Virtually experience the Inauguration

Earlier today, we posted some tips about how to use Google Maps to be prepared for tomorrow's Inauguration. Well, for those who aren't able to take in the historic event in person, our own 3D data specialist Nathan Kohrmann put together an amazing model of the Inauguration venue -- the US Capitol Building. 

Visit the Google 3D Warehouse where a full scale replica of the 2009 Inaugural Stage is ready to be explored... complete with Barack Obama taking the oath!  With Google Earth installed, click "Download Model" to instantly import the stage into a fantastic 3D view, then let the fun begin.  Zoom in close to where Barack Obama is standing on the stage to take in the exact view he has or swoop down to the National Mall to see what millions of other spectators are watching. 

News.com.au has also put together a great Street View "walking tour" of the Inaugural Parade route, which is another great way to feel like you're a part of the festivities no matter where you are.

Posted by Elaine Filadelfo, Lat Long Blog Team

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Helpful maps for the Inauguration

There is most definitely a buzz in the air.  Hundreds of thousands of people are streaming into Washington D.C. to see Barack Obama sworn in as America's 44th President.  If you're lucky enough to be in D.C., you'll need some help to get your bearings and map out your inaugural adventures.  Google Maps can help, every step of the way.

There are a few things you should do before you set out.  First, be sure to install Google Maps for mobile on your mobile device so you can use My Location to pinpoint your current location while on foot and track your progress on the map, making you have less stress about getting lost.  If you're driving toward the epicenter of activities either today or tomorrow check live traffic conditions before you set out by clicking on the "Traffic" button on Google Maps or take a look at Trafficland to map streaming video camera views.  Closer to the action, this Google My Map (embedded below) has been created by DC radio station WTOP and can help you with bridge, road and freeway closures:  

View Larger Map

Google Maps can also be used to plot walking directions, and if you're going to be using public transit, check out Metro's interactive map or this mapplet.  You can use Street View to preview the areas to get a better idea of where you're heading. Street View can be especially useful for finding very specific meeting points for you and your friends, since most areas will be flooded with people -- browse the area to find the exact spot to fnd each other, like "next to the fire hydrant at the southeast corner of 7th and E Street".

 

The Wall Street Journal has a helpful map for Inaugural events taking place day by day, as well as must-see D.C. attractions to take in. You can find some more helpful (and fun) maps here, and I'll be back tomorrow with another roundup of sites that will help you prepare for the parade and also take in the historic event over the web and of course... on a map!  

Posted by Mike Pegg, Product Marketing Manager

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Share questions & answers in the Google Earth Help Forum

Earlier this week, we told you about the new Help Forum for Google Maps. Well the Google Maps enthusiasts aren't the only ones who will benefit from the new and improved help system: we're also unveiling the Google Earth Help Forum!

Just like the Google Maps help forum, our new forum should make it easier for you to find answers, share resources with others, and have your participation acknowledged. You can read more about the changes in Wednesday's announcement, or simply head over to the new and improved Help Forum to see for yourself. 

We really appreciate all the great discussions in our old Group, and we encourage you to check out the new Google Earth Help Forum!

Posted by Sandhya Vora, Google Earth Support Team

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Don't let history pass you by

Back in November we launched the Ancient Rome in 3D Curriculum Competition alongside a brand-new Google Earth layer highlighting the historic city in breathtaking detail.

Whether you're putting the finishing touches on your submission or have yet to explore the new layer, you still have some time! Just be sure to register and upload your files no later than Monday, February 9th.

Bona Fortuna!

Posted by Anna Bishop, Google Earth Education Team

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A new place to find help

Our Google Map Help Group now has a new home! You may have already heard of (or tried out) the new Google Help Forums. Today, our Google Maps Help Group will be moving to this new platform.

The help forum is still an area for users to come together to discuss and share their knowledge of Google Maps and the Local Business Center - only now it has a new look. It's integrated with our help center, which makes it even easier to jump into the forum while you're browsing the help center. You can search for content across both the forum and help center articles as well.

