Google Lat Long: August 2009

Where in the world is... (Answers)

August 31, 2009

So how many were you able to figure out? I hope you didn't spend too much time on #7 as that was the false factoid. The images featured on the quiz included imagery from Geo-Eye, DigitalGlobe and aerial providers. I hope you had fun with the quiz; see you next time!

1) This city hosted Stage 4 and was the departure of Stage 5 in the 2008 Tour De France.
-- Cholet, France

2) Unscramble this: D-E-E-R-B-A-G-O
-- Beograde (Belgrade), Serbia

3) This port city in the Piura Region, hosted a United States air base during World War II.
-- Talara, Peru

4) Every October this city hosts an International Balloon Fiesta; with over 1,000 hot air balloons each year, it's the largest hot air balloon gathering in the world.
-- Albuquerque, New Mexico

5) The siege of this city was the longest siege in the history of modern warfare lasting from 5 April 1992 to 29 February 1996.
-- Sarajevo, Bosnia

6) This is one of the oldest and largest cities in Poland.
-- Krakcow, Poland

7) This city was founded after the civil war in 1578, named after the infamous bridge battle the decided the outcome of the war.
-- Trick question!

8) This city houses Russia's biggest nuclear submarine base.
-- Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky, Russia

9) This city is approximately 244 kilometres (152 mi) from Ankara, 255 kilometres (158 mi) from Adana, 222 kilometres (138 mi) from Izmir, and 300 kilometres (186 mi) from Istanbul.
-- Antalya, Turkey

10) This city was founded after the Port Royal earthquake in the 17th century.
-- Kingston, Jamaica

Following is a more complete version of the updates in this data push:

Americas:
United States: Alburqurque, Beaumont (Texas), part of the Mississippi River, Jefferson County (FL), Cass County (MO), Hamilton County (IA), Western Michigan, Portage (MI), Clinton County (MI), Eaton County (MI), Ingham County (MI), Greenville (SC), Baltimore (MD), Charles County (MD), Calvert County (MD), Dorchester County (MD), Carroll County (MD), Frederick County (MD).
Canada: Surrey (BC)
Peru: Talara
Argentina: Salta, Santiago del Estero, Villa Mercedes, Bahia Blanca

Brazil: Santa Maria, Joinville, Santos, Montes Claros, Petrolina, Araguaina, Parnaiba, Belem

Europe, Middle East, & Africa:
France: Manche, Mayenne, Maine-et-Loire, Marne, Haute-Marne, Meurthe-er-Mosselle, Lozere, Herault, Pau

Lithuania: Vilnius

Poland: Krakow, Lodz, Auschwitz

Slovakia: Bratlsavia

Bosnia and Herzegovina: Sarajevo

Serbia: Belgrade

Moldova: Chisinau

Russia: Perm, Chita, Avacha

Libya: Benghazi

Syria: Aleppo

Iran: Mashad

Turkey: Antalya

Pakistan: Lahore

Guinea-Bissau: Bissau

Guinea: Conakry

Liberia: Monrovia

Kenya: Mombasa

Swaziland: Mbabane

Asia & Oceania:
China: Nanchang, Yumen, Altay, Taizhou, Huaian, Chuzhou, Xingtai, Shijiazhuang, Leting, Baotou

New Zealand: Christchurch, Wellington, Bay of Plenty, Waipa

Antarctica: McMurdo Station

New 2.5m base imagery for: Mexico, Argentina, and India

For even more fun exploring the new imagery, here is a KML outlining all the areas receiving new data. Please note, if you see an area that is updated and not in this KML file, you're not crazy! As part of this update we are re-shuffling many of our satellite scenes to ensure that in areas where we have many satellite scenes stacked on top of each other that the newest image is visible. These are not considered 'new' updates since they've been available through Google Earth's Historical Imagery feature.

Posted by Wayne Thai, GIS Specialist

Street View gets down to business

August 27, 2009

Finding a business with Street View just became easier. For example, if you search for "thai restaurants near mountain view" on Google Maps, and click on a search result, a bubble pops up with various links, including a link to "Street View".

You can click on the "Street View" link to see the restaurant marked directly in Street View with a 3D marker just like the one you'd find on the map. Clicking the marker displays more details about the restaurant without leaving Street View.

