The countdown begins

Posted by Melissa Crounse, Santa Tracker

For those of you who have followed Santa's trip in Google Earth for the past few years, you'll be interested to know that this year we've paired up with the real Santa-tracking pros -- the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD).

Starting tomorrow, December 1st, you'll be able to count down to the big sleigh ride on the NORAD Tracks Santa website; starting at 1 am PST on December 24th, you'll be able to download a special KML file that lets you follow his trip in real time. Check out the Official Google Blog to learn more about our involvement in this Santa-tracking tradition that began more than 50 years ago.

Read More

Update on Street View via search

Posted by Stephen Chau, Product Manager, Google Maps

We've heard from some of you that you're having trouble accessing Street View imagery within the local search and address bubbles, so we're going to work on it a bit more. We're sorry for any disappointment, and we'll keep you posted on our progress. Stay tuned...

Read More

Location, location, location

Posted by Steve Lee, Product Manager, Google Mobile Team

Anyone who's used a GPS-enabled version of Google Maps for mobile knows how useful it can be to have location information. But very few devices actually support GPS, and the technology is still evolving -- it can sometimes take a while to acquire a satellite signal, getting coverage indoors can be difficult, and using GPS can drain your phone's battery.

Today Google launched a new version of Google Maps for mobile with a beta technology called My Location, which provides approximate location information for those of us without GPS, and complements GPS location information for those of us who do have it. Read more on our new mobile blog.

Read More

Import your KML, KMZ, and GeoRSS files

Posted by Brian Cornell, Software Engineer, Google Maps

If you use Google Earth, you're probably familiar with the KML and KMZ file formats, which are used to store geographic information like placemarks, lines and shapes. Now you can share your KML files more easily with other people (who may not have Google Earth installed) by importing them into My Maps. Your file will be stored online and will be viewable on any computer with a web browser.

To import a KML file, create a new map and click the Import link. You'll be able to upload a file from your desktop, or enter the URL of a file on the web. We'll import all of the data from that file into your map for online access and editing. Keep in mind that Google Maps doesn't support as many features of KML as Google Earth, so some of your information (like 3D models) won't be imported into your online map.

You can use this feature to transfer placemarks from Google Earth to Google Maps, make an editable copy of some geographic data you find on the web, or upload KML data from a GPS tracking device. Then you can bring it back to Google Earth by clicking on the KML link to download a KML file. Make some changes in Google Earth and import it back into the same map, checking the replace checkbox this time to replace the existing map with the updated one.

Read More

My Our Maps

Posted by Jess Lee, Google Maps Product Manager

The My Maps feature of Google Maps lets people create maps to share their hobbies and expertise with the world. For example, a surfing enthusiast could map out their favorite surf spots or a surfing club could plot all the best beaches in Southern California. Now imagine if all the surfers around the globe worked together, leveraging their combined knowledge to create a single map of the best surf spots worldwide, applying the power of wiki-style collaboration to cartography.

Starting today, Google Maps supports collaborative map-making, so multiple people can edit the same My Map. Just click the "Collaborate" link and enter the email addresses of the people you want to invite. They'll receive an email invitation with a link to the map. Once they open the map, they should be able to edit it, as long as they are signed into a Google Account that's associated with that email address. You can also open your map to the world so anyone can edit it by selecting the "Allow anyone to edit this map" checkbox.

By the way, we're always looking for good surf spots, so please add your favorites to our collaborative map. Or if you're not the surfing type, we'd still love to see your maps, whether you're cataloging the best wineries in Australia, reporting UFO sightings to the National UFO Reporting Center, or planning a cross-country road trip with friends.

Read More

Another way to take in the view

Posted by Jie Shao, Software Engineer

I'm pleased to announce a whole new method for cruising the streets: Street View via search. In the past, a search of a specific location in Maps yielded a placemark on its location and a pop-up balloon containing its address. Starting today, the balloon will also display a thumbnail preview of the panoramic image for locations where Street View is available. Just click on the thumbnail or the "Street View" link under it to display the location in full view.



Street View links really come in handy if you're searching for a local business. Let's say you're not quite sure where to eat. Searching "pizza place near 40 Market St., San Francisco, CA," for example, will yield many results. Now you'll see a pop-up balloon containing a Street View link for each result so you can actually see which one looks best! And don't forget to scope out which pizza place has the most convenient parking.



