What's interesting around here?

Posted by Doug Ricket, Software Engineer, Google Maps

Since the launch of our map-creation tools, we've seen some fantastic content created by people around the world, ranging from places to visit in Kyoto to isolated populations in Western Europe to photos of Americana. We wanted to share these maps with you, so we created a Mapplet for browsing popular user-created maps. This makes it easy to find public maps created by other users via the My Maps tab. Pan the map to your favorite destination, and you'll see some user-created maps for that area on the left-hand side of the screen. Use the Mapplet to find interesting things to do on your vacation, read stories from people on other continents, or broadcast your own views. If you find something you really like, you can click "Save to My Maps" and it will be added to your My Maps tab.

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Browsing geotagged photos from Picasa Web Albums

Posted by Ping Hsin Chen, Software Engineer, Picasa

About a month ago, we added a new feature to Picasa Web Albums that makes it easy to geotag your favorite photos. With the "Map My Photos" option, you can literally just drag and drop your pictures onto a map. Already, the Picasa Web Albums community has added map information to millions of photos from all over the world.

Now we have a new Mapplet that lets you search and browse all of the geolocated photos in Google Maps. Just click here to add the Picasa Web Albums Mapplet to your "My Maps" tab. Then, zoom in to your favorite spot on Google Maps, enable our Mapplet and watch the photos roll in! You can see what snapshots exist of your favorite getaway or take a virtual vacation to Paris. The world is your oyster.

While you browse all the photos around a given location, you can also do keyword searches drawing from the captions associated with each photo. For instance, pop over to London, zoom in to get a bird's-eye view, then type "eye" into our Mapplet's search field. Now you'll see a more finely filtered set of photos taken in and around the gigantic London Eye observation wheel by folks from all over the globe.

If you'd like to learn how to add map locations to your own photos using Picasa Web Albums, check out this previous blog post and our demo gallery. Once you've added a location to your photo, just designate the album as both public and searchable, and we'll get it on the map.

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In-car Google Local Search with BMW ConnectedDrive

Posted by Thomas Wuertele, BMW ConnectedDrive & Jeff Zabel, BMW Technology Office USA

In March, BMW introduced Google Maps Send to Car in Germany. As of today, we've expanded this service to all of our European BMW Assist customers. In addition to Google Maps Deutschland, you can now send businesses from Google Maps, Google Maps Italia and Google Maps UK directly to your in-car navigation system. This means that instead of printing out or writing down information before you go, you can find what you're looking for and send it to your car via Google Maps. Once on the road, you no longer need to manually enter the phone number or address. Simply click to call or select your destination as you go.

Google Maps Send to Car is a convenient way to send locations in advance, but what about when you want to find a business on the road? Google and BMW are the first to launch an in-car Google Local Search available within BMW Online Germany. Looking for a gas station, a museum or a nearby sushi spot? This service gives you access to all the information from Google Maps while you enjoy your drive. Just search online using Google Maps and transfer the address to your navigation system, or call the contact with one click. It's that easy. Watch this video (or click here for the German version).

Together with Google, we look forward to further enhancing BMW ConnectedDrive’s vision of the connected vehicle to bring our drivers more innovative and convenient services like these in the future.

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Track and explore real-time earthquakes and volcanic activity

Posted by Scott Haefner and Dina Venezky, Geologists, U.S. Geological Survey (USGS)

The USGS monitors, assesses and issues warnings of natural hazards, including earthquakes and volcanoes. In the past month alone, a magnitude 8.0 earthquake shook Peru, Alaska’s Pavlof Volcano began erupting and lava started to flow from a new vent that formed in Hawaii's Kilauea Volcano. Now you can track both real-time earthquakes and volcanic activity on Google Maps using the USGS Mapplets.

The Earthquake Mapplet plots the past week of earthquakes around the world, showing the location, time and magnitude. Each earthquake includes a link to the USGS earthquake website for more information, including additional parameters, background and other content such as Google Earth KMLs, ShakeMaps (shaking intensity maps) and "Did You Feel It?" maps.

The Volcano Mapplet displays the latest U.S. volcano updates, showing the current level of both ground-based and aviation hazards. Clicking on an alert icon provides a summary of the volcano update along with a link to the USGS Volcano Hazards Program website for additional details and images.

Give them a try and let us know what you think.

