The wonderful world of Where 2.0

Posted by Jess Lee, Product Manager, Google Maps

The Where 2.0 conference was a blast. Here are the 3 coolest things I saw at Where 2.0 that didn't already get a whole ton of media coverage.

1) Platforms by Project Aphrodite -- They're platform shoes with GPS and video screens embedded in the heels. Includes a panic button that makes loud noise and a way to call 911. They're meant to protect sex workers from violence.




2) PigeonBlog -- An art project and grassroots scientific data gathering initiatve that uses homing pigeons equipped with air quality sensors to track pollution levels. You can track the pigeons' flights on a map. Did you know that pigeons can only carry 8% of their own weight?




3) Plundr -- A location-based pirate game played by people walking around the streets using a Nintendo DS or laptop. I'm really excited about the future of location-aware games on mobile devices. Imagine playing real-life World of Warcraft, where you go to specific real-world locations to complete quests and get points, similar to a scavenger hunt. Imagine all those pasty, unathletic WoW nerds (like me) going outside in the sunshine and getting some exercise!




See you at next year's Where 2.0!

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Google to Purchase Panoramio

Posted by Brandon Badger, Product Manager

Great news for Google Earth sightseers: Google has agreed to purchase Panoramio, a website that links millions of photos with the exact location where they were taken. Read more about it on the Official Google Blog.

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Introducing... Street View!

Posted by Stephen Chau, Product Manager

Here on the Google Maps team we constantly strive to make high-quality imagery of the world available to our users. Why? We know that providing rich, detailed maps better enables you to understand the world's geographic information.

Along those lines, I'm proud to announce that today we are launching a new feature that will further enhance your ability to understand the world through images -- Google Maps Street View. With Street View, you can virtually explore city neighborhoods by viewing and navigating within 360-degree scenes of street-level imagery. It feels as if you're walking down the street!

Here's a video showing Street View in action.

We're launching with imagery in San Francisco, New York, Las Vegas, Miami, and Denver. Expect many more city rollout announcements on Google Lat Long in the near future.

I hope you will try out Street View and let us know what you think. For starters, check out one of my favorite panoramas. Happy travels!

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Mashup of Mashups

Posted by Thai Tran, Product Manager

In the two years since we originally released the Google Maps API, we have been continually impressed by all the innovative and interesting new applications that developers have built on top of our maps. One day we were looking at two of the original Google Maps mashups, HousingMaps.com and ChicagoCrime.org, and we realized it would be even more useful if they could be combined because most people wouldn't want to live near high crime areas. We also noticed that most of you were not aware that these great sites even existed.

These two realizations led us to create Mapplets, which are mini-applications that any developer can build on top of the Google Maps site -- essentially, these are embeddable mashups. You can then choose which of these Mapplets you want to see overlaid on the same map and combine them with the built-in features of Google Maps, like driving directions and business search. This lets you create your own mashups from the content that's most relevant to you. It also gives publishers a new channel to reach the millions of Google Maps users who are looking for their content.

We've released a special Developer Preview version of Google Maps that supports Mapplets at: http://maps.google.com/preview.

Mapplets are created from the mashup of the Google Gadgets API with the Google Maps API, so anyone who is already familiar with these can quickly create a Mapplet. For more information, please see this demo and the Mapplets developer documentation. We can't wait to see what new mashups our developer community will dream up and what old mashups will be reinvigorated by new exposure.

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Transit Directions in San Diego and Reno

Posted by Joe Hughes, Software Engineer

We're happy to announce that we've just added schedules for San Diego, California's MTS and Reno, Nevada's RTC RIDE to Google Transit. Now we can help you figure out how to get from the airport to a conference in San Diego's Horton Plaza, or from lovely Balboa Park to picturesque cliffside dining in La Jolla's restaurant row. In Reno, if Oppio Park is too crowded, you can head across town to Idlewild Park. Or, if you happen to be at the mall, but would rather be at the craps table, we can show you that it's a quick ride to the casinos next to the train station.

We're working to bring you more transit data from around the world, so stay tuned!

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The road not taken...

Posted by Barry Brumitt, Software Engineer

Do you prefer to avoid driving on major highways? Do you ride a scooter that can't travel at highway speeds? Or do you simply prefer to take the road less traveled? If so, Google Maps driving directions now has an "Avoid Highways" option for you.


When you click the the "Avoid Highways" checkbox, the route instantly updates to one that tries very hard to stay off of interstates, motorways, and other major roadways. This may give you a much longer path, but one that you may find more suitable. If it isn't what you want, you can uncheck the box and quickly revert to the normal route to help plan your trip.