If you move along the street, you will continue to see the marker in front of the restaurant, letting you see a business in the context of what else is around it. Double-clicking the marker will jump you back to the closest view.

While you are in Street View, you can also click on another search result in the left panel to jump to the closest view for that result. Take a look at this video for a quick overview:

We use the position of the business on the map to approximately display it as a 3D marker in Street View. We are continuously working on improving the quality of the underlying map, and this will result in more and more businesses being positioned with high accuracy in Street View over time.

Posted by Abhijit Ogale and Andrea Frome, Street View engineers

Where in the world is ...

August 27, 2009

What time is it? That's right, it's new imagery time! In between bites of fruit snacks and orange chicken, we've been working hard to add the newest available imagery in Google Earth and Maps. Here's a quiz showing you just a small sample of the new imagery that has been posted. To make things a little more interesting this month, here's a disclaimer: One of these facts is false and will lead you nowhere.

1) This city hosted Stage 4 and was the starting point of Stage 5 in the 2008 Tour De France.

2) Unscramble this D-E-E-R-B-A-G-O

3) This port city in the Piura Region was the home of a United States air base during World War II.

4) Every October, this city hosts an International Balloon Fiesta. With over 1,000 hot air balloons each year, it's the largest hot air balloon gathering in the world.

5) The siege of this city was the longest siege in the history of modern warfare, lasting from April 5, 1992 to February 29, 1996.

6) During WWII, this city was converted to the capital of Germany's General Government.

7) This city was founded after a civil war in 1578 and is named after the infamous bridge battle that decided the outcome of the war.

8)This city houses Russia's biggest nuclear submarine base.

9) This city is approximately 244 kilometres (152 mi) from Ankara, 255 kilometres (158 mi) from Adana, 222 kilometres (138 mi) from Izmir, and 300 kilometres (186 mi) from Istanbul.

10) This city was founded after the Port Royal earthquake in the 17th century.

Posted by Wayne Thai, GIS Specialist

3D makes headline news in Belgrade

August 26, 2009

[Cross-posted from the Official Google SketchUp Blog]Zexland3D buildingsEnglishoriginal article

Posted by Bruce Polderman, Product Manager

Arterial traffic available on Google Maps

August 25, 2009

Commuters have long relied on traffic sites to help them determine their last-minute path around poor traffic on the highway. But if the traffic looks bad on the highways, you'll probably want to know how it looks on the alternate routes through arterials. I usually would just guess that the traffic on back roads is light, but with this new launch the guesswork is eliminated: Google Maps will now show you live traffic conditions on arterial roads in selected cities. Just zoom-in on the city you're interested in, and click the "Traffic" button in the upper-right corner of the map. As you zoom in closer to an area of interest, we'll color the arterial roads, in addition to the highways, to show current traffic conditions. Just as with the highways, the colors correspond to the speed of traffic (relative to the speed limit of the road): green is free sailing, yellow is medium congestion, red is heavy congestion, and red/black is stop-and-go traffic. For example, here's how traffic looks near the Google Seattle office today.

Here are some examples of what you can find out with this new feature:

Highways aren't looking great. Probably time to take the scenic route!

Trying to get to the airport on time? Now you can see the traffic on many of the roads leading there so you know the best route to take so you won't miss your flight:

If you have Google Maps for Mobile, you can see the same traffic there and, better yet, help improve the data: See our post on the Official Google Blog about traffic crowdsourcing. Here's to a happier commute!

Posted by Jordan Weitz, Software Engineer, Google Traffic Team

3 Days, 3 Googlers, 2 CPUs, 8 Cores: Google goes to Camp Roberts

August 24, 2009

Recently, three Googlers visited Camp Roberts near Paso Robles in central California. The exercise, organized and hosted by the Naval Postgraduate School, brought tech companies together with testers to collaborate on disaster relief, humanitarian aid, and development.

Shortly after we arrived, we disrupted the relative quiet of the Tactical Operations Center (TOC) by spooling up an 8-core Google Earth Enterprise Server to process satellite imagery provided by the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA). We used the server to process the imagery – 1m resolution GeoEye IKONOS scenes over Jalalabad, Afghanistan – with Google Earth Fusion to create a 3D globe and set of Mercator map tiles. We then published the tiles to the Portable Earth Server running in an Ubuntu Virtual Machine to be used as a base imagery layer for mashups by other applications including Sahana, Development Seed, FortiusOne, Open Street Map, and InSTEDD.