There are a lot of new features that make the forum an effective resource for users. You can vote on which responses you think answer a particular question, and even mark a response as a "best answer" to a question that you've asked. The new system will also recognize contributions from helpful posters.

If you haven't checked out our help forum before, now is a great time to come take a look. Post a question if you have one, or take a few minutes to answer one of your fellow Google Maps users. You can find us at Google Maps Help Forum.

Posted by Adam Hughes, Online Operations Sr. Strategist

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New ways to get around with the Transit Layer

I'm pleased to announce the launch of the Transit Layer on Google Maps in more than 50 cities around the world making it easier for citizens and tourists around the globe to access public transportation line information in their cities.

To switch on the layer go to the More button and select the Transit tab:

If you want to book a hotel or make a restaurant reservation you can switch on the Transit Layer and look for the public transport line nearest to the location. If you want to travel from A to B you can quickly familiarize yourself with the public transport network and find out which lines to use and where to change.

The Transit Layer is a part of Google Transit. Whereas the main Google Transit product has the goal to provide full schedule information and routing, the objective of the Transit Layer is to overlay lines visually on Google Maps. Think of a virtual metro map on top of Google Maps -- even when we don't have itinerary planning available, we want you to be able to see public transit options that are available. Our goal is to be able to offer transit information as an alternative to driving directions wherever possible.

Let's say you plan a visit to London. For a long time you wanted to visit Tate Modern, but how do you get there? Simple! You do a search for Tate Modern on Google Maps, and then click on "More" and activate "Transit". Now you can see nearby Tube stations and which lines serve them. You can even click on a station and get passing lines highlighted. For agencies that are a part of Google Transit, you can also find schedule data and itineraries.

The full list of cities is Belo Horizonte, Berlin, Bordeaux, Brasilia, Cairo, Capetown, Caracas, Chicago, Copenhagen, Dallas, Dortmund, Duisburg, Düsseldorf, Ekaterinburg, Essen, Frankfurt, Genoa, Guadalajara, Hamburg, Helsinki, Johannesburg, Kazan, Köln, Lille, Lisbon, London, Lyon, Madrid, Marseille, Medellin, Mexico City, Monterrey, Montreal, Munich, Naples, Nizhniy Novgorod, Oslo, Paris, Perth, Portland, Porto, Porto Alegre, Prague, Pretoria, Recife, Rennes, Rio de Janeiro, Samara, San Francisco, Santiago, Sao Paulo, Seattle, Strasbourg, Toulouse, Tunis, Vienna, Warsaw.

Posted by Raphael Leiteritz, Product Manager

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Explore the masterpieces of the Prado Museum up close with Google Earth

Today Google launches the Prado layer in Google Earth allowing you to explore highly detailed photographic images of fourteen of the Prado Museum's masterpieces. The Prado Museum in Madrid is one of Spain's most visited destinations and via the Google Earth layer you can view and learn about its most famous paintings such as The Maids of Honor (Las Meninas) or The Three Graces (Las Tres Gracias)

The Prado Museum has become the first art gallery in the world to provide access to and navigation of its collection in Google Earth.  Using Google Earth, art historians, students and tourists everywhere can zoom in on and explore the finer details of the artist's brushwork that can be easily missed at first glance.

The paintings have been photographed in very high resolution and contain as many as 14,000 million pixels (14 gigapixels). With this high level resolution you are able to see fine details such as the tiny bee on a flower in The Three Graces (Las Tres Gracias), delicate tears on the faces of the figures in The Descent from the Cross (El Descendimiento ) and complex figures in The Garden of Earthly Delights (El Jardin de las Delicias)

The Google Earth Prado layer also includes 3D models which allow you to fly around the Prado buildings to experience the museum as if you were actually there.

To view the layer, select 3D buildings from the left panel and type 'Prado' in the 'fly to' search box.  You will then be transported to the Prado Museum in 3D where you can click on an icon to view the masterpieces. 

