Golly Gee, look who's 3...

Posted by Mike Pegg, Product Marketing Manager

We're pretty excited about all of these birthdays that have been happening lately.  The Google Outreach program just celebrated its first birthday, and Google Maps Street View is happy to also be going one year strong.   

We're also pleased as punch to wish our pride and joy for geoweb developers everywhere, the Google Maps API, a happy third birthday.  It was June 29th, 2005, but it seems like only yesterday that we were marvelling at what context the Gmaps Pedometer was giving us for our running routes or walk to work.  Who can forget how many great real estate auctions we were finding with 2RealEstateAuctions? Since then the API has been helping businesses like Ace Hardware map its store locations, and Trulia plot houses for sale.  Thanks, Google Maps API, for making all of these great mashups and tools possible! 

To mark the occasion we've created a timeline mashup of the Google Maps Mania blog, as well as the former Google Maps API Blog (now the Google Geo Developers Blog) to take you on a geolocated journey from June of 2005 to present.  It will show you all of the fantastic things that people from all corners of the world have done with the Google Maps API.  Stay tuned for a post over on the Geo Developers Blog which will help you to visualize time-based data on maps.  

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Mapping the Northern California wildfires

Posted by Matt Manolides, GIS Specialist

There have been many wildfires raging in Northern California in recent weeks, and with more dry weather and potential thunderstorms in the forecast, things are looking quite dangerous. According to the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, there are currently 12,521 firefighters battling hundreds of fires which have scorched nearly 160,000 acres. To help citizens stay safe, the department has made an excellent My Map, plotting out the locations of all the fire, allowing anyone interested to find out where the danger zones are, which is extremely useful for everyone from residents to campers.

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Additionally, we have imagery courtesy of MODIS Rapid Response Project at NASA/GSFC available as a KML overlay, which you can download and display in Google Earth.

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Happy First Birthday to Google Earth Outreach

Posted by Tanya Keen, Google Earth Outreach

Today marks the first birthday of the US launch of the Google Earth Outreach program. The program began as a 20% project by Googlers Rebecca Moore and Jenifer Austin Foulkes, who shared a vision of using technology like Google Earth to make the world a better place. In response to demand from non-profit organizations who wanted help using Google Earth and Maps to tell their story, their side project grew into a formal program. The Outreach website launched with teaching tutorials, a Google Earth Pro license grant program and a showcase gallery featuring great Google Earth layers created by people from around the world, and a new folder in the Google Earth layers panel called "Global Awareness" was created. From taking viewers on a virtual tour to taking them along on an expedition with a geoblog, groups have used Google Earth layers to share their compelling work in a geospatial context.

In the past year, we've more than doubled the number of layers in the Global Awareness folder, made the program available in seven languages, trained partners in nine countries, made it easier to create content in Google Earth with Spreadsheet Mapper 2.0 and launched a new version of our site. Public benefit groups around the world have been busy creating phenomenal maps and posting them to our Showcase Gallery. Grants of Google Earth Pro have been issued to over 450 charitable organizations. Organizations are seeing the benefits of using mapping technology for public awareness and seeing the resulting impact in measurable terms. It's amazing to see what's transpired in just one year.

Below you'll find a video highlighting some of the great content from the past year, and today we've added the Rosetta Project/Long Now Foundation's KML, which allows you to explore information about endangered languages in Africa and the Americas. Take a look and join us in celebrating our first birthday!

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Notes from the classroom: Exploring literary spaces via Google Earth

Posted by Jerome Burg, Retired English Teacher and creator of GoogleLitTrips.com

As I head to the Googleplex this week to speak with this year’s group of tech-savvy educators at the Google Teacher Academy, I wanted to share a bit about how I’ve found Google Earth useful for teaching literature.

Much of the world's greatest literature incorporates a literal journey as a metaphor representing universal experiences we share with the characters as we travel through our own life’s journeys. The Odyssey, Candide, and The Grapes of Wrath immediately come to my mind.

Focusing on the real settings within these stories can often engage students in new ways that significantly enhance their empathy for the fictional characters and their various trials. Literature students have often been asked to mentally chart the characters' progress, but Google Earth can make this significantly more realistic and personal for them.

Compare these representations of Flagstaff, Arizona, a key location in John Steinbeck’s classic The Grapes of Wrath. With the imagery and 3D capabilities afforded by Google Earth, teachers and students no longer have to abstractly conceptualize the setting of a story. Instead, they now can experience a story's setting almost realistically, as if seeing it through the eyes of the characters. Students can achieve a special understanding of what it was like for the Joad family to gaze upon Flagstaff during their westward journey.