Personally, I'm excited to have the addition of this feature as the holiday season kicks off. Holiday planning can be stressful, as everyone knows, and we're hoping this tool will help ease some of those holiday woes.

And speaking of the holidays, the Maps team here at Google has already received the best gift of all: Street View's spot on Time's "Best Inventions of 2007" list!

Read More

Explore new terrain

Posted by Chris Pennock and Keith Ito, Software Engineers

We've noticed that many people build customized maps using My Maps and KML to help others see the planet in a new light. We've seen everything from maps of hiking trails with pictures taken along the way to a guide to the world's mountain peaks. Today we're releasing Terrain maps to help highlight this natural beauty even more. These maps focus on physical features such as mountains, valleys, and vegetation. They contain labels for even very small mountains and trails and are enhanced with subtle shading that can often give a better sense of elevation changes than a satellite image alone.

For example, we think Terrain maps may just be the best way to experience the grandeur of the Grand Canyon or to plan your hiking trip on the Appalachian Trail. And of course, big mountains look really cool. Better yet, you can mix them with custom maps from our users, such as a map of highest points in the United States or a guide to the Pyrenees mountains.

To see the new style, simply click on the "Terrain" button in the upper-right corner of the map.



You may notice in this screenshot that the handy "Hybrid" button, which shows satellite images overlaid with labels and roads, seems to have gone missing. Don't worry -- this view can now be accessed by clicking the "Satellite" button and checking the "Show labels" check box that will appear under the "Satellite" button:

Read More

A breath of fresh air

Posted by Steve Miller, Product Manager, Google Earth Outreach

We're so happy (OK, more like ecstatic) about the recent wave of people, companies and organizations "going green." Everywhere you look these days, you see hybrid cars, solar panels, recycling bins, and so on. And we were really thrilled to learn about the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's new project using Google Earth.

The EPA has created an amazing KML file that tracks air emission sources. That means Google Earth users can now track air quality, near and far, from the comfort of their computer screens.

The layer also makes it possible to see which companies are generating air pollutants at the highest rates. Select a given location and view placemarks of all of the companies in the area. Tilt the earth until you're at ground level and check out the collection of placemarks; they vary in height based on pollutants emitted at their particular location. Click on a company of interest to read about their eco-history.

We hope people make good use of this great new tool, whether it be to simply discover the air quality in different areas around the world or to encourage companies to engage in more environmentally friendly practices. To find out how to get started, take a look at this informative EPA page -- it couldn't be simpler.

Update: The EPA has actually created not one but two informative KML files. In addition to a layer that tracks air emission sources, the EPA has created a KML file that provides real-time air quality information. This tool displays the most current air quality conditions by city, updated hourly with data taken from the AIRNow database. Check out their website, which includes instructions for using this informative tool.

Read More

Armchair parade watching

Posted by Elaine Filadelfo, Thanksgiving Day Parade Enthusiast

I'll admit it, I still love the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade. In fact, this is the first year in as long as I can remember that I won't be spending my Wednesday evening braving the crowds on 77th Street to see the balloons getting inflated. But I'll definitely be camped out in front of my TV tomorrow morning (with frequent trips to the kitchen to baste my turkey, of course) watching the balloons, floats, and marching bands make their way through Herald Square. Plus, there are several maps and a KML file that plot out the route so you can follow along at home. That way, when the commentators say the Big Apple Circus float is at Columbus Circle, you'll know you've got plenty of time to stir your cranberry sauce before they perform.

There are also lots of parades happening in other cities across the country. Take a look in Google Maps and see if your city's parade is already in there (I just found Chicago's parade, for example). If you don't see it there, create your own MyMap of the route and the best viewing places.

And if all that parade watching makes you antsy to hit the streets yourself, there are plenty of Thanksgiving races charted out in MyMaps. Many of them show the actual routes, so you can also use them on Friday morning to burn off some of those calories from the big dinner!ost content

Read More

Think globally, mark locally

Posted by Seth LaForge, Software Engineer, Google Maps

The last time I threw a party, I used the My Maps feature of Google Maps to tell my friends exactly how to find my house. But if they'd just searched Maps on their own for my address and had gone to the marker location, they would have been partying in the middle of the street!

Now for your next party (or any other occasion), you can move the marker for your address to show the exact entrance of your house. Just search for your address, click "Edit," click "Move Marker," and drag the marker to your front door.

