The official blog for Google Maps
Helicopter view of your driving directions on Google Maps
September 30, 2011
Update Oct 3, 12:00 pm: In order to use 3D driving directions, you'll need to have the
Google Earth plug-in
installed on your computer.
Getting directions is one of the most popular features on
Google Maps
, whether it be for driving, walking, biking or transit. Today, we are launching a new feature that allows you to bring your upcoming trip to life, by allowing you to preview your route in 3D.
Let’s say you’re planning a road trip down the beautiful coast of California’s Highway 1 and want to be able to see what the route really looks like. California’s rugged coastline is not to be missed, but the top-down view really doesn’t give you a good sense of what this majestic terrain is like. Using the 3D preview; however, you can get aerial view of the route, as if you were in a helicopter flying above the road.
To preview your own route, it is as simple as clicking on a button. Start by entering your starting point, destination, and mode of transport like any directions; in this case, driving directions from ‘Carmel CA to Big Sur CA.’ Then, just click on the “3D” play button. The map will switch to Earth view and automatically start flying you along your recommended route.
You can pause the flight at any time by clicking anywhere in the 3D view or on the pause button in the lower left. While the flight is paused, you can explore the surrounding area in 3D by clicking and dragging the map. When you are ready to resume the flight, simply click on the play button in the lower left of the 3D view.
To help you keep track of which step you are on, the current leg of the trip is highlighted in the left panel. You can also jump to a different part of the trip by clicking on a different step.
You can get back to 2D mode by clicking on the “2D” button in the left panel at any time.
We hope you enjoy
your flight
.
Paul Yang, Google Maps engineer
Refocused Design Evolution, Continued
September 29, 2011
In June we
launched
the start of a comprehensive visual redesign for Google Maps founded on three key principles:
focus, elasticity, and effortlessness
. This week we’re continuing to implement that philosophy by improving and evolving a few key features.
Our new pin
Perhaps the most notable change is an update to the styling and color of our
iconic pins
across all Google properties. This change reflects our interface’s recent design
evolution
, introducing a more harmonious visual relationship between the on-map markers and the map itself.
Our on-map controls are also now more visually aligned with the rest of our design system. Together these changes reflect our recent efforts to reduce unnecessary clutter and give greater priority to information on the map.
In the header we’re also introducing more prominent buttons for Directions and My places integrated into an elastic interface that expands and contracts to best fit your browser window size.
Putting all of these changes together you get:
We hope you find this a welcome update making Google Maps more functional, effortless, and enjoyable. This is just one part of the many design updates that will continue rolling out across Google Maps in the coming weeks and months, so keep an eye out for more!
Posted by Willem Van Lancker, User Experience & Visual Designer
Search Stories: Surfing for the Perfect Wave
September 29, 2011
(Cross posted from the
Google Inside Search Blog
)
Searches can become stories. Some are inspiring, some change the way we see the world, and some just put a smile on our face. Today we continue our series of posts about people who have used Google to discover or do something extraordinary. Have a story?
Share it.
- Ed.
I’ve surfed all my life. And every summer I spend a couple weeks with my family on a small island called Hornby just east of Vancouver Island. I always think that area would be paradise if only it had great surf. It turns out it does... And with the help of Google Maps and Search, local pro surfer Sepp Bruhwiler is well on his way to finding that perfect wave that breaks somewhere off Vancouver's west coast.
Vancouver Island has a large, beautiful coastline. Before Google, local fishermen would tell Sepp about these enormous waves they found along some remote part of the coast. Sepp would run down to the dock, hop in a boat, and try his luck tracking down those elusive "breaks". It was an imprecise science with mixed results.
Sepp’s quest then led him to pull up the satellite layer in Google Maps, where he scanned the coastline near his hometown of Tofino. What, exactly, was he was searching for? That tell-tale image of a line of curling white swells -- waves.
Just like Google Maps lets you zoom in to explore your city, your street and your house, that same viewing experience extends to Canada's rugged coastlines. As Sepp put it, "we navigated the entire coastline by dragging my finger across my phone." When he found what he was looking for, he zoomed in and put a virtual pin in the location of the waves. Sepp and his surfing pro friends then pulled up the weather conditions and a swell report from nearby buoys on Google Search. And, just like that, it was on!
