The wonderful world of Where 2.0

Posted by Jess Lee, Product Manager, Google MapsThe 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...

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Google to Purchase Panoramio

Posted by Brandon Badger, Product ManagerGreat 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 Bl...

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Introducing... Street View!

Posted by Stephen Chau, Product ManagerHere 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...

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Mashup of Mashups

Posted by Thai Tran, Product ManagerIn 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...

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Transit Directions in San Diego and Reno

Posted by Joe Hughes, Software EngineerWe'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...

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The road not taken...

Posted by Barry Brumitt, Software EngineerDo 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....

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1-800-GOOG-411: Freedom With Speech

Posted by Arnaud Sahuguet, Product ManagerIn 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,...

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Neighborhood Search Capability

Posted by David Tussey, Product ManagerRecently 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...

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Local businesses in Universal search

Posted by Thai Tran, Product ManagerYou'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...

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Viewing your collections with Google Maps

Posted by Mark Limber, Product ManagerAre 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...

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Citizen journalism meets My Maps

Posted by Jessica Lee, Product ManagerI'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...

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Making Maps and Earth Global

Posted by Adam Smith, Geo Product ManagerTo 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 languagesWe know that Google Earth is used around the world, and on May 9th we moved this effort forward by doubling the number of languages...

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Greensburg, Kansas, Tornado Imagery

Posted by Brian McClendon, Engineering DirectorRecently 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...

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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...

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