Google Lat Long: May 2009

3D tours added to the Google Earth Gallery

May 28, 2009

[Cross-posted from the Official Google SketchUp Blog]3D BuildingsGoogle SketchUpGoogle Earthcastlesbridgesmuseumsbaseball stadiumsskyscrapers

AdamJordan

downloadPosted by Bruce Polderman, Sr. Business Product Manager

Businesses layer for Google Earth on your iPhone

May 27, 2009

Since we announced the Google Earth for iPhone application, I've been enjoying my virtual trips around the globe. However, what I find it especially useful for is putting search in a local context.

The Google Earth application shows great satellite imagery, which is always handy to get a first impression of a neighborhood. But imagine having businesses displayed on the screen - how helpful could that be to get to know your location better?

Today, we added a "Businesses" layer to Google Earth on iPhone, as well as to the "Geographic Web" folder in the desktop Google Earth version. To make them easily discoverable, you'll see them by default when you start the application next time. You'll find businesses like restaurants, bars, banks, gas stations, and grocery stores all just a touch away. By clicking on the icons, you'll get additional information like the telephone number, reviews, hours, and much more. And don't forget, as you zoom in further, more businesses become visible.

Have fun exploring your current location - and let this virtual world help you discover new things in the real world.

Posted by Carmen Erni, GIS Specialist, Zurich

Map Maker Graduation: Part II

May 26, 2009

Most of our lives are local. Google has rarely been more challenged in its mission than in providing maps and local information to users in countries where there has never been any detailed digital map.

NGOs will tell you that they need good maps to help develop many of these regions but traditionally, great maps are only created once a place is already developed.

This was the motivation behind the launch of mapmaker.google.com almost a year ago, giving users the power to solve this problem for good. Today, we see that promise fulfilled as Google launches the first generation maps for the following 64 new countries and territories on maps.google.com:

American Samoa, Anguilla, Armenia, Aruba, Azerbaijan, Bahrain, Belize, Benin, Botswana, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Cameroon, Cape Verde, Cayman Islands, Central African Republic, Chad, Christmas Island, Cocos (Keeling) Islands, Comoros, Cook Islands, Costa Rica, Cote d'Ivoire, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Djibouti, El Salvador, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Gabon, Gambia, Ghana, Guadeloupe, Guinea, Iran, Kyrgyzstan, Madagascar, Malawi, Martinique, Mauritania, Mongolia, Montserrat, Mozambique, Myanmar (Burma), Nauru, Netherlands Antilles, Niger, Nigeria, Niue, Northern Mariana Islands, Pakistan, Reunion, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Samoa, Sao Tome and Principe, Sierra Leone, Solomon Islands, Somalia, Togo, Tokelau, Tonga, Turkmenistan, Tuvalu, Uzbekistan, Wallis and Futuna, Zambia.

On behalf of the millions of people who can now use these maps, we extend our thanks to those exceptional people who selflessly and tirelessly continue to build these maps. To get an idea of who those users are go to mapmaker.google.com and peek at the bottom right of any viewport. And if you are from one of these places, do edit the map and make it a little better for you and your neighbors.

To celebrate these maps, here are a few snapshots of before and after the Map Maker data launch:

Lahore, Pakistan

Western Africa

Posted by Anand Srinivasan, Lakshminath Bhuvanagiri and Jessica Pfund, Map Maker Team

Disneyland Paris in Google Earth

May 26, 2009

Last summer The Walt Disney Company took a big step into the realm of virtual tourism by introducing the Walt Disney World park located in Orlando, Florida in Google Earth, much to the delight of children around the world. We were impressed with the excellent quality of the 3D models, but the thousands of trees, shrubs, benches and other "street furniture" were a first, and set a new bar for realism in Google Earth.

This week Disney introduced its Disneyland Paris resort, with amazing 3D buildings. They're able to achieve this with the quality of the photos used for texturing these buildings. Disney tells me that more than 85,000 photos (450GB worth) were taken over a 20 day period for this project. The castle alone is comprised of over 354 textures derived from over 2,000 photos.