They found great waves that had possibly never been ridden before. In the words of Sepp’s friend, Pete Devries: "To go to a spot that few people have surfed ever before, that's been breaking for hundreds, maybe thousands of years, keeps you wondering what else is out there and what else we could possibly find."
I’m inspired. Next summer when I head up north, I plan to bring my surfboard, a smartphone, and a really warm wetsuit. I can’t wait to join Sepp in the never ending search for great new waves.
Surf on...
Posted by
Brett Crosby
, Surfer & Director of Product Marketing.
Welcome to the world’s largest intact forest: Canada’s boreal
September 28, 2011
Editor’s Note: Today's guest author is Steve Kallick, from the Pew Environment Group’s International Boreal Conservation Campaign. We are excited to support Pew in the development of this narrated tour and think that Google Earth is a great way to make Canada’s boreal forest accessible to the world.
In just three minutes, you can take a non-stop, coast-to-coast
Google Earth
narrated tour of Earth’s “green halo:” the boreal forest.
The Pew Environment Group
takes you over the vast northern forests and waterways and unveils an ecosystem that stores twice as much carbon per acre as tropical rainforests, holds more freshwater than any other continental-scale ecosystem and teems with wildlife. Watch the tour below or download the
KML file
to view in
Google Earth
.
Pew’s Google Earth tour shows why the boreal forest is so important.
The Pew Environment Group
is the conservation arm of
The Pew Charitable Trusts
, a nongovernmental organization that works globally to protect our oceans, preserve wildlands and promote clean energy. Pew and its sister organization, the
Canadian Boreal Initiative
, developed this tour to illustrate the nature of the
blue forest
and its ability to store massive amounts of carbon, primarily in its soil and wetlands. The tour is featured at the
launch of Google Earth Outreach in Canada,
happening this week.
Viewers will see bears, wolves, and caribou that still roam this vast landscape, learn about aboriginal communities that depend on the boreal, view the
Peace-Athabasca Delta
, one of the most important wetlands in the world, and the last refuges for North American Atlantic salmon.
The Peace-Athabasca Delta viewed in the Pew Environmental Group's new Google Earth tour
.
Unfortunately, Canada’s boreal forest is increasingly affected by large-scale industrial activities. A rapidly expanding footprint of development already includes 180 million acres (728,000 km²) affected by forestry, road building, mining, oil and gas extraction, and hydropower.
Pew and CBI have worked with aboriginal communities, conservation groups, federal, provincial and territorial governments to protect the boreal, resulting in 185 million acres set aside from development to date, including key wetland and river areas. That total represents more than 12% of Canada’s 1.2 billion-acre (nearly 4.9 million km²) boreal forest.
Visit us online
to learn more about
this new tour
and the steps we can take together to protect this global treasure.
Posted by Steve Kallick, Pew Environment Group
Trying on the new Dynamic Views from Blogger
September 27, 2011
As you may have noticed, the Lat Long blog looks a lot different today. That’s because we—along with a few other Google blogs—are trying out a new set of
Blogger
templates called Dynamic Views.
Launched today
, Dynamic Views is a unique browsing experience that makes it easier and faster for readers to explore blogs in interactive ways. We’re using the Magazine view, but you can also preview this blog in any of the other six new views by using the view selection bar at the top left of the screen.
We’re eager to hear what you think about the new Dynamic Views. You can submit feedback using the “Send feedback” link on the bottom right of this page.
If you like what you see here, and we hope you do, we encourage you to try out the new look(s) on your own blog—read the
Blogger Buzz post
for more info.
Update
Oct 25
: We hope you enjoyed Dynamic Views on our blog! If you want to continue reading Lat Long using Dynamic Views, visit
http://google-latlong.blogspot.com/view
.
Posted by Tasha Danko, Geo Marketing Manager
Google Earth Outreach launches in Canada
September 26, 2011
We are excited to announce the launch of the
Google Earth Outreach
program in Canada. To celebrate the Google Earth Outreach team is directly engaging the Canadian non-profit and aboriginal communities through a week of exciting workshops and activities in Vancouver, BC. The program has been successful in helping non-profits around the world bring their stories to life through the use of Google’s mapping tools. To date, the Google Earth Outreach team has facilitated the use of mapping tools to
stop mountaintop removal coal mining in Appalachia
,
documented Darfur
with USHMM, highlighted
climate change with Al Gore
, and most recently took
Street View to the Amazon
, just to name a few.
