The New Google Maps

Google introduced the new Google Maps at Google I/O this week. Along with a brand new shiny look it has added Earth mode (see 2:11 in video) which is a lite version of Google Earth minus the Google Earth plugin. This will run in all modern browsers and no extra software will have to be installed; I also expect more features will be added to the web app with time. For us Chromebook users, this is a must needed feature. As I have told many of future Chromebookers, cloud enthusiasts, and techies the only major thing that Chromebooks were missing was Google Earth. Here's hoping that my invite to the new Google Maps arrives soon!

Google Maps: Maps Maker Graduates and User Photos In Street View

Google Maps is a fantastic program, and what's making it even better is that users like yourself, can edit maps and release them to the web via Google Maps Maker. This week, there were 16 graduates (countries) and these are now all present in Maps:

Bhutan, Bolivia,Cambodia, Dominica, Dominican Republic, Guam, Iceland, Mauritius, Paraguay, Philippines,Senegal, Seychelles, Sri Lanka, Tajikistan, Vietnam, Zimbabwe.

There has been a lot of work put into these Maps, some users have added up to 10,000 edits. This is truly fantastic that people will commit their time to work on editing these maps. I guess the whole driving force between this and open source in general is that people enjoy working on projects that they are extremely interested in. Anyways, check out the before and after photo below to see how this editing has added to the richness of Google Maps:

Senegal

Another feature added to Maps is popular photos in Panoramio can now be viewed in Streetview. 

Check out the video below to see how amazingly awesome this is. Soon there will be no need to travel to places, everything will be in Google Maps!!

Google Roundup for September 16th-21st

Hello folks, welcome back for some more news in the world of Google, and I may sound like a broken record or mp3 player, it has been another busy week in the house of Google:

• For iPhone users, there is a new application called Earthscape and is available for free at the Apps Store and is very Google Earth-like.
• For all you people who don't want to upgrade from the free Google Earth version but want GPS tracking with Google Earth, check out this application called Navigator. This is able to automatically log tracks to a KML file and also has USB interface support.
• There is an updated version of the Arctic ice animations, check out the 30-day animation , 60-day and 90-day animations. These new animations have better coverage and higher resolution.
• Check out before and after photos of Hurricane Ike by clicking on this file for an overlay overlay image .
• Something that I didn't know was released on the Adsense blog. It is not a violation of program policies to perform searches on one's own Adsense for search boxes. But, it is highly recommended that you do not do this because it will increase the chance of invalid clicks and provide an false view of activity on your site.
• Google Desktop 5.8 has been released and is much faster than previous versions and search covers more Outlook folders and gadgets now have support for flash.
• Gmail labs has some new features; (1) ability to put labels and chat friends on the right and left side of the window instead of being stacked and (2) "Mark as Read" button can be added to top of inbox (this was created by a guy named Mark).
• Gears has been released for Safari on OS X, it can be downloaded at http://gears.google.com.
• Google Maps for mobile has been released and now included Street View. Check out the video below (the guy should invest in a new bicycle!!!). Note that this is available for Blackberry and most Java-enabled phones.
  

• Google Audio Indexing has been added which as allows searching of audio within videos, super awesome!! This can be found at Google labs.
• Those environmentally-sound Google people have joined forces with GE to allow consumers better energy choices. They basically want all aspects of power to be improved and the smart grid implemented.
  
• Google search is now available in Pirate, yep that's right, pirate.
  

Coolest Feature of the Week: For all of those people out there who forget to attach the attachment in a email, Gmail labs has a Forgotten Attachment Detector. When this is activated, an alert will occur when you forget to attach a file. Neat hey?

Google Maps for Mobile

Google Roundup for August 26th - September 1st

This summer has gone by so fast, I cannot believe that it is Labour Day, and back to work tomorrow followed by teaching. It has been a busy summer on the Google front, now its time for some more news:

• If your a blogger like myself, you'll notice a new feature over the next few weeks. The new feature is called Following and it allows you to know who is following your blog. When the followers icon is clicked on, followers can be browsed, along with the blogs they write and you can read any other blogs they are following. Also, a new tab has been added to the Blogger dashboard called Blogs I'm Following, this will show automatically the latest posts from blogs that you follow. I love social networking.