While the buildings are superb, it's really all the other detail that makes this data worth the virtual trip. There are over 500 unique landscape elements that were created to make the park look as realistic as possible. What's more, each attraction has unique plant life associated with that area. For example, palm and tropical plants were used on Adventure Island. Desert-type plants were used in Frontierland, broad leaf deciduous trees were used in Main Street, pine trees were used in Discovery Land and shaped pruned trees were used in Fantasyland. If there were street or landscaping elements in the photographs, they were modeled. This means every bench, light post, tree, bush, planter box, street sign, fence, street curb, fountain, rock, bridge, table & chair are included.

Apparently the photographers rode the Indiana Jones Temple of Peril ride repeatedly in order to "understand the actual path of the roller coaster when modeling the attraction" (a hardship I know, but "just part of the job", they say.) The model includes every loop, turn and climb. At the top of the Sleeping Beauty Castle, you'll spy Tinker Bell, complete with a trail of pixie dust, adding just a little more magic to the layer.

Disney developed a custom KML for each attraction in the two Disneyland Paris Parks, each of the seven Disney hotels and the Disney Village. Simply click on the area of interest and a KML bubble complete with Flash animations and sound will appear. You can navigate from place-to-place using this approach, but my preference is to use my 3D mouse and stroll through the park on my own at ground level.

The Disneyland Paris layer can be found in the "Gallery" folder (note that you need to have Google Earth 5.0 to view the models). The layer is available in six languages: French, Italian, German, Spanish, Dutch and English.

Posted by Bruce Polderman, Sr Business Product Manager

Using Google Earth to visualize the toll of war

May 24, 2009

For many of the people on my team, working with Google Earth is not just a day job, it's a personal passion. For example, take Sean Askay. As a graduate student he began experimenting a few years ago with using Google Earth to display complex data, including in his thesis when he used Google Earth to visualize sensor networks. It was also around that time that he began a mapping project to honor servicemen and women who, since October 2001, had lost their lives in Iraq and Afghanistan. He published this map to the Google Earth Community in 2005 and then, two years later, found himself working here at Google.
While he's certainly kept himself busy working on the Google Earth Outreach team, he has continued to work on his map as a 20% project and in his personal time. Google Earth has come a long way since he first started this project in 2005, and all along, Sean's been updating his map with the product's newest features. Throughout the process, Sean consulted with current and retired servicemen and women, as well as veterans' organizations in the United States. He also reached out to many families of the fallen and Warrant Officer Frank McVey, a retired member of the UK's Royal Air Force (and avid Google Earth user), for guidance and help with this project. and rhumb linesviewwebsite

Posted by Brian McClendon, Engineering Director

Would you like some extra suggestions with that?

May 22, 2009

The Google Maps driving and walking directions team has traditionally been in the business of answering the question "what is the best way to get from point A to point B?" When there's a single obvious route, we usually don't have a problem finding it. When there are many good routes to your destination, we suggest one we consider to be the best and let you drag the route around to discover the rest. But what about when there are two or three different routes that all get you to point B effectively? Wouldn't you like to see them all on the map for comparison? Now you can!

When there is more than one good way to get from A to B, we still show you the route we think is best, but in addition we now show one or two additional routes, under the "Suggested Routes" heading. These are other good routes that we think you might be interested in because they are different enough from the best route that personal preferences are likely to affect your choice.

For example, when driving between the two engineering offices in Washington, while we still return the WA-520 bridge as the primary route, we offer the additional suggestion of the I-90 bridge which you might prefer because it has carpool lanes; hover over a suggestion to see both routes on the map, and click on a suggestion to update the step-by-step directions:

For those curious about what's happening behind the scenes, here are some slightly technical details. Deciding which route is "best" involves balancing competing factors: distance, travel time, number of turns, and many more. We boil all these factors down to a "cost" associated with each candidate route and display the route with the lowest "cost." But we don't know about all of your personal preferences, some of which can mean a higher cost route is better for you. Now you can compare and choose!

One final tip: when you're evaluating routes, check to see if the traffic layer is available in your area so you can see either the live conditions or the predicted conditions for when you're traveling, helping you make a smart decision about the best route for you.