Both as a Canadian and Google Earth Outreach team member, I’m thrilled to bring these exciting opportunities home. Canada currently faces a wide variety of environmental and social issues that can benefit from powerful geographic visualizations.
With the launch of the program in Canada, the team aims to support the use of online mapping tools by public benefit groups seeking to address Canada’s most pressing concerns, such as the protection of the Boreal forest and Arctic regions, as well as other humanitarian and cultural issues. We are enabling organizations to quickly and easily get the resources they need to use
Google Earth
and
Google Maps
to tell visually compelling stories about their causes to millions of users. Watch the video below for a preview highlighting
the work the David Suzuki Foundation is doing
to protect Canadian oceans.
David Suzuki Foundation’s
I Am Fish video is a great example of a Canadian organization using Google Earth to communicate their cause to a large global audience.
Eligible
members of the Canadian non-profit community are now able to apply for grants of Google's tools and services including
Google Earth Pro
and
SketchUp Pro
. The launch of our
Canadian website
gives our Canadian users access to a plethora of resources to help them better develop their mapping projects through
tutorials
, a
showcase of great non-profit maps
, and an online community of other non-profit Google Earth and Google Maps users.
To jumpstart these mapping initiatives in Canada, the Google Earth Outreach team has partnered with
Tides Canada
to engage with Canadian non-profits face-to-face with two very popular and fully-booked events. Starting today, the Google Earth Outreach team will be teaching a technical, interactive three-day
workshop
and facilitating mapping projects among the participating non-profits and aboriginal groups. We’ll cap off our activities on Wednesday night with an exciting event for the larger Canadian non-profit community, with a keynote talk by our very special guest
Dr. David Suzuki
. This event will give attending non-profits a sneak peek at how other groups have used Google Earth and Google Maps to make a powerful impact on their communities.
To hear more about what we’re up to in Canada this week, check out our
homepage
for a different Canadian mapping example every day and
follow us on Twitter
. We hope these early Canadian partners will inspire you to use Google Earth and Google Maps to help tell your own story!
Maryam Ghofraniha, Google Earth Outreach
Google Earth 6.1 now available: New features make it easier than ever to explore your world
September 20, 2011
Today we are pleased to announce new features available in
Google Earth
. The
Google Earth 6.1
update includes enhancements to make Google Earth easier than ever for both everyday users and business professionals.
Easier to use My Places
If you’re like me, your growing collection of maps in the My Places panel is getting a bit unwieldy. Every time I find a great new map or upload a new
GPS track
, it gets a little harder to find things. With this release, we’ve added a couple of new features to help you clean house a bit and find things more easily. First, we’ve added the ability to sort a folder - just right click on any folder and choose “Sort A-Z.” We’ve also made our My Places search feature easier to find; now all you have to do is type in the name of a map or a feature and it will highlight in the My Places panel.
You can now sort your My Places folders to improve organization.
Improved Street View
Building on the improvements we made to the
Street View experience in Google Earth 6
, we’ve now added even more Street View features, including better zoom control through the slider tool and a wider field of view similar to
Google Maps
. You can now also navigate from one place to another with just a single-click of the mouse. These features make Street View in Google Earth more immersive, while performance improvements create a faster, smoother overall experience.
Street View in Google Earth now has a wider field of view.
Google Earth Pro
While these features are available to all of our users, much of the work we’ve done in
Google Earth 6.1
benefits power users and professionals who use
Google Earth Pro
, including:
Enhanced print layout:
Pro users can now include scale bars and directional arrows when printing, making it easy to include all relevant information in client presentations.
Simplified movie maker:
It’s now easier to convert saved tours to video and record live actions from the 3D viewer to really bring your presentation to life.
Expanded data styling:
Control up to 64 unique style attributes for imported datasets.
Improved networking infrastructure:
Earth Pro 6.1 received a robust network update, which offers better support for network proxies and SSL certificates commonly found in corporate networking environments.
Combined elevation profiles and ruler tool:
We know that sometimes distance is only one part of the equation. We’ve tied
elevation profiles
into the ruler tool, making it possible to take into account the entire 3D environment when measuring distance.
Combined ruler and elevation profile tool used to measure Yosemite’s Half Dome Peak.
We hope these enhancements make it even more fun and exciting to explore the planet, wherever you are in the world. Download
Google Earth 6.1
to get started.
Posted by Peter Birch, Product Manager
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