Of course, we couldn't limit ourselves to just addresses — businesses can be hard to find too. Take your favorite restaurant, for example. Now you can find it on Google Maps and move the marker to its front door. You might just save someone's date with this information! Fixing markers can be downright addictive. I've spent hours using Street View to locate businesses and houses, and then moving their markers.

You might be worried about people monkeying with markers. Fear not, we've thought of that. Whenever you find a recently-moved address or business, you'll see a "Show original" link you can click to see where the marker was originally. If it's in the wrong place, just move it to the right one.

Move a marker, and make your virtual neighborhood a better place -- that is, in the U.S., Australia and New Zealand, where it works right now. You'll need a Google Account to join the fun. And I should also tell you that's not actually my house.

Read More

Teaching a thing or two

Posted by Anna Bishop, Google Earth Education Coordinator

Rounding out our celebration of Geography Awareness Week, I’d like to point you to some Google Earth and Maps educational applications that recently caught my attention:

Here in the United States, Tim Hunter of the Advanced Technology Environmental Energy Center (ATEEC) brought together over a dozen educators to develop a virtual field trip that explores political and environmental issues in the Arctic. The purpose of this National Science Foundation-supported project is to explore fossil fuels, discuss sustainable sources of energy, and explore the Alaskan wilderness.

Across the pond in the UK, middle school geography teacher Noel Jenkins created a lesson plan that combines fiction with film-making and climatology. Acting as location scouts, students use Google Earth to find ideal spots for filming the movie version of Philip Pullman's book The Golden Compass. They need to read the text carefully, but the decision-making process is also based on how they interpret the landscape.





















And schools across the globe have joined forces to commemorate the 2007-2008 International Polar Year. In this initiative, environmental science, history, anthropology, and technology come together to immerse students in the world of geography. Check out which schools have launched virtual balloons to mark their participation.

We'll keep you posted on more educational resources as we hear about them. And be sure to visit the Google Earth for Educators page and the Google Earth Community for additional lesson plan ideas and discussion forums.

Read More

Map of the day: My Maps for teaching Physics and Literature

Posted by Sowmya Subramanian, Engineering Manager, Google Maps

In my time spent combing through all of the amazing customized maps created by our users, I've been pleased to find many maps that illustrate the usefulness of My Maps in a classroom setting. For example, I recently found two great ones that illustrate how tools in the My Maps tab can be used by teachers in two very different subjects: Physics and Literature.

For one, check out this cool map created by a Physics teacher who has been teaching his 9th grade students about speed, velocity and displacement. In an effort to make the class more interesting, he had his students pair up and use map-making tools in the My Maps tab to plot out different bus routes in the area. Each route was labeled with the average time needed for a bus to make a complete loop and the average speed of the bus. Pretty cool, huh? You can read more about it on his blog .

And then there's an English teacher who got his students (and me!) hooked on a reading assignment by mapping out a novel's plot points. In the book Whirligig by Paul Fleischman, main character Brent travels to the four corners of the U.S. on a Greyhound bus. Tom used My Maps to plot out the character's entire route, highlighting key placemarks and engaging students along the way. And be sure to read more about the assignment on his blog.

Teachers, what are you waiting for? On your marks... get set... map!

Read More

Sky in the classroom

Posted by Andrew Connolly, Google Visiting Faculty (University of Washington)

Google products can be useful in many classes, but today I want to point out how they can be useful in my favorite high school class: astronomy!

When I studied astronomy, the teachers used to bring a gigantic star map to class, point at the stars, and tell us all those great stories about them. I always wanted to see deeper into the sky and know more about it, but I had to wait for the annual trip to the observatory to actually do that, unfortunately. With Sky in Google Earth you can do all of that and much more now without even leaving the classroom. Just open Google Earth, click on the new "Sky" button, and you'll see the very sky above your location. Here are some tips on how to get an astronomical education:

- To see a particular object, just search for it in the search box (for example, try searching "Betelgeuse"). If you want to know more about a particular star, just select the "backyard astronomy" layer from the layer panel and click on a star to get more details.

- To see a giant cosmic explosion in space, search for "crab nebula" and fly 6,300 light years in a second. Click on the icon to learn more. And you can explore other Hubble pictures using the layers panel.

- To explore the planets as they move across the sky, double-click the "planets" layer on the left panel and then press play on the time slider on the top-right corner. If you want to explore, say, the moon or Mars, just click on either one of them to land in a map. It's almost like being there ...