Posted by Ami Fischman, Software Engineer

Bring More of Your World Into Google Map Maker

May 22, 2009

Since launching Google Map Maker, our user-contributed "wiki-map", we've gotten a lot of great user feedback. Two of our top requested features are to more easily get data into and out of Google Map Maker. We've recently begun to address the latter with a variety of efforts ranging from making Google Map Maker tiles available in the Maps API to allowing shp and kml file download for some of the Google Map Maker data.
With the latest batch of new features, we now also give users a new way to bring data into Google Map Maker: Overlays. This allows users to overlay kml and image files on top of the map tiles to assist with mapping. A great file to test this feature out with is the Panoramio kml: www.panoramio.com/kml . Adding this kml will drape user-contributed photos on top of your map to give you a ground view no matter where in the world you are mapping. For a full tutorial on how to use the Overlay feature, see Overlay Tutorial.

Posted by Kishore Annapureddy, Software Engineer, and Jessica Pfund, GIS Specialist

Congratulations Eric Yang, winner of the 2008-2009 National Geographic Bee

May 20, 2009

[Cross-posted from the Official Google Blog]

1. Timis County shares its name with a tributary of the Danube and is located in the western part of which European country?

2. Name this eastern European capital city, where a ﬂight from the southeast would approach the city by ﬂying over the Rhodope Mountains.

3. Name this city in Oceania, the largest on South Island, where a ﬂight from the west would approach the city by ﬂying over the Southern Alps.
Earlier today I had the honor of speaking at the championship round of the 2008-2009 National Geographic Bee — moderated by Jeopardy!’s Alex Trebek for the 21st year. This year, Google Earth is sponsoring the Bee in support of its mission to raise awareness and support of geography education. Held at National Geographic’s Washington, D.C. headquarters and broadcast on public television stations across the country, the competition inspires and challenges students to better understand the world around them.
Eric Yang, who didn't miss a single question in the finals, won on the third question of a tiebreaker round by answering the first question above. Eric, a 7th grader from Texas, has already scored 2200 on his SATs!

It wasn't just the students who came away from the day re-energized and excited about geography. I was also lucky enough to meet a number of passionate educators like Rebecca Montgomery, a teacher from Mississippi, who administered the state bee there this year and told me that "the bee had a tremendous impact on our schools this year and I know now what we need to do to get kids ready to learn geography."
Here at Google, we're always excited to see how innovative teachers are using tools like Google Earth and Maps to engage students by putting the world's geographic information at their fingertips. I'm particularly happy to have been part of the Bee today because geography and mapping were such a big part of what led me to help create Google Earth. I'm not the only Googler who fell in love with maps at an early age, though. Check out this video to see how some of my fellow mapmakers started down the path that eventually brought them to their current profession:

We'll be watching to see what lies ahead for today's passionate young geo whizzes. Congrats again to all the Bee competitors, and happy exploring!

Answers: 1. ɐıuɐɯoɹ 2. ɐıɟos 3. ɥɔɹnɥɔʇsıɹɥɔ

Posted by Brian McClendon, Director of Engineering, Google Earth and Maps

Who's going to Where?

May 20, 2009

Last week we invited all of you to share your reasons for wanting to attend the O'Reilly Where 2.0 Conference for a chance at a complimentary pass for this great geo event. We received a number of great stories and reflections on the personal and professional passion people have for the geoweb and geospatial technology. We learned about some very interesting geo-startups that are being born using the Google Maps API and even some touching personal accounts of how location is truly changing people's lives.

We decided to select Alison King, an enterprising new student to the area of geospatial tech. So interested in fact that she is currently pursuing a GIS certificate of completion from City College in San Francisco. With a background in analytical systems and product design she was interested in seeing where these two things areas converge with geospatial technology. She had an interest in attending a conference like Where 2.0 where this expertise converges but didn't think she could manage on a student's budget, thus was interested in this pass... be our guest Alison! We're looking forward to your insights after the conference concludes!

We're excited to be at the conference. If you're unable to make it, the @Googlemaps Twitter account will be live-tweeting the event with thoughts and analysis, and check back to this blog later in the day for more updates from Where 2.0.

Posted by Mike Pegg, Product Marketing Manager

Earth Outreach Gets a Makeover

May 19, 2009

You want to change the world. We want to help.

With our newly re-designed website, Google Earth Outreach can help more than ever. Our new showcase, tutorials, and community give non-profit and public benefit organizations the ability to explore, create, and connect at Google Earth Outreach.

