A dozen more cities in Street View

Posted by Vaibhav Vaish, Software Engineer

We're happy to bring you Street View in 12 more cities today. This effectively doubles our Street View coverage. And there are many new sights to explore, including our first glacier, the "drive-in" Mendenhall glacier in Juneau, Alaska:


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If you find glaciers too icy, consider the slightly warmer Great Salt Lake:


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And where do you think we found this grand railway station?


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Street View coverage has expanded to include:

• Albany and Schenectady, NY
• Boise, ID
• Juneau, AK
• Kansas City, MO (home of the railway station!)
• Manchester, NH
• Milwaukee, WI
• Research Triangle Park (Raleigh, Durham, Chapel Hill), NC
• San Antonio, TX
• Salt Lake City, UT

And don't forget, you can easily embed Street View panoramas, like the ones above, in your own web pages and blogs. So explore, embed, and enjoy!

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Are you a supermodel(er)?

Posted by Allyson McDuffie, Google SketchUp Education Program Development

Today we announced the Google 2008 International Model Your Campus Competition, which invites students around the world to create 3D models of their campus. To get inspired - or to go on a virtual college tour - check out what last year's winners modeled. Then, visit the competition website to register. We can't wait to see what you come up with.

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Truly global

Posted by Chikai Ohazama, Google Earth Product Manager

When I was an intern at Silicon Graphics in the '90s, some engineers and I would speculate about what it would take to accomplish impossibly large goals, like how much 3D graphics power we'd needed to perfectly recreate reality or how much disk space we'd need to store satellite imagery of the entire world at 1 meter resolution. They were fun exercises that you'd never expect to actually happen given where technology was at the time.

But as I sit here today, browsing Google Earth, those hypotheticals are no longer out of reach. When my partners and I started Keyhole back in 2001, we were focused on creating a dynamic, three dimensional, interactive map of the US with satellite and aerial imagery. We made good headway on this goal, but that only covered a little more than 6% of the world's land surface. Google acquired us in 2004, and that took us to a whole new level. It was now conceivable to tackle the inconceivable, to create a database of satellite and aerial imagery for the entire world at sub-meter resolution.

Over the past three years, the imagery team at Google has been executing on this challenge, partnering with townships, national governments, and commercial imagery providers to gather and stitch together the millions of pieces of this global imagery puzzle. We've also, of course, spent a lot of time creating new tools so that everyone can better navigate and use the unprecedented maps we've been creating. However, the new tools and layers are more obvious than the intricacies of the foundation, and so I want to take a moment to highlight just how global Google Earth is.

Google Earth is available in 13 languages and has been downloaded over 350 million times by people from around the world. People tell us that the reason they use Google Earth is because it covers the areas they care about with high resolution detail -- whether it's Timbuktu, Cabo San Lucas, or Whitiangia, New Zealand. No other online mapping provider in the world offers this global reach with sub-meter resolution imagery. In fact, we cover more than a third of the world's land surface and half of the world's population with this sort of "high definition" imagery. That means you can see details like Victoria Falls in Zimbabwe, the Taj Mahal in India, and the world's tallest completed skyscraper in Taipei, images you can't explore anywhere else online. Google has been able to provide this unique global imagery by partnering with hundreds of aerial and satellite imagery providers around the world. From the small town of Castillia, Colombia to National Geographic photographers like Michael Fay, we are constantly working with new content owners to include their imagery in Google Earth. It turns out that our global imagery database is helpful for reasons even beyond our expectations: it's been used in critical humanitarian efforts from the mountains of Pakistan to the deserts of Sudan.

All of this would not have possible if we took the pragmatic approach and just focused on just the most populated cities of the world. We were given the freedom and encouragement to pursue our lofty and seemingly impossible goals, which in the end has enabled an ecosystem of map mashups and KMLs that would have otherwise not existed.

We hope you enjoy the view, and continue to check back here for imagery updates and innovations.

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From style makers to mapmakers

Posted by Jeff Martin, Product Marketing Manager

Who loves New York? Gucci does. And they're willing to bet lots of other people do too. The CEO and the creative director used our Maps API to highlight some of their favorite places on guccilovesny.com. And they're inviting people to take part. You can upload your favorite spot to the site for a chance to get featured on the map. Now if only Madonna would upload some photos from the fundraiser she threw in NYC last night...

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Super day for a super map

Posted by Brittany Bohnet, Elections Program Manager

We've done it before and we're doing it again, this time in a much bigger -- dare I say super -- kind of way.

Today, we announced our Super Tuesday map, a one-stop shop for elections-related news and results. Included in the map are results by county, an embeddable map code for your website or blog, a Super Tuesday YouTube layer of geo-tagged user videos, Google News election headlines, as well as Twitter updates from around the country. Google Maps aficionados will be able to pan around the nation and view all 24 primary state results in real time.

Super Tuesday will be extremely important for the remaining presidential candidates, as it will play a role in determining who will receive their party's nomination. We put together this map to help you follow all of the excitement on the campaign trail.

And if you're looking for something to do while you await more results, embed the map onto your website or blog, create your own Super Tuesday video on YouTube, send text messages to Twitter, or spend your time reading up on the action in Google News.

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NYC Super Bowl specials map

Posted by Greg Donaker, Software Engineer, Google Maps

Since my favorite team, the 49ers, didn't make it to the Super Bowl this year, I'll be rooting for the Patriots this Sunday. But no matter who wins, half the fun of watching the big game is the atmosphere. UrbanTailgate.com has put together a Super Bowl My Map with all the best places to watch the game in New York City. They list over 80 bars holding tailgate parties and point out who's offering Super Bowl specials. So if you're in New York, check it out and find the perfect place to cheer on the home team... or the Patriots!

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All the news that's fit to map

Posted by Evan Parker, Software Engineer, Google Maps

It may be hard to imagine that people working at the BBC ever get downtime on the job, but during a quiet night shift, one employee decided to tinker around with Google Maps. The result? A mashup that shows the locations of BBC bureaus and reporters around the world. If you click on one of the map icons, you can read stories that are generated from that location. You can also find out which specific reporters are covering stories from a particular place and read their work. Being both a maps enthusiast (obviously!) and a bit of a news junkie, using this mashup is a mix of business and pleasure. You can read more about it, or head straight to the map to follow the world's news.

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