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!!

Tour de France via Google Earth

I'm a recreational cyclist and I love it!! The terrain in my neck of the woods, St. John's, Newfoundland is hilly and we have some strong winds, but besides that there are no real traffic problems and the roads are in OK shape. Like most cyclists I am a Tour de France fan, and I would love to be in good enough shape (without steroids) to complete (not compete) the course, maybe it will happen, maybe.....Anyways, to the point of this posting, Google Earth has Street View imagery (you are given a view from the street) for the whole Tour, it is simply amazing. All you have to do is make sure that the Street View layer is checked off, take a trip via Google Earth to France, look for the camera icon, double click on it, and voila, you can see what the cyclists see, plus you have time to look around. The resolution of the photos is good, I spent 10 minutes looking at a fruit stand along the way, and examining the hill inclines/lengths is exhausting. Go for a ride via Google Earth!!!

Tour de France Street View

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!!!