A good example of such a route can be found here, from Seattle to Google's office in Kirkland. The route skips the I-90 and WA-520 floating bridges across Lake Washington, taking the scenic route around the lake through Juanita instead.

If you really have the time to take a different road through the yellow wood, you'll be glad to know the Avoid Highways option even works over long distances: an account of your backwoods journey from Vancouver, BC to Key West, FL would make a great My Map!

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1-800-GOOG-411: Freedom With Speech

Posted by Arnaud Sahuguet, Product Manager

In case you hadn't heard, our mission at Google is to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful. The good thing about mission statements is that you can refer to them and decide where you need to go next. We've gotten a good start on our mission already... provided you have access to a computer with an internet connection, or a phone with SMS and some very nimble fingers.

But in order to start to reach some folks that don't have an internet connection and aren't SMS savvy, we started a new experimental service a few weeks ago. It's called Google Voice Local Search and can be accessed by calling 1-800-GOOG-411. Google Voice Local Search is a new way to access business information available in Google Maps. Just call our toll-free number, answer a few questions, and get to the information you need. If there's more than one answer, you can navigate among the results. Once you get to the result you like, you can either be connected (free of charge) directly to the number, ask for a text message with the number and address, or ask for more details. The text message even has a link to Google Maps so you can display it on your phone. At the moment this service is only available in English for US businesses.

User feedback will be critical in the development of this service, so we are looking forward to your comments and suggestions via email labs+goog411@google.com or on our Google Voice Local Search groups page.

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Neighborhood Search Capability

Posted by David Tussey, Product Manager

Recently Google Maps introduced the ability to perform searches by neighborhoods. Neighborhoods tend to be somewhat informally defined but well recognized in certain cities. Neighborhood search is now available in fifty US cities, with more to follow.

You can now do searches such as bagels upper east side new york and restaurants, over the rhine, cincinnati on Google Maps. Additionally, this capability allows you to do city-level searches where the city is uniquely named, regardless of size, such as bakery corpus christi, or movie theater albuquerque.

Now Local Search is even more local!

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Local businesses in Universal search

Posted by Thai Tran, Product Manager

You've probably heard Google's big announcement about Universal search. As part of this, when you search for local businesses on Google.com, listings from Google Maps are now blended into the results page. These listings may appear at the top, middle, or bottom of the page based on their relevance compared to the other web results.

Previously we only showed local listings at the top of the results page, and since this was prime real estate, we would not display the listings if we were not certain that you were looking for a local business. Within the Universal search framework, we are now able to more smartly handle ambiguous queries. For example, for the query [san francisco bar] we can now satisfy users who are looking for the website of the Bar Association of San Francisco as well as those looking for a local place to get a drink.

Additionally, when you do click through to see more local business results from Universal search, you will see a new "Text View" that highlights information such as photos, reviews, and restaurant menus to help you get an impression of the businesses before you visit. You can of course switch over to the familiar "Map View" if you want to explore the neighborhood.

We're excited about this first step in the integration of local results in Universal search and will continue to let you know about developments in this area over the coming months.

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Viewing your collections with Google Maps

Posted by Mark Limber, Product Manager

Are you using Google SketchUp to build out a city for Google Earth? Are you interested in building a city for Google Earth? Or maybe you're just getting started on putting together a collection of buildings that are important to you?

If so, the Maps View of the Collections feature of the 3D Warehouse can help you organize your efforts. (And if you didn't already know, the 3D Warehouse is a place for sharing your 3D creations made with Google SketchUp.) In 3DWH, a "collection" is a way for you to group models that fit together according to whatever criteria you choose. It's simple: create a collection, find all the models in the 3DWH that belong in your collection, and add them as you go along.

The Maps View feature helps you navigate through all the geo-referenced models in your collection. When you go to the main page for your collection, you'll see a Google Maps view of your collection items. Using this map you can monitor your progress. (Is the neighborhood crowded enough for you?) You can also navigate the entire collection without paging through the hundreds of models you've gathered.

Visit these collections of buildings in the cities of Edmonton in Canada and Valencia, Spain, to see a few interesting examples.

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Citizen journalism meets My Maps

Posted by Jessica Lee, Product Manager

I've noticed that lots of people are using My Maps to document breaking news and current events for their communities. Here's an example:

Missouri Flood map -- Torrential rain caused levees to break along the Missouri River near Kansas City, claiming 12 lives. This map includes flood forecasts, water level information, and hydrographs for the communities affected by the floods.



