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Google Earth Outreach in Africa

October 26, 2009

We are proud to announce that as of today, the Google Earth Outreach Program is available in Africa, making it possible for local NGOs and other public benefit organizations to take advantage of Google Earth Pro software grants and other opportunities.

In addition to the launch of the program itself, several amazing examples (listed below) of non-profit organizations' efforts to visualize their work in Africa with Google Earth and tell their stories to the world are now available.

Save the Elephants takes you to Mali and shows you their effort to protect the last of the Mali Desert Elephants. This Google Earth project uses KML touring, a feature in Google Earth 5.0 and above, which enables non-profit and other public benefit groups to tell their story with a narrated tour. Your narrator on this Google Earth journey is Dr. Iain Douglas-Hamilton, Founder of Save the Elephants in Samburu, Kenya. This is also the next tour in the 'Changing Climate in Google Earth' series in the lead-up to the Copenhagen climate summit in December. Download the tour here, or view it at www.google.com/cop15.

The Mapping Africa's Protected Areas Project, or MAPA, has done just that: mapped Africa's parks and reserves in Southern and East Africa. See rich content including park boundaries, GPS tracks, images, and more, as this project makes available for the first time valuable data of land and wildlife in protected areas in Africa. Download the MAPA Google Earth file here to begin exploring!

The United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) has done it again: with the release of their new Uganda Atlas of Our Changing Environment, they have mapped areas of drastic environmental change using historical imagery for 11 sites in Uganda. See the change for yourself in Google Earth, by opening Google Earth, turning on the "UNEP: Atlas of Our Changing Environment" layer in the the Layers panel, and zooming into Uganda to click on some of the placemarks. They have also created narrated Google Earth tours for four locations of environmental change: the City of Kampala, Mabira Forest Reserve, Mount Elgon, and the Mau Complex. [Update, 11/2: The sites in the "UNEP Atlas of Our Changing Environment" layer showing areas of dramatic environmental change in Kenya and Uganda are based on work in two recent hardcover publications: "Kenya, Atlas of Our Changing Environment from UNEP" and "The Kenya Government and Uganda, Atlas of Our Changing Environment" produced by the Government of Uganda with support from UNEP.]

http://earth.google.com/outreach/africa.html
Posted by Karin Tuxen-Bettman and Tanya Keen, Google Earth Outreach

Evolving the look of Google Maps

October 23, 2009

Today the Google Maps team is rolling out a number of refinements to the look and feel of our maps, the biggest such changes since we first launched about 4.7 years ago. In that time we've been steadily adding details like walkways, address labels, bus stops, new country coverage, and improved satellite imagery, but the look of the map hasn't changed much.

Today's changes are intended to keep the same information-rich map while making it easier to pick out the information that is most useful. The changes affect both the 'Map' and 'Hybrid' styles, and include numerous refinements to colour, density, typography, and road styling worldwide. For example, in map view, local and arterial roads have been narrowed at medium zooms to improve legibility, and the overall colours have been optimized to be easier on the eye and conflict less with other things (such as traffic, transit lines and search results) that we overlay onto the map. Hybrid roads have gained a crisp outline to make them easier to follow, and the overall look is now closer to an augmented satellite view instead of a simple overlay.

In some areas the changes are obvious, while in others they are quite subtle. But overall we hope you'll agree they're a nice improvement. Let's take a quick world tour to see some of these changes in action...

Taking a look at a far zoom of the area around my hometown London, notice the improved readability and density of the roads in the hybrid view. The motorways are easier to follow, and the A-roads are surfaced earlier:

Further north and more zoomed in still, the small town of Portinscale in England's beautiful Lake District shows the benefits of displaying increased road density. Local roads, important in this context, are now visible:

Jumping west across the Atlantic to San Francisco and switching to map view demonstrates the changes in colour and font treatment. All the same information is maintained on the map, but there is more contrast between background detail such as local roads, and important orientation signals like neighbourhoods and major arterial roads:

Heading south to Brasilia illustrates the advantages of the newly optimized road widths. The thinner treatment at this zoom makes it much easier to pick out fine detail in the complex local road shapes:

Heading northwest across the Pacific, Beijing sees some dramatic changes: the subway lines are coloured to fit local convention, the text is aligned with the streets, and the overall colour scheme is tuned to be more harmonious:

And finally, completing the journey where we started, note the finer road widths, cleaner rail lines, and less visually heavy colour scheme in London:

We hope you enjoy the changes to your local area too!

Posted by Jonah Jones, User Experience Designer, Google Maps

Layers come to Google Maps for BlackBerry

October 22, 2009

[Cross-posted from the Google Mobile Blog]

We're excited to announce that version 3.2 of Google Maps for mobile is now available for BlackBerry. This release contains many of the same features we recently launched on Windows Mobile and S60, including Layers.

Layers make it easy to view various types of information on your map and are especially helpful in situations when you're traveling somewhere new. For example, you can turn on the Wikipedia layer to read entries about nearby places, then use the transit lines layer to help map out a route. Or you can use the My Maps feature of Google Maps to create a collection of places you're planning to visit on your trip and then use Google Maps for mobile to access it from the road. You can also turn on the Google Latitude layer to see your friends' locations.