Posted by Clara Rivera Rodriguez, Google Spain

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Flying Through Google Earth at Macworld

This year for Macworld I decided to create a program that allows people to "surf" any region on the Earth's surface using a Nintendo Wii Balance Board and the Google Earth API.  To do this, I used the Google Earth Browser Plug-in with a Javascript API.  The Wii Balance Board transmits the your movements to the Earth Surfer application using Bluetooth and allows you to maneuver a virtual milktruck by shifting your balance as if you were on a surfboard.

Check out the following video to see it in action:


While it's fun to use Earth Surfer, I really wrote it to inspire others to write their own programs. It's all open source using the Apache License, so you can use the code in your own programs, even commercial ones.

It is based on Thatcher Ulrich's terrific Javascript Monster Milktruck demo, which is an open source program on a webpage. I wrapped it as a Macintosh application program so I could add Objective-C.  Objective-C uses the Macintosh Bluetooth support to decode the Bluetooth packets from the Wii Balance Board. The Balance Board support is my work. I based that on DarwiinRemote, open source decoders for the Wii Remote.

Earth Surfer and its source code will be available next week on the Google Mac Developer Playground.

Posted by David Phillip Oster, a Google Earth iPhone engineer

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Google Street View helps find kidnapped Mass. child

[Cross-posted with the Public Policy Blog]

An interesting first (at least as far as we're aware): Google's Street View imagery was used by police officers to help successfully locate a kidnapped child in rural Virginia.  Nine year old Natalie Maltais, from Athol, Massachusetts, was found safely at a motel on Tuesday.  You can read more in the Worcester Telegram & Gazette.

View Larger Map

Posted by Pablo Chavez, Senior Policy Counsel

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Geotagging blog posts

As part of the Lat Long blog team, I'm naturally a big fan of both maps and blogs. Recently, the Blogger team launched a feature that combines both of these -- geotagging for your blog posts.

When you use Blogger in draft, you'll see an option below the post editor to "add location". If you know the exact location, you can simply enter the address, city, or zip code; if you're blogging about the view from the top of a mountain you just hiked or don't have a precise location, you can browse the map or turn on satellite mode and put a marker at the right spot (and the reverse geocoder will label the location for you). The geotag will appear below your published post as a link, which will open up Google Maps. The location will also be included in your blog's RSS and Atom feeds using GeoRSS.

Read more about geotagging on the Blogger in draft blog.

Posted by Elaine Filadelfo, Lat Long Blog Team

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Building a bridge in Google Earth

More than 250,000 vehicles a day zip past the largest construction project in California history. That project – the new San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge – is now on Google Earth, the first time a construction project has been featured. You'll be able to do things on Google Earth's Bay Bridge that would get you arrested in real life – like climbing to the top of the Self-Anchored Suspension Span's single tower, which offers breathtaking views of the Bay Area. To view the model, turn on the 3D Buildings layer in Google Earth.

The bridge is scheduled to be completed in 2013, so visitors are getting a sneak peak of this new Bay Area landmark. The solid sections of the bridge are already complete, while the transparent sections are under construction, and we will continue to update the model as the construction progresses. Now you can be among the first to "drive" across the new bridge and see a world class icon come to life.

Posted by Bart Ney, Public Information Officer, California Department of Transportatiaon

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Tracking Santa: the backstory

[Cross-posted with the Official Google Blog]

When I look back on four years of tracking Old St. Nick on Christmas Eve, I can't help but smile. The Santa tracker has really come a long way. I always thought NORAD's Santa Tracker was a great holiday tradition, but I felt like it could have been even better if people could visualize exactly where Santa was on Christmas Eve. So in 2004, shortly after Keyhole was acquired by Google, we followed Santa in the 'Keyhole Earth Viewer' — Google Earth's original name — and we called it the 'Keyhole Santa Radar.' The audience was relatively small since Keyhole was still a for-pay service at that point, and we hosted everything on a single machine shared with the Keyhole Community BBS server. We probably should have had 3 separate servers to host the Santa tracker - that first year, we had only a portion of a single machine. That night, about 25,000 people kept tabs on Santa and, needless to say, wreaked some havoc on our servers!