Ware County Wildfire Map -- A wildfire has been raging in Southern Georgia for a month, devastating 128 square miles of Ware and northern Charlton counties.



Oakland Maze Closure -- A tanker filled with 8,600 gallons of gasoline exploded on a heavily trafficked freeway overpass in Oakland, CA. Hundreds of feet of concrete collapsed onto the freeway below, crippling the road network in the area.



University Bridge water main break -- A large water main burst under the University Bridge in Seattle, creating a sinkhole that devoured two unoccupied cars. The bridge had to be closed, and many people in the area reported brown water.

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Making Maps and Earth Global

Posted by Adam Smith, Geo Product Manager

To have a truly global product, you need engineers from around the world to make it happen. Over the past year we've spent a lot of time building up engineering teams in offices around the world in order to build localized versions of Google Maps and Google Earth in *all* countries. We've got a long way to go, but this week we made a lot of progress.

Google Earth now in 13 languages

We know that Google Earth is used around the world, and on May 9th we moved this effort forward by doubling the number of languages supported by adding:

Arabic
Czech
Dutch
Korean
Polish
Portuguese
Russian

This is in addition to the languages in which Google Earth has been available for some time:

French
Italian
German
Spanish
Japanese
English (UK/CA)

This is the first step toward our goal to have Google Earth speak as many languages as all of you do.

Geocoding now available in 24 countries

We realize that the first thing most of you do when you approach an online map is enter your home address. Taking an address and locating it on a map takes a bit of technological work under the hood. On Monday, we've launched support for "home finding" in five new countries:

Brazil
Poland
Czech Republic
Hungary
Portugal

There's still tons more work to do, so we'll continue to update you as we make progress.

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Greensburg, Kansas, Tornado Imagery

Posted by Brian McClendon, Engineering Director

Recently the town of Greensburg, Kansas was devastated by an F5 tornado and most of the town was destroyed. On May 7th one of our satellite providers, DigitalGlobe, jumped into action and gathered imagery of the region for search-and-rescue teams. Today we are making this before-and-after imagery available as a Google Earth overlay. We think you'll agree that the imagery is quite powerful, and we hope it is a valuable resource for rescue teams, residents, and all of those touched by this natural disaster.

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A new world unfolding

Posted by John Hanke, Director, Google Earth & Maps

Welcome to the Google "geo" blog. As web mapping (dare I say "the geoweb"?) matures, we're finding that we have a lot more to communicate about new developments in Earth, Maps, Local, and our APIs. The tools are becoming more powerful, more accessible, and more interrelated -- not only to each other, but also to the web at large and to things like search. Things are changing so fast we thought a blog focused on this topic would be the best way to communicate with you, both about our products and about the overall development of geo on the web.

So... what is the "geoweb"? Some people will scratch their heads and call it buzzword proliferation. Others, including Mike Liebhold, who has a long history of thinking and writing about this area, have a very well defined notion of what they believe it is (or should be). I don't think that there is agreement on what the geoweb is, but I think there is a lot of enthusiasm and energy across many fronts to make it happen. I expect the "it" will evolve substantially over the next few months and years as we (the geo ecosystem on the web) collectively figure out how "earth browsers," embedded maps, local search, geo-tagged photos, blogs, the traditional GIS world, wikis, and other user-generated geo content all interrelate. Those of us who work on geo products and services at Google believe we have an opportunity to make the web more useful -- and ultimately, to improve people's lives through better information and understanding.

At the moment, the biggest news on this front at Google is My Maps and geo search. My Maps makes it super-easy to create a custom map -- everything from real-time fire maps to congressional delegations geoblogging their trip to Iraq. And geo search (the ability to search all kinds of geographical information) makes it possible for people to discover these maps through normal "local" searches simply by clicking on the "see user-created content" link (it works in both Earth and Maps). A couple of examples are windsurfing near San Francisco and Jerry Seinfeld in NY. As cool as this integration is, the real news is that geo search doesn't just search My Maps. It also searches KML documents across the web. And, through KML sitemaps, Google has made it possible for sites like Platial, Smugmug, and Propsmart to make their maps searchable through geo search as well. Our goal is to help foster the ecosystem of geo development across the web. We will continue to look for ways to evolve our current products and to invent new ones that will make this possible. Check back here for the latest. We are looking forward to seeing many of you at Where 2.0 and the Google Developer Day.

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