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Sky: The final frontier

Posted by Lior Ron, Product Manager

Since ancient times, people have looked at the sky and tried to find order in the chaos of stars and planets. Ancient sky maps and astronomical computers were created alongside maps of the earth. With Google Earth, we try to provide you with the best mapping experience possible, enabling you to virtually explore our planet. But wouldn't it be great to be able to explore the stars and galaxies as well?

Today, I'm excited to announce we are launching Sky in Google Earth. You can now explore the universe from the comfort of your chair. Zoom in to distant galaxies hundreds of millions of light years away, explore the constellations, see the planets in motion, witness a supernova explosion; it's like having a giant, virtual telescope at your command -- your own personal planetarium!







To start exploring today, download the newest version of Google Earth, click on the new Sky button on the toolbar at the top of the screen, and navigate the skies! There are 100 million individual stars and 200 million galaxies in Sky just waiting to be discovered. To help you get started, we've prepared a short video.

There's so much more to Sky than what meets the eye. After you download the new Google Earth, check out our Google Earth Gallery for fascinating examples of natural phenomena, Asteroids, or just take a tour of the sky. Since people across the world all share the same sky, we're happy to announce we'll be making Sky available in 13 languages.

Happy stargazing, everyone.

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YouTube-style Embeddable Maps

Posted by Jess Lee, Product Manager, Google Maps


Today we're excited to announce a new feature on Google Maps that allows you to add maps to your blog or website just by copying and pasting a snippet of HTML. And once you embed the map, it has all the same functionality of the Google Maps you know and love; it's clickable, draggable, and zoomable.

Adding a map to your website or blog is now as easy as embedding a YouTube video. No programming skills are required, and there's no need to sign up for a Maps API key. All it takes is three simple steps:

1. Go to Google Maps and pull up the map you want to embed. It can be a location, a business, a set of driving directions, search results, or a map you've created using our map-making tools.



2. Then click "Link to this page" in the top right-hand corner. Copy the text that you see in the second box.



3. Paste that text into your blog editor or into the HTML of your webpage. We use an <iframe> so it works on most blog hosting sites like Blogger.



Voila! The map appears on your blog.

For example, you could be writing a blog post about your recent trip to Hawaii...


View Larger Map

Or you could be a business owner adding a map of your location to your website...


View Larger Map

Or you could be sharing your photos of the San Francisco Zoo...


View Larger Map

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Real time Traffic in Google Earth

Posted by Mark Tsui, Software Engineer

Today we launched a new feature in Google Earth that provides that same real time traffic information that people have come to rely on in Google Maps. By enabling the "Traffic" layer in Google Earth, you can see a real time picture of traffic conditions to help plan a route or just check out how bad traffic might be in a city that you're exploring. It's useful information to have at your fingertips whether you're house hunting or just browsing. So come on over and check it out!

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Google Book Search in Google Earth

Posted by Brandon Badger, Product Manager

Did you ever wonder what Lewis and Clark said about your hometown as they passed through? What about if any other historical figures wrote about your part of the world? Earlier this year, we announced a first step toward geomapping the world's literary information by starting to integrate information from Google Book Search into Google Maps. Today, the Google Book Search and Google Earth teams are excited to announce the next step: a new layer in Earth that allows you to explore locations through the lens of the world's books.

Now when you turn on the "Google Book Search" layer in Google Earth (found in the "Featured Content" folder in the "Layers" menu), you'll see small book icons scattered around the globe. When you click on one of the book icons, a pop-up balloon will display a snippet of text from one of Book Search's public domain books that references that location. You'll also find links to the Google Book Search page for that snippet so that you can learn more about what it has to say about the city or town.

For example, let's say that you're interested in Detroit, Michigan. After flying there in Google Earth, you'll find that one of the book icons is for "The Writings of Thomas Jefferson." Clicking on the book icon brings up the pop-up balloon with the following text snippet:

"With respect to the unfor-tunate loss of Detroit and our army, I with pleasure see the animation it has inspired through our whole country, ..."

A link in the pop-up bubble with take you to page 191 of Jefferson's writings so that you can read the full context of the reference. We hope that you'll find this layer to be a dynamic and interesting way to explore the world's literature; it is a whole new way to visualize both the written history of your hometown as well as your favorite books.

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Planning a trip using Google Maps

Posted by Thai Tran, Product Manager, Google Maps

I just returned from a vacation in Europe, and I found two Mapplets invaluable for planning my trip:

Wikimapia Layer --Wikimapia.org is a website where people have have annotated millions of places all over the world, and you can now view these annotations on Google Maps using their Mapplet. After zooming in on a location such as [Prague], I would then go to the "My Maps" tab and turn on the Wikimapia Layer to find out where interesting sights such as the Old Town, Prague Castle, and the Charles Bridge were located.