- Go to HeyWhat'sThat to access a night sky overlay in Google Earth and see what your sky will look like tonight.

- With planets and asteroids moving through our own solar system, and with exploding stars and mysterious flashes of gamma ray radiation, there are always new things to see in the night sky. At voeventnet.org you can use Sky to find out whats new in the sky tonight and go and see for yourself.

- We also have special tours you can use: just click on the "User's guide to galaxies" or the "Life of a Star" tour on the layers panel, and then click on the star or galaxy icon to learn more. You can also create your own tour of Sky to share with friends or students, using the same tools in Google Earth. Here's a good tutorial.

Additionally, you can learn more about the planets through a new layer created by exoplanets.org, which will show you all of the stars with planetary systems that we currently know about. Download it from the Google Earth gallery.

It's our hope that Sky will help educate kids around the world on the wonders of space. We encourage you to share your feedback with us in the Sky forum.

Read More

Viva la via!

Posted by Ryan Sturgell, Software Engineer

A few months ago we added a simple and fun way to interactively modify the directions created by Google Maps. You can drag the endpoints of your route to change where the route starts or stops. You can also drag the route itself to modify how you get to your destination. Perfect, right? Well, almost. Our users have told us that, while they love dragging their routes to use the roads they want, they don't like that we add a new destination at the spot they dragged: I want to go via the I-90 bridge, not stop on it! We wouldn't want to either. So we've tweaked this feature by adding a "via" point to the spot where you dragged, rather than a whole new destination:



This also improves our directions: No longer will we suggest you stop on the bridge during your trip. Viva la via!

Read More

Google Maps comes to Switzerland

Posted by Giorgio Scherl, Product Manager Google Maps, Switzerland

Falling in love with Switzerland just got even easier. Those romantic lakeside hotels, world-famous chocolate shops, and winding roads through the Alps can now be discovered using Google Maps for Switzerland. The all-new Maps service, developed right here in Zurich, will help people in Switzerland find and enjoy the businesses and services around them. It also includes easy-to-use driving directions and trip-planning public transport information. We worked with Swiss content providers, ranging from Swiss doctors to the Public Transit Authority, to provide a comprehensive one-stop-shop of local information. The same information can also be accessed from Google Earth.

So whether you're taking public transportation in Zurich, planning a family ski trip, or looking for a special place to stay in Geneva, Google Maps can help.

Read More

Google Transit trip planning in Europe

Posted by Christoph Oehler, Product Manager

We are very happy to announce the launch of Google Transit trip planner in Europe. For quite some time, Google Maps has featured transit stop icons with helpful information like lines serving a station and next departures for many cities. But now you can plan your entire journey using public transportation! So far we have information for the following places and transport companies:

- Traveline South East, UK
- SBB, Switzerland (train, ferries and long distance bus coverage)
- VBZ, Zurich, Switzerland
- Turin, Italy
- Florence, Italy

Try it yourself: type your start and end address in the "get directions" boxes. The default results are driving directions, but in the areas that we have transit routing coverage, you can simply click on the "Take Public Transit" link.

We believe this is an important step in encouraging people to use public transit. We're hoping folks will decide to leave the car at home if they can easily discover a transit stop next to a business as they're searching for it, or if they realise it's easy to take a train as they plot their journey from point A to point B. We're always looking to improve our coverage and work with more partners -- we'll keep you posted as more places and transport companies are added.

Read More

Architect ideas with Project Spectrum

Posted by Tom Wyman, Market Development Manager

It's always incredible to witness even the youngest children mastering sophisticated web applications at lightning speed. Not long ago, I was wowed to learn that many children with autism have proven to be particularly adept at creating 3D models using Google SketchUp. Last week on the Official Google SketchUp Blog, we announced the creation of Project Spectrum, a program dedicated to connecting the autistic community with free software and learning materials.

Project Spectrum was dreamed up by the Google SketchUp team in partnership with the Boulder, Colorado chapter of the Autism Society of America, the Boulder Valley School District, and the Center for Lifelong Learning and Design at University of Colorado. By connecting children with SketchUp tools and the know-how to use them, Project Spectrum makes it possible for kids with special abilities to create 3D models of anything from actual existing buildings to imagined dream homes. They can even show off their work in the 3D Warehouse, an online repository of 3D models in which users can publish the models they've created, as well as search and download models built by others. And what's even cooler, the best models in the 3D Warehouse are added to the 3D Buildings layer in Google Earth, giving every child the opportunity to share their hard work with the whole world!

