom, and the US. So if you want to be part of it just get in touch!

In the meantime, enjoy your trip!

Posted by Kenzo Fong Hing, Google London

More Street View updates: See the sea, see the world

elaine — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 19:30:00 +0000

Today's update to Street View is a whale of a launch -- literally! We've added imagery gathered by our Trike for several special attractions we've partnered with in the United States, including the SeaWorld parks. Of course, that includes photos of SeaWorld's biggest star, Shamu:

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You can also catch their acrobatic dolphins mid-leap:

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Along with imagery of all three SeaWorld locations (Orlando, San Diego, and San Antonio), we've also photographed Aquatica and Discovery Cove, through our partnership with SeaWorld Parks & Entertainment. Another theme park addition is Hersheypark in Pennsylvania, where you can see their dozens of rides and, of course, lots of candy.

High school seniors around the country know that college application deadlines are fast approaching, so to help them narrow down their choices by getting a better feel for schools, we've worked with Boston University to add their campus to Street View:

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You can also browse all our new special attractions in the Street View Gallery. And if you work for a theme park, college, race track, or any fun destination that you want to be featured in Street View, be sure to visit our Street View Partner Program site to learn more.

To the north, we've expanded our coverage in Canada. Nine new cities can now be explored from the comfort (and warmth!) of your home: Victoria, Nanaimo, Edmonton, Saskatoon, Winnipeg, Sudbury, London, Sherbrooke, and St. John's. The historic Victoria Empress hotel looks like it would make a great trip:

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We're also continuing to provide imagery of entirely new countries. Today Singapore becomes the first country in Southeast Asia included in Street View. You can explore iconic locations like Orchard Road and Clarke Quay; cultural areas like Chinatown and Little India; or the heartland like Jurong and Woodlands.

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In the UK, earlier this year we let users nominate locations for our Trike to photograph, just as we recently did in the US. After more than 10,000 submissions and 35,000 votes, winners are now online: Millennium Stadium, Angel of the North, Eden Project, Warwick Castle, Bamburgh Castle, and Stonehenge:

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Stay tuned for the big announcement of the trike contest winners in the United States, and more exciting Street View news that's always on the horizon. Till then, I'll leave you with a challenge: see if you can find another area, photographed by our trike, where a friendly bunch of Googlers stopped by to say hello.

Posted by Julie Sohn, Content Partnerships Team

31 Google Maps tips for smooth sailing through the holiday season

elaine — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 18:25:00 +0000

With families coming together, the start of the ski season, and weekly shopping trips becoming acceptable, there's a lot to love about the holiday season. What's that? Gridlocked traffic? Fully booked hotels? Can't find the perfect gift? Oh my, the holidays are rough!

To help kick off your season right, we've put together a list of 31 Google Maps tips for life to help you to save time, look smart, and manage your travels efficiently. Start with the tips that are right for you, based on what type of expert you'd like to become: a Local Expert, Ace Navigator, Global Explorer, or Business Owner. You can try a tip a day for a month, or blast through them all at once.

Here are my favorite tips from each section:

Local Expert Tip #3: Just keep searching
It's rare that you leave the house with only one goal in mind. More often you're heading to one place, like a party across town, but you need to pick up your contribution at the grocery store and get gas along the way. In Google Maps, you can see multiple searches layered on the map all at the same time. When you do two or more consecutive searches, you'll notice a blue bar at the bottom of the left panel. Click on it to expand the widget, which allows you to turn on both searches at once.

The markers on the map are color-coded, so you can tell which search is which. This is perfect for helping you pick the most efficient route to accomplish all your goals.

Ace Navigator Tip #4: Check live and predictive traffic information
Traffic patterns are hard to decipher when you're driving out-of-town. For both highways and arterial roads, Google Maps provides live and predictive traffic information for any day of the week and time of the day, based on past conditions and live crowdsourcing. Plan your departure times to avoid traffic jams!

Global Explorer Tip #6: A page for every place

No matter how far from home your travels take you, with Google Maps on your side you can become an expert even in a foreign locale. By clicking on the "More Info" link in a business listing, easily learn more about any place on the map with information ranging from photos to reviews to store hours. A Place Page is like a webpage for every place in the world, organizing all the relevant information about it. Who wants blueberry pancakes in New York? I've never been there, but I'd now recommend Clinton Street Baking Co, which has the "best blueberry pancakes ever!" according to reviews.

Business Owner Tip #3: Add coupons to your Google business listing

Cross your fingers that the economy is recovering, but even so, holiday shoppers are likely to be on the lookout for bargains. Google Insights for Search shows that searches for coupons are still up. By claiming your Google business listing through Local Business Center, you can create coupons that will appear alongside your business listing on Google Maps. Let Google users print your coupons and bring them to your business, or even show your coupons on mobile phones to attract customers on the go.

Enjoy our new tips for life, and next time you find someone lacking in holiday cheer, just share with them one of 31 ways to save time, look smart, and manage their travels more efficiently, like you.

Posted by Laura Melahn, Product Marketing Manager

With coupons on your phone, it doesn’t matter where you left the scissors

elaine — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 17:35:00 +0000

We know that coupons are a great way for local businesses to drive customers to their stores - that's why we created the option for businesses to add coupons to their Google Local Business Center listing back in 2007. Now, as the holiday shopping season kicks off, we've upgraded the ways that customers can find your coupons.

First up, with more and more people using their mobile devices to find local businesses, we've added a new option for Local Business Center users in the US to display their coupons on mobile devices. Additionally, we've made it simpler to find and print coupons from your desktop, so now it's easy to get discounts wherever you are.

Coupons on a mobile device
If you add a new coupon to your business listing in Local Business Center, by default it will now be available on mobile devices. To make your existing coupons available on mobile, edit them and check the box for Mobile Distribution, as shown here:

When users pull up your business listing on their mobile phone, they'll see a section that lists the available coupons. They can then click to find a specially-formated page which shows all the coupon details they need for redeeming it. Now even when customers are on the go, they can see all the great values and offers available from your business.

Improved interface for desktops
We've also overhauled the printable pages that people visit from a business' Place Page. Now you can be confident that every Google coupon customers bring to your store will look the same, helping you and your staff easily recognize and redeem them. In addition to the re-design, we've made sure that the coupons print out correctly and consistently across all major browsers and operating systems.

To create a coupon now or to claim your business with Local Business Center for the first time, visit google.com/lbc.

Posted by David Armstrong, Software Engineer

Uniting for a cause

elaine — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 23:05:00 +0000

At an event organized jointly by the United Nations and Google at Google's office in New York, 80 United Nations delegates from more than 20 UN agencies, met with various Google product teams to explore how Google's wide array of products and services can further the UN mission and help foster innovation and new thinking. Google's Alfred Spector and the U.N.'s Choi Soon-hong, the first Chief Information Technology Officer (CITO) for the United Nations, both gave inspirational keynote addresses. We discussed products and tools including Google Earth & Map Maker, Flu Trends, visualization APIs, public data search, and much more.

One consistent theme was the desire to increase momentum in efforts to collaborate and share information publicly in ways that will help all U.N. agencies and other humanitarian organizations meet new challenges in an increasingly networked society. This same theme was echoed in the workshop that Google hosted in Washington DC with over 20 international humanitarian organizations last month.

Google's Map Maker Product Manager Lior Ron made two exciting announcements at the event. On the heels of our recent announcement of the Latin America Mapping competition, Google will be launching a global mapping competition in partnership with UNICEF. The competition will run December 15 - January 31, and Google will donate $50k to UNICEF that will go toward programs that empower young people through technology in the home country of the competition winner.

The other announcement is that Map Maker data for Southeast Asia is available for download for non-commercial uses. The 9 Southeast Asian countries where Map Maker is open for editing that are now included in the Map Maker download program are Brunei, Cambodia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar (Burma), Papua New Guinea, Philippines, Timor-Leste, and Vietnam.

The Map Maker download license is available for non-profits, government agencies, and individuals to create and enhance their own non-commercial map-related projects as long as attribution is given back to Map Maker. We started this data download program with the Africa dataset over the summer. See our new Map Maker partner showcase page to learn how several United Nations agencies have used Map Maker data to further their humanitarian missions.

Posted by France Lamy, Google.org

Ready, set, map: Latin America Map Maker competition

elaine — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 19:03:00 +0000

This past Saturday, we launched the first ever mapping competition in Latin America during a live session on Map Maker at the Campus Party Mexico 2009. The competition officially kicked off at the event in Mexico city, where tech enthusiasts from all over the country got to know first about the Map Maker competition.

Participating in the Campus Party allowed us to enjoy not only a warm welcoming from our Mexican audience but also learn about their sincere interest in improving the geographical data for their country. Our presentation included a demo on Google Map Maker main features like how to add points of interest, moderate changes from other users or edit driving directions.

There was time to discuss the brand new Google Maps Mexico (htttp://maps.google.com.mx/) and all the new & exciting possibilities Mexican users have in their country: looking for addresses, points of interest or local businesses, photos and reviews from other users, creating your own maps with My Maps, adding your business to the map through the Local Business Center or exploring one of the seven first Latin American cities available in Street View (Mexico City, Monterrey, Guadalajara, Puebla, Puerto Vallarta, Cancun, Playa del Carmen and Cozumel).

The Campus Party started in 1997 in Spain as an event for passionate Internet users and since then, it has become an essential meeting point for those interested in understanding new information technologies. Nowadays, there are four different yearly editions of the event at Valencia, São Paulo, Bogotá and Ciudad de México and almost 40.000 registered campusers worldwide.

Now, you can map the areas you know best in Latin America and possibly win a prize while you are at it! The Map Maker competition runs from November 14th until December 15th and all Latin American lovers are invited to participate. You can find all the details, Terms & Conditions and the entry form for you and your team members at http://mapmaker.google.com/competition.

We were also excited to announce the prizes for the winners of the Map Making competition. Winners will be based on those with the biggest volume and highest quality of edits and moderations during the Map Maker competition; among others, 100 laptops for a university or school from the winning city, a netbook for each member of the best team or a laptop for the top individual contributor. Winners will also enjoy an all included trip to the 2010 Super Mappers Conference, which will be an amazing opportunity to share your mapping passion with other top contributors and to get to know the Google team.

Crea tu mundo con Google Map Maker (in Spanish):

Because you know your neighborhood better than anyone, put it in the map and let the competition begin!

Posted by Genoveva Descalzo, Consumer Operations & Latin America Competition Manager

Google Earth 5.1 is now out of beta

elaine — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 22:43:00 +0000

Two months ago, we released the beta version of Google Earth 5.1. The 5.1 release focused on one of our most important features: performance. The power of Google Earth is the seamless, immersive 3D fly-throughs that give you a sense of being "there," so we made a lot of adjustments under the hood to make flying around the globe faster and smoother. Today, after a few more tweaks and bug fixes, we're proud to say that we're ready to remove the beta tag.