Booking.com Hotel Search -- Booking.com is an online hotel reservation service that has especially good coverage in Europe. Using the Booking.com Mapplet, I was able to find out which hotels were available and compare their rates and proximity to the locations I was most interested in seeing. Using this, I found the Hotel Modrá Růže, which I highly recommend if you're ever visiting Prague.

Note: If you're traveling within the US, you can also try the Hotels.com or Orbitz Hotel Search Mapplets.

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Maps for Educators

Posted by Liz Xu, Software Engineer, Google Maps

David Bellel, a semi-retired computer coordinator from the New York City public school system, has created a series of video maps that can be used by social studies teachers to educate kids on the history of various neighborhoods in New York City.

Queen's Jazz Trail -- Homes of Jazz Greats and other notables in Queens, NY.

Famous & Infamous Manhattan: East Village -- A tour based on "A Colorful Walking Tour of New York's Most Notorious Crime Sites" by Andrew Roth.

In David's own words: "I've found in my years as a NYC public school teacher that many kids' knowledge of the city only extends to the 10 square block area of their neighborhoods. Perhaps the creation of libraries of city-wide Quicktime VR movies can provide some help in broadening their horizons."

To learn more about David's work, check out his website.

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The 59 Mile Drive

Posted by Jess Lee, Product Manager, Google Maps

The original "49 Mile Drive" was a route created in 1938 by the San Francisco Downtown Association to highlight the city's beauty and to promote it as a tourist destination. The route has changed several times in the last 70 years, but most recently a user on Google Maps has plotted his own version of the 49 Mile Drive. The original route has been modified to avoid highways and to include scenic views such as the Painted Ladies at Alamo Square and Lombard Street (the "crookedest street the in the world"). It's also 10 miles longer, so I guess a more appropriate name would be the 59 Mile Drive. You can map your own scenic route using the map drawing tools found in the My Maps tab of Google Maps.

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More Street View Cities

Posted by Stephen Chau, Product Manager, Google Maps

Since the launch of Street View we've been working hard on extending the service to more cities.

We're excited to announce that Street View is now available in San Diego, Los Angeles, Houston and Orlando. Like the San Francisco Bay Area, San Diego features high-resolution imagery.

I've been waiting to visit Frank Gehry's Walt Disney Concert Hall in LA for some time now. Now I can see it in Street View!

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Minnesota Bridge Collapse

Posted by Jess Lee, Google Maps product manager

Yesterday the I-35W Bridge connecting Minneapolis and St. Paul collapsed during rush hour. Here are some user-created maps that we hope are useful to those affected by the tragedy:

35W Bridge - Photos, links to news articles, meeting point locations, contact information for nearby hospitals, and prayer service schedules.

Roads closures & detours - Traffic information such as closed lanes and exits.

More information can be found by searching for terms like "35W detour" within the user-created content on Google Maps.

Update: We have updated our driving directions to avoid the I-35W Bridge and to take into account other local road closures that have been enacted to help the flow of traffic. Our driving directions will now recommend the best alternative driving route in the face of these closures.

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How long will it take at rush hour?

Posted by Eli Brandt, Software Engineer

Let's say you want to leave from Berkeley to catch the sunset from the beach at Half Moon Bay, to relax on the sand and watch the sun sink into the Pacific. We all know Google Maps will tell you how to get there. Now it's better at helping you decide when to leave to catch your sunset on time. When you ask Google Maps for driving directions, the directions say "about 59 minutes". But they also say something new: "up to 1 hour 50 minutes in traffic".



Google Maps now lets you know how long a drive might take in rush-hour traffic, for a limited set of metropolitan areas. Of course, if there is an accident, the drive could take even longer. But more likely than not, your drive to Half Moon Bay will take between 59 minutes and 1 hour 50 minutes.

If sunset today is at 7:00, then you figure you'll catch the tail end of rush hour. You might try a different route to dodge traffic. Drag the blue line off the Bay Bridge and onto 880 instead. Now the estimate is "up to 1 hour 20 minutes in traffic" -- that sounds better.



So be sure to leave by about 5:40, bring some warm clothes for after sunset, and with luck, maybe you can catch a green flash.

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