The creators of Project Spectrum have put together a very cool video to showcase ways in which children with autism can take advantage of SketchUp. Check it out:





It's especially inspiring to learn about Project Spectrum's launch right in the middle of Geography Awareness Week. We hope people continue using our products in such fun, educational ways. If you are an educator who would like to use Google SketchUp in the classroom, please visit our SketchUp for Education page.

Read More

Geography Awareness Week

Posted by Cathy Tang, Project Lead

Which country is home to the world's oldest lake? Where is harissa (a porridge-like soup made from stewed chicken or lamb and coarsely ground soaked wheat) a national dish?

As you may have guessed, each of these questions is related to Asia. We've teamed up with My Wonderful World, a National Geographic-led campaign for geographic literacy, to give students, parents and geography enthusiasts a look at "Asia: Continent of Contrasts" during Geography Awareness Week. Held annually during the third week of November, Geography Awareness Week is an initiative to create awareness of the people, places and diversity of a specific world region.

Check out My Wonderful World's tours of Asia in Google Earth, featuring photos, videos and interesting tidbits about Asia -- its natural wonders, wildlife, art, cuisine and more. You can also test your knowledge with the "Ultimate Asia Challenge." Within these layers you'll find answers to the questions above and many more.



Geography Awareness Week offers a great example of how Google Earth and other online applications can be used in the classroom to make learning more interactive and visual, whether your subject matter is Asia, astronomy or algae. Each day this week, we'll be posting other examples of how mapping tools can make a difference in the classroom.

Read More

Map of the Day: San Francisco Bay Oil Spill

Posted by James DeBoer, Software Engineer, Google Maps

Google Maps' map-making tools are often used by news agencies to report stories as they happen. This past week's oil spill in the San Francisco Bay is a good example. The San Francisco Chronicle's map provides numerous pictures of the slick and cleanup. The KCBS map also shows areas affected and roughly how far the oil has travelled.

Read More

Transit routing up north

Posted by Joe Hughes, Software Engineer

I'm happy to announce we've added directions for Vancouver's TransLink buses, trains, and ferries to Google Maps. Now, any time you search for directions in the Lower Mainland using Google Maps, you'll see a "Take Public Transit" link above the driving directions. If you click on it, you'll see a few ways that you can get to your destination using a combination of buses, SkyTrain, SeaBus, and West Coast Express. For example, here's a route from Pacific Central Station to Lonsdale Quay:



Since Vancouver is our first Google Transit city in Canada, I made a special trip to meet with TransLink folks and local transit advocates last week. TransLink has big goals for reducing carbon emissions in the region while helping residents and visitors get around (especially during the 2010 winter Olympics), so we're happy to help them reach a broader audience through Google Maps. By sharing their schedule information with us in GTFS format, TransLink will also able to make their route information more accessible to non-English speakers and the visually impaired (Google Maps is available in many languages as well as in a plain HTML version that works with screen readers).

This is another exciting step for us, but our work is far from done. We'll keep you posted on our progress as we continue to work with more transit agencies to bring their routes to Google Maps.

Read More

New layers in Google Earth

Posted by Wei Luo, Senior GIS Specialist

People will find some pleasant surprises in the most recent Google Earth data update. You've already heard about the new "Weather" and "MDG Monitor" layers, but that's not all ...

We have re-organized the data layers in the left-side Layers panel in this new release. The long layer list has been shrunk into a smaller set. Basic information such as roads, 3D buildings, and Weather are at the top. If you are looking for interesting things to do or places to visit, expand the "Gallery" or "Places of Interest" folders and you will find a wide selection of interesting data layers for you to explore.



If you've ever wanted to plan a trip to Egypt, you can now turn on the "Egypt Tourism" layer to see a collection of destinations to visit. You'll even find intricately designed 3D models of some of the famous landmarks.





But if you just want to stick around and hang out with friends and family this holiday season, you might be happy to know you can find good restaurants easier than ever with Google Earth. The data team has recently updated the business listing layers with user reviews. Simply zoom into the neighborhood you want to go to, and you'll see restaurants show up at street level. You can read reviews of the restaurants before you head out. Or if you have some good restaurants to recommend, you can write reviews. To see more things to do, expand the "Places of Interest" folder and check out other local business and recreation information.