Over the next two years, our Santa-tracking efforts improved dramatically. By December 2005, Keyhole had become Google Earth and our audience had become much, much larger. Our 'Santa Radar' team also grew: we used greatly improved icons from Dennis Hwang, the Google Doodler, and set up 20 machines to serve the tracking information. My colleague Michael Ashbridge took over the software and more than 250,000 people tracked Santa on Google Earth that Christmas Eve. In 2006, Google acquired SketchUp, a 3D modeling software that enabled us to include models of Santa's North Pole workshop and sleigh. We also incorporated a tracking feed directly from NORAD's headquarters, and we were now displaying NORAD's information in Google Earth. That night, more than a million people tracked Santa.

In 2007, Google became NORAD's official Santa Tracking technology partner and hosted www.noradsanta.org. In addition to tracking Santa in Google Earth, we added a Google Maps tracker and integrated YouTube videos into the journey as well. Now, we had Santa on the map and on 'Santa Cam' arriving in several different locations around the world, with commentary in six different languages. The heavy traffic — several millions of users — put Google's infrastructure to the test, but with some heroic work by our system reliability engineers, the Santa Tracker worked continuously.

This year, Googler Bruno Bowden is in charge of the Santa software, and we have further upgraded our server capacity. We're hoping this version of the tracker will be the best yet. In addition to our Santa Cam footage, geo-located photos from Panoramio will be viewable in Google Maps for each of Santa's stops without a video. We've also included a few new ways to track Santa. With Google Maps for mobile, anyone can keep tabs on him from their mobile phones (just activate GMM and search for 'norad santa'). You can also receive updates from 'Bitz the Elf' on Twitter by following @noradsanta. And of course, be sure to visit www.noradsanta.org tomorrow morning at 6:00 am EST when Santa's journey begins.

Posted by Brian McClendon, Original Google Engineering Elf

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Snow conditions of Alpine skiing resorts in Google Earth

It is undeniable: winter has arrived here in Europe. Piles of snow line the roads, white roofs and snowmen call for your attention. I can't help but start thinking about skiing and snowboarding.

A very easy and visual way of checking the latest snowfalls in ski resorts in the Alp regions of Austria, Germany, Italy, and Switzerland is the new "Ski resorts in the Alps" layer in Google Earth. You can find it in the Gallery folder of the layers panel under "Travel and Tourism".

All information on the ski resorts are provided by bergfex who aggregates the data from the ski resorts to make sure that you get the latest data in this layer. The icons represent the average snow depth of that area; the whiter the icon, the more snow you can expect. Check back often, as these snow depth readings are updated four times a day.

Every balloons displays useful information such as the fresh snow depth from within the last 24 hours (on the mountain and also in the valley), the altitude of the skiing area, the length of the slopes, useful phone numbers, and much more!

Now use Google Earth to get the latest info and then get outside to enjoy the snow, the real stuff, on-site!




Posted by Carmen Erni, Google Earth Vector Team, Zurich

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Where does our oil come from?

[Cross-posted with the Google.org Blog]

There’s a great deal of talk about the high cost of oil and the billions of dollars that the US and other oil-importing nations spend each year to buy oil. As part of the Google.org Geo Challenge Grants Program, Rocky Mountain Institute (RMI) has created a map of US oil imports by country since 1973. By clicking on the green light to play, you can see the countries supplying oil to the U.S. (either in terms of barrels or dollar value) and how our imports have changed over the last 35 years. The thicker the line in the map, the more oil produced or imported. While this map highlights data on United States oil imports, the picture is similar for every oil-importing country in the world.

The map highlights 5 eras of oil consumption, from the oil shocks of the 1970s to the price collapse in the 1980s to recent events including Hurricane Katrina and gas approaching $5 per gallon before retreating rapidly recently. (You can see these selections by clicking on the buttons below the map on the RMI website.) One interesting time period is from 1982 to 1985, when low prices caused oil imports from the Middle East to decline to very low levels.

