Thanksgiving is only a week away, which means that the holiday travel season is upon us. Booking plane tickets can be like alphabet soup: you're just trying to get from Los Angeles to Washington, DC, but your itinerary has you changing planes at CVG and landing at BWI. Where on earth are those airports? In Google Maps, you can simply enter the 3-letter airport code to find it on the map. This makes it much easier to figure out where exactly your journey will take you, and to get directions to or from an airport without having to find its address.
Thursday, 20 November 2008
Thanksgiving is only a week away, which means that the holiday travel season is upon us. Booking plane tickets can be like alphabet soup: you're just trying to get from Los Angeles to Washington, DC, but your itinerary has you changing planes at CVG and landing at BWI. Where on earth are those airports? In Google Maps, you can simply enter the 3-letter airport code to find it on the map. This makes it much easier to figure out where exactly your journey will take you, and to get directions to or from an airport without having to find its address.
This week, we've started to feature another layer in the Google Earth Gallery, showing several thousand panoramic views provided by 360cities.net. This layer contains exciting 360 degree panoramas from a variety of great photographs taken all over the world!
Do you want to explore some beautiful spots in Central Park, or be impressed by the beautifully illuminated Kremlin at night as seen from the Red Square in Moscow?
These amazing panoramas from 360cities.net will provide you another way to browse user contributed pictures and information in addition to our Panoramio and Wikipedia layers.
Are you also an enthusiast taking panoramic views? It's not difficult to add your images as Photooverlays to Google Earth on your own. If you want to share them with others, just follow the links in the balloons of the 360cities.net layer that will take you to the website to join the 360cities.net community.
Wednesday, 19 November 2008
From the practical to the political, from the serious to the silly, developers of over 150,000 sites around the world continue to inspire us with their creative uses of the Google Maps API.
To celebrate this blossoming ecosystem, we've redesigned our Case Studies video site. Timed with this relaunch, we've got two new videos showcasing innovative API uses, this time for sites that help you make the most of where you live.
Yelp was an early and eager adopter of the Google Maps API. As their local reviews site has grown in size and geography, Yelp has aggressively built upon our platform with intuitive neighborhood maps, static maps that load quickly but quickly transition to powerful dynamic maps, and more. They've also been quick to support our newest API features such as Street View and Mobile. Check out the video!
We are also excited to profile Zipcar, which uses Google Maps to help its exploding userbase find cars available for hourly or daily rental in their neighborhood:
Tuesday, 18 November 2008
One of my favorite things to do while I'm on a business trip -- wherever I am -- is to find great coffee shops. Knowing I can relax with locals and get a strong cup of coffee helps get me through the jet lag and long days that usually accompany these trips. However, I'm usually busy doing all sorts of things on the web, like creating presentations, updating spreadsheets, or checking my flights.
To find a new destination for my coffee fix without having to leave the site I'm on, all I need to do is use the Google Maps gadget on the new Google Toolbar 5 (for Internet Explorer or Firefox). Every time I click on the "compass" icon on my Toolbar, a Google Maps window pops under it: inside the gadget I can search for "Seattle Cafe" and get listings of local coffee shops, along with reviews and driving directions. You can find more interesting gadgets to add to your Toolbar in our gallery.Monday, 17 November 2008
For the third year in a row, Google is delighted to work with My Wonderful World, a National Geographic-led campaign to give kids the power of global knowledge, on Geography Awareness Week. Beginning today, students and teachers alike can explore a range of geo-activities using Google Earth. Working together on projects like this, that encourage people to roll up their sleeves and explore the world, is what Google's Geo Education initiative is all about.
Did you know that the Lake Victoria water level is dropping, impacting the daily lives of 30 million Ugandans, Kenyans, and Tanzanians? Take a geo-tour of global hotspots to see how geography can help us understand critical issues facing the world today.
Did you know that dining in certain fast food joints in Japan can be a very elegant experience? Or that grocery shopping in Russia is often more of a negotiation than a transaction? With National Geographic's Glimpse, you can hear from young people living and working around the world and see their stories in Google Earth.
Visit the Google for Educators site to learn more about these initiatives and to start exploring today!
It's my pleasure to announce the launch of Google SketchUp 7. If you've been putting off getting familiar with Google Earth's 3D modeling "other half", now's the time to do something about it. After all, nothing makes a nicer holiday gift for your spouse than a 3D model of your dwelling or dream dwelling. Well, almost nothing.
So what's new in SketchUp 7? Lots of stuff, but here are some of the highlights I think you'll find most interesting (take a look at the SketchUp website for a complete rundown).
- Edges now split other edges where they cross, automatically. Modeling in SketchUp is more intuitive now.
- The inferencing system (SketchUp's colored points and guide lines that help you draw in 3D) is clearer and more consistent than ever.
- When you need help using a tool, click the "?" icon at the bottom of your modeling window; the Instructor panel pops up to give you more information.
We've added three things to SketchUp 7 that make building photo-textured models (like the ones you see in Google Earth) infinitely easier:
- Make Unique Texture crops your textures to the face you're editing; this makes them smaller and your models lighter. Google Earth likes small models.
- Combine Textures "stitches" together adjacent textures to reduce their numbers and further reduce your file size.
- Edit Texture lets you open textures directly in the image editor of your choice to fiddle with them. When you're done, the texture you edited updates in SketchUp automatically – no more re-applying a whole building facade just because you need to clone out a parking meter.
The Google 3D Warehouse is where models live online. It's an enormous, searchable repository of stuff from modelers all over the world. Recently, we introduced Google Docs-style sharing and collaboration: now you can upload a model and specify who gets to use it – and what they can do with it. You can make it private, share it with a select group of invitees, or set it completely free. If you model a building and make it editable by anyone, there's a good chance it'll evolve over time. It's wiki editing for the 3D world.
As I mentioned above, there's tons of new stuff in SketchUp 7. Visit the website to learn all about it, and have fun.
Friday, 14 November 2008
A strong, fast-moving wildfire began last night in Santa Barbara, California and has already destroyed 100 homes and put many more at risk. Residents of the impacted and endangered areas urgently need information about the fire path, evacuated areas, road closures, and other important safety factors. A group in Santa Barbara quickly put together a My Map containing extensive information that can help keep residents informed and safe. If you are in the impacted area or would like to stay abreast of the situation, we hope you'll find this map valuable.
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