Explore non-profit and public benefit maps with our new Showcase, where you can interact with Google Earth and Maps projects right from within the webpage. We've added Maps API and Earth API applications, as well as My Maps. You can also visit in-depth case studies for several projects from the Showcase. Some case studies, like Appalachian Voices and Clean Up the World, contain new videos about how the organization used maps to change the world.

Create maps with our enhanced Tutorials section, which includes seven new Google Earth tutorials, such as how to create a tour and embed it on your website. All of the new tutorials have videos to watch before you get started. You can also plan your project before you dive into your mapping work. Also new is a list of Tools and Resources that will help you create your maps.

Connect with other non-profits at our new Community & Grants section, which contains many different opportunities for non-profits. If you're an eligible non-profit, you can apply for Google Maps & Earth software grants, including Google Earth Pro, SketchUp Pro, and now Maps API Premier. In our new Developer Marketplace , you can find a list of programmers and developers with experience in public benefit mapping to help with your project. Finally, you can sign up for our quarterly newsletter where you can learn about new updates, upcoming trainings, and more!

Visit our new Earth Outreach website today at http://earth.google.com/outreach.

Posted by Tanya Keen and Karin Tuxen-Bettman, Google Earth Outreach

Tips & Tricks: Jog your memory with saved locations

May 14, 2009

For places I don't visit frequently, the hardest part about finding them on Google Maps can be remembering the right address. The dentist's office or a museum, for example -- places I've found on Google Maps before, but not quite recently enough to remember the exact address to search for a second time. Fortunately, when I'm signed in to my Google account, Google Maps automatically saves the addresses I search for. The Saved Locations list can hold up to 100 different places -- an indispensable address book that I add to each time I search for somewhere new.

To see what locations are on your list, sign into your Google account and click the small gray triangle just to the right of the search box. You'll see a list of a few of the locations you've searched for recently, as well as the option to enable or disable the automatic saving of your searches. Click Edit saved locations to see a full list of all your saved places. You can change a particular address by clicking Edit, as well as add a label. You can search using your saved labels just as you would an address; typing 'Jen's house' or 'Hardware store' can be a lot easier to remember than an address.

Finally, you can click the green arrow next to a saved location to set it as your default location -- it's the map you'll see whenever you sign into Google Maps, and it's useful if you usually look for places in the same area. It doesn't have to be a street address; you can set any location to be your default.

So, for addresses you search for repeatedly that seem to slip your mind, or a new place you want to save so that you won't have to remember it again, the Saved Locations ensures that racking your brain for an address will never hold you back from finding your way.

For more Google Maps tips and tricks, you can check out the Maps Water Cooler blog.

Posted by Sarah Gordon, Tips Guru

Where is the world is... (Answers)

May 14, 2009

As always, great detective work everyone! In case any left you stumped, here are the answers and our list of updates.

1) I remember back in my school days having learned a poem by a German writer about the disaster of a rail bridge in the 19th century in northwestern Europe that collapsed in a heavy winter storm while a train was crossing it.
Tay rail bridge, Dundee, Scotland

2) A large, mythical lake often shrouded in mist. Legend has it that a sea snake about 60 feet long lives in this lake.
Loch Ness, Drumnadrochit, Scotland

3) This artificial lake in Europe became famous for starring in the opening of a James Bond movie in which a bungee jump was performed.
Lago di Vogorno, Ticino, Switzerland

4) A spaceport in the jungle. Several European space agencies - federal and commercial - conduct rocket launches from here.
Guiana Space Centre, Kourou, French Guiana

5) A large national park in the continental U.S. that is mainly covered by tempered rain forest and glaciated peaks is now entirely visible at the resolution of at least 1m per pixel.
Olympic National Park, Washington, USA

6) This section of motorway in Europe closes a small gap but runs across a bridge which is currently the tallest in the world with a maximum height of 270 meters.
Viaduc de Millau, Midi-Pyrénées, France

7) This is a very popular tourist location on the pacific side of North America.
Puerta Vallarta, Jalisco, Mexico

8) Finally, this last image shows a part of the sculpture park of this European city. The sculptures show human figures.
City of Oslo, Norway