The map also looks at potential oil from offshore drilling and exploration of the Alaska National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR). The screenshot below illustrates the impact of off-shore drilling. With the map zoomed or ‘drilled’ 3-5 levels down and centered near Alabama (and the map pushpin that represents offshore), check out the very thin line that shows the potential peak production of 220,000 barrels per day. The lines represent estimates of production in 20-30 years, and even with this very long timeline, the amount of oil that could be generated from offshore drilling is miniscule compared to our oil needs today.

Both Google and RMI are working hard to help create a future where we are not reliant on daily imports of millions of barrels of oil that pollute our atmosphere and risk our national security.

Today, along with the Brookings Institution, RMI is hosting “The Oil Solutions Initiative” a summit to identify solutions to break America’s dependence on oil, with Google in attendance. In 2004, RMI’s Chief Scientist, Chairman and Co-founder Amory Lovins and a team of RMI collaborators drafted Winning the Oil Endgame (PDF of the book) - a roadmap for the United States to get completely off oil by 2050.

Google.org’s RechargeIT initiative is driving toward the commercialization of plug-in vehicles that can wean the US off gasoline. In our Clean Energy 2030 Plan we show that increasing conventional automobile mileage, deploying millions of plug-in hybrids and accelerating the turnover of the fleet would reduce oil consumption by 51% by 2030. That decrease would have an even larger effect on oil imports because we produce about one-third of our oil in the US. Google and RMI have worked together on a number of projects including RMI’s “Smart Garage” Charrette, a summit to identify the barriers and breakthroughs needed to electrify the U.S. auto fleet.

While oil prices have declined rapidly over the past five months, most people expect oil prices to remain high into the near future. When asked whether or not the drop in oil prices reduces the need to act, President-Elect Barack Obama responded that we go from “shock to trance” and as a result “never make any progress.”

If you are a non-profit with a great idea like this one, please consider applying for funding to develop your project. We are currently accepting applications for the December 22, 2008 deadline.

Posted by David Bercovich, Program Manager, Google.org

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Where in the world is ... (answers)

If yesterday's quiz left you a little stumped, here are the answers!

1) This is the largest in a chain of islands in the Tyrrhenia sea; and the legendary home of the sorceress Circe.
-- Isola Ponza, Italy 

2) Throughout 2008 this active stratovolcano has been sending plumes of ash and water vapor over a nearby town, a town that was evacuated in 1994 due to danger from the volcano

-- Tavurvur volcano, Papua New Guinea

3) Part of an island chain named by Captain Cook for the day on which he discovered them, forty-nine days after Easter Sunday.
-- Hamilton Island (part of Whitsunday Islands), Australia 

4) This is the crater of an extinct tuff-cone volcano, now used as a memorial cemetery.

 -- Punchbowl Crater, Punchbowl Memorial Cemetery, Hawaii, USA  

Updated Imagery:

Americas:
    - USA: Anchorage (AK), Santa Rosa (CA), Thousand Oaks (CA), Newberg (OR), Bee Cave (TX), El Paso (TX), part of South Dakota, Manhattan, Long Island
    - Mexico: Tijuana, Juarez, Aguascalientes, Queretaro, Cuernavaca, Puebla, 
    - Canada: Gibsons (BC)
    - Cuba: Havana
    - Haiti: Port-au-Prince
    - Guatemala: Guatemala City
    - Honduras: Tegucigalpa
    - French Guiana: Cayenne
    - Brazil: Brasilia, Sao Paulo
    - Uruguay: Montevideo

Europe, Middle East, & Africa:
   - Italy: Parma, Perugia, Foggia, Lucera, Viste Peschici, Isola Ponza, Isola d'Ischia
   - Hungary: Budapest
   - Romania: Bucharest
   - Ukraine: Kiev, Odessa
   - Bulgaria: Sofia
   - Montenegro: Podorica
   - Cyprus: Nicosia
   - Azerbaijan: Baku
   - Iran: Tabriz, Tehran, Mashhad
   - Turkmenistan: Ashgabat
   - Kuwait: Kuwait City
   - UAE: Abu Dhabi, Dubai
   - Saudi Arabia: Riyadh, Jeddah, Mecca
   - Yemen: Sana
   - Jordon: Amman
   - Morocco: Casablanca
   - Niger: Niamey
   - South Africa: Johannesburg, Pretoria, Cape Town, Durban

Asia:
  - Pakistan: Islamabad
  - India: Ahmadabad, Chennai, Bangalore
  - China: Chongqing

Oceania:
   - New Zealand: Christchurch
   - Australia: Cairns, Gold Coast, Whitsunday Islands

New 2.5m base imagery for parts of: India, China, and Australia.