We've also added Wikipedia articles in 6 languages: French, Italian, German, Spanish, Japanese, and Dutch. Other updates include adding all country names in local languages as well as business listings for Australia.

Read More

Tracking human development in Google Earth

Posted by Megan Goddard, Senior GIS Specialist

We're happy to let you know that the MDG Monitor, which launched last week at the United Nations, is now live in Google Earth. You can find it in the 'Global Awareness' folder on the left-side panel.

The Millennium Development Goals aim to:

• Eradicate extreme poverty and hunger

• Achieve universal primary education
  

• Promote gender equality and empower women
  

• Reduce child mortality
  

• Improve maternal health

• Combat HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases

• Ensure environmental sustainability
  

• Develop a global partnership for development

Back in 2000, all of the countries of the world agreed to reach these goals by 2015. We are now halfway there, and while many countries have made excellent strides, there is still a long way to go. The MDG Monitor makes it easy to track the progress, so we encourage you to take a look at the layer and find out more about what governments around the world are doing (and sadly, in some cases, not doing) to improve the health and well-being of their citizens.

Read More

How's the weather?

Posted by Cris Castello, GIS Data Engineer

A wise man once said, "I ain't often right, but I've never been wrong." When it comes to weather forecasts, this certainly rings true. You always remember that day when you planned a picnic because it was supposed to be sunny and it ended up raining. In the latest release of Google Earth layers, we're letting you play weatherman by publishing a slew of great, dynamic weather data.

If you're running the latest version of Google Earth, you'll notice a new "Weather" folder in the layers panel:



The "Weather" folder contains three sub-layers ("Clouds," "Radar," and "Conditions and Forecasts") and one "Information" link that gives you some background information on the data being displayed. The "Clouds" layer depicts a global satellite mosaic of clouds created on an hourly basis by our friends down the road at the Naval Research Laboratory in Monterey. As some of the foremost satellite meteorologists in the world, they have implemented various algorithms to make the data as accurate and comprehensive as possible. Click on the "Information" link in the "Weather" folder to see the what time the current clouds image portrays. Please note that there are a couple of hours of latency built into the data. In other words, the image you're looking at is probably from two to three hours ago. For a special visual treat, try zooming in towards the clouds. You'll eventually find yourself below the clouds, at which point you can look up and see the cloud deck above you.

The "Radar" layer contains a near real-time Doppler radar image of the United States, updated every 15 minutes. This data is being fed to us by the folks at Weather.com. We will shortly be rolling out radar for Puerto Rico, Alaska, Hawaii, and Europe as well. The "Information" bubble contains the time stamp associated with the current radar image.

Weather.com is also providing us with observation and forecast data for nearly 50,000 cities worldwide; that's what you see in the "Conditions and Forecasts" layer. You can zoom around to see the current conditions and forecasts for just about every major city in the world, among other cities. Can you find the world's most extreme weather? What about Base Orcadas in the South Orkney Islands, where, as I'm writing this, it's 23 degrees F with a 26 mph wind, making it feel like 6 degrees? And it's just about summertime there! The current conditions are updated at least hourly (more often in some places), and the forecasts get updated once every few hours.

My favorite feature of this release is something that you won't see in the layers panel of Google Earth itself. We're offering a separate KML network link download of a time animation of the last 24 hours of clouds data or the last 6 hours of radar data. Once you download the file, you'll see a new item in your "Temporary Places" folder in the "Places" panel (either "Clouds Animation" or "Radar Animation," depending on which file you downloaded). Make the animation visible by checking its associated checkbox, then click the "Play" button in the animation control at the top right of your screen and wait for the data to load (even though the resolution isn't as high as the static image, it might take a little while). If you load the clouds animation (be sure to turn off the current clouds image), you'll be rewarded with a beautiful animation of clouds dancing and swirling across the Earth's surface. More than any other data I've seen, the cloud animation turns Google Earth from an artificial virtual globe into a living and pulsing representation of the planet.

We're really excited to share all this great new data with you and have plans to add more down the road. I mentioned adding radar for places outside of the U.S., and we'll also be fully internationalizing the point conditions layer. Enjoy the weather!

Update: Due to high traffic, it may be difficult to access the layer right now. Rest assured that we are working on it, and please check back soon!

Update: All Weather layers should be fully visible now. We're sorry for any difficulties you may have had accessing them earlier. It's nothing but blue skies from here!