This release also includes the Google Earth browser plug-in for Mac users, all in the same installation. Both Mac and PC users can explore all of the exciting Google Earth sites that our developers have made without having to mess around with another installation. You can search for universities, or perhaps fulfill your secret fantasy of being the captain of a giant shipping vessel. Now these and many more Google Earth web applications are just a click away.

Download the latest version today at http://earth.google.com.

Posted by Peter Birch, Product Manager

More views in more countries

elaine — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 23:05:00 +0000

It's been a very busy week for the Street View team! Not only have we made Hawaii the 50th state to get Street View imagery but we've also been hard at work mapping other stunning locations around the world. Now you can explore around huge swathes of Spain, an extra 30 towns in Netherlands and 5 cities in Mexico.

In my home country of Spain, I think we may have created what could be the the first ever virtual pilgrimage: Street View imagery is now available for the Camino de Santiago in commemoration of the year Xacobeo 2010 (the holy year of Saint James).

People can "wander" virtually along the French route from Auritz to Finisterre, through significant points as Pamplona, Estella, Logroño, Nájera, Santo Domingo de la Calzada, Astorga, Ponferrada and Santiago de Compostela. Potential visitors can also plan their entire trip thanks to a customized "mapplet" on Google Maps, created by Consumer Eroski magazine, where tourists can see hotels, hostels and restaurants located along the Camino de Santiago. Make sure you also visit other amazing Spanish sites such as:

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Alhambra of Granada

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Aqueduct of Segovia

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Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao

In the Netherlands, you can now explore the many iconic windmills of Kinderdijk. We tried to guess how many windmills there must now be in the Dutch imagery but we were stumped. We want to hear your guesses but we think it could be in the hundreds. Don't believe me? Here's another example:

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Of course, the Netherlands has much more to explore than just windmills -- here's a virtual tour through some other beautiful places:

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Utrecht

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The Hague

But who'd have thought Street View would be able to get my taste buds going too! I've been reminiscing about all that gorgeous Mexican food by checking out the many taco stalls of Mexico City and wishing i could order an enchilada or find my true favourite a 'Gordita'. You can tour other amazing places around the wolrd in our new gallery of global landmarks.

Posted by Isabel Salazar, Google Spain

Trike finalists announced!

elaine — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 00:45:00 +0000

Last month we asked you to submit nominations for places that you want our Street View Trike to visit. We were inundated with more than 25,000 suggestions across all categories, with university campuses making up 44% of all suggestions.

Starting today, you can cast your vote for your favorite place within each category to tell us which locations you'd most like to see on Google Maps. The finalists in each category are... drumroll please:

University Campuses

Arizona State University

Michigan State University

Princeton University

Rochester Institute of Technology

Stanford University

Parks & Trails

Boulder Creek Bike Path, CO

Capital Crescent Trail, MD/DC

Centennial Trail, WA

Schuylkill River Trail, PA

Stevens Creek Trail, CA

Pedestrian Malls

Faneuil Hall Marketplace, Boston, MA

Navy Pier, Chicago, IL

Pier 39, San Francisco, CA

Landmarks

Alcatraz Island, San Francisco, CA

Central Park, NY

Millenium Park, Chicago, IL

Kennedy Space Center, FL

National Mall, DC

Theme Parks & Zoos

Bronx Zoo, NY

Busch Gardens, VA

Detroit Zoo, MI

Lincoln Park Zoo, Chicago, IL

San Diego Zoo, CA

Universal Studios, FL

Visit www.google.com/trike to vote! You can vote as many times as you like until the deadline at 11:59pm PST on Monday, November 30th. We'll then work on getting all the winners into Google Maps, and of course we'll work closely with the relevant organizations to collect images of any privately-owned locations. It takes a bit of time to ride a 250-pound bike around the country, but we're excited to see which locations get your votes.

If you're anxious to see some new places in Google Maps right now, you happen to be in luck! Today we've added imagery of my home state Hawaii, making it the 50th state featured in Street View. In honor of this launch, we've created an online gallery to showcase some of the amazing new imagery from Hawaii, as well each state capitol building from across the United States. You can read more about today's launch on the Official Google Blog. To get you started exploring this amazing new imagery, here's an image from Kailua Beach - I first learned to surf at the island offshore:

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You'll find much more waiting for you to explore in the Street View Gallery. You'll notice it also has a collection of locations photographed by the Trike -- you can help determine which places will be included in the future by submitting your vote!

Posted by Laura Melahn, Product Marketing Manager

NYC subway system on Google Maps

elaine — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 19:50:00 +0000

My wife and I moved out to New York last week, and we sure put Google Maps to use in our housing hunt. With Real Estate listings to help find a place, Street View to scope out the neighborhood, directions to help us find our broker, and local search to find nearby amenities, just about the only thing that we needed another source for was to see where the extensive subway lines ran. Until now!

We're happy to announce that you can now see New York's subway lines drawn out directly on Google Maps as part of the transit layer. To turn it on, just point Google Maps to somewhere in New York, click on the "More..." button at top-right, and select "Transit":

The colorful lines aren't just pretty to look at, they're also interactive. When you click on any station name, a bubble pops up with the names of the line that service the station, and all the other lines on the screen fade out.

This new feature compliments the New York transit directions we launched last September, for all services offered by the MTA, including bus, ferry, commuter rail, and of course the subway. We cover much more than the Big Apple, so look for the transit layer in other cities like Paris and Tokyo, and use transit directions with over 436 agencies around the world.

Having the MTA in the transit layer will certainly help me get my way around my new hometown, as I start to familiarize myself with the nation's largest public transit system. I can even pull up the layer on my mobile phone while on-the-go (read more on the Google Mobile Blog). We're happy to say that we found a great place in Brooklyn — and based on the leafy green trees and walk-up brownstones in Street View, some friends back in California are convinced we're moving to Sesame Street!

Posted by Jesse Friedman, Associate Product Marketing Manager

Featured Map Maker: Mihai

elaine — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 18:10:00 +0000

Name: Mihai Voiculescu (Cartograful)
Day job: Web programmer at itbox.ro
Region mapped: Romania

Until last month, Romania wasn't on Google Maps. Users started a Facebook Cause and a Twitter Petition to get Google's attention on adding Romania to the map. "I found out about Map Maker opening in Romania over Twitter -- I follow Google Maps on Twitter," says Mihai Voiculescu. Mihai is now the #1 mapper in Romania with more than 5,000 map edits made since Google Map Maker opened in Romania in August, and as of last month many of those edits are now live in Google Maps for the world to see.

Like many mappers, Mihai started by mapping his hometown -- Târgu Jiu, the city in the southwest of Romania where sculptor Constantin Brancusi lived and where several of his large works of sculpture have become tourist attractions. From there, Mihai went on to help map Bucureşti (Bucharest) -- the video below shows how the map of Bucharest grew quickly from 5 highways to a complete city over a two week period:

Mihai runs a Romanian travel web site (itbox.ro) that uses the Google Maps API, and says that having a detailed and accurate map of Romania on Google Maps is important for local tourism. "Many people who came to Romania asked me why Romania isn't on Google. People think that Romania is empty, like a desert. Having Romania on Google Maps is a big plus." Mihai also uses Panoramio and has had some of his photos published in Google Earth; "I love the Web, programming and travel," he says.

Normally, Google Map Maker mappers use Google's satellite imagery to draw roads and locate schools, parks and businesses. When the satellite imagery isn't clear enough (due to clouds or low resolution) to trace from directly, Mihai uses a GPS device to create GPS tracks for roads or to locate hotels, then exports the tracks as KML files and uses the Map Maker Overlays feature to draw the roads and hotel locations accurately. He also uses KML files to locate hotels on the map for his travel web site.

Mihai collaborates with other Romanian mappers and co-created a Romania Map Maker discussion group. "I met these people online," says Mihai. However, he will soon be getting together with his fellow mappers in person as they have scheduled a Map Maker training event and mapping party in Bucharest at the Bucharest Academy of Economic Sciences on November 14th (a Google team member will also attend the event in person). "I want to thank all the people from Romania who contribute to build the map on Google."

Posted by Jennifer Mazzon, Maps Community Organizer

Autumn updates for Google Transit

elaine — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 01:12:00 +0000

The days may have just gotten a little bit shorter, but that's not going to stop the Google Transit team from working hard to add new agencies. Over the past few months, we've launched with several partners in many places all around the world.

If you're traveling to Europe, you may be particularly pleased with some of our newest additions in popular tourist regions. In France, we have completed the coverage of Bordeaux, a famous red wine hub, and an UNESCO World Heritage site. In Italy, we launched coverage for the entire regions of Tuscany, Reggio Emilia, and Brescia. If you are in need of some Spanish tapas and sun, the Asturias region in the north of Spain can offer you that -- and we can offer public transit to get you around. The Czech Republic now has the Student Agency and the city of Pardubice covered, and in the UK the launch of the East Anglia region joins the existing East Midlands and Southeast.

This represents great progress in Europe, adding partners in countries where coverage was previously quite thin. We're very excited about this, but we are still far from our end goal of having a public transit alternative for every driving directions search, so we're hoping to keep up our momentum.

We have not neglected the rest of the world, and we have launched many smaller regions in the US, such as Gainesville, Florida and Long Beach, CA. I'm particularly excited about the addition of Bear Transit in Berkeley, which is where Google Transit originated. We also launched our first routing in the Middle East, with data from the Roads and Transport Authority in Dubai, UAE. And coinciding with the announcement of the host of the 2016 Olympic games, we launched a full coverage for Rio de Janeiro. We also launched the first city in New Zealand - Wellington, the Kiwi capital.

Our mobile users also got special treatment. With the launch of Google Maps for Mobile 3.2, the transit layer is available on Symbian S60, Windows Mobile, BlackBerry, and the new Motorola DROID, and transit directions were added to the Palm Pre. This means now transit directions are available in Google Maps on all major smartphone platforms.

You can find more information about Google Transit and our current coverage at http://maps.google.com/transit.

Posted by Noam Ben Haim, Product Manager

More, more, more real estate in Google Maps

elaine — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 21:33:00 +0000

Since we announced the ability to see lots of real estate listings directly on Google Maps back in July, we've been working hard to make it even easier to use. As we've added new features and updated Google Maps, with things like brand new high-resolution Street View imagery or detailed map data, Google Maps has become an even more useful tool for online real estate searching. Here are a couple of things you can look out for next time you visit.

First of all, we've made it easier to find real estate listings. Now, you can simply select "Real Estate" from the 'More' button on the top right of any Google Map to discover listings. From there, it's a simple matter to refine your search using the left hand panel - price, bedrooms, bathrooms, and so on. Of course, you can still pan the map to search for the perfect neighborhood and it'll automatically update with more listings.

We've also added the ability to search for rental listings in the US. You can now find places for rent in New York or one bedrooms in San Francisco for rent simply by turning on the Real Estate layer via the 'More' button and selecting some refinements.

You'll also notice that Google Maps is now showing even more information about an area as you pan around and zoom in. There are small icons on the map showing the names and location of businesses and prominent features of the neighborhood. This means that during your property search, you'll be able to tell at a glance just exactly what shops can be found down the road from where you're looking, all without typing!

You can now find real estate in cities and towns across the US, Australia, New Zealand and India.

Of course, these aren't the only resources available for your new home search. You can use Street View on Google Maps to check out the neighborhood before driving to an open house; use driving directions to find out exactly how to get there; and transit information to work out what your new commute might be if you went ahead and moved house.

Also, if you're in the real estate industry and want to provide listings to be seen in Google Maps, it's really easy to get started.

Happy house hunting this weekend!

Posted by Andrew Foster, Product Manager

Evolving the look of Google Maps

elaine — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 18:09:00 +0000

Today the Google Maps team is rolling out a number of refinements to the look and feel of our maps, the biggest such changes since we first launched about 4.7 years ago. In that time we've been steadily adding details like walkways, address labels, bus stops, new country coverage, and improved satellite imagery, but the look of the map hasn't changed much.

Today's changes are intended to keep the same information-rich map while making it easier to pick out the information that is most useful. The changes affect both the 'Map' and 'Hybrid' styles, and include numerous refinements to colour, density, typography, and road styling worldwide. For example, in map view, local and arterial roads have been narrowed at medium zooms to improve legibility, and the overall colours have been optimized to be easier on the eye and conflict less with other things (such as traffic, transit lines and search results) that we overlay onto the map. Hybrid roads have gained a crisp outline to make them easier to follow, and the overall look is now closer to an augmented satellite view instead of a simple overlay.

In some areas the changes are obvious, while in others they are quite subtle. But overall we hope you'll agree they're a nice improvement. Let's take a quick world tour to see some of these changes in action...

Taking a look at a far zoom of the area around my hometown London, notice the improved readability and density of the roads in the hybrid view. The motorways are easier to follow, and the A-roads are surfaced earlier:

Further north and more zoomed in still, the small town of Portinscale in England's beautiful Lake District shows the benefits of displaying increased road density. Local roads, important in this context, are now visible:

Jumping west across the Atlantic to San Francisco and switching to map view demonstrates the changes in colour and font treatment. All the same information is maintained on the map, but there is more contrast between background detail such as local roads, and important orientation signals like neighbourhoods and major arterial roads:

Heading south to Brasilia illustrates the advantages of the newly optimized road widths. The thinner treatment at this zoom makes it much easier to pick out fine detail in the complex local road shapes:

Heading northwest across the Pacific, Beijing sees some dramatic changes: the subway lines are coloured to fit local convention, the text is aligned with the streets, and the overall colour scheme is tuned to be more harmonious:

And finally, completing the journey where we started, note the finer road widths, cleaner rail lines, and less visually heavy colour scheme in London:

We hope you enjoy the changes to your local area too!

Posted by Jonah Jones, User Experience Designer, Google Maps

Powerful IT for disaster relief

elaine — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 22:47:00 +0000

[Cross-posted with the Google Public Policy Blog]

When disaster strikes in the form of a hurricane, earthquake, famine or flood, information technology can play a crucial role in coordinating a local or global response. Earlier this month, Google hosted over 20 international humanitarian organizations in our Washington, D.C. office for a day of workshops to raise awareness and share experiences about how Google's geographic and data visualization technologies, such as Google Map Maker and the Google Data Visualization API, can aid relief efforts and various humanitarian efforts.

FEMA Administrator Craig Fugate kicked off the day's discussions with a talk about how agencies can leverage citizen-generated data and imagery to better coordinate response efforts, such as video from people using handheld cameras in the midst of a hurricane. He also cited Google Flu Trends as an example of how to glean public health insights from the wisdom of crowds.

After Craig spoke, the American Red Cross, World Bank and Plan International gave presentations on their own experiences using geographic and data visualization technologies in the field. American Red Cross, for example, is using Google Maps to display open shelters (left) and building damage assessments (right) on the map:

Several Google team members then led discussions and presentations on the myriad Google tools at the disposal of relief agencies: Google Earth, Google Maps, Google Map Maker and the Map Maker Data Download program for Africa, Google Labs Fusion Tables, the Google Data Visualization API and more. See, for example, how UNOSAT used Google Map Maker to aid flood relief efforts in West Africa by clearly mapping transport networks (for more examples of Map Maker in action, see here).

Below are a few photos from the event. Our next workshop, hosted in partnership with the United Nations in New York, will be held in November. If you're interested in more details, give @googlepubpolicy a shout on Twitter.

Posted by Jen Mazzon, Maps Community Organizer

A travel companion with Lonely Planet’s favorite places

elaine — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 20:25:00 +0000

Favorite Places was a project we launched a few months ago to celebrate local businesses and places around the world. This month we worked with a few travel editors and authors from Lonely Planet to share their favorite places in New York, London, Melbourne, and Vancouver.

We were also lucky to get Tony Wheeler, one of the co-founders of Lonely Planet, to take a break from his travels and share his favorite places around the world with a map and a Google Earth tour:

Here are some of the highlights from some of the Lonely Planet writers:

Robert Reid, US travel editor in New York- reveals one of the city's "secret" bars, the USA's largest mausoleum, and the newest park built on old rail lines in his favorite places.

Tom Hall, Travel Editor in London shares where you can find London's best hangover cure, a smuggler's pub, and a tunnel under the mighty Thames.

Vivek Wagle, Travel Editor in Melbourne recommends the Chocolate Buddha, exploring a four-story monument to movies, and where to go to find the best crepes.

John Lee, Travel Writer in Vancouver shows what to do in this Olympic host city whether its boozing at a cave-like back alley wine bar, eating at a sustainable seafood shack, or a jogging a nature hugging park trail with beautiful views of the skyline.

I'm used to keeping a Lonely Planet guide in my backpack when traveling, relying on its local knowledge of a big mix of things to see and do, but now I can access its great content through my mobile device or a nearby computer. In fact, when you browse the Lonely Planet website, you'll find that they're using the Google Maps API. This is one example of how our mapping technology is used to help our users plan their trips by allowing them to explore new places and see what other users are saying. After a trip of your own, you can share your adventures and experiences with My Maps, highlighting your favorite places to sightsee, sleep, eat, and explore.

Whether you're a global traveler like Tony or a local expert like Tom Hall, it's always nice to have a friendly travel guide to point you in the right direction. If you want to see more favorite places from local and global experts, visit www.google.com/favoriteplaces.

Posted by David Kim, Associate Product Marketing Manager

Go Mobile with Google Maps

elaine — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 22:10:00 +0000

It's "Go Mobile" week at Google, and across all of Google's blogs, we're giving insight into our philosophy about mobile versions of our products. If there's one product amongst all of Google's that was destined to "go mobile", it is without a doubt Google Maps.

I still remember when I moved to San Francisco several years ago -- before the advent of smartphones -- and I didn't know may way around town. Driving up and down the city's crazy hills was sometimes a fun adventure, but other times an exercise in frustration. When I knew where I wanted to go before I left home, I'd usually print out driving directions beforehand. But any time I left home without directions, or if I decided to go somewhere spur of the moment, all I had was a clumsy paper map. It's not easy pulling over to the side of the road on a 40 degree hill to try to make out the tiny streets on a paper map. And if you've spilled coffee on your map, or it's become tattered... forget it, it's much less useful. So I rarely looked at the map, and I got lost. A lot.

When I think about these experiences, I realize why I remain so passionate about Google Maps for mobile. You get all the power of Google Maps that you use at home, but you can carry it around like you can a paper map. Actually, easier than a paper map since there's no folding, and it connects you to more than just information about where the streets are. Now that I know the city a little better, I can be spontaneous not just when I take a wrong turn. Google Maps on my phone lets me decide to go somewhere spur of the moment, with no preparation and pre-printing directions. The addition of a business directory (remember those giant books?) is liberating as well. If I get a craving for something like "burgers" or "pizza", I just type my craving into Google Maps, which returns all relevant results nearby, and presto, hunger abated. With features like transit and walking directions, I can now figure out how to get there without a car. Street View even helps me recognize the place when I get there.

So if you still haven't got a smartphone, now is a great time to go out and get one. We've got a lot of engineers building Google Maps for all the major mobile operating systems: Android, BlackBerry, iPhone, Palm, S60, and Windows.

Once you take the plunge into smartphones, then getting Google Maps for your phone is easy. Just visit m.google.com/maps in your mobile browser, or go here to send a link to your phone. And if you have any questions for us on our mobile products, submit them here by 11:59pm Pacific time on Tuesday 10/13, and we'll answer some of the top questions on Wednesday on the Google Mobile blog.

Posted by Steve Lee, Product Manager for Google Maps for mobile

Random Hacks of Kindness

elaine — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 00:43:00 +0000

We've posted several blogs about the various ways Google geo tools have contributed to disaster relief efforts. Last year, Direct Relief created a KML of health centers in the wake of Cyclone Nargis. More recently, UNOSAT used Map Maker data during the western Africa floods.

Mapping technologies may be central to understanding and responding to disasters, but many other technologies--such data-feed mechanisms, people finders, and reporting & communication tools--are necessary as well. With this in mind, we're partnering with The World Bank to host the first-ever Random Hacks of Kindness codejam.

The ultimate goal of Random Hacks of Kindness is to save lives. Random Hacks of Kindness will bring technologists and relief workers together to develop technologies that enable disaster victims to help themselves and give first responders and aid workers the tools they need to better help victims--to reduce loss of life and to speed recovery.

Over the course of two and a half days, speakers like FEMA Chief Craig Fugate will expound on the mission, subject matter experts will brief self-organized teams on specific problems, a great deal of coffee will be consumed, and code will be written. Teams will have the opportunity to port their solutions down to Camp Roberts near Paso Robles, CA, where it will be tested in field simulations to provide real-time feedback for multiple iteration cycles.

We hope RHoK generates software solutions that help users predict, prevent, and respond to disasters—but, realistically, we know that coding over a single weekend is only a start. That’s why the codejam in November is the first RHoK, but not the last. In and effort to encourage the developer community to adopt disaster response as a mission, we’ll hold a RHoK event every six to twelve months—sharing learnings from actual events, building on ongoing efforts, and collaborating on promising new technologies.

Join us! The codejam will take place from November 12-14 at the Hacker Dojo, located in Mountain View, CA. Invitations to developers will go out shortly, so if you're interested in coding, serving as a subject matter expert, or sponsoring the event, please visit www.randomhacksofkindness.org.

Posted by Jeff Martin, Google Crisis Response Team

3…2…1… Congratulations

elaine — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 23:29:00 +0000

To keep bringing you new, high-quality imagery in Google Earth & Google Maps, we work directly with several commercial satellite imaging providers. Last week, our partner DigitalGlobe successfully launched their next generation satellite, WorldView-2, aboard a Boeing Delta II 7920 from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. The successful launch of WV2 is another important step forward in making more high resolution, accurate, current imagery available. You can read more about the launch on DigitalGlobe's site or see it for yourself here:

Congratulations to DigitalGlobe!

Posted by Dylan Lorimer, Geo Content Partnerships

A bonus batch of Street View imagery

elaine — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 21:50:00 +0000

Yesterday we announced that Street View imagery is now available for more than 11 cities across Canada, as well as in the Czech Republic. It is always exciting to bring Street View to a new country and hear from all the folks who have been eagerly awaiting it -- the news proved so popular that global traffic to Street View doubled yesterday and there were 28 million views of Canadian images yesterday (nearly as many views as Canadians!). You can see what all our partners had to say and see pictures from the launch event on the @GoogleCanada Twitter account.

But another priority is to refresh and extend our coverage in places we've already been. Now that you've hopefully had the chance to explore some of the stunning new images, we also wanted to point out some updates to the United States and Japan that got a little lost in yesterday's new country excitement. We added new high-resolution imagery in several areas across the US, and have launched several special destinations in Japan through the Street View Partner Program.

We've updated our coverage in New York City, bringing you newer and more high-quality imagery. You can see the newly restored Guggenheim Museum, or take a look at the unique architecture of the Flatiron Building. I'm a big baseball fan, so I'm especially excited that we have the brand-new Yankee Stadium featured in Street View, just in time for the playoffs (go Yankees!):

View Larger Map

We've also expanded our coverage around the Washington, DC metropolitan region, which is where I grew up. Now I can take a trip down memory lane by checking out the park where my dad taught me to play catch or wandering the streets of Old Town Alexandria. DC also has a new baseball stadium for the Nationals, which you can now see in Street View:

View Larger Map

You'll also find updates here in San Francisco:

View Larger Map

There are areas of new imagery across California, Colorado, Texas, Pennsylvania, DC, Florida, and New York. Not all areas in these places have been updated, but we're still hard at work.

In Japan, with our Street View Partner Program, we've been able to add images of 10 popular tourist destinations and special attractions, such as the Sapporo Maruyama Zoo:

View Larger Map

For a really global experience, tour around Huis Ten Bosch, a theme park in Japan modeled as a Dutch village:

View Larger Map

Posted by Elaine Filadelfo, Lat Long Blog Team

A gold medal-worthy Street View update

elaine — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 18:15:00 +0000

En Français

As a former Toronto resident, one of the most enjoyable experiences I look back on is taking in the city from a street car gliding along Queen Street West. From my perch high atop cars and cyclists it afforded me the chance to see vibrant, colourful shops, parks and developing residential communities. I'm happy to share that we've expanded our coverage of Street View on Google Maps to include parts of Canada, so others can virtually experience that same street car ride.

Now, whether from your chesterfield or smart phone, you can explore 360-degree street-level photographs of Canadian hotspots ranging from Parliament Hill and the CN Tower to Old Quebec City and Halifax's Pier 21. We're also thrilled to be shining a light on the site of the 2010 Olympic & Paralympic Winter Games by including imagery of Vancouver and Whistler.

View Larger Map

Whistler Creekside

View Larger Map

Toronto's CN Tower

As you might expect, I am quite a hockey fan - which is why I'm excited that today we're also launching brand new imagery in the Czech Republic, another hockey "hot"spot. You can see some of the beautiful landmarks of Prague, such as the famous Charles Bridge:

View Larger Map

or the National Museum in Wenceslas Square:

View Larger Map

In Canada, we're thrilled to be partnering with several organizations for this launch:
City of Vancouver - With the world coming to this great Canadian city for the 2010 Winter Olympics, explore what it has to offer using Street View and plan your visit
Tourism British Columbia - Using Street View imagery embedded on pages throughout their site, plan your trip to the province hosting the 2010 Winter Games
Tourisme Montréal - Get down to street level and find out why this is considered one of North America's most unique cities
Heritage Toronto - Explore Toronto's storied buildings, museums and iconic structures
ChicWalks.com - Take a shopping tour of top fashion cities using Street View

We've also consulted with the data-protection authorities in Canada and the Czech Republic, and have made user privacy a priority. The imagery was gathered from public roads, and is not real-time. Identifiable faces and licenses plates are blurred automatically, but we also allow any user to flag an image for removal by clicking on the "Report a problem" link at the bottom of every Street View window.

Along with Vancouver, Squamish and Whistler, today's launch includes imagery from Banff, Calgary, Kitchener-Waterloo, Toronto, Ottawa, Montréal, Quebec City and Halifax. If you're disappointed that your hometown or your favorite vacation spot isn't featured yet, sit tight: we're working to add new places!

Whether you want to virtually wander the next Olympic city, or feel like you're strolling across one of Prague's historic bridges, we hope you enjoy exploring Canada and the Czech Republic like never before.

===

Promenez-vous virtuellement au Canada et en République tchèque

En tant qu'ancien résident de Toronto, l'une des plus belles expériences dont je me souviens est la découverte de la ville à bord d'un tramway le long de Queen Street West. Perché au-dessus des voitures et des cyclistes, j'ai pu découvrir les boutiques vibrantes et animées, les parcs et les communautés résidentielles en développement. Je suis heureux de vous annoncer que nous avons élargi notre couverture de Street View dans Google Maps afin d'inclure certaines régions du Canada et de permettre à d'autres personnes de découvrir virtuellement cette même promenade en tramway.

À présent, à partir de votre canapé ou de votre téléphone intelligent, vous pouvez découvrir des images à 360° au niveau de la rue de lieux prisés du Canada, de l'Assemblée Nationale, à la Tour CN, en passant par le Vieux-Québec et la Jetée 21 d'Halifax. Nous sommes également heureux de pouvoir mettre en vedette les sites des Jeux olympiques et paralympiques de 2010 en proposant des images de Vancouver et Whistler.

Parallèlement à la mise à jour de Street View Canada, nous sommes heureux de déployer Street View dans Google Maps en République tchèque - un autre pays qui adore le hockey!

Au Canada, nous sommes enchantés de notre partenariat avec les organisations suivantes dans le cadre de ce lancement :

Ville de Vancouver—Le monde afflue vers cette ville fantastique du Canada, alors découvrez ce qu'elle a à offrir en utilisant Street View sur Google Maps
Tourism British Columbia—En utilisant les images Street View intégrées sur les pages de leur site Web tout entier, planifiez votre voyage dans cette province qui accueillera les Jeux olympiques d'hiver 2010
Tourisme Montréal—Plongez dans les rues pour découvrir pourquoi cette ville est considérée comme l'une des plus exceptionnelles d'Amérique du Nord
Heritage Toronto—Explorez les bâtiments étagés de Toronto, ses musées et ses structures iconiques
ChicWalks.com—Visitez les boutiques des plus grandes villes de la mode en utilisant Street View sur Google Maps

Pour regarder ces images, il vous suffit de vous rendre sur Google Maps et de glisser le bonhomme (icône en haut à gauche) à l’endroit de votre choix sur la carte. Les bordures bleues indiquent l’emplacement où vous pouvez obtenir un point de vue au niveau de la rue. À partir de là, vous pouvez repérer un lieu de rencontre avec vos amis, voir si votre destination offre une aire de stationnement, ou encore explorer votre nouveau quartier ou votre nouvelle ville. Nous vous prions de bien vouloir nous excuser si votre région n'est pas encore couverte : nous y travaillons.

Visitez le site global de Street View où vous trouverez différents conseils utiles et des vidéos de présentation. Si vous êtes responsable d'un site Web ou d'un blog, vous pouvez également y ajouter ces nouvelles images Street View en utilisant My Maps ou l'API Google Maps.

Veuillez noter également que nous avons pris des mesures exceptionnelles afin de protéger la vie privée de nos utilisateurs, tout en nous assurant que chacun puisse tirer parti de ce service. Street View dans Google Maps contient uniquement des images déjà visibles par toute personne qui se promène ou circule sur la voie publique, et aucune image n’est en « temps réel ». En outre, Street View utilise une technologie de brouillage pour masquer les visages identifiables et les plaques d’immatriculation des véhicules.

Si vous découvrez une image que vous considérez inacceptable ou inappropriée, vous pouvez facilement la signaler pour en demander le retrait en cliquant sur « Signaler un problème » dans n’importe quelle fenêtre Street View. Lors du développement de Street View dans Google Maps et de ses mécanismes de protection de la vie privée, nous avons consulté les autorités à la protection de la vie privée du Canada et de la République tchèque.

En plus de Vancouver, Squamish et Whistler, on propose des images de Banff, Calgary, Kitchener-Waterloo, Toronto, Ottawa, Montréal, Québec et Halifax. Nous espérons que vous apprécierez votre visite virtuelle unique du Canada et de la République tchèque.

Posted by Mike Pegg, Product Marketing Manager

Your world, your map

elaine — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 15:30:00 +0000

One of the exciting challenges of working on the Geo team at Google is that the physical world is constantly changing, and keeping on top of these changes is a never-ending endeavor. For example, 15,000 miles of roadway are built in the United States each year. At the same time, we are fortunate to have a large and active community of users who want to share detailed information about the places they live, work, and travel.

So, as part of our ongoing commitment to provide the richest, most up-to-date maps possible, we continuously explore ways to integrate new information from users and authoritative partners into Google Maps. Two years ago, we began allowing you to move map markers to improve address precision; since early last year, you've been able to add locations; and over the past few years, we've been partnering directly with transit agencies to integrate their data.

Today you may notice that the United States looks a bit different in Google Maps -- all of that new green park land was probably a giveaway. That's because we've worked directly with a wide range of authoritative information sources to create a new base map dataset. In our experience, these organizations that create the data do the best job of keeping it accurate and up-to-date. For example, in the US there are a number of publicly accessible geospatial datasets created by the government for the Census, land surveying, and transportation. These datasets provide information on everything from road networks and water bodies to toll roads and bridges. By integrating this information, and working with specialized data sources like the USDA Forest Service's Forest Boundaries and the US Geological Survey's National Hydrography Dataset, we've been able to expand and improve features in our maps like parks and water bodies. Satellite, aerial, and Street View imagery also helped. With overhead imagery, we could zoom in on roadway details to figure out details like the size of the road. Our Street View imagery, which you know as a tool to help you explore new places, turns out to be very helpful to understand road restrictions and confirm street data by reading street signs.

The best part about this new dataset is that we've been able to add a lot of new, detailed information to Google Maps - information that helps people better explore and get around the real world. For example, college students will be pleased to see maps of many campuses; and cyclists will now find many more trails and paths to explore. Soon we even plan on providing you with biking directions to take advantage of this new data. Of course, in the true Google spirit of "launch and iterate," we plan to work with more data sources to add new features in the map.

So where do you fit into this? Well, we've found our users are also remarkable data sources themselves, so we've added a new tool to Google Maps that lets you communicate directly with Google about any updates that you think need to be made to our maps. You'll find this "Report a Problem" link on the bottom right of Google Maps (you can also find it by right-clicking on the map). Has that new highway on-ramp finally opened up? Do we have an outdated name for your local school? Was Main Street converted into a pedestrian-only walkway? Tell us! Once we've received your edit or suggestion we'll confirm it with other users, data sources, or imagery. We hope to resolve each edit within a month. If you submit your email address, we'll even keep you posted on our progress. The video below walks you through the process, or learn more here:

We're constantly working on making sure Google Maps is up-to-date, accurate, and includes the information that you care about most. Your edits and feedback will not only help us achieve this goal, but will help everyone in your community to get around town better and explore the world.

Posted by Andrew Lookingbill, Software Engineer

Featured Map Makers: Faraz & Jabran

elaine — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 18:00:00 +0000

Name: Faraz Ahmad (farazilu)

Day job: Web programmer

Region mapped: Pakistan

Name: Jabran Rafique (جabran)

Day job: IT administrator

Region mapped: Pakistan

Faraz and Jabran are both Pakistani-born, high tech workers living in the United Kingdom. They both learned about Map Maker on the Internet, and they have formed a virtual team with a mission to map Pakistan. Although they live 400 miles apart and have never met in person, they collaborate on mapping Pakistan and providing other mappers with advice and tips on mapping the region.

Time lapse video of Gujranwala, Pakistan:

Faraz started using Map Maker shortly after it launched in 2008, and he is now the top mapper with more edits than any other user. Jabran found Map Maker a few months after Faraz. Both mappers started with their home towns and have subsequently mapped many cities in Pakistan. "It's like mapping your own world -- describing your world to other people. In the UK, we use Google Maps to find directions if we want to go somewhere. But we couldn't do that in Pakistan. This is a big opportunity to help other people find things," says Faraz.

Time lapse video of Karachi, Pakistan:

"I spend so much time on the Internet looking at new technologies. It's like a hobby for me to develop maps -- time spent positively because I know it will help others. In Pakistan, using Map Maker to find an efficient way to get somewhere can save a life in an emergency situation," says Faraz.

Experienced and accomplished mappers with more than 70,000 map edits between them, Faraz and Jabran collaborate with many others to map the region as well. Jabran explains, "I post on the group when I finish mapping a city. A fellow who just joined recently is making some edits near Lahore, adding names to streets and local businesses. So we help each other. If one can map it and another can name it, that's great. Someday I will open Google Maps and see all of Pakistan mapped!"

In areas of Pakistan that the virtual team knows less well, they use the satellite imagery on Map Maker to draw the roads. When they meet people from Pakistan, Faraz & Jabran ask them where they are from and what areas they know. "Then I drag them to Map Maker and ask them the names of roads, shops, hospitals, whatever. We're trying to make the maps more and more elaborate. Together we can make a difference."

Jabran recalls that, one weekend, a couple of guys with local knowledge of an area sat with him as he edited the maps -- here's one small example of an addition to the map he made based on their knowledge. "Great thanks to all those many people who agree to help in such a way," says Jabran.

Living in the UK, Faraz and Jabran use Google Maps extensively, particularly on their mobile phones, to find their way around and explore new places. Through their contributions to mapping Pakistan with Google Map Maker, their goal is to help all Google Maps users in Pakistan to find their way, too. We wish both of these Map Maker "power users" all the best in their efforts to map their worlds, and look forward to seeing their goal of completing the Pakistan map fully realized!

Posted by Jennifer Mazzon, Maps Community Organizer

Preserving forests to reduce carbon emissions

elaine — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 15:25:00 +0000

Following last week's launch of the new Climate Change in Google Earth tour series, we are excited to announce the release of three more tours. These tours shed light on solutions that non-profit organizations and communities are doing to prevent or adapt to further climate change.

The new tours we released today all involve deforestation -- preventing, protecting, and preserving our global forests around the world in an effort to reduce emissions of carbon dioxide, a large part of the cause of climate change.

Greenpeace tells a story of a successful collaboration between companies, such as McDonald's, and Greenpeace campaigners to establish a moratorium on further destruction of Amazon rainforest for soybean plantations.

Conservation International flies you through Madagascar, where they are helping local communities forge new economic paths through REDD (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation) projects. Stone Gossard, of Pearl Jam, also speaks about their support of Conservation International's efforts through donations from concert ticket revenue.

Take a virtual tour with WWF of the peatland swamps in Sebangau, Borneo. With the deforestation and burning of peatland for agriculture, vast amounts of carbon emissions are released. WWF has helped local communities preserve their peatland swamps, which you can fly over in this tour.

See all these tours now by visiting www.google.com/cop15, and clicking on the button for each tour. Then stay tuned for more!

Posted by Tanya Keen, Google Earth Outreach

This week in @googlemaps

elaine — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 21:40:00 +0000

Here are this week's highlights from Twitter - remember, you can follow us at twitter.com/googlemaps. You'll find some fun links and announcements you may have missed:

Impressive global mashup showing where iconic music album cover photos were taken - over 700 of them http://bit.ly/3YsOa1

Map Maker data from 19 new countries & territories now graduated to Google Maps. Some amazing before/after shots http://bit.ly/pbAHd

Making a statement on the floor of the Rio subway http://twitpic.com/jvczn

NYC pizza quest helped by Google Maps http://bit.ly/q96uu (via @nydailynews)

国庆北京交通限行地图。 http://bit.ly/3faQ98 [Road closures in Beijing during National Day parade on October 1st.]

Wild card: Ever wanted @googleearth as a carpet? Sacramento Int'l Airport has a lovely sample http://bit.ly/l2XmN

Posted by Julie Zhou, Chief Maps Twitterer

Where in the world is… (Answers)

elaine — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 20:50:00 +0000

As always, great job figuring out the answers to all the questions. I hope you had fun deciphering the clues. Here are the answers in case any stumped you. For even more fun exploring the new imagery, here is a KML outlining all the areas receiving new data.

1) Once a political capitol, now a financial capitol, MapMakers in this city rapidly growing have cried for updated imagery and we have delivered.

-- Karachi, Pakistan

2) With updated imagery over this city, you can see leftovers from the Texas Tech - Virginia game.

-- Jacksonville, FL

3) This former "closed city" just got a GeoEye-1 update.

-- Sevastopol, Ukraine

4) The wettest area of the continental United States has gotten an update. (Hint: it's a Rain Forest)

-- Olympic National Park, Washington

5) This beloved stadium, which was built for the 1978 World Cup, is still in pretty good shape from the looks of it. There's even a go-kart track in the parking lot!

-- Cordoba, Argentina

6) Ever wonder where Aluminum comes from? Africa's second largest Aluminum production site has gotten new imagery.

-- Maputo, Mozambique

7) This great palace was constructed between 1857 and 1859, but was mostly destroyed by allied bombing in World War II. Finally re-built in the 90's, this site is now a major tourist destination.

-- Mandalay Palace, Myanmar

8) Though you can't do any shopping here from your desk, you can now view South America's largest open-air market with increased clarity.
-- La Cancha in Cochabamba, Bolivia

9) Connected to civilization by an ice road and a gravel runway, this diamond mine is difficult to operate.

-- Diavik Diamond Mine, Canada

Following is a more complete version of the updates in this data push:

Americas:
United States: Bradford County (FL), Broward County (FL), Baker County (FL), Dade County (FL), Holmes County (FL), Charlotte County (FL), Monroe County (FL), Seminole County (FL), Union County (FL), Washington County (FL), Highlands County (FL), Duval County (FL), Levy County (FL), Glades County (FL), Marion County (FL), Hendry County (FL), Osceola County (FL), St John's County (FL), Lake County (FL), Putnam County (FL), Boston Metro Area (MA), Brooklyn (NY), Cleveland (OH), Santa Rosa (CA), Ventura County (CA), Mission Viejo (CA), Kitsap County (WA), Washington State, Bosie (ID), Cheyenne (WY), Wichita (KS), St Louis (MO), Minneapolis (MN), La Crosse County (WI), Porter County (ID), Kenton County (KY), Campbell County (KY), Aiken County (SC), Wayne County (NC), Lenoir County (NC), Currituck County (NC), Armstrong County (PA), New Haven (CT), Hartford (CT), Portland (ME), Garret County (MD), Allegany County (MD), Washington County (MD), Howard County (MD), Montgomery County (MD), Prince George's County (MD), Anne Arundel County (MD), Harford County (MD), Cecil County (MD), Kent County (MD), Queen Anne's County (MD), Talbot County (MD), Caroline County (MD), Saint Mary's County (MD), Wicomico County (MD), Worcester County (MD),
Canada: Diavik, Ivujivik

Brazil: Impz, Maraba

Argentina: Mendoza, Cordoba

Bolivia: Cochabamba

Chile: Iquique

Europe, Middle East, & Africa:

Spain: Hondarribia

Portugal: Porto Santo, Madeira

Ukraine: Sevestopol

Russia: Kamyshin, Ust-Illimsk, Norilsk

Algeria: Medea

Libya: Tobruk

Morocco: Tetouan, Khouribga

Burkina Faso: Ouagadougou

Niger: Madaoua

Nigeria: Lagos, Port Harcourt

Zambia: Kitwe, Ndola

Mozambique: Maputo, Nampula

Asia & Oceania:

Pakistan: Karachi

Myanmar: Mandalay

China: Lhasa, Shihezi, Hami, Zichuan, Liazhou

New 2.5m base imagery for: Parts of New Zealand.

Posted by Matt Manolides, Senior GIS Specialist

One place, one page

elaine — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 22:00:00 +0000

When you're looking for information about a restaurant down the street or a museum across the country, you sometimes find relevant information is scattered across the web. Instead of doing the research all over the web, wouldn’t it be great to see all the information for that place in... one place?

Starting today, you can do that with Place Pages for Google Maps. A Place Page is a web page for every place in the world, organizing all the world's information for that place. And we really mean every place: there are Place Pages for businesses, points of interest, transit stations, landmarks, and cities all over the world. To find a Place Page, click on "more info" in your Google Maps search results or "more info" in the info bubble on the map.

If I'm visiting Sydney, I can visit the Place Pages of popular destinations like the Opera House, Aquarium, and Garden Palace to see photos, find nearby public transit, and even discover related maps users have created with landmarks in Australia. For businesses, I can check out "More Details" to see where all the information is coming from or even edit to add my own information or reviews. For example, if I look at the Place Page for my favorite chocolate shop, Burdick Chocolate Cafe in Boston, I can see relevant photos, read all the user reviews, browse the menu, see their hours, and even find out what transit lines take me there.

We think Place Pages will make searching much easier (and hopefully more fun!) for our users, but we're also excited about what it means for business owners. By default, users looking for local businesses can easily view ratings for your business, reviews, related maps, find nearby transit options showing them how to get to you, and take a look at your business with a Street View preview - and it's all on one page. If you claim your listing with the Local Business Center, you'll be able to make sure there's even more rich content on the Place Page, like photos, YouTube videos, hours of operation, types of products or services offered, and several other categories you can submit. You can even add a coupon that will appear on your Place Page to really entice potential customers. By editing your Local Business Center listing your place page will automatically be updated.

Another nice benefit of Place Pages for Google Maps is that they will come with a friendly URL that will make it easy to remember and link to. For example, you'll find the San Francisco Place Page at google.com/places/us/california/san-francisco-city. We're working on rolling this out for all Place Pages; right now we include cities and most businesses; if your business isn't included just yet, we're working on it!

If you want to learn a bit more before trying it out for yourself, you can read our post on the Official Google Blog - then start exploring all sorts of places!

Posted by Avni Shah, Senior Product Manager, Place Pages team

Map Maker graduation, Part III

elaine — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 20:20:00 +0000

Our ability to explore maps relies on having access to quality data. Much of our world has yet to have access to accurate digital mapping data. This is why we originally created Google Map Maker, and why we're excited today to announce 19 new countries and territories to that have made the leap from being drawn on Google Map Maker to being pushed on Google Maps:

Algeria, Angola, Congo, Faroe Islands, French Guiana, Guyana, Haiti, Kazakhstan, Liberia, Morocco, Namibia, New Caledonia, Papua New Guinea, Qatar, Suriname, Swaziland, Tunisia, Turks and Caicos Islands, Western Sahara

as well as 11 that were added in July:

Bahamas, Bermuda, British Indian Ocean Territory, Fiji, Greenland, Laos, Mali, Marshall Islands, Micronesia, Pitcairn Islands, Saint Helena

Almaty, Kazakhstan

Paramaribo, Suriname

Georgetown, Guyana

Noumea, New Caledonia

Thanks to all of the wonderful Map Maker contributors. We hope more of you will join us in mapping your world. Here's a full list of Map Maker countries now on Maps.

Posted by Anand Srinivasan, Vishwajith Krishnamurthy and Jessica Pfund, Map Maker Team

Where in the world is …

elaine — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 22:15:00 +0000

It's been a month since out last imagery update and I know you're all hungry for more data, so today we've finished pushing out some great imagery to Google Earth. Below are a few hints that should help you find some of the new imagery. Happy hunting!

1) Once a political capitol, now a financial capitol, MapMakers in this city rapidly growing have cried for updated imagery and we have delivered.

2) With updated imagery over this city, you can see leftovers from the Texas Tech - Virginia game.

3) This former "closed city" just got a GeoEye-1 update.

4) The wettest area of the continental United States has gotten an update. (Hint: it's a Rain Forest)

5) This beloved stadium, which was built for the 1978 World Cup, is still in pretty good shape from the looks of it. There's even a go-kart track in the parking lot!

6) Ever wonder where Aluminum comes from? Africa's second largest Aluminum production site has gotten new imagery.

7) This great palace was constructed between 1857 and 1859, but was mostly destroyed by allied bombing in World War II. Finally re-built in the 90's, this site is now a major tourist destination.

8) Though you can't do any shopping here from your desk, you can now view South America's largest open-air market with increased clarity.

9) Connected to civilization by an ice road and a gravel runway, this diamond mine is difficult to opperate.

Posted by Posted by Matt Manolides, Senior GIS Strategist

Explore our changing climate in Google Earth

elaine — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 17:20:00 +0000

Today we're launching a new series of narrated Google Earth tours all about climate change as part of Google's effort to make climate information accessible leading up to the UN Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen in December. This series brings together scientific geo-data about our world under a changing climate -- in a manner that can be explored interactively. The data includes temperature and precipitation projections and the rising risks to food security, water stress, coastal zones, health, and much more.

You can view the first released tour, Confronting Climate Change, narrated by Al Gore that takes you through some of the worst impacts expected due to our changing climate, and points us towards the upcoming tours introducing the range of solutions for confronting it.

This is just the first of a series of tours that we will be rolling out in the next few weeks. You'll see both global overview tours as well as case studies where you can zoom in to certain parts of the world for a deeper look at what non-profit organizations and communities are doing to cope with climate change.

Posted by Karin Tuxen-Bettman, Google Earth Outreach

Ocean Now: Diving the Gemelas Seamounts

elaine — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 00:15:00 +0000

[National Geographic has recently begun their Ocean Now expedition to Cocos Island and the Gemelas Seamounts west of Costa Rica. We've invited National Geographic explorer Sylvia Earle to author this guest post to share stories about her submarine dives on the DeepSee to coincide with the update to our Ocean Expeditions layer, which features this expedition. --Ed.]

LatLong: 5 degrees 33.424 minutes N, 87 degrees 2.489 minutes.

I’m here near Cocos Island five degrees north of the Equator in the eastern Pacific with a National Geographic Ocean Now project involving two ships, the Hanse Explorer and the Argo. I’m on board the Argo, which has a beautiful little submarine called the DeepSee. On the surface, there’s a support boat that’s called the TopSee.

We’re all having a lot of fun out here, and accomplishing a lot of good scientific observations—actually, a few breakthroughs! We were able to go out to two seamounts that have never been looked at with a submarine before. You can’t dive them, because they’re too deep.

The only way they’ve been sampled before is by fishermen. There’s plenty of evidence of that, because during the four dives that we made on them during the past week, we could see literally miles of fishing line wrapped around and around and around these beautiful undersea mountains.

We even saw a big grouper that had a hook still attached in its mouth, and a long line that had been there so long that growth was on the line. He was an awfully skinny grouper, because I think he had trouble feeding. It really breaks your heart to see what happens when derelict fishing gear causes problems for the creatures here. Not just those immediately caught, but those that suffer beyond the time of the fishing.

Generally, though, it’s good news: we have seen lots of fish, corals that are recovering from El Niño years when much of the coral dies. Here’s the thing: During the last strong El Niño, about 90 percent of the coral here at Cocos died. Jorge Cortés, the chief Costa Rican scientist on this ship, who has studied this area for many years, points out that if 90 percent of a rain forest died, people would be up in arms. They would be so concerned! When 90 percent of the coral reef dies, people are concerned, but they don’t react with quite the same passion that they do when something on the land happens that everybody can see.

Underwater, our job partly is to demonstrate the problems that are occurring, and why it matters to everybody—why what happens to the ocean affects you wherever you are, and also how what we do affects the ocean in a way that is important for us to understand. The ocean gives us the oxygen we breathe. Most of the oxygen we inhale comes from the sea. The water that falls out of the sky largely originates in the sea. So you don’t have to be living by the sea to be living by the sea, because the sea really governs life, everybody’s life. It’s really important for us to understand that, so that we can do a better job of taking care of the ocean that takes care of us.

Posted by Sylvia A. Earle, Explorer-in-Residence, National Geographic

Desktop discovery following Ocean Expeditions in Google Earth

elaine — Mon, 21 Sep 2009 22:50:00 +0000

Today we've updated our Ocean Expeditions layer in the Ocean folder in Google Earth. Each ship icon represents the most recent post from either a live expedition or one within the last 6 months (look for the yellow-filled ship icon) or the post from the beginning of a historical expedition (look for the blue-filled ship icon). We have over 40 Ocean Expeditions including historical tracks from National Geographic's Ocean Now Pristine Seas Expedition, the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, Scripps Institute of Oceanography, MBARI, National Oceanography Centre, Southampton, the Cousteau Society, the Census of Antarctic Marine Life, and the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).

We recently added the US Coast Guard Healy arctic icebreaker expedition (see images), followed the Scripps Seaplex expedition to the Pacific garbage patch, and tracked Roz Savage on the second leg of her solo global row from Hawaii to Tarawa, a Polynesian island nation located in the Pacific Ocean midway between Hawaii and Australia, where she arrived September 9th. You can click on any expedition and from that balloon, download the entire expedition by clicking the right arrow in the bottom right of the balloon. Follow along as scientists and explorers discover hydrothermal vents, coral reefs and strange, deep sea creatures.

In particular, check out our new live expeditions:

National Geographic has recently begun their Ocean Now expedition to Cocos Island in Costa Rica. From their ship blog, you can read about their mission to explore this pristine reef area, the first post from explorer Enric Sala, and you can follow their latest photos and videos in geographic context from their Expedition Maps site using Google Maps and the Google Earth plugin. Watch a video of explorer Sylvia Earle's sub dive where she met "Georgina", a hawksbill sea turtle.
The Antinea Foundation is sponsoring the Changing Oceans Expedition, a ten-year journey through the world's most important marine areas allowing scientists to do Research, communicators to Educate and anyone to follow along virtually online. You can come along using Google Earth (download the kml pointer here) or on the expedition website, where they have the embedded Google Earth plugin. Those on the expedition will explore, study and fully share ocean discoveries, day by day, moment by moment, through this new, interactive media. Over the course of a decade the Changing Oceans Expedition ship, Fleur de Passion, will sail to 100 of the ocean's most important sites, from the shores of the Mediterranean to the farthest reaches of the South Pacific, spending 2009 in the Mediterranean Sea, the Adriatic, and in Croatia.

Open this kml in Google Earth and discover for yourself. Check back to the blog soon to hear directly from someone currently on one of the featured expeditions - Sylvia Earle herself!

Posted by Pete Giencke, Michael Rubinstein, & Jenifer Foulkes, the Ocean in Google Earth team

Visiting Korea with Google Earth

elaine — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 21:40:00 +0000

One of my favorite places in Korea is the Insa-dong art district. Whenever I have guests I take them there to show off Korean traditional goods and galleries, but now I can show all my overseas friends and coworkers Insa-dong as well as many other tourist highlights around the country.

If you've dreamt of traveling to beautiful Korea, you can now turn on the "Korea Tourism" layer under the Travel and Tourism folder in the Google Earth Gallery to make a virtual visit or get a jump-start on planning your trip. The Korea Tourism Organization has worked to develop this Korea Tourism layer, which allows you to discover rich information about landmarks and attractions all over the country. You will see some of the country's highlights, which include temples, palaces, amusement parks, springs, shopping places, and much more. You can also enjoy virtual tours, create an itinerary, or turn on other interesting travel-related layers such as Panoramio, Wiki, or 360cities to help plan your trip. Be sure you don't miss out on Dongdaemun gate, 63 City, and Namsan Hanok Village.

Posted by Sun-Gi Hong, Google Korea

Spreading the word about Local Business Center

elaine — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 23:50:00 +0000

Last week I was in Anaheim, CA as a new partner with Sysco's iCare program, helping restaurant owners claim their Google business listings with Local Business Center. One interaction that really stuck out in my mind was with Geof Gaines who owns Coffee Depot - the self-described largest coffee house in the world - in Riverside, CA.The hours in his unclaimed business listing were incorrect, and he wanted to add videos to show off the musical acts that perform at his shop. After he verified his listing by phone, he got access to Coffee Depot's dashboard and was immediately able to see that in mid-July, the number of people who found his listing jumped dramatically and has been steadily high ever since. He thought back and realized that the spike happened at the same time that a local paper had written about his business. Now he's planning to closely monitor his listing's dashboard to see how various marketing and publicity tactics perform.

We want a lot more businesses to be able to have this "Aha!" moment, getting insights on data that they could never see before. So, building upon our Favorite Places celebration of local businesses back in June, we're launching new efforts to make sure that business owners know about Local Business Center, and that users know how to take full advantage of the statistics in their dashboard.

First, all Local Business Center users in the U.S. who opted into receiving newsletters will now receive a monthly email report on how their business listings performed on Google in the previous month, including how many times the listing was seen, how many people clicked to the business' website, and more.

We'll also provide tips for optimizing business listings, such as advice on adding photos, uploading videos, and creating coupons (coming up in the next newsletter!). We'll also highlight successful businesses of the month and let businesses know about other Google products and offers that can help grow their business. You can find August's newsletter here, but make sure you're on the list to automatically receive future installments by opting in to newsletters in your account. Once you sign up, watch for the latest newsletter with your own customized business stats and all sorts of tips to be arriving soon.

Second, with lots of positive feedback on our Local Business Center introduction video, we decided to make a 30 second version to air in places where business owners are looking. We launched it earlier this week on television with Google TV Ads, and on various websites across Google's content network. In the video, you'll hear an overview of all that the Local Business Center has to offer, directly from Carter Maslan, our Director of Product Management for Local Search. So keep your eye out for the video (and pass it along to any business owners you know!).

Businesses can claim their listing and get started at google.com/lbc. It's been great to get to talk to people like Geof and other business owners, and to hear their feedback. If you have any interesting ideas for other types of outreach or partnerships, let us know.

Posted by Ryan Hayward, Product Marketing Manager

Discover new places with related maps

elaine — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 18:50:00 +0000

Now that I've lived in San Francisco for almost a year, I've hit most of the big tourist attractions, but still don't quite feel like a local. There are still plenty of neighborhoods I've yet to explore, a list of restaurants I'm still dying to try out, and a whole lot of scenic views I haven't discovered. I've been using Google Maps from the day I moved here to get the lay of the land, find my way around, and master public transportation. Now that I'm a little better oriented, I've started figuring out different ways that Google Maps can help me explore.

I've found that searching for user-created maps can be a great way to get local flavor. When I do a regular search for "ice cream," I'll get a list of ice cream places in the city. But, when I click Show search options and then select "Related maps," I can find user-created maps showcasing their own favorite ice cream spots, complete with reviews and flavor recommendations. Doing a "Related maps" search for "scenic views" returned maps showing city spots with awesome views that I never knew existed. It's a great way to create your own customized city tour, taking advantage of local knowledge and user recommendations.

And, if a user has created a map that you particularly like, click their username to check out their Maps profile. There, you can find out if they've created any other maps you might be interested in. You can also share your recommended places with the world by creating a public My Map, that will show up in other users' search results. To learn more about My Maps, visit the Google Maps User Guide.

Posted by Sarah Gordon, Tips Guru

Google Earth 5.1: Think fast

elaine — Wed, 09 Sep 2009 18:40:00 +0000

When we released Google Earth 5 earlier this year, we packed it full of amazing new features. We opened up two-thirds of the planet to exploration by letting you dive into the oceans; with historical imagery, we added the ability to go back in time to see how our planet has changed over the years; with touring, we made it easy for anyone to create and share guided, narrated stories; and with 3D Mars, we made it easy to leave Earth's orbit and explore the Red Planet.

But here at Google, we've realized that one of the most important features of all is speed. One of our key design principles is "fast is better than slow." So for the newest version of Google Earth, we've been hard at work making it faster.

We've made a lot of adjustments under the hood, like improving memory utilization so we can show more buildings, layers, and user content. We improved our shaders (that's graphics-speak for small programs that run inside your graphics processor) to make the atmosphere draw faster. We also worked to reduce stuttering (known as frame drops) to provide an even smoother experience as you fly around the globe. When we draw imagery, we now use compression technology to use less memory and graphics resources. We know that waiting for a program to start-up can be really frustrating, so we improved our start-up time by 25%. In our Google Earth API (which allows developers to include Google Earth right in their websites), we have made API calls significantly faster, which means that our developers can now do even more.

What does all of this mean to you? A faster, smoother experience when you're flying around the globe. Download the latest version (Google Earth 5.1), head on over to Paris, and turn on the road layer without fear of slowing things down. Or turn on one of the Rumsey Map layers from our gallery and see the world as it was drawn by Cassini in 1790 without missing a beat.

We've also made another exciting change with the release: our browser plug-in is automatically included when you install Google Earth (PC-only for now.) This means that once you've downloaded Google Earth 5.1, you can explore all of the exciting Google Earth sites that our developers have made without having to mess around with another installation. You can learn about endangered marine species, or perhaps practice landing a lunar rover before your next big expedition. Now these and many more Google Earth web applications are just a click away.

Download the latest version of Google Earth at http://earth.google.com, and fly around the globe faster than ever before.

Posted by Peter Birch, Product Manager

Mapping for disasters with UNOSAT

elaine — Wed, 09 Sep 2009 17:00:00 +0000

Seasonal floods are currently affecting West Africa. Senegal, Niger, Burkina Faso, Benin, Ghana, Sierra Leone, Mali, Liberia and Guinea are all experiencing significant damage to infrastructure and agriculture due to heavy rainfall causing floods in numerous locations. More than 350,000 people have been impacted thus far.

Based on requests from the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, theSpace Charter - created to acquire imagery in the wake of disasters - was activated, and UNITAR/UNOSAT started satellite mapping. UNITAR/UNOSAT is formally recognized by the Space Charter as “Charter User Intermediary” -- this status grants the privilege “to act as gateway for request submissions on behalf of UN users related with humanitarian actions”. Imagery from Space Charter members was sent to UNOSAT within a few hours after being taken. A dedicated technical team immediately started the analysis, and turned this near real-time satellite imagery into useful information products, which were disseminated to a range of users in the field, at national & regional offices, and in headquarters. This rapid mapping production chain ensures all relevant parties simultaneously receive the same crucial information as quickly as possible.

One important component in this process was the use of the Google Map Maker data to clearly map the transport networks, allowing emergency managers to plan and implement relief assistance. For example, they could avoid roads that are marked on the maps as likely to be flooded by comparing satellite flood layers with road layers.

Satellite image derived flood map showing current situation in Niger - flooded areas in red.

Courtesy: UNITAR/UNOSAT & International Charter Space and Major Disasters

We've been pleased to hear positive feedback directly about this combination of imagery with Map Maker data directly from those in the field -- as one simply stated, "Thumbs up!"

Posted by Einar Bjorgo, Head, Rapid Mapping, Applications and User Relations, UNITAR/UNOSAT; France Lamy, Program Manager, Google.org

Imagery & resources for LA wildfires

elaine — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 23:10:00 +0000

My wife and I were planning a trip to visit a friend in Pasadena for the upcoming Labor Day weekend. We've been hearing about the huge Station Fire burning in the nearby hills, and have been diligently searching for maps and news with the latest updates. For us, it's a mere matter of deciding whether we'll hop in the car tomorrow, but for many of you out there, the latest update on the fire's progress will help you keep tabs on loved ones or perhaps even your own property and safety. That's why a cross-team group at Google has launched a California Wildfires landing page, with:

a My Maps map from the Los Angeles Times tracking the latest position of the fire,
status updates from the US Forest Service,
YouTube videos of the fire,
a Google News gadget with latest news and
other updates from relevant sources

In addition, our partners at DigitalGlobe have made available some stunning satellite imagery tracking the fires, which you can get by downloading this kml to open within Google Earth.

We also created a time-series of lower resolution imagery from NASA's MODIS Terra satellite. To watch the progression of the fire simply download the KML and click the play button in the upper left hand corner of the Google Earth viewport. You may want to play it more than once to allow the imagery to load if you want a smoother transition during playback. You can also turn individual images on and off.

If you live in the area, please stay safe. Depending on how the winds shift and the continuing heroic work of the firefighters, Laura and I just might see on you on Colorado Blvd. this weekend.

Posted by Jesse Friedman, Associate Product Marketing Manager

Featured Map Maker: Leonel

elaine — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 20:32:00 +0000

[This post kicks off an ongoing series highlighting members of the Map Maker community. - Ed.]

Name: Leonel John Foronda (Leonel)
Day job: Physician
Region mapped: Philippines

When asked about Google Map Maker, 32-year-old physician Leonel John Foronda compares Google’s online map creation platform to the Human Genome Project, a scientific milestone completed early in the 21st century. “This project started out with the aim of ‘mapping’ the entire human DNA,” says Leonel. He then explains that, similar to the Human Genome project, which took years to complete, Google’s vision of plotting an online, searchable map of huge portions of the world is a daunting task. But such a goal is achievable with local people like him who are interested and willing to help.

“Before online maps were available to the general public, the only detailed print maps I had were those of North America. It was frustrating that maps of my hometown of Laoag City, Philippines for instance, were non-existent as there was little information about our roads, sub-localities, and our smaller political units, or ‘barangays’ as we call them.”

Below, check out the timelapse video of how the map of Laoag City, Philippines has changed from just one year ago.

Leonel discovered Map Maker in October 2008. “I was already a Google Earth user at the time. Although it was somewhat cool to play around with Earth, it was also disheartening to see major roads in Manila that were coarse and did not really align with the satellite map,” recounts Leonel. Around that time, he was surprised to see a detailed map of Manila credited to "Google Map Maker" embedded on a website. He immediately went to mapmaker.google.com and started making his own edits.

His first edit was to draw a road called J.P. Rizal Street in his hometown of Laoag City, whose map had been completely blank except for the main highway. After only a few weeks, Leonel was hooked. Due to his unpredictable working hours at the hospital, he tries to squeeze in his map-making where time permits, provided he has his laptop as well as a decent Internet connection.

At present, Leonel has 17,000+ edits in Map Maker, making him the top contributor in the Philippines. After spending hours mapping every square meter of Laoag City, he meticulously edited the boundaries and features of nearby provinces such as Cagayan, Ilocos Sur, Apayao, and other regions of the Philippines.

“Since it’s all voluntary, my contributions are published on Google Maps and Map Maker for free. Although we receive no compensation, I personally would like to think of it as my own little way of helping Google’s mission to map the world.” However, he admits that there are perks to being a "Google Map Maker Power User".

In April 2009, Leonel, with fellow map makers civil engineer Dante Varias and university student Wayne Dell Manuel, represented the Philippines in an international Google Map Maker User Conference in Bangalore, India. The three joined delegates from around the world to learn from each other’s experiences and hear from Googlers about updates to the product. Afterwards, the three shared their experiences from the event with more than 20 Map Maker users in the Philippines at a mapping party.

(l-r) Map Maker Power Users Leonel (17,000+ edits), Dante (14,000+ edits) and Wayne (10,000+ edits) speak at mapping party in Bubba Gump Shrimp Co. restaurant in the Philippines

“Personally, I feel honored that I am making something that could help people, businesses, and even tourism boards by placing them on the map. Anyone who has knowledge of a particular place, such as his or her own hometown, is encouraged to contribute to Map Maker. Becoming a mapper in this platform does not need high-level technical skills as there are experienced people who are ready to guide and moderate your edits,” says Leonel.

With more and more people becoming map makers, he hopes that like the success of the Human Genome Project at mapping human DNA, the online map of the physical world will someday be complete.

Posted by Julie Zhou, Associate Product Marketing Manager

Street View gets down to business

elaine — Thu, 27 Aug 2009 20:50:00 +0000

Finding a business with Street View just became easier. For example, if you search for "thai restaurants near mountain view" on Google Maps, and click on a search result, a bubble pops up with various links, including a link to "Street View".

You can click on the "Street View" link to see the restaurant marked directly in Street View with a 3D marker just like the one you'd find on the map. Clicking the marker displays more details about the restaurant without leaving Street View.

If you move along the street, you will continue to see the marker in front of the restaurant, letting you see a business in the context of what else is around it. Double-clicking the marker will jump you back to the closest view.

While you are in Street View, you can also click on another search result in the left panel to jump to the closest view for that result. Take a look at this video for a quick overview:

We use the position of the business on the map to approximately display it as a 3D marker in Street View. We are continuously working on improving the quality of the underlying map, and this will result in more and more businesses being positioned with high accuracy in Street View over time.

Posted by Abhijit Ogale and Andrea Frome, Street View engineers

Arterial traffic available on Google Maps

elaine — Tue, 25 Aug 2009 15:15:00 +0000

Commuters have long relied on traffic sites to help them determine their last-minute path around poor traffic on the highway. But if the traffic looks bad on the highways, you'll probably want to know how it looks on the alternate routes through arterials. I usually would just guess that the traffic on back roads is light, but with this new launch the guesswork is eliminated: Google Maps will now show you live traffic conditions on arterial roads in selected cities. Just zoom-in on the city you're interested in, and click the "Traffic" button in the upper-right corner of the map. As you zoom in closer to an area of interest, we'll color the arterial roads, in addition to the highways, to show current traffic conditions. Just as with the highways, the colors correspond to the speed of traffic (relative to the speed limit of the road): green is free sailing, yellow is medium congestion, red is heavy congestion, and red/black is stop-and-go traffic. For example, here's how traffic looks near the Google Seattle office today.

Here are some examples of what you can find out with this new feature:

Highways aren't looking great. Probably time to take the scenic route!

Trying to get to the airport on time? Now you can see the traffic on many of the roads leading there so you know the best route to take so you won't miss your flight:

If you have Google Maps for Mobile, you can see the same traffic there and, better yet, help improve the data: See our post on the Official Google Blog about traffic crowdsourcing. Here's to a happier commute!

Posted by Jordan Weitz, Software Engineer, Google Traffic Team

3 Days, 3 Googlers, 2 CPUs, 8 Cores: Google goes to Camp Roberts

elaine — Mon, 24 Aug 2009 23:40:00 +0000

Recently, three Googlers visited Camp Roberts near Paso Robles in central California. The exercise, organized and hosted by the Naval Postgraduate School, brought tech companies together with testers to collaborate on disaster relief, humanitarian aid, and development.

Shortly after we arrived, we disrupted the relative quiet of the Tactical Operations Center (TOC) by spooling up an 8-core Google Earth Enterprise Server to process satellite imagery provided by the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA). We used the server to process the imagery – 1m resolution GeoEye IKONOS scenes over Jalalabad, Afghanistan – with Google Earth Fusion to create a 3D globe and set of Mercator map tiles. We then published the tiles to the Portable Earth Server running in an Ubuntu Virtual Machine to be used as a base imagery layer for mashups by other applications including Sahana, Development Seed, FortiusOne, Open Street Map, and InSTEDD.

Once we provided the new imagery tiles, other applications could pull the imagery into Disaster Management systems, and, combined with their value-added utilities, continually update their geo-information, which positioned them to respond more quickly to the next disaster.

Later in the afternoon, volunteers from the Open Street Map Foundation, Umbrella Consulting, and Stamen Design utilized the imagery tiles and Open Street Map vector overlays to print hard-copy "Walking Papers." These Walking Papers were sent into the field where road and structure information was noted by hand. Back at the TOC, the annotated maps were scanned. Because a QR code on the maps contained coordinate information, annotations were automatically georeferenced as the data was imported into the Open Street Map database. This paper-and-pen method was a smart, practical, low-tech way to to increase the accuracy and data density of vector data for an area of interest.

We saw first-hand the range of challenges technologists face as they look to balance ever-changing information with tools designed for a highly connected world, and as they work in less-than-ideal states of connectivity out in the field. Some problems were successfully dispatched in 20 minutes; others remained unsolved after 3 days.

This week at Camp Roberts reaffirmed the powerful role that agile deployments of geospatial visualization and analysis can play in the quest to build sustainable political structures and mitigate human suffering. We learned to adapt and respond to mixed states of connectivity, and wide ranges of technological states and proficiencies amongst end users. We are going to keep working on projects that aid in the mitigation, recovery and building processes. And we're going to keep supporting open source applications and data projects that address these challenges–and are flexible enough to meet them.

Posted by Jeff Martin, Sean Wohltman, &Dylan Lorimer; Google Earth Enterprise and Google Crisis Response Teams

Map Maker goes west

elaine — Wed, 19 Aug 2009 12:10:00 +0000

Google Map Maker (mapmaker.google.com) is now open for editing in Mexico. Mexico joins an impressive list of Latin American countries spanning much of South America, Central America, and the Caribbean. Combined with the launch in Eastern Europe earlier this week, this launch constitutes a substantial expansion in the western hemisphere, wherein these two launches have doubled the number of users who can map their country on Map Maker.

In the last year, mappers from around the world have contributed local knowledge with everything from mapping entire countries to adding details like one-way streets to make maps drivable. We're very excited to see these new communities around the globe embrace the ability to maps their countries, such as these users, former Peace Corps volunteers now mapping in Guyana.

For those of you new to Google Map Maker, check out this site (also translated into Spanish) for more information on getting started.

Posted by Lior Ron, Product lead; Lalitesh Katragadda, Tech Lead

Bringing Street View to an attraction near you

elaine — Tue, 18 Aug 2009 14:00:00 +0000

Along with the new countries added to Street View, I'm particularly excited to be launching some imagery from our Street View Partner Program. It's been a blast to work with a wide range of exciting partners so it's great to now showcase some of their locations in Street View. You'll now find imagery of Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca,Thunderhill Raceway Park, San Diego State University and LEGOLAND California featured in Street View.

View Larger Map

Everything that you've seen on Street View so far has been from public places. But with our new Partner Program, we've been working directly with various partners and are able to collect imagery of private destinations like race tracks, universities and amusement parks.

For some of these spots, like a race track, our Street View cars are a perfect fit. But to be able to explore more pedestrian-focused areas, such as a campus, we're using a new platform called the trike, a bicycle-based version of a Street View system. With the trike, it gets us almost anywhere the car doesn't fit. You can see that the trikes resemble an ice cream cart a bit:

It uses the same camera system we have on our cars, but we've transplanted it onto the trike. It's built onto a 3-wheeled bicycle base and we've added a few of our own tweaks. We've gone through a few versions to get to where we are now; the first one came in at 500lbs, and the newest version has slimmed down to 300lbs. Believe me, our riders are very happy about that.

I think one of the most memorable experiences from working with this first batch was getting to go around the track at Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca with the GT and Le Mans prototypes from the Monterey Sports Car Championships last year.

View Larger Map

Grab the pegman and check out all these cool spots. If you happen to work at a location that you think would be a great fit for the Partner Program, be sure to visit the Content Central Blog to find out more about how you too can be featured in Street View.

Posted by Wendy Wang, Operations Program Manager

The wait is over: new Street View imagery

elaine — Tue, 18 Aug 2009 13:00:00 +0000

Since the first launch over 2 years ago, the feedback I hear most often from users - and, in fact, members of my own family - around the world is "When will Street View be available where I live?". For those of you in Taiwan, Portugal, and Switzerland who have been among that vocal group, I've got great news: today we're launching imagery in your countries!

I'm particularly excited about Switzerland and Taiwan since I have relatives in those countries I don't get to see nearly as often as I would like. Now, not only can I finally give them the good news that their countries have Street View, but I can re-live my past visits with them. I've found everything from that drive around Lake Geneva with my uncle:

Größere Kartenansicht

...to that delicious shaved ice stand my aunt took me to in Taipei:

View Larger Map

I've also been able to virtually explore Portugal, a country I haven't yet had a chance to visit - but this imagery has me eager to book a trip.

View Larger Map

In addition, as a follow-up to our launch of Disneyland Paris, we're excited to launch more special areas of interest in Street View. We took our Street View cars for spins around two race tracks in California: Thunderhill Raceway Park and Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca. We've also used our Street View Trike, the new bicycle-based system, to gather imagery at San Diego State University and LEGOLAND California. We've included a little surprise at LEGOLAND, which we hope you will enjoy! Check back shortly for a blog post about the Trike and our partner program for Street View. [Update: You can view the blog post here.]

View Larger Map

Regardless of where in the world you are, I hope you enjoy exploring the new imagery. Whether you want to see the Taipei 101, Geneva's Jet d'Eau, or race cars, there's something for everyone in this new Street View update.

Posted by Stephen Chau, Product Manager

Picasa photos in Street View

elaine — Fri, 14 Aug 2009 16:50:00 +0000

Earlier this year, we launched a new Google Maps feature embedding user-contributed photos into Street View. The new way of browsing photos has recently been enhanced with photo-to-photo zooming, which lets you explore some of the world's most interesting landmarks and landscapes in an intuitive and entertaining way.

Our first release of user photos in Street View only included photos from Panoramio. Today, we are adding Picasa Web Albums as another source of user-uploaded, geo-tagged images.

Millions of people already rely on Picasa Web Albums to share their photographs with friends and the internet community. Now, their public geo-tagged photos will help Google Maps users to get a better impression of a geographic place, especially for areas where we may not have any Panoramio photos.

We've selected these photos by looking for geo-tagged public images in Picasa Web Albums. We apply face detection to screen out images with identifiable individuals and image matching so that we're including the most relevant photographs.

The feature is available at major landmarks around the world, in places as different as Paris, Tokyo, and New Zealand. When you try it out, you'll discover how easy it is to seamlessly navigate between images from Street View, Panoramio, and now Picasa -- particularly with our new photo-zoom feature. Have fun exploring the world!

Posted by Daniel Cotting, Software Engineer, Google Zurich