Updated Imagery: Americas:

- USA: Muscatine County (IA), Parts of Champaign County (IL), Parts of Benton County (AR), Parts of Washington County (AR), parts of Washington State, and parts of Michigan

- Mexico: Puebla, Toluca, Puerto Vallarta

- Brazil: Porto Alegre

- French Guiana: Northern Coast

Europe, Middle East, & Africa:

- Great Britain: Large parts of Scotland and considerable amounts of England

- France: Departments of Seine-Maritime, Calvados, Val-d'Oise, Yvelines, Essonne, Seine-et-Marne, Aube, Yonne, Sarthe, Vosges, Territiore de Belfort, Vienne, Haute-Vienne, Charente, Charente-Maritime, Cantal, Aveyron, Aude, Bouches-du-Rhône, Saône-et-Loire, Haute-Savoie, Savoie, Martinique (Caribbean Sea), Mayotte (Indian Sea)

- Italy: Costa Smeralda (Sardegna), Genova (Liguria), Milano (Lombardia), Lago Maggiore (Piemonte/Lombardia)

- Spain: Cádiz

- Switzerland: Engelberg

Asia & Oceania:

- New Zealand: Palmerston

New 2.5m base imagery for: Southern India and Western Paraguay.

New Terrain for: Contra Costa County, Paris, Copenhagen, Dallas, Houston, Jacksonville, Lisbon, Madrid, Memphis, Mexico City, Miami, Minneapolis, Nashville, Orlando, Phoenix, Portland, Sacramento, Sevilla, St Louis, Tampa, and Toronto

Posted by Bernd Steinert, GIS Specialist, Zurich

Behind the scenes of the NYC - Google mapping partnership

May 13, 2009

In January New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg announced a partnership between Google and NYC & Company, NYC’s official marketing, tourism and partnership organization, to create a new website and high-tech information center. Using these new tools, you can now plan a trip to NYC from your home computer, transfer your itinerary to your cell phone, and then learn more at an information center.

A number of people have asked us about our role in the NYC partnership. We did not create nycgo.com and the Official NYC Information Center here at Google, as you'd probably expect. Rather, we provided NYC with our standard APIs and a bit of technical guidance, and NYC did the rest.

To help other cities and organizations gain a bit more insight into how NYC managed to create nycgo.com and the Official NYC Information Center, we put together this short video of interviews with principal members of the NYC project team:

Click here to learn more about the partnership between Google and NYC.

Posted by Ryan Pollock, Product Marketing Manager

Sky Map for Android - Location and Orientation

May 12, 2009

Most maps are designed to help you look down on the Earth from space. But sometimes you want to do just the opposite, which is why star maps have always been designed to help you look up into space from the Earth. Since the launch of Google Sky in 2007, we've been helping users to see the view above as well, and now we're happy to welcome the newest tool in the sky mapping family: Sky Map for Android.

Most new phones today can sense their location using GPS and network signals, so they could construct a map of the stars and constellations that you might expect to see overhead. But Sky Map goes even further: Android-powered phones today have access to a compass reading as well as the other sensors, and so they can also determine the direction you're facing. Once you have a phone with a compass ("magnetometer"), a plumbline ("accelerometer"), and you can pinpoint your position (using GPS) and your time (using a clock), that's enough to work out which direction you're pointing in the Universe.

The result is a whole new sky mapping experience. Point the phone at any part of the sky, and Sky Map gives you a specially constructed map telling you what stars, planets and constellations you're looking at. You can even search for stars and planets by name, and the phone displays an arrow telling you how to move to face the object you're interested in. The phone can't "see" the stars as such: it works out their positions mathematically from the sensor readings. One quirky consequence of this approach is that Sky Map doesn't need a line-of-sight to find the stars and planets. It will just as reliably display stars you can't see on a cloudy night, stars you can't see because the Sun is shining, stars you can't see because you're indoors, and even stars in the opposite hemisphere that you can't see because the Earth itself is in the way. So you can even use Sky Map to work out that the Southern Cross is currently somewhere beneath your right foot!