Read More

Google on the go

Posted by Karen Roter Davis, Principal, Business Development

In my formative years, I spent countless hours in the backseat of my parents' car listening to them argue about whether or not they should pull over to ask for directions. I love my parents dearly, but I still can't comprehend how we wound up going north on I-95 driving from New York to Florida!

So I was especially excited to work with Gilbarco Veeder-Root to make driving directions and local business information available to people at the gas pump. Access to local information is so vital to our users, and it's especially relevant when they're not at home or at their desks. In the same way that we worked with Jet Blue and Virgin America to provide Google Maps on their flights, we want to make sure people can access the power of Google search whenever and wherever they need it.

And if we can improve a family vacation or two along the way, so much the better!

For more information, check out Gilbarco's press release.

Read More

Sunlight Foundation sheds political light on Google Earth

Posted by Chikai Ohazama, Product Manager, Google Earth

It's always inspiring to see the diverse, innovative ways people are using our products. Today on election day, it was especially exciting to come across a group called the Sunlight Foundation that's using Google Earth to 'shed some light' on the activities of Congress. The organization has created a unique KML file that pinpoints nearly 1,500 areas where congressional provisions (or earmarks) are directing funds. Read the USA Today story.

Check out this thought-provoking layer and find out where your tax dollars are being spent. And if you haven't already, don't forget to run out and vote!

Read More

Your town in 3D

Posted by Bruce Polderman, Business Product Manager



















We've all heard that big things come in small packages. Well, in the small town of McMinnville, Tennessee, a group of visionary folks are planning something pretty big: a community-wide effort to develop a 3D model of their town in Google Earth -- the first of its kind in the state. The project, dubbed 3D Downtown, is being led by a non-profit organization called Main Street McMinnville and includes volunteers from the State Department of Economic and Community Development, the City Planning office, the Chamber of Commerce, the local College and Technology Center, and a host of local businesses.

This coming Friday at 9 a.m. sharp, Main Street McMinnville will host a modeling training session to officially kick off the project. Local volunteer modelers have signed on to participate; participants from Google will also be on-site to lead the training of the Google SketchUp Pro and Google Earth Pro software that we've donated to help the effort. We hope this local endeavor will inspire members of other communities to coordinate 3D modeling projects of their own. Like McMinnville, many towns are faced with the challenge of balancing the need for growth with historic preservation, while seeking more effective ways to engage the community in a dialogue. The introduction of realistic yet virtual representations of towns could help facilitate solving these issues. From design professionals and urban planners to city agencies and people responsible for economic development, anyone and everyone can access and use our tools.

If you'd like to develop a 3D model of your own, you can use our free, downloadable modeling tools via the Google SketchUp website. For larger modeling projects, we offer SketchUp Pro and Google Earth Pro software. We encourage communities that are limited by funds or resources to apply for SketchUp Pro licenses. We look forward to seeing your town in a whole new dimension!

Read More

Introducing the MDG Monitor

Posted by Ad Melkert, Under-Secretary-General and Associate Administrator, United Nations Development Programme

As this space doesn't have guest bloggers very frequently, you are probably wondering why they have given it to someone at the UN, an organization not normally associated with cutting-edge tech savvy. The reason is that we have partnered with Google and Cisco on an innovative resource called MDG Monitor. MDG stands for Millennium Development Goals, which are targets that the international community set to decrease extreme global poverty by 2015. Because we work with UN colleagues and partner governments in more than 130 countries across the globe, we needed to have this valuable information accessible from one easy place.

And that's where the MDG Monitor layer in Google Earth comes in. It enables people to virtually fly around the globe to chart our progress in the fight against poverty. And this information can be easily shared with anyone who needs it. At a glance, we can assess how the world is doing, redouble our efforts in areas that need work, and make more informed decisions about how to help those who need it most.

In the minute it will take to download this information, more than two children will have died from diseases associated with lack of access to safe drinking water, inadequate sanitation and poor hygiene. We can do better with your help! We have a huge task in front of us, but with partnerships like this, our goals get closer to becoming reality.



Launching the MDG Monitor, from left to right: Michael T. Jones, Chief
Technologist, Google Earth and Maps; Kemal Dervis, Administrator,
UNDP; United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon; Carlos Dominguez,
Senior Vice President of Worldwide Service Provider Opportunities,
Cisco. Photo by Katrin Park, UNDP

Read More