Blogger + Social Networking

• Related to the above bullet, for any Google Reader users, you will now see a special folder called Blogs I'm Following, which allows you to see all of the blogs that your following. In the future, Google Reader will become more social by adding the Google Friend Connect.
• Hurricane Gustav is all over the news, and if you want to check out its current track, click off the weather layer to see satellite photos, radar, storm tracks etc. Check out many of the weather tools available in Google Earth by clicking on this file created by the Google Earth people.
• For all of you GPS people (I think I may be one soon),WikiLoc is a site that allows users to upload and share GPS tracks. This is now available in Google Earth as its own layer.
• Here is some more good news for Google Earth and Maps users, a new satellite which will be launched on Sept. 4th, will provide imagery for both of these programs, and it does this super fast, an area the size of New Mexico can be done in 1 day!! The name of the satellite is the GeoEye-1 adn has the highest ground resolution color imagery commercially available.
• Google Sites had just received a nice improvement. In the past, if you wanted to add a Google Spreadsheet to your site, it would have to be published to the world (shared with everyone), but no more, the requirement has been dropped.
• Some new features have been introduced to Google Calendar, adding a friend's calendar, creating new events for those busy schedules, and reminder times have been improved, check out this blog for more details.
• IES (Integrated Environmental Solutions) has released a free plugin for Google Sketchup that calculates a building's energy use and carbon dioxide emissions. It looks like the environmental movement is here to stay!!
• YouTube has introduced a new caption feature to videos. Check out this page for more information.

Enjoy the rest of Labour Day, and remember to fill up with an extra dose of coffee in the morning. See you all next week.

Google Roundup for Aug. 10th-17th

I hope you all are enjoyin' the Olympics. My country, Canada, finally got some medals, yesterday they picked up 7, and what about Phelps for the US, crazy hey? Here goes another round of roundup:

• As you all know, we are undergoing climate change. One of the most affected areas is and will be the Arctic. If you have time, check out the animations in Google Earth provided by the National Snow and Ice Data Center for 30-day ,60-day and 90-day showing the change in Arctic ice.
• If your an ESRI software user, your GIS information can be viewed in Google Maps with the ArcGIS JavaScript Extension.
• To increase it's appeal to the international market, Google News is available in 9 more countries, check out this post for more details.
• If you have a RSS feed, and you are using Adsense, ads can now be placed in your feed, and the list of languages and countries for video units has increased. Languages supported are: English, French, German, Japanese, and Spanish; countries included: Australia, Brazil, Canada, France, India, Ireland, Italy, Germany, Japan, Mexico, Netherlands, New Zealand, Poland, Spain, United Kingdom, and United States.
• Google Calendar is now available in 38 languages, recent ones added are: Latvian, Romanian, Filipino/Tagalog, Serbian, Ukrainian, Bulgarian, Hindi and Indonesian.
• If your a user of Google Docs forms, then a few welcomed changes has occurred. These are now accessible in the Docs List page and from within other editors (i.e., Presentations). Also, the forms interface has become more user friendly.

• I love Google Reader, and an excellent feature has been added. Instead of only being able to share with all of your friends, now a custom friends list can be created to selectively choose who you want to share with.

Climate Change via Google Earth.

Google Earth

I'm quite sure that most computer users have used/seen Google Earth in action, so I won't talk about how it works. This is just an amazing program, it has changed the way that we physically view our world and it is free although there are paid versions with more advanced features. This program is used everywhere from news to classrooms. Last week I attended the Summer 2008 American Society of Limnology and Oceanography ASLO conference, 90% of the sampling figures (excluding those produced by GIS software) included some sort of Google Earth image. Again, like all Google Products, the product is often updated, with high resolution imagery updates occurring approximately every 4 months. The latest update included:

• New navigation controls, but I sort of liked the older one better
• More 3-D buildings
• Watch the sun
• Street View
• High Res photos are dated, which was greatly needed

One more thing, this has been out for a while, but Google Earth has a flight simulator, all you have to do is press Ctrl+Alt+A, and begin flying around the world, enjoy!!!

Google Maps for Mobile

Check out this video of the Google Maps for Mobile, this was a recent winner for a contest at the See into S60 blog, enjoy.


And the The winner is...