As well as being orientation aware, another way that Sky Map differs from most mapping applications is that its core data model is very small. There are only a few planets in our solar system, and 88 recognized constellations in our night sky - but more surprisingly, there are only some 6000 to 9000 stars that are visible from the Earth witch the naked eye, even under the best viewing conditions. And apart from the occasional supernova once every few centuries, star data is pretty stable. This meant that we could fit all of Sky Map's core data into a tiny 60K, all of which ships freely with the application and might never need a single update in the lifetime of your phone. When you're out in the country at night, miles and miles from the nearest city light or network connection, Sky Map is one mapping application that still works perfectly, just when you want it the most!

To try Sky Map, visit the Android market at http://www.android.com/market, and search for "sky map", or you can find the application listed by popularity in the Applications > Reference section.

For more information, have a look at our post on the Google Mobile Blog and at the Sky Map landing page.

Update (5/13): We have updated the version of Sky Map for Android in Android Market. We realize that some users were experiencing crashes or slow start-up times. This new version fixes these issues, so Sky Map should now work fine on all Android-powered phones.

Posted by Dom Widdows, Differential Geometer

Where in the world is...

May 11, 2009

Hello geo fans, here comes another batch of new imagery for Google Earth and Google Maps. To help you find the locations pictured in this new imagery, I have assembled a small quiz with some famous places that have been updated. Stay tuned for the answers to this quiz to appear in this blog, along with a more complete list of areas with updated imagery.

To make the quiz a bit more challenging this time around, the images are sometimes not oriented northernly.

1) I remember back in my school days having learned a poem by a German writer about the disaster of a rail bridge in the 19th century in northwestern Europe that collapsed in a heavy winter storm while a train was crossing it.

2) A large, mythical lake often shrouded in mist. Legend has it that a sea snake about 60 feet long lives in this lake.

3) This artificial lake in Europe became famous for starring in the opening of a James Bond movie in which a bungee jump was performed.

4) A spaceport in the jungle. Several European space agencies - federal and commercial - conduct rocket launches from here.

5) A large national park in the continental U.S. that is mainly covered by tempered rain forest and glaciated peaks is now entirely visible at the resolution of at least 1m per pixel.

6) This section of motorway in Europe closes a small gap but runs across a bridge which is currently the tallest in the world with a maximum height of 270 meters.

7) This is a very popular tourist location on the pacific side of North America.

8) Finally, this last image shows a part of the sculpture park of this European city. The sculptures show human figures.

Posted by Bernd Steinert, GIS Specialist, Zurich

Who, What, Why... Where 2.0!

May 8, 2009

May is finally upon us and that can only mean it's time once again for the Where 2.0 Conference! The event will be held this year in San Jose from May 19-21. The geo team here at Google looks forward to this event each year for the chance it gives us to meet with the people that are helping the geoweb grow and evolve. Our very own Lior Ron and Steve Lee will be speaking about this topic in their keynote, and there are several Googlers running workshops and talks on topics ranging from how companies are using the Google Maps API to indigenous mapping.

We hope you have plans to attend but if you don't, we're hoping we can help get you out to this great geo conference. Where 2.0 organizers have given us 1 free pass for the event, a $1,690 value, and we'd like to pass it along to someone without a ticket that really wants to be there. If you aren't already planning on going, let us know why you'd like to: describe what about the event is intriguing to you and why do you want to attend. Do you have an interesting story that makes this event particularly relevant to you? Please send us your story with this form; we'll take a look at what gets submitted and select one person to receive this complimentary pass.

If you're already planning to be at the conference, be sure to stop by our booth to say hi!

Posted by Mike Pegg, Product Marketing Manager

New resources for non-profit and humanitarian mapping

May 7, 2009

Our friends at MapAction have created a great new publication. Their Field Guide to Humanitarian Mapping was produced "to help humanitarian organisations to make use of mapping methods using Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and related technologies". You can download the first edition for free (3.2MB PDF).

While the free field guide is designed to help organizations doing emergency work, it is relevant to many other organizations, and anyone looking to take advantage of geospatial tools and methods like GPS technologies for collecting data, free & open-source GIS software such as MapWindow for processing and analyzing data, and Google Earth and Google Maps for visualization and display.