My coworker Mat is a big fan of Layers and made the below video to show you how he uses the feature. Check out the video, and get the latest version of Google Maps for your phone by visiting m.google.com/maps from your phone's browser.

Posted by Michelle Chen, Software Engineer

Where in the World is...(Answers)

October 22, 2009

Hope you all had a great time exploring this new imagery around the globe and that you answered all the questions in the quiz correctly.

Here are the answers to the quiz:

1. This city was once a mill town in UK. The person who invented multi spool spinning wheel hails from this town.
-- Blackburn.
 
2. This particular county is from the United States and it was named after the 'SALT LICKS' that are in this area.
-- Licking county.
 
3. This county was a part of the ancient kingdom of the south Saxons. The English Channel lies to the south of this county.
-- East Sussex.

 4. This is the coast of one of the largest states in the US and it also shares an international border. This state fought hard for its independence.
-- Texas coast.
 
5. This city is a state capital which has the same name as of its state from Mexico, and it is famous for a large archaeological site of pre Columbia.
-- Oaxaca.

 6. This city is a state & country capital. Both the city & the state share the same name which is derived from Arabic and means “end of an elephant’s trunk”.
-- Khartoum.
 
7. This city is one of the largest industrial areas in the United States and many industries are headquartered here. Another clue to identify this place is, a company that makes beef jerky, cocktail pepperoni and other snack sausages is based here.
-- Kent.

 8. This is a metropolitan city in Brazil which is well known for its combination of contemporary and classical buildings. The city is surrounded by several parks, and a wide variety of animal species live here.
-- Belo Horizonte.

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

Americas:
- US: Kent (WA), Texas Gulf Coast, Fort Benning (GA), Davidson County (TN), Story County (IA), Union County (NC), Rowan County, Davidson County (NC), Randolph County (NC), Chatham County (NC), Greene County (NC), Craven County (NC),
- Mexico: Oaxaca
- Venezuela: Punto Fijo
- Argentina: Santa Fe, Goya
- Bolivia: Potosi
- Peru: Puno
- Brazil: Belo Horizonte, Rondonopolis

Europe, Middle East, & Africa:
- UK: East Sussex, Leeds, Bradford, Calderdale, Kirklees, Wakefield, Preston, Blackburn, Burnley, Glasgow
- Romania: Braslov, Cluj
- Ukraine: Simferopol
- Russia: Ulan-Ude
- Turkey: Konya, Karaman
- Saudi Arabia: Najran
- Iran: Birjand
- Tunisia: Sousse
- Algeria: El-Jazair
- Morocco: Bechar, Taourirt
- Nigeria: Gombe
- Sudan: Al Khurtum
- South Africa: Port Elizabeth

Asia & Oceania:
- India: Mumbai, Agra,
- China: Xining, Anshan, Linhe
- Indonesia: Cirebon, Surabaya
- Kazakhstan: Shymkent, Semey

New 2.5m base imagery for: Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Iceland, Poland, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Algeria, Libya, Sudan, Chad, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Mozambique, Kazakhstan, China, and Laos.

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

Posted by Mukesh K.B, GIS Specialist

Design It Shelter Competition: The Winners

October 21, 2009

[Cross-posted from the Official Google SketchUp Blog]Solomon R. Guggenheim MuseumDesign It: Shelter CompetitionGuggenheim websiteFrank Lloyd Wright School of Architectureten finalistsjury

The People's Prize

The winner of the People's Prize is the CBS – Cork Block Shelter
by David Mares of Setúbal, Portugal

The Juried Prize

The winner of the Juried Prize is the SeaShelter
by David Eltang of Aarhus, Denmark.

Each of the winners will receive transportation to New York City for two people, accommodation for two nights, "backstage" tours of both the Guggenheim Museum and our New York Google office, and free admission to a number of other NYC museums. The Juried Prize winner will also receive a check for one thousand dollars.

Congratulations to the finalists and to the winners. Thank you to everyone who submitted a design, and thanks to everyone who voted.

Posted by

The Surui on the internet: "Trading Bows & Arrows for Laptops"

October 21, 2009

[We've invited Chief Almir Surui to write a guest post about the ways the Surui tribe of Brazil has been using Google Earth -- Ed.]BioneersMāori “Trading Bows and Arrows for Laptops” Google Earth tourwith this tourAmazon Conservation TeamKanindeGoogle Earth OutreachExplore the tour in Google EarthPosted by Chief Almir Surui

Powerful IT for disaster relief

October 20, 2009

[Cross-posted with the Google Public Policy Blog]Google Map MakerGoogle Data Visualization APICraig FugateGoogle Flu Trendswisdom of crowdsAmerican Red CrossWorld BankPlan InternationalGoogle Maps

Google EarthMap Maker Data Download programGoogle Labs Fusion Tablesaid flood relief efforts in West AfricaheregooglepubpolicyPosted by Jen Mazzon, Maps Community Organizer

Google Earth Outreach in Africa

Evolving the look of Google Maps

Layers come to Google Maps for BlackBerry

Where in the World is...(Answers)

Design It Shelter Competition: The Winners

The Surui on the internet: "Trading Bows & Arrows for Laptops"

Powerful IT for disaster relief

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