Once we provided the new imagery tiles, other applications could pull the imagery into Disaster Management systems, and, combined with their value-added utilities, continually update their geo-information, which positioned them to respond more quickly to the next disaster.

Later in the afternoon, volunteers from the Open Street Map Foundation, Umbrella Consulting, and Stamen Design utilized the imagery tiles and Open Street Map vector overlays to print hard-copy "Walking Papers." These Walking Papers were sent into the field where road and structure information was noted by hand. Back at the TOC, the annotated maps were scanned. Because a QR code on the maps contained coordinate information, annotations were automatically georeferenced as the data was imported into the Open Street Map database. This paper-and-pen method was a smart, practical, low-tech way to to increase the accuracy and data density of vector data for an area of interest.

We saw first-hand the range of challenges technologists face as they look to balance ever-changing information with tools designed for a highly connected world, and as they work in less-than-ideal states of connectivity out in the field. Some problems were successfully dispatched in 20 minutes; others remained unsolved after 3 days.

This week at Camp Roberts reaffirmed the powerful role that agile deployments of geospatial visualization and analysis can play in the quest to build sustainable political structures and mitigate human suffering. We learned to adapt and respond to mixed states of connectivity, and wide ranges of technological states and proficiencies amongst end users. We are going to keep working on projects that aid in the mitigation, recovery and building processes. And we're going to keep supporting open source applications and data projects that address these challenges–and are flexible enough to meet them.

Posted by Jeff Martin, Sean Wohltman, &Dylan Lorimer; Google Earth Enterprise and Google Crisis Response Teams

Map Maker goes west

August 19, 2009

Google Map Maker (mapmaker.google.com) is now open for editing in Mexico. Mexico joins an impressive list of Latin American countries spanning much of South America, Central America, and the Caribbean. Combined with the launch in Eastern Europe earlier this week, this launch constitutes a substantial expansion in the western hemisphere, wherein these two launches have doubled the number of users who can map their country on Map Maker.

In the last year, mappers from around the world have contributed local knowledge with everything from mapping entire countries to adding details like one-way streets to make maps drivable. We're very excited to see these new communities around the globe embrace the ability to maps their countries, such as these users, former Peace Corps volunteers now mapping in Guyana.

For those of you new to Google Map Maker, check out this site (also translated into Spanish) for more information on getting started.

Posted by Lior Ron, Product lead; Lalitesh Katragadda, Tech Lead

Bringing Street View to an attraction near you

August 18, 2009

Along with the new countries added to Street View, I'm particularly excited to be launching some imagery from our Street View Partner Program. It's been a blast to work with a wide range of exciting partners so it's great to now showcase some of their locations in Street View. You'll now find imagery of Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca,Thunderhill Raceway Park, San Diego State University and LEGOLAND California featured in Street View.

View Larger Map

Everything that you've seen on Street View so far has been from public places. But with our new Partner Program, we've been working directly with various partners and are able to collect imagery of private destinations like race tracks, universities and amusement parks.

For some of these spots, like a race track, our Street View cars are a perfect fit. But to be able to explore more pedestrian-focused areas, such as a campus, we're using a new platform called the trike, a bicycle-based version of a Street View system. With the trike, it gets us almost anywhere the car doesn't fit. You can see that the trikes resemble an ice cream cart a bit:

It uses the same camera system we have on our cars, but we've transplanted it onto the trike. It's built onto a 3-wheeled bicycle base and we've added a few of our own tweaks. We've gone through a few versions to get to where we are now; the first one came in at 500lbs, and the newest version has slimmed down to 300lbs. Believe me, our riders are very happy about that.

I think one of the most memorable experiences from working with this first batch was getting to go around the track at Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca with the GT and Le Mans prototypes from the Monterey Sports Car Championships last year.

View Larger Map

Grab the pegman and check out all these cool spots. If you happen to work at a location that you think would be a great fit for the Partner Program, be sure to visit the Content Central Blog to find out more about how you too can be featured in Street View.