Early last year, MapAction published a briefing paper (1MB PDF) on the use of Google Earth in the humanitarian sector. Since then, we've added several new features, like imagery acquisition dates and historical imagery, touring, ocean, and free GPS data import, all of which help users to visualize, share and explore their places and data in new and exciting ways.

Another great new resource is A Nonprofit's Introduction to Google's Online Mapping Tools, recently posted on TechSoup by Chris Peters and Mano Marks. It provides excellent advice on how organizations that have data to display can effectively use Google Maps and Google Earth for outreach and advocacy.

Some more handy Google Earth and Google Maps resources include:

Google Earth Outreach (website with examples and tutorials)
Maps 2.0 Resources from Humaninet
A Rough Google Earth Guide (872kB PDF) form Mercy Corps

Finally, Google has a full suite of free tools available to non-profits on the Google for Non-Profits page.

Posted by Christiaan Adams, Google Earth Outreach

Introducing 'Google Earth Featured Modeler Profiles'

May 6, 2009

The Official SketchUp blog has introduced a new series called 'Google Earth Featured Modeler Profiles' where modelers that have submitted their work to the Google 3D Warehouse for display in Google Earth will be highlighted on a regular basis.

Our first featured modeler, "IntotheWest," has almost single-handedly enabled visitors of Calgary, AB, Canada to view this city in 3D in Google Earth. "IntotheWest," aka Andrew, has modeled over 40 skyscrapers and buildings in Calgary - you can check out his entire collection here.

Have a look at Andrew's profile on the Official SketchUp Blog and stay tuned to learn more about SketchUp users' efforts to model their worlds in 3D.

Posted by Tasha Danko, SketchUp Product Marketing Team

Sharing your location with Google Latitude

May 4, 2009

If you've been using Google Latitude and are one of the many people who wished you could share your location beyond your Latitude friends, check out the Official Google Blog. The Latitude team has created two new applications that let you share your location with your Google Talk friends, or publicly on your website or blog.

The team is also releasing the KML and JSON feeds of the location data, allowing you to take your personal KML feed and open it in Google Earth, load it in Google Maps, or put it on your own website with the Google Maps API. Check out the Geo Developers Blog for more info.

Posted by Heaven Kim, Product Marketing Manager

400 Years in the Making: Celebrating Henry Hudson

May 4, 2009

To commemorate Henry Hudson’s explorations, the Henry Hudson 400 Foundation commissioned Cartosoft to create a map full of Henry Hudson history: early harbor and coastline illustrations, stories of the first New Yorkers, photos ancient maps, 3D models of Hudson’s ship the Half Moon, and of course, the routes Henry Hudson sailed. The map, created using the Google Maps API, can be found here.
The map also includes an “Events” section highlighting modern-day venues, displays, and activities related to the commemoration of Henry Hudson. Explore the New Amsterdam Trail, locate the South Street Seaport where a Henry Hudson historic maps exhibit—including the first known map of Manhattan and the Manhattan purchase document—will open this autumn, visit the shipyard where a replica of the 1614 Onrust is being built, and find the Liberty Science Center, the site of the H209 International Water Forum scheduled for September. The website also lets you to upload stories of your own ancestry to their map.

The Henry Hudson 400 Foundation has put together a rich resource to explore this (in)famous part of American history. And talk about a bargain: you can view the map for $24 dollars less than the purchase price of Manhattan! Posted by Jeff Martin, Product Marketing Manager

3D tours added to the Google Earth Gallery

Businesses layer for Google Earth on your iPhone

Map Maker Graduation: Part II

Disneyland Paris in Google Earth

Using Google Earth to visualize the toll of war

Would you like some extra suggestions with that?

Bring More of Your World Into Google Map Maker

Congratulations Eric Yang, winner of the 2008-2009 National Geographic Bee

Who's going to Where?

Earth Outreach Gets a Makeover

Tips & Tricks: Jog your memory with saved locations

Where is the world is... (Answers)

Behind the scenes of the NYC - Google mapping partnership

Sky Map for Android - Location and Orientation

Where in the world is...

Who, What, Why... Where 2.0!

New resources for non-profit and humanitarian mapping

Introducing 'Google Earth Featured Modeler Profiles'

Sharing your location with Google Latitude

400 Years in the Making: Celebrating Henry Hudson

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