Posted by Mark Hessenflow, GIS Data Engineer

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Even more GPS trails in Google Earth

As holiday season approaches, are you planning a trip somewhere? If you are an outdoor person and would like to make hiking, biking, or even flying part of your fun, then make sure you check out the new EveryTrail layer before you go. The EveryTrail layer showcases GPS trails captured by outdoor adventurer with pictures taken along the trails. Download a trail by clicking on any picture in an EveryTrail balloon and start a virtual tour of your destination. If you prefer strolling around cities, there are plenty of trips in EveryTrail layer to help you discover best places to visit.

See this video to get an overview of the layer:

Here are a few of our favorite trails:

Kyoto - Visit Kiyomizudera, Ginkakuji, and Ryoanji Temples

Kalalau Trail, Kauai, Hawaii

Exploring Galapagos

Posted by Wei Luo and Pete Giencke, Google Earth Team

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A one-two-three on licensing your content to Google

[Cross-posted with the Content Central Blog]

With Google Maps and Google Earth, we strive to provide our users with the most comprehensive, accurate and compelling representation of the world. We believe that integrating the geospatial data produced by governments and other public sector organizations is vital to achieving these goals. The positive effects of governments using Google Maps and Earth to share their geospatial data are many, but this post isn't for our standard sales pitch. Rather, my purpose is to address a specific question that we hear over and over from organizations around the world: "What's the process for licensing our geospatial data to Google?"

Glad you asked.  There are three steps to licensing--or granting Google the legal rights--to publish your organization's geospatial data on our services:

Step 1: Tell us about your organization and the data you have to share.

The best way to tell us about you and your content is to fill out our contact form. The more details you provide the better, so that we can determine if your content is a fit with our services.

Step 2: Sign our content license agreement.

If your content is a fit, we will send you our content license agreement that you and your organization's legal authority can review and agree to accept.  It's with this agreement that you affirm that your organization has the necessary rights to provide the content to Google.  The agreement also defines what Google will and won't do with your content.

For governments, we offer a "government-friendly" version of this content license agreement that is tailored to the unique legal status of public sector organizations.  In some countries, we're able to provide this agreement in a "click-to-accept" format.  We send you an invitation by email to review this online document and you can just click to agree to the terms.  For other countries, we email you a conventional paper agreement.  In all cases, we strive to keep the process simple for your organization and Google, and to eliminate the need for negotiations over legal terms, so that we can quickly get to work integrating your geospatial data on our services.

Step 3: Provide the content to Google.

Once you've clicked or signed to accept the content license agreement, we will work with you to get your content transferred to us. Our preferred method for transferring geospatial data is to download the datasets from your FTP/HTTP(S) server.  Alternatively, you can send your data on DVD, or, for larger datasets, we can arrange to ship you a hard drive that you can send back to us at your convenience.

That's the whole process.  And when done right, it can happen very fast!

If you're interested in hearing more about how to add your geospatial data to Google Maps and Earth, listen to a recent Very Spatial podcast in which a couple members of our Content Partnerships team discuss Google's efforts to partner with governments around the world.

Posted by Michael E. Jones, Content Partnerships

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Your maps in your hands for the holidays

[cross-posted with the Google Mobile Blog]

Just in time for the holidays I'm proud to present to you My Maps Editor by Google, now available for download in Android Market! In just four months of my 20% time and with a little help from the 20% time of my coworkers this application has gone from an idea in my head to a full application ready for you, really demonstrating the ease and power of developing on Android.

