A Year on Google Maps - Part Two

July
In July Google Maps gained a new button that, when clicked, centres the map on your approximate location.

Also in July the Google Maps for Flash API released 3D view. Street View added some cool navigation tools to use with user-contributed photographs (very similar to Microsoft's Photosynth).

Google Maps for Mobile 3.2 added a number of new layers, including traffic, local search results, Latitude friend locations and Wikipedia.

Google released a collection of favourite places around the world chosen by local celebrity experts. The Favorite Places site features a Google Map with locations chosen by each of the celebrities.

Real estate listings were added to Google Maps in Australia and New Zealand.

August

In August Google started adding interactive markers to businesses and points of interest in Street View.

The Google Maps team released v2 of the API for Google Static Maps. The release added a number of new features including polylines and polygons.

Google also added traffic conditions on arterial roads in selected cities on Google Maps.

In August Street View was launched in Switzerland and Portugal. Also Picassa photographs were added as a source for user-contributed photos in Street View.

September

Google added Polylines and Polygons to the Maps API v3.

In August Google also added Place Pages to Google Maps. To get to a Place Page you can click on the 'more info' link that appears when you carry out a search in Google Maps.

October

In October driving directions were added to the Google Maps API v3.

Google Maps also released a new base map dataset for the USA. Google ended its partnership with TeleAtlas for US map tiles. Which paved the way for Google to release Google Maps Navigation.

In October the biggest news was undoubtedly the release of Google Maps Navigation (Beta) for Android 2.0 devices.

Google Maps Navigation comes with everything you'd expect to find in a GPS navigation system, like 3D views, turn-by-turn voice guidance and automatic rerouting.

Google rolled out some design changes to the map and hybrid views in Google Maps. These included refinements to color, density, typography, and road styling.

In October Google also released Street View in Canada.

November

In November Google added some new features to its location tracking service Google Latitude. The main new feature was Google Location History, which allows you to store your past locations and visualize them on Google Maps and Earth.

Google released Street View in Mexico, Hawaii and expanded coverage in the Netherlands and Spain.

December

In December Google released Google Goggles. Google's new Android phone application, Google Goggles, allows mobile phones to carry out visual searches, using images rather than text. Users take a picture of something with their camera phone and Google will return results based purely on the photograph.

In December Google also released 'Aerial View' in the Google Maps API. 'Aerial View' provides oblique views on Google Maps. Aerial View imagery is limited to San Jose and San Diego for now but Google has plans to add new imagery over the coming months.

For now Aerial View is only available through the Google Maps API but in 2010 I'm pretty sure it will graduate to the main Google Maps site.

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Share Your Location on Facebook

Mobcast
Mobcast is a free iPhone application that lets you share your location with your Facebook friends. The application can display your friends' location in near real-time on a Google Map and can also update your Facebook wall.

Using Mobcast you choose who can see your location using Facebook friend lists. It is also possible to choose how long your location is stored on the server after you stop running the application. You can even delete your location or run in 'stealth mode' at any time.

Get Mobcast for free on the iTunes Store

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Virtual Helicopter Ride Over Mont Blanc

Virtual Tours of Chamonix & Mont Blanc
Have you ever fancied taking a helicopter ride over Chamonix and Mont Blanc? If so you will love these virtual helicopter rides created with the Google Earth browser plugin.



To start the tour just press 'run'. Once your helicopter is in flight you can then change the view by using the camera buttons in the bottom left corner of the screen. You can also check the progress of your tour using the embedded Google Map in the bottom right corner.

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Mashup Australia Contest Winners

Thanks to Australian blog All Things Spatial, Google Maps Mania has been able to have a close look at the numerous Google Maps mashups entered into the Mashup Australia Contest. The overall winners of the competition were announced today and will receive $10,000 in prize money.

The winners are Suburban Trends and Know Where You Live, both of which use the Google Maps API.

Here's what the judges had to say about the winning entries:

Suburban Trends


“Suburban Trends (is) a mashup of different types of crime and census data that allows (users) to compare and contrast suburbs by a range of economic, education, safety and socio-economic indicators. The judges thought the ability to compare suburbs visually combined with the selective choice of statistics was excellent especially in a field dominated by many entries using similar datasets.“

Know Where You Live

"This entry bills itself as a prototype of a mashup of a range of open access government data based on postcodes so that you can truly know where you live. The judges loved the very citizen-centric ‘common questions’ user experience of this app and the groovy, and again, selective repackaging of what could otherwise be considered (we’ll be honest here) slightly boring data.

The integration of publicly-held historical photographs and rental price data was a nice touch as was the use of Google’s satellite images in the header. Judges were disappointed that some of the data for states other than NSW wasn’t available for inclusion. The focus on compliance only with the most modern standards compliant browsers was not seen as detrimental to this mashup."


Highly Commendable Mashup award and $5,000 in prizes went to geo2gov (an online service that accepts location information in a variety of formats, like address, postcode, lat/lon, IP address, and returns data on that locations as JSON feed) and Firemash (mashup of relevant twits and New South Wales’ Rural Fire Service RSS feeds; it sends twