Google Data » Natasha

Google Maps API for Business brings NexTraq to the next level

Natasha — Wed, 02 May 2012 19:37:00 +0000

Posted by Nicole Locklear, Channel Marketing Specialist at NexTraq

Editors note: Today’s guest blogger is Nicole Locklear, Channel Marketing Specialist at NexTraq. NexTraq is a GPS fleet tracking company headquartered in Atlanta that helps business owners across the US and Canada track the movement, behavior and activity of their vehicles.

NexTraq, a GPS fleet tracking company, helps customers manage their fleets with reporting, alerts, dispatching and routing tools. Several years ago, our company noticed a simple problem: it took too long to train our customers how to use our products. After looking at several other mapping possibilities, we realized that we should give our customers something they already used in their daily lives: Google Maps. Our customers already used Google Maps to get directions, view landmarks with Street View and Satellite View and avoid bad traffic. This made the decision to move to Google Maps API for Business easy.

By using Google Maps, we were able to free up internal resources -- such as developers and engineers -- because of the outstanding support that Google provides during implementation. Even though we deployed Google Maps on a large scale, the implementation was seamless. Our customers love Google Maps for Business because it brings Google Maps features directly to the business setting. For example, they can look at their route for the day, pinpoint heavy traffic, and reroute their vehicles accordingly. Not only are they saving time, but, as gas prices rise, they’re cutting fuel costs as well. Being able to see the street view of any place a vehicle is located gives customers an added layer of comfort. If an employee can’t find a service stop, a dispatcher can see a 360-degree view of where the employee is standing and direct them based on landmarks and other surroundings.

Instead of trying to reinvent the wheel, we went with a solution that we knew our customers already knew and loved. Google Maps API for Business was the best move we could have made for our customers.

Visualize U.S. demographics using Google Maps API for Business

Natasha — Wed, 04 Apr 2012 22:00:00 +0000

Posted by Thor Mitchell, Product Manager, Google Maps API

In April 2010, 89 million U.S. households returned a census form in which they answered ten basic questions. Once collected, aggregated, and published, the 2010 U.S. census provided rich insights into the makeup and distribution of the U.S. population. However the resulting demographics, which cover all 50 states, over 3,000 counties, over 70,000 census tracts, and over 200,000 block groups, are extremely challenging to obtain and visualize on a map.

Today we are making U.S. demographics visualization accessible and easy for our Google Maps API for Business customers with the launch of the new Demographics Layer in Maps API v3. The Demographics Layer enables Google Maps API for Business developers to add visualization of U.S. demographics provided by Nielsen to their Maps API applications.

Developers can select from 34 statistics to display on the map at state, county, census tract or block group granularity, including:

population
age
race
marital status
housing status

Data is available for 2010 and 2011, in addition to projected data for 2015 and 2016.

Google Maps API for Business applications using the Demographics Layer can control how the data is styled, such as defining color thresholds or gradients, and also define style rules based on expressions across statistics that are evaluated in real time. For example, by defining a gradient style based on the expression “population / area” you can visualize population density on the map.

The Demographics Layer is now available to all Google Maps API for Business customers for use in internal applications. For more information on how to add the Demographics Layer to your applications please see the documentation. If you are not an existing Google Maps API for Business customer and are interested in using the Demographics Layer, please contact the sales team by filling in this form.

We hope the Demographics Layer provides your business with the intelligence you need to put your own data into context, and empowers you to make smarter business decisions going forward.

Build better maps with Analytics for Google Maps API for Business

Natasha — Wed, 04 Apr 2012 16:30:00 +0000

Posted by Daniel Schramm, Associate Product Manager Intern, Google Maps API

Every day people rely on maps to help them make purchasing decisions. Location matters for everything from choosing a restaurant for dinner, to picking the perfect home. It’s important to understand how users view and interact with this information so you can create a map experience tailored specifically to your customers’ needs. Today we make this possible with the release of Analytics for Google Maps API for Business:

Just as Google Analytics shows you how visitors interact with your website, Analytics for Google Maps API for Business provides detailed information on how customers interact with maps on your website. Do customers have to pan and zoom to find what they need? How often is 45 degree imagery used? Should you consider using a different map type? Now this information is at your fingertips.

Analytics for Google Maps API for Business delivers reports for map interactions, services, the Places, and Street View. Make changes to your map and immediately see how these enhance user behavior, allowing you to quickly customize your map to the needs of your customers.

Analytics for Google Maps is a feature included with your license of Google Maps API for Business. You can enable Analytics for Google Maps API for Business for your maps with the click of a button in the Google Enterprise Support Portal. All information recorded is anonymized and aggregated to protect the privacy of users.

For more information on how to enable and access Analytics for Maps API for Business, please see the Maps API for Business Developer Guide. If you need further assistance, or have ideas for additional features you would love to see in Analytics for Maps API for Business, please contact the Google Enterprise Support team.

Announcing Google Earth Pro version 6.2: A more beautiful Earth and Parcel search

Natasha — Wed, 15 Feb 2012 19:00:00 +0000

Posted by Dan Cohen, Google Earth Pro Team

We would like to share the new features available in the latest release of Google Earth Pro. Version 6.2 delivers a better user experience with improved imagery rendering and enhanced search.

Improved Rendering
Previously, the imagery in Google Earth Pro had patchy rendering because it was constructed by combining different satellite images. The improved rendering in Google Earth Pro version 6.2 addresses this patchiness with a new way of rendering imagery that smooths out differences between the separate satellite images. The improved rendering provides higher quality screen captures for Google Earth Pro users, as well as provides seamless base imagery for creating maps using spreadsheet or GIS import.

San Francisco before and after the integration of seamless imagery.

Parcel Search
Since June 2010, Google Earth Pro users have had access to the U.S. Parcel Data layer. Now users will be able to search that data layer for specific parcels. In Google Earth Pro version 6.2, users simply have to type the parcel number into the familiar search box to be taken to the location of the parcel in the visualization window and access property information such as the property address, standard use code, and last assessed value. The ability to query by parcel number, instead of having to manually navigate to the parcel location, will save the time of real estate and insurance professionals who frequently use the U.S. Parcel Data layer to remotely survey specific properties.

Real estate and insurance professionals using Google Earth Pro can quickly find specific parcel details by searching the Premium U.S. Parcel Data layer by parcel number.

These new features in conjunction with the other Google Earth Pro offerings, such as advanced measuring tools and the U.S. Demographics and Traffic count data layers, allow users to save time and money when making geographic decisions. Instead of traveling to survey a property, businesses can save time by searching for a parcel in the U.S. Parcel database and remotely measuring and inspecting those properties in just hours. Companies can spruce up their presentations and pamphlets to impress clients by using Google Earth Pro’s high resolution prints (now with seamless imagery). Other businesses use the Google Earth Pro import tool to overlay spreadsheet or GIS data on a map for visual analysis.

We encourage you to look at the release notes for Google Earth Pro version 6.2 (beta). If you’re not a Google Earth Pro user you can sign up for a 7-day free trial to try out the newest version. If you are currently using Google Earth Pro, the newest version is available for download here.

Updating the Roads in United Kingdom, Germany, Sweden and Finland

Natasha — Fri, 09 Dec 2011 00:00:00 +0000

Posted by Natasha Wyatt, Google Earth and Maps for Business Team

Today we announced changes to the data that powers Google Maps API Premier, Google Earth Builder and Google Earth Pro in the UK, Germany, Sweden and Finland.

Among other improvements, the updated maps will show more detailed bodies of water and local parks and will ultimately provide better, more accurate geospatial information for your employees and customers. As Google Maps and Google Earth for Business customers, you can now share direct feedback about our maps and let us know about needed updates to the map in these areas by using the "Report a Problem" tool in the lower right corner of the map. We highly recommend that you re-geocode all of your data to take advantage of the new updated data.

GeoEye Using Google Earth Builder for Commercial Distribution of their Data

Natasha — Tue, 18 Oct 2011 20:00:00 +0000

Posted by Dylan Lorimer, Google Earth and Maps for Business Product Manager

Since 2008, Google has worked with GeoEye to publish millions of square kilometers of satellite imagery to Google Earth and Maps users. In addition to the imagery the company shares with Google, GeoEye also collects satellite imagery for licensing by numerous governments and business customers around the world.

Google Earth Builder is designed to make it easy for a geospatial data provider to securely publish its data to specific users or developers. For example, during a crisis response effort such as a forest fire, a government agency might need a particular group of employees to be able to access recent satellite images of the forest on their tablets or smartphones in real time.

Today we’re delighted to announce that GeoEye is the first commercial satellite imagery provider to adopt the Google Earth Builder platform. By using Google Earth Builder, GeoEye will rely on Google's cloud infrastructure to process, host, and securely publish their satellite imagery and mapping layers. Doing so will make it easy for their customers to access GeoEye’s geospatial data from their computers, tablets and other internet-connected devices.

This also means GeoEye will be able to create new business models around hosted, subscription access to their data, and will be able to provide Google Enterprise customers with the option to license additional imagery from GeoEye for use within Google Maps, Google Earth and APIs.

We’re really excited to have GeoEye using Google Earth Builder and looking forward to them publishing a host of new subscription imagery layers to our Google Enterprise Maps and Earth customers. Learn more about GeoEye’s plans to create subscription imagery services with Google Earth Builder here.

Announcing Google Earth Pro 6.1: New Features and Easier to Use!

Natasha — Tue, 20 Sep 2011 20:00:00 +0000

Posted by Coleman Rusnock and Dan Cohen, Google Earth Pro team

We are pleased to announce the newest release of Google Earth Pro! Version 6.1 focuses on user experience improvements that empower professionals to make faster geographic-related business decisions.

Google Earth Pro is a simple yet powerful tool used by industry professionals all over the world. Businesses in retail, construction and insurance save travel time by inspecting, measuring and profiling land parcels before visiting the site. Many companies use Google Earth Pro’s high resolution prints for client meetings and presentations. Other companies use the Google Earth Pro import tool to overlay spreadsheet or GIS data on a map. You can read about other use cases on our customer stories page.

Real estate and insurance professionals can analyze distances more effectively with the combined Ruler and Elevation Profile tool, as shown in this measurement of San Francisco, above.

Print high-resolution screenshots with scale bar and north arrow for client meetings and presentations.

Key feature enhancements in version 6.1 include:

Enhanced Print Layout: Print maps and overlays in premium resolution for tactile collaboration with key stakeholders. Improved output and paper handling allow fine controls for professional-looking deliverables.

Simplified Movie Maker: Create professional video presentations to share with your target audience. Render saved tours as videos, or take the director’s seat and record live actions from the 3D viewer.

Consolidated Measurement Tool: View path length and elevation profile in one window to better understand the 3D environment surrounding your area of interest.

Expanded Data Styling: With 64 unique styling attributes available for each imported dataset (compared with eight in previous versions), users have greater control over the look and feel of their data.

Improved Networking Infrastructure: Earth Pro 6.1 offers better support for network proxies and SSL certificates commonly found in corporate networking environments, making it easier for business to use Google Earth Pro within their network security guidelines.

Click here to download the latest version of Google Earth Pro for your organization today.

Putting big data on the map: helping customers see location-based information

Natasha — Fri, 29 Jul 2011 20:00:00 +0000

Rahul Sood, Enterprise Director of Partnerships

Today, all types of businesses rely on geographic information to make better decisions about their customers, products and processes. As part of our ongoing effort to make geographic information accessible and useful, we offer the Google Maps API Premier to businesses that want to integrate Google Maps directly into their own applications and websites. Interactive maps have become critical to many basic business functions from asset tracking in the logistics industry to inventory planning in retail.

Earlier this week, we announced a new collaboration with SAP aimed at helping enterprise customers use Google’s mapping services with SAP’s business analytics software. As this demo from SAP shows, the Google Maps API lets companies visualize geographic data more easily, leading to better business decisions. Access to SAP and Google tools on tablets and other mobile devices means that employees can review their business data whenever and wherever the need arises.

Google is committed to helping businesses and software vendors build, run and support innovative applications that involve huge data sets. These “big data” sets require massive storage and processing power, a task Google’s cloud infrastructure is uniquely well suited to handle. Today, in addition to the Google Maps API, Google also provides the Google Prediction API and Google Storage for Developers to support businesses working with their important big data. Like the Google Maps API, businesses and developers can use these services to process data or build applications.

3D Visualizations that Wow Customers

Natasha — Thu, 21 Jul 2011 17:15:00 +0000

Posted by Clay Maffett, The Google Earth Pro Team

Google’s users have always found creative and inspiring ways to get the most out of our products. The Google Earth Pro team is reminded of this daily as we speak with companies across industries around the world that use Google Earth Pro for a wide range of purposes, from planning transportation routes to mapping forest fire risk areas.

One such use case is that of Coherent Navigation, a nine-person startup that develops GPS receivers for the US Military.

"Our software is very complex and has capabilities far beyond any other solutions in the market today," said Bryan Galusha, Senior Development Engineer at Coherent Navigation. "But at the end of the day, it provides a single position, much like a glorified ‘You are Here’ sign in a mall.” In order to convey the value of such complicated software as quickly and concisely as possible, Coherent turned to Google Earth Pro’s visualization capabilities. “Google Earth enabled us to quickly create a visualization of our receivers’ performance that effectively communicated the performance and capabilities of the receivers to both technical and non-technical customers,” Bryan said. An example of such a visualization can be found below, with the green distorted sphere representing Coherent’s calculated position of the white van.

Beyond the ability to create still images like the one above, Coherent also utilized the Movie Maker tool to “create videos of our receivers’ performance to be shown after major technical demonstrations” to potential customers. Lastly, Google Earth Pro helped them demonstrate visually the satellite infrastructure their software uses to pinpoint location, shown in the screenshot below:

Ultimately, Bryan said, “Google Earth Pro allowed us to quickly and inexpensively create 3D visualizations with accurate satellite imagery that ‘wowed’ our customers.” We’re glad Coherent Navigation was able to use Google Earth Pro so successfully, and we hope their story inspires other creative uses of Google Earth Pro.

If you are interested in learning more about Google Earth Pro, you are welcome to sign up for a free 7-day trial to test drive the product.

Google Earth API and StrataLogica: Changing Education

Natasha — Wed, 29 Jun 2011 20:00:00 +0000

(Cross-posted on the Lat Long Blog)

Editors note:
The Google team encounters fun and new ways of using the Google Earth and Maps API. Here’s an example of how a century old educational map and globe publishing company realized more students wanted to learn online and transformed their teaching methods to include a program built on the Google Earth API. Don Rescigno, from Herff Jones | Nystrom, explains how students and teachers benefit from technology in the classroom with StrataLogica.

With today's technology enabling information to travel at a much more rapid rate than in the past, students feel more advanced than what many of us can remember from our own days in school. Elementary school students use a school computer, manage multiple usernames and passwords, work with spreadsheets, develop their own blogs and websites, and more. They’re tech savvy and they’re connected.

The challenge for educators is to use tools and resources that take advantage of students' advanced technological skills. Combining educational content with technology like the Google Earth API gave us the opportunity to foster a new and immersive experience that changes the way students see our world.

StrataLogica—combined with the Google Earth API —provides students with powerful tools to visualize and comprehend the ways in which geography has impacted events, politics and populations throughout human history. Students have the ability to see current events, taking place around the world, from their classroom.

Using a computer or interactive whiteboard, students uncover layers of educational content and can then drill down to Google Earth’s satellite imagery, see what’s actually there, and even use historical imagery to compare then and now. Recently, I had to play the role of a teacher when one of my children overheard a CNN report on Japan and asked, “Dad, what made the earthquake and tsunami?” The ability to access and interact with so many resources—aerial imagery of the earthquake, videos, and photos posted by Japanese citizens, local news stories—allowed me to teach him about the Earth’s processes and their impact. It helped to create a better understanding beyond the news story. It fostered critical thinking and a global perspective.

Like so many with children, I want to see students learning in a new way that
inspires them. It’s important for our future generation to understand how we are all connected — to think
globally and comprehend world impact. We want them to truly become global
citizens. StrataLogica and the Google Earth API are helping change the way students see the world; they can “fly” to any location in a matter of seconds, zoom in to imagery and see street views of historical sites that they may never have an opportunity to visit, embed videos and photos, and experience their own virtual field trips.

If you’re an educator interested in teaching geography, history, earth science and
more, visit stratalogica.com to learn more.

Posted by Natasha Wyatt, Google Earth and Maps Enterprise Team

Finding the perfect place

Natasha — Tue, 14 Dec 2010 20:17:00 +0000

Editor’s note: Today’s guest blog authors are Rick McMullins, VP and CTO bitHeads, inc. and
Elaine Yim, Senior Product Manager, Rent.com, to talk about the use of Google Maps API Premier in the Rent.com mobile application.

Rent.com is the nation's #1 Internet listing site (ILS) in the rental housing industry, enabling renters to find a residential rental property online using a free robust search tool. Rent.com has the most online traffic and the largest inventory of contracted property listings.

Rent.com recently extended their reach from the browser to the smartphone by releasing mobile applications for the Android, Blackberry and iPhone smartphones. The Rent.com mobile applications give users the ability to quickly and easily search Rent.com’s complete list of detailed online listings from the palm of their hand. Google Maps API Premier was a critical component to the Rent.com mobile application for renters to see the location of properties on a map as well as a way to quickly get driving directions to visit a particular property. After Rent.com users narrow down the list of properties that they would like to check out, either through the Rent.com website or by using one of the new mobile applications, they can hit the street with mobile phone in hand to go see the properties.

Property search results, properties viewed and contacted as well as favorites are all synced back to a user’s Rent.com account so that they are accessible from both the original web platform and the mobile application. Plus, while visiting the properties users can create notes and take pictures of the properties using the mobile application and forward them via email. This feature is especially handy when the user wants to quickly share the property details with friends.

A big part of the Rent.com’s mobile strategy was to make sure that people could easily find properties in personally desirable neighborhoods. “By taking advantage of the Google Maps Javascript API V3, the mobile applications team at Rent.com was able to implement an easy to use solution for a user to be able to view rental properties in specific areas of interest.”, said Elaine. With the Rent.com application, a user can view all of the properties from a search result on a single map to get a feel for where the properties are located or display a single property on a map. Furthermore, should the user wish to visit the property they can bring up driving directions to the selected property within the application.

“By using the Google Maps JavaScript API V3 to implement the mapping components of the applications, the mobile applications team at Rent.com was able to quickly implement the core set of location based features that were crucial to the success of the mobile applications.”, said Rick.
To access the Rent.com mobile applications:

Android:
Type Rent.com/m into the browser on your phone and click to download.
-or-
Scan the following QR Code.

Blackberry:
Type Rent.com/m into the browser on your phone and click to download - App World required.

iPhone:
Type Rent.com/m into the browser on your phone and click to download.
-or-
Search for Rent.com in the App Store on your phone.

Posted by: Natasha Wyatt, Google Earth and Maps Enterprise team

Google Earth Pro 6: Measure your world in 3D

Natasha — Thu, 02 Dec 2010 16:52:00 +0000

(Cross posted from the Google Lat Long Blog)

We’re excited to announce a new addition to the Advanced Measurement Tool Suite in Google Earth Pro: you can now measure in 3D!

Pro customers recently ranked Area Measurement as one of the most valuable Google Earth Pro tools, so we wanted to add more to the package. In a continued effort to mirror the real world, allowing you to lift measurements off the ground and extend them in to the 3D realm seemed a natural next step.

We think these tools will be beneficial to our customers as there are limitless applications for their use. 3D Measurements can be used by engineers to plan wind farms, real estate firms to determine skyline views for new high rise buildings, construction companies to measure the materials needed for a retrofitting, architects to calculate the space between buildings, and more.
To measure buildings and distances between buildings, just turn on the 3D Buildings layer and click the Ruler Tool icon in the toolbar. If you’re running Google Earth Pro, you’ll notice two new tabs for measuring in 3D: 3D Path and 3D Polygon.

Here are a few examples of what the new Pro 3D Measurement Tools have to offer:

Measure the height or width of a 3D building:

Measure the area of the face of a 3D building:

Measure the distance between a building and a point on the ground or another building:

If you’re new to Google Earth Pro, try it for free for 7 days or buy Google Earth Pro today and discover how 3D Measurements can benefit your business. Onward and upward!

Posted by Cristelle Blackford, Google Earth Pro Team

Editor's note: Updated the post with the correct measurement image.

Google Earth Enterprise customer honored for government IT achievement

Natasha — Mon, 15 Nov 2010 20:40:00 +0000

Editor’s note: From time to time, the Google Earth and Maps Enterprise Team likes to show off our users who have created useful and timely applications with our products. Marty Kitrell, from the Information Technology Laboratory of the US Army Engineer Research and Development Center, explains how many agencies organized to build the Google Earth Enterprise powered project called NIPRNet Globe Service (NGS), which is one of the 10 award winners for 2010 Outstanding Information Technology Achievement in Government by the Government Computer News.

Google Earth has revolutionized how people see the world. Through simple clicks of a button, a user can zoom to any part of the world and quickly access information about any place on earth. It’s technology that millions use to plan vacations and business trips, map routes from one place to another and learn about where they are going and what they will encounter along the way. It provides an effortless window to all parts of the globe.

How can those same capabilities be given to U.S. Army Corps of Engineers?

It hasn’t been possible — until now. The Information Technology Laboratory at the US Army Engineer Research and Development Center in Vicksburg, MS, and Program Director Transportation Information Systems (PD TIS) and Program Manager Joint-Automatic Identification Technology (PM-JAIT), have collaborated to combine Google Earth Technology and the Non-Classified Internet Protocol Router Network (NIPRNet) Global Services (NGS) project. It solves the two main problems that have precluded the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers from using Google’s state-of-the-art technology — security and customization.

NIPRNet Globe Services is the result of three years of research and development in building and deploying a fully operational decision-support system based on Google Earth Enterprise technology. Through NGS, the Corps of Engineers can now quickly access customized globes containing detailed information of specific geographical areas following a natural or man-made disaster required for decision support, including satellite imagery, maps, terrain and made-to-order data fields. With customizable layers, the Corps can quickly access as much or as little information as needed for emergency planning and management. And, importantly, the data is secure. No commercial servers have to be accessed because NGS has custom-written geocodes and auto-update servers that run on NIPR behind the .mil firewall.

Because of its ground-breaking technology, NGS been named as one of 10 award winners for 2010 Outstanding Information Technology Achievement in Government by the Government Computer News. Team members of NGS were formally honored at the GCN Awards Gala on Oct. 27 at the Ritz-Carlton, Tysons Corner in McLean, VA. If you want to know more about NGS, please contact NGS applications manager Robert Walker at robert.s.walker@usace.army.mil.

Posted by Natasha Wyatt, Product Marketing Manager, Google Earth and Maps Enterprise

Update to Google Maps in Europe, Africa, Australia and New Zealand

Natasha — Wed, 10 Nov 2010 00:47:00 +0000

Today we announced changes to the data that powers Google Maps features like the map tiles, geocoding, and driving directions. These changes can be seen in many countries in Europe, Africa and the Pacific:

Australia
Austria
Belgium
Denmark
Liechtenstein
Netherlands
New Zealand
Norway
South Africa
Switzerland

The new base maps will have greater features such as expanded geocoding coverage, more detailed water bodies, university campuses, zipcode and postal code coverage – all leading to better, more accurate maps for your employees and customers. Along with this update we've launched the popular "Report a Problem" feature in these countries (as we've had in the U.S. and Canada), enabling you to tell us about errors and changes directly for faster Maps updates. It's highly recommended that you re-geocode all of your data to take advantage of the new updated data.

Learn more about the Google Maps API Premier at google.com/enterprise/maps.

Posted by Natasha Wyatt, Product Marketing Manager, Google Enterprise Maps/Earth team

You Can Be Lost in Data Without A Map

Natasha — Fri, 10 Sep 2010 22:55:00 +0000

Editor's note: From time to time, Google likes to highlight partners and customers who have developed interesting and unique applications using our products. Peter Rossiter is a founder and CEO of Integeo, a company whose product leverages Google Maps API Premier. With over thirty years experience in the IT industry, Peter has led many innovative commercial ventures and research projects.

Location-based services have quickly become pervasive in our everyday lives and maps are now widely used as a convenient and useful visual tool to present data in ways that people can easily relate to.

Business Intelligence (BI) covers a collection of techniques and tools that support an organization’s decision making process. The advent of Google Maps familiarized people with the concept of data points on a map and progressively more and more BI customers are expecting fully integrated maps and spatial analytics with their tools of choice. Seeing data in the context of its location often exposes information previously hidden in the raw data.

But a tool is only useful if it’s usable. You need to focus on solving your business problems not technology. Avoiding the need for specialist programming resources is a good start followed by ensuring the BI skills of a dashboard or report designer are sufficient even if the underlying spatial analysis is quite complex.

Google Maps API Premier is a solid platform for presenting a rich background context of street and satellite data for analysis of business data. The Google API also enables us to dynamically geocode address data and users can zoom to particular areas of interest using our enhanced Google Search facility.

There is a lot more to visualizing data on maps than just plotting points and icons. Integeo’s Map Intelligence comes out of the box with an extensible, easy to use palette of spatial analytical functions. These enable clear and immediate perception of data relationships, groupings, classifications, patterns, trends and variations that stand out when mapped. A summary of the features of Map Intelligence can be found on our website.

At the click of a button, the analytics currently being viewed by a user can be interactively viewed on Google Earth. The dynamic map layers are generated by Map Intelligence from the “facts and dimensions” in the dashboard or spreadsheet, offering the choice to either use KML (KMZ including images, legend, etc.) or a network link that will update from the Map Intelligence server whenever the user changes their Google Earth view. All the information and data relationship layers are dynamically available so that as filters are applied in the BI environment they are automatically applied to the view in Google Earth.

Please visit www.integeo.com if you would like to learn more about Integeo and see why Map Intelligence is the only BI product to rank top 10 among purpose built GIS solutions (Ovum Research 2009). We offer integrated mapping analytics incorporating Google Maps API Premier as an “off the shelf” solution for users of all the major BI platforms - currently these include (but are not restricted to) BI products from Cognos (IBM), Business Objects (SAP), Oracle, MicroStrategy, QlikView, Actuate, BIRT, Microsoft Excel and SQL Reporting Services.

Posted By Natasha Wyatt, Google Earth and Maps Team

Faster, Larger, Closer: Regionation in Google Earth Pro 5.2

Natasha — Tue, 07 Sep 2010 21:42:00 +0000

We’re excited to announce that Google Earth Pro 5.2 is now out of beta. With the initial launch two months ago, we detailed the new features that are available to all Google Earth users, including Multitrack and Elevation Profile, and outlined the new Google Earth Pro Data Layers.

Today we’d like to take this opportunity to highlight some of the most exciting new features that are exclusively available to Google Earth Pro customers. Vector and Image Regionation make it possible to integrate even more of your own data and imagery into the Google Earth globe, while maintaining the fast, 3D performance you and other professionals rely on.

Vector Regionation

Watch this video to witness the difference Vector Regionation can make when importing your data.

In a nutshell, Regionation allows Google Earth Pro to display huge amounts of data. It does so by breaking the data or imagery into the smallest necessary components. This means that only the data that is in view needs to be retrieved. You can think of Regionation as a hierarchical subdivision of points or tiles, which shows less detail from afar, and more detail as you zoom in to the globe. This dynamic loading creates clearer visualizations by minimizing clutter, while simultaneously speeding up the rendering process.

Imagine importing a long list of customer assets that are all geocoded to a small, heavily populated urban area, such as a neighborhood in New York City or Tokyo. It would be possible to have more than 100,000 assets within a single square mile radius. If you were viewing this area in the context of the rest of the city, all of the data would overlap, preventing you from making out individual points. However, Vector Regionation solves this problem.

Image Regionation

This U.S. Geological Survey image of Mineral Resources in Portsmouth, Virginia highlights the amount of detail that’s preserved through Image Regionation.

Image Regionation, otherwise known as Super Image Overlays, allows you to overlay your own high-resolution imagery and view it in varying levels of detail without taxing your system or degrading the quality. The addition of Super Image Overlays makes Google Earth Pro one of the most dynamic platforms for displaying your GIS imagery and can be useful for anything from environmental assessments to site planning. For example, you could import a 150MB preview of a new housing development and navigate it down to the smallest detail, without losing fidelity. In conjunction with Google Earth’s existing imagery and tools like Area Measurements and the Historical Imagery Slider, you’re now able to make more informed business decisions without having to go on site.

Try Google Earth Pro for free or buy Google Earth Pro today and give Regionation a whirl. There are countless applications for these tools, and we hope that the businesses we serve will benefit from their use.

Posted by Cristelle Blackford, Google Earth Pro Team

Chains to trains: BART provides bike-friendly directions with Google Maps API Premier

Natasha — Thu, 19 Aug 2010 17:28:00 +0000

Editor’s note: Today’s guest writer is Timothy Moore, Website Manager for Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART). Here he discusses how they use Google Maps API Premier v3 to power searches and biking directions on BART.gov. BART serves the San Francisco Bay Area covering 4 counties, 43 stations, 104 miles (167 km) of track, and has an average weekday ridership of 335,000 passengers. It is the 5th busiest heavy rail rapid transit system in the U.S.

Recently the BART website (www.bart.gov) launched some cool new trip planning services, including bicycle directions and station area points of interest, using the Google Maps API. The BART QuickPlanner is one of the most popular features on our website. If you live in the Bay Area, chances are you’ve used it. The QuickPlanner has traditionally offered a mix of BART trip plans, directions for walking and driving to the station, connecting transit information, carbon savings and more.

We're always looking for ways to improve the QuickPlanner, so when Google Maps started offering bicycle directions we were green with envy. Our latest research shows that only 4% of BART customers ride a bicycle from their home to a station. With ongoing cuts to connecting transit services and many BART station parking lots filled to the brim, adding bicycling directions to the QuickPlanner will help us promote the option to more than a million website visitors every month.