With this application you can create, edit, share, and view personalized maps on your Android powered phone synchronized with the My Maps tab on Google Maps. Create a map on your desktop computer using Google Maps and then take it with you on the go and update it on location. My Maps Editor by Google supports full editing functionality for markers, lines, and shapes on maps, plus the ability to mark your location using GPS or attach a photo directly from your phone. Your maps are automatically synchronized with your My Maps on the web. Check out this tour of Google Mountain View that I just created on my phone:

There are plenty of ways to put this to good use during the holiday season:

• Plan out your holiday shopping. Create a map on your computer with markers for all of the stores you need to visit. Color code the markers according to importance, category, or sales. Then as you visit each store, change the icon to indicate that you've been there and list what items you were able to get in the description. If you find a store you didn't think of, you can quickly add a marker for it to help future planning.
• Make a map of holiday decorations and displays that you see. Every time you see an interesting holiday display, use the Mark My Location feature to create a marker, then edit the details and add a photo of the display right from the phone's camera. Share your map with your friends and family to show them the best holiday displays in your area. Just go to the maps list, tap and hold on your map, and select Share Map to share it right from your phone.
• Keep track of your travels. You can map out your travel plans and take them with you wherever you go. Add markers while you travel to mark interesting places, and take lots of pictures and attach them to the markers. Then when you get back, you can share the map with your friends and show everyone what your did on your vacation with a map and pictures to help them really visualize the trip.

The fun doesn't stop once the holidays are over. The possibilities are endless when your maps are in the palm of your hand (try making a map of running routes to keep yourself to your New Years resolution!). Don't take my word for it, go download My Maps Editor by Google from Android Market (currently available on the T-Mobile G1) and see for yourself!

Posted by Brian Cornell, Software Engineer

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Where in the world is...

1) This is the largest in a chain of islands in the Tyrrhenia sea and the legendary home of the sorceress Circe.

2) Throughout 2008 this active stratovolcano has been sending plumes of ash and water vapor over a nearby town, a town that was evacuated in 1994 due to danger from the volcano.

3) Part of an island chain named by Captain Cook for the day on which he discovered them, forty-nine days after Easter Sunday.

4) This is the crater of an extinct tuff-cone volcano, now used as a memorial cemetery.

Posted by Mark Hessenflow, GIS Data Engineer

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The gift of gadgets

The holidays always mean a lot of traveling for me -- traveling to the airport, to stores, to Grandma's house, and all over town.

Getting from Point A to Point B has always been easy on Google Maps. Simply click on "Get Directions" and you're on your way - whether by car, by foot or by public transit (in select cities). Now with our new directions gadget, you can bring driving and walking directions powered by Google Maps right to your website.

With the gadget, the days of manually typing and updating multiple blocks of text directions are over. By copying and pasting a single line of code, any website can offer customized door-to-door directions to their users. Users can then print directions with a single click. Did you know that you can now print directions with embedded maps and Street View images? This video shows you how.

This gadget is perfect for any webmaster wishing to direct users to a physical location - this means businesses both large and small. Some partners already using this gadget include major airports (Atlanta Hartsfield-Jackson Airport), universities (Stanford University), amusement parks (Legoland California), and restaurants (Emeril Lagasse's restaurants), to name just a few.

Below is a version of the gadget to play with that provides directions to Google's San Francisco office. If you would like to add this directions gadget to your site, visit our gadget creation page to quickly make your own!

PS: Providing directions from Google Maps is pretty flexible; in addition to run-of-the-mill addresses, you can give your site visitors directions to everything from a generic ZIP code to a specific set of lat-long coordinates for any of your locations.

Examples:
123 River St, Woods, MA
90210
42.06782,-71.756963

But with great power comes great responsibility. You might want your visitors to end up at your coordinates, but that doesn't mean they'll understand what a mess of numbers means when they see it in your list of addresses. The key is to give the address an alias, or a name that everyone will understand. You can do this by putting the alias in parentheses just after the address:

42.06782,-71.756963 (Grandma's House)

Add an alias to as many of your addresses as you like, or feel free to leave it off the easier ones; it doesn't hurt for your visitors to know where they're going. After all, you want them to remember how to come back for a second visit…

Posted by Julie Zhou, Product Marketing Manager

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