Posted by Wendy Wang, Operations Program Manager

The wait is over: new Street View imagery

August 18, 2009

Since the first launch over 2 years ago, the feedback I hear most often from users - and, in fact, members of my own family - around the world is "When will Street View be available where I live?". For those of you in Taiwan, Portugal, and Switzerland who have been among that vocal group, I've got great news: today we're launching imagery in your countries!

I'm particularly excited about Switzerland and Taiwan since I have relatives in those countries I don't get to see nearly as often as I would like. Now, not only can I finally give them the good news that their countries have Street View, but I can re-live my past visits with them. I've found everything from that drive around Lake Geneva with my uncle:

Größere Kartenansicht

...to that delicious shaved ice stand my aunt took me to in Taipei:

View Larger Map

I've also been able to virtually explore Portugal, a country I haven't yet had a chance to visit - but this imagery has me eager to book a trip.

View Larger Map

In addition, as a follow-up to our launch of Disneyland Paris, we're excited to launch more special areas of interest in Street View. We took our Street View cars for spins around two race tracks in California: Thunderhill Raceway Park and Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca. We've also used our Street View Trike, the new bicycle-based system, to gather imagery at San Diego State University and LEGOLAND California. We've included a little surprise at LEGOLAND, which we hope you will enjoy! Check back shortly for a blog post about the Trike and our partner program for Street View. [Update: You can view the blog post here.]

View Larger Map

Regardless of where in the world you are, I hope you enjoy exploring the new imagery. Whether you want to see the Taipei 101, Geneva's Jet d'Eau, or race cars, there's something for everyone in this new Street View update.

Posted by Stephen Chau, Product Manager

Monitoring California Wildfires with Google Maps

August 17, 2009

Last week, several wildfires sprung up across California. These blazes are the latest in what is anticipated to be a very active fire season. California is tracking ahead of an average year, already reporting nearly 3,000 wildfires.

Located between the towns of Swanton and Bonnie Doone in the Santa Cruz Mountains, the Lockheed Fire has burned more than 7,000 acres and destroyed two outbuildings. Soon after the fire began, Tom Moore, Online Editor of the the Santa Cruz Sentinel, created this informative Google MyMap of the area. It is being updated regularly, and has served as a significant source of information for the residents of the area, receiving over half a million views so far.

View Lockheed Fire Map in a larger map

Data for the map is crowdsourced from a live discussion feed and added to the map by Sentinel staff. The contributors get their information from local briefings, personal interviews, and empirical observations. While the data has not been verified by an authoritative source such as CalFire and may therefore contain some inaccuracies, the benefit is that it can be published quickly to get valuable information into the hands of those who need it while it's still relevant.

As of Monday morning, the Lockheed Fire was 65% contained - up from 5% Friday afternoon. We wish the firefighters on the front-lines luck and safety in their ongoing efforts. We also wish good fortune to the local community members whose homes and businesses are threatened.

Posted by Jeffery Martin, Google Crisis Response Team

Map Maker gets a European flair

August 17, 2009

Google Map Maker (mapmaker.google.com) has yet another exciting update, as several Eastern European countries are now open for editing: Albania, Belarus, Kosovo, Macedonia, Moldova, Montenegro, Romania, Serbia. We've also opened edits for Malaysia (which recently got its own maps domain) and Brunei. This makes map editing available for users around the world in more than 170 countries / regions in total.

In the last year, mappers from around the world have contributed local knowledge with everything from mapping entire countries to adding details like one-ways to make a drivable map. We're very excited to see these new communities around the globe embrace the ability to map their countries. One example is the Romanian Facebook community, with more than 7000 members asking for Romania to be added to Google Maps. Now we invite them to join our Map Maker community: come leverage your local knowledge to help build the most comprehensive map of Romania possible.

Alongside making Map Maker available in new countries, we're committed to making the result of everyone's work as available and accessible as possible. With this launch, we're also taking a step in that direction by extending our Kenya pilot and making the entire dataset of Africa fully available for download by non-profits, government agencies and individuals to create and enhance their own non-commercial map-related projects. More details are available on our download site.

For more information on Map Maker, please visit our new overview site. Happy Mapping!

Posted by Lior Ron, Product Lead; and Lalitesh Katragadda, Tech Lead, Map Maker

Picasa photos in Street View

August 14, 2009

Earlier this year, we launched a new Google Maps feature embedding user-contributed photos into Street View. The new way of browsing photos has recently been enhanced with photo-to-photo zooming, which lets you explore some of the world's most interesting landmarks and landscapes in an intuitive and entertaining way.

Our first release of user photos in Street View only included photos from Panoramio. Today, we are adding Picasa Web Albums as another source of user-uploaded, geo-tagged images.

Millions of people already rely on Picasa Web Albums to share their photographs with friends and the internet community. Now, their public geo-tagged photos will help Google Maps users to get a better impression of a geographic place, especially for areas where we may not have any Panoramio photos.

We've selected these photos by looking for geo-tagged public images in Picasa Web Albums. We apply face detection to screen out images with identifiable individuals and image matching so that we're including the most relevant photographs.

The feature is available at major landmarks around the world, in places as different as Paris, Tokyo, and New Zealand. When you try it out, you'll discover how easy it is to seamlessly navigate between images from Street View, Panoramio, and now Picasa -- particularly with our new photo-zoom feature. Have fun exploring the world!

Posted by Daniel Cotting, Software Engineer, Google Zurich

The China-India data error explained

August 12, 2009

Recently, as part of a routine data update to maps.google.com, we inadvertently added Chinese language names to some locations in Arunachal Pradesh that were previously unlabeled or labeled with English language Indian place names.

The data was published accidentally in an unintended form. As soon as we discovered this, we reverted maps.google.com back to its original state. We'd like to make it clear that we at no point meant to indicate support for one country's view over another.
Posted by Gabriel Stricker, Director, Search Communications

Ready, Set, Go: Add a Google map to your website

August 10, 2009

Katie's Challenge - As part of an event planning team, Katie needs to build a simple map and display it on a webpage. The map should be simple, only 10 markers plotting event locations, but needs to be created quickly and added to a page in time for an event that will be happening tomorrow. What are Katie's options and what Google Maps tool should she use?

Allen's Challenge - Allen's boss has read about new web mapping and wants to start visualizing information on a map which today sits in large text tables on the company website. Allen leads a team that is capable of developing a complex mapping application, but he'd like to learn what options are available to the company.

With both Katie and Allen in mind we have created one place to learn all ways you can add a Google map to your website. From plotting only a few locations or embedding driving directions to more advanced custom mapping options, the URL for this site is conveniently titled:

http://maps.google.com/getmaps

Once you select the appropriate level, you'll get another set of options to pick which best describes your use case.

When Katie arrives at this site she follows the easy steps to create a My Map. She selects the size of the map she wants to embed and copies the auto-generated HTML and adds it to the event website. She even customizes a slightly smaller version for the event blog which she decides to embed in a post to let attendees know about the map. She sends a quick email to her team with a link to the map.

Meanwhile, Allen arrives and chooses "Advanced" since the mapping needs for his company are more complex. First he compares the features of the two Google Maps APIs available to his company and even finds out that Google provides a way for him to reach out to a certified Google Maps developer. He has faith in his own team and decides to read on, learning what platforms the Google Maps API is available to be developed on. After exploring the example maps presented on the site, Allan concludes that the Flash-based maps interface will provide the user experience he's looking for.

Mapping Success! Katie's team thinks she's a mapping whiz and the developers in Allen's group are impressed that he knows the difference between an interactive JavaScript and Flash-based map! We truly hope this page helps you to navigate the many options before you to add a map to your own website!

Posted by Mike Pegg, Product Marketing manager

New data in Google Earth show wider swath of destruction in Darfur

August 6, 2009

On the side of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum west wall is a quote etched into the rock from General Dwight D Eisenhower, who witnessed firsthand the conditions in the concentration camps in 1945, after they were liberated:

"The things I saw beggar description... I made the visit deliberately, in order to be in a position to give first hand evidence of these things if ever, in the future, there develops a tendency to charge these allegations to propaganda.”

This ability to bear witness is vital in preventing and responding to genocide and crimes against humanity today.

Despite having far more information about the genocide in the Darfur region of Sudan than previous conflicts - celebrity visits to refugee camps, CNN updates, blog posts from aid workers on the ground - it is difficult for the average American to grasp the true scope of systematic violence over an area roughly the size of Texas.

Now the Museum is providing, through its partnership with Google Earth, the most detailed picture to date of the scope and nature of the destruction that occurred during the genocide in Darfur. That thousands of villages were destroyed has been known for some time; these new data document the true enormity of the destruction.

The attacks against villages in Darfur resulted in the deaths of at least 200,000 civilians, the rape of tens of thousands of women, and a refugee crisis in which more than 2.5 million Sudanese remain displaced from their homes.

The updated Google Earth layer, created with data provided by the U.S. State Department’s Humanitarian Information Unit, shows more than 3,300 villages throughout Darfur that have been damaged or completely destroyed. These data also confirm that most villages were destroyed between 2003 and 2005, during the height of the brutal Sudanese government-backed systematic campaign targeting civilians in Darfur.

For the first time the layer also includes the locations of nearly 200 sites throughout Darfur where users can view imagery from both before and after the destruction, using Google’s own historical dataset. You can find the layer in the "Global Awareness" folder in Google Earth, as shown below, or by downloading the content directly. You can also visit the Museum's website to find out how you can take action.

The web is making it easier to take part in bearing witness to the worst crimes on the planet. Now, with millions throughout Sudan still at serious risk of violence, we must follow through on the more vital task- putting pressure on the international community to help create sustainable peace throughout Sudan. The perpetrators of mass violence in Sudan and elsewhere know that the world is watching.

Posted by Michael Graham, Coordinator of the Genocide Prevention Mapping Initiative, U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum

I didn't know that was there!

August 4, 2009

Here at Google Maps we're always looking for new ways to allow people to easily explore the world's information. Well, what could be easier than putting things right on the map? We've now added icons and labels of prominent businesses and places of interest directly on the map itself. We've found it super useful for checking out what's nearby a hotel we'll be staying at, orienting ourselves, getting the feel for a neighborhood, or just browsing around for fun.

Not only can you see where these places are, but you can click the icons to get a summary of what this place is about and explore more by choosing more info to see business info, reviews, photos, Wikipedia articles, and a lot of other local information.

While writing this blog post Nick was looking for a interesting sample image to use and decided to poke around the Mall area of Washington D.C. He grew up just outside D.C., and has been to the Lincoln Memorial, the Washington Monument, and the museums along The Mall countless times. However, Nick had no idea there is an Albert Einstein Memorial there until just yesterday.

Like many other cool features we build at Google, this feature was a cross-team effort involving engineers from the Seattle, New York and Zurich offices. We want to all get together to celebrate this launch, and even though Andrin is traveling in from Zurich he won't have problem finding his way to the party because he can just check Google Maps to find the landmarks to orient himself!

Posted by Nick Lee, Seattle; and Andrin von Rechenberg, Zurich

Where in the World is ... (Answers)

August 4, 2009

Great work figuring out the answers to the quiz! The quiz images were from the satellite GeoEye-1 and they are just so awesome to look at.

Here are the answers in case any of the questions stumped you, and below is a more complete listing of areas updated.

1) This Asian city is at the center of the Hexi Corridor and Marco Polo has spent a year in this ancient city.
-- Zhangye, China

2) The nickname "City of Lights" just gives this one away.
-- Perth, Australia

3) Tangerines were named for this city, the first one to ship the fruit to Europe.
-- Tangier, Morroco

4) This city has a government building named the "The Custom House".
-- Dublin, Ireland

5) This city is home of the two time winner of the FIBA EuroLeague Women.
-- Como, Italy

6) This northern Canadian city started its first oil boom when it struck oil on February 13, 1947.
-- Leduc, Canada

7) This beautiful rail station is central to this Asian mega-city.
-- Beijing, China (Beijing South Rail Station)

8) A major UN convention on biodiversity was held in this city in 2006.
-- Curitiba, Brazil

9) This lake is a few kilometers outside the city created in 1937 to be the headquarters for the western mining group of the High Katanga Mining Association.
-- Kolwezi, Democratic Republic of Congo

Following is a more complete version of the updates in this data push:

Americas:
United States: Thurston County (WA), Spokane (WA), Albuquerque (NM), Jackson (MS), Winnebago County (IL), Boone County (IL), Ogle County (IL), Lee County (IL), Dekalb County (IL), La Salle County (IL), Putnam County (OH), Van West County (OH), Mercer County (OH), Paulding County (OH), Shelby County (OH), Union County (OH), Morrow County (OH), Richland County (OH), Seneca County (OH), Sandusky County (OH), Ottawa County (OH), Wayne County (OH), Cabton County (OH), Tuscarawas County (OH), Harrisburg (PA), Winston-Salem (NC), Greensboro (NC), Hyde County (NC), Onslow County (NC), New Hanover County (NC), Gulf County (FL), Jackson, Liberty County (FL), Jefferson County (FL), Columbia County (FL), Gilchrist County (FL), Levy County (FL), Citrus County (FL), Lake County (FL), Sumter County (FL), Hernando County (FL), Sarasota County (FL), Osceola County (FL), Indian River County (FL), Okeechobee County (FL), Saint Lucie County (FL), Collier County (FL), Monroe County (FL), Mineola (TX), State of Missouri, State of South Carolina, the Coast of Georgia, and the Coast of Mississippi
Canada: Leduc (BC)
Mexico: Guadalajara, Leon de Los Aldama
Bolivia: La Paz
Brazil: Curitiba, Tocantins, Aracatuba,
Paraguay: Asuncion
Argentina: Rio Cuarto, Santa Rosa,

Europe, Middle East, & Africa:
Ireland: Dublin, Cork
Belgium: entire country
Italy: Amalfi, Como
Spain: Beasain, Costa del Sol
Sweden: Stockholm
Morocco: Casablanca, Agadir, Safi, Larache
Gibralter: entire country
Turkey: Antalya
Saudi Arabia: Mecca
Qatar: Doha
Oman: Masqat, Salalah
Zambia: Lusaka, Livingstone
Mozambique: Beira
Democratic Republic of the Congo: Kolwezi
Iran: Shiraz

Asia & Oceania:
Australia: Perth, Sunshine Coast, Thuringowa
China: Bejing, Baoji, Lanzhou
Pakistan: Okara
South Korea: Busan
Malaysia: Kuala Lumpur
Timor-Leste: Dili
Fiji: Suva

New 2.5m base imagery for: Western Sahara, Mauritania, Senegal, The Gambia, Guinea-Bissau, Mali, Niger, Burkina Faso, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Doha, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Moldova, Vietnam, Cambodia, and Thailand.

For even more fun exploring the new imagery, here is a KML outlining all the areas receiving new data.

Posted by Roger Lee, GIS Data Engineer

Take a peek at our new Street View site

August 4, 2009

Since our launch of Street View in May 2007, it has consistently been one of Google Maps' most popular features. We've also found that it has been one of the features that folks are most curious about, so we have given our Street View overview site a refresh that puts everything you wanted to know about Street View in one place.

Some of the things you can now learn are:

Where in the world Street View imagery is available, and where our vehicles are currently gathering new imagery
The story behind our Pegman mascot
What our early prototype of the Street View vehicle looked like
The ways you can use Street View to make life a little easier
How long it takes us to collect imagery
What privacy safeguards we've put in place and how you can request image removal

We hope this new site will help make using Street View to explore the world even easier, and maybe a little more fun.

Posted by Julie Zhou, Associate Product Marketing Manager

Where in the World is...

August 3, 2009

It's that time again! We have been hard at work processing imagery for everyone and have just released a major update. There are some interesting places getting updates and we've got a short quiz to push you in the right direction. We will be back with the answers and the complete list of updated areas.

1) This Asian city is at the center of the Hexi Corridor and Marco Polo has spent a year in this ancient city.

2) The nickname "City of Lights" just gives this one away.

3) Tangerines were named for this city, the first one to ship the fruit to Europe.

4) This city has a government building named the "The Custom House".

5) This city is home of the two time winner of the FIBA EuroLeague Women.

6) This northern Canadian city started its first oil boom when it struck oil in 1947.

7) This beautiful rail station is central to this Asian mega-city.

8) A major UN convention was held in this city in 2006.

9) This lake is a few kilometers outside the city created in 1937 to be the headquarters for the western mining group of the High Katanga Mining Association.

Posted by Roger Lee, GIS Data Engineer

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