Frankly we've struggled with the integration of other mapping products into our custom-built BART scheduling application; weak documentation, limited real-world examples, and cumbersome programming requirements. Developing with the Google Maps API was a whole different world. As our lead programmer, Robert Falconer, noted, "It was easy to learn and quick to implement. And the ability to use free-form input terms for addresses, locations and points of interest was a major plus.”

If you've ever had to trap address or landmark input errors you know what he’s talking about. For example, if a user enters in “Frrey Blding” to the QuickPlanner, Google's geocoding service can recognize the user's intent and return the proper term "Ferry Building" with the correct corresponding address. All of this is done seamlessly behind the scenes so that all user sees is the address they are looking for when their trip is mapped out.

Again, using the Google Maps API, we’re able to provide more information about points of interest near BART stations, including directions. If you visit the neighborhood map section you can now use freeform search for station area destinations, and we’re no longer limiting you to searches based on standard address formats or a preset pull down menu. We also use the Google Maps API for services like “Find Closest Station” and for the map images presented on our station landing pages.

Overall this was a really fun project for us. I hope our use of the Google Maps API on bart.gov will encourage more bicycling to BART and I also hope people will use it to discover all of the awesome things that BART station area neighborhoods have to offer.

Posted by Carlos Cuesta, Google Earth and Maps Team

Toyota Europe uses Google Maps API Premier to power desktop and mobile applications

Natasha — Wed, 11 Aug 2010 15:10:00 +0000

Editor’s note: Toyota Motor Europe, based in Brussels, provides central content, websites and applications to all of Toyota’s country sites in Europe. Thirty-six of Toyota’s European country sites are built and hosted at Toyota Motor Europe. Manuel von Rahden, marketing manager for e-services, and Michaël Notté, IT project leader, explain how Google Maps API Premier allows the marketing team to define the direction of the website and allows the developers to easily implement the website design.

At the end of 2009, Toyota Motor Europe decided to create a pilot website which would be entirely optimized for mobile devices. The goal was to create a full mobile version of our website instead of a scaled down, simplified version of the current website. Location-based services are one of the great advantages of the mobile internet, so on top of a fully database driven car configurator, we planned a Google Maps API Premier based “Dealer Finder” for the mobile site. The pilot site http://www.toyota.de/mobile/ went live on time, and all of the main site Dealer Finder applications were migrated to Google Maps successfully.

We decided to use Google Maps on both main and mobile sites for many reasons:

* Our website visitors are already familiar with Google Maps and were very comfortable with using it
* One major goal of the redesign was to increase location-based information on our website
* The Google Maps API is open, allowing us to easily customize the application when creating international websites
* Version 3 of Google Maps API Premier is especially suited to be used for mobile sites and desktop web alike

The mobile website was tested in a usability lab with very good results. We also received very positive comments on the advanced features such as the car configurator and Google Maps based Dealer Finder.

The technical point of view
The goal of the project was to provide a flexible dealer locator solution that would fully integrate with our existing back-end services and CMS. Flexibility was crucial as the service had to be reusable with minimal efforts on both Toyota websites and Lexus websites across 26 markets. Even if we made the functionality quite generic, we always have one or two markets that come with very particular requirements. On top of that, we had to implement Google Maps API in our application and roll it out across Europe in very tight time frame and a strict deadline which we could not miss.

But we made it, thanks to the several advantages that the new Google Maps API v3 provides. Also, the fact that the Google service is available in all the languages we needed saved us considerable translation work. In particular, Google Maps API Version 3 provided us with some great features:

* More object-oriented which means a nicer & more efficient code, but more importantly it made easier to integrate it with our current code.
* Fully optimized for mobile: we were working on our first mobile site at the same time and we wanted to provide our dealer search service on this new platform. Response time of the Google API is very good and it works very smoothly on mobile. By using v3, we were able to implement it very quickly in our mobile site with minimum efforts as the same back-end is used for both platforms.

Google Maps API v3 was definitely a good choice; it is very easy to use for basic functionality, and yet offers all the flexibility and features to implement complex and advanced functionality. It is highly customizable and it gives us full control on our solution. This looks very promising for the future evolution of our application and for new services. And to quote our developer, “It was fun to do this project!”

To check out an example of Toyota Europe’s Website using Google Maps API Premier version 3, visit www.toyota.fr.

Posted by Natasha Wyatt, Google Earth and Maps team