Both through my website and the enthusiastic messages I receive from teachers around the world, I’ve learned how clearly Google Earth helps students engage in the predicaments of the characters and develop empathy for their trials and tribulations; imagine being able to view the desolate terrain of the New Mexico desert in which the Joads’ car breaks down. One of the best parts about this virtual journey is that students literally get excited when they “see” the connections between the literature they're reading and their own lives and the world as they know it.

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Making your mark on the world

Posted by Lalitesh Katragadda, Software Engineer and Sanjay Jain, Product Manager

Have you ever wondered why some parts of the world don't have great maps and thought how nice it would be if they did? Building a map is an exceedingly complex process, and it is a challenge to reach all parts of the world. Today we unveiled Google Map Maker, a new product that allows users to contribute and edit Maps data for regions around the world.

Google Map Maker is a significant step in our ongoing efforts to engage Google Maps users and equip them with an easy-to-use tool to build high quality maps of their neighborhoods, cities and countries. Map Maker allows you and your peers to add, edit and moderate most features you see on maps including roads, lakes, parks, points of interest, businesses, cities and localities. You will be able to trace many of these features using satellite images; as you trace, maps are immediately updated.

As of today, you can build maps in the countries of Cyprus, Iceland, Pakistan, Vietnam and the Caribbean nations of: Antigua & Barbuda, Bahamas, Barbados, Bermuda, British Virgin Islands, Cayman Islands, Grenada, Jamaica, Netherlands Antilles, St. Kitts & Nevis, St. Lucia, St. Vincent & the Grenadines, Trinidad & Tobago. The existing mapping data for these countries could benefit tremendously from local knowledge and expertise that you and other map makers posses, and we're excited to see how you put that to use.

This product is a labor of love by many engineers based in Bangalore who have a desire to see the world mapped. Take a look at the before and after images from the Mapplet created to support relief efforts in Myanmar that we shared with you -- it was created with Map Maker!

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Map of Wisconsin road closures

Posted by Timothy Vik, WisDOT State Traffic Operations Center

Due to the rain and flooding in Wisconsin, we at the Wisconsin Department of Transportation's State Traffic Operations Center and Emergency Operation Center have utilized Google Maps to create a My Map to display up-to-date road closures due to flooding. The map has been viewed over 1.4 million times. Visitors to the map have left more than 300 comments providing additional information about road closures and flooding, allowing the map to have the most comprehensive information possible.

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The Presidential Showcase

Posted by Brittany Bohnet, Google Maps Special Projects

If you've been following politics (or our blog) closely this year, you may have seen some Google Maps mashups from the Iowa Caucus, Super Tuesday, and the US state primaries--including an extra special primary map in Pennsylvania. We've recently discovered several other elections map mashups on the web that are just as interesting and we couldn't help but share.

In order to better showcase these maps to you, we've created a Google Maps Elections Gallery that will serve as a collection of the best political maps mashups during the US campaign season. Here's a sneak peek at what's inside:

• Primary Results: Take a look back in time as you view the final outcome of the United States primaries. Check results down to the county level and measure how close the final votes were between democratic candidates Clinton and Obama.

• Fundrace: The Huffington Post brings you a map that tracks campaign donors by party, candidate, and location. Already have the Earth API plug-in installed? Try switching on the Earth mode for an even richer experience!

• Twitter: Use the Twitter map to discover what people around the world are saying about the US elections.

• Obama's Journey/McCain's Journey: Follow Obama and McCain's lives, as written by Wikipedia. Whose will lead to the White House?

• Search Queries: Can search queries predict the elections? View the most popular candidate queries around the United States and discover historical trends up to six months back.

• Campaign Trail: A one-stop shop that showcases each candidate's next campaign stop.

Whether you're a citizen journalist, online news producer, or just love staying on top of the political news, you now have the opportunity to further engage yourself (and your readers) with the 2008 elections by adding any of these maps to your site.

To get the embeddable code for these maps, click the "Embed this map" link on any of the gallery pages. You will be taken to a new page where you can customize the size, title, and border of the map. Once you are happy with the parameters you've set, click on the "Get the Code" button and simply copy/paste the source code into the HTML of your website -- it's as simple as that.

Are you a developer? Browse through our getting started guide to view a list of free open source political content on the web. Use this content to come up with an elections mashup of your own. Once you're finished building, let us help you show it off to the world by submitting your map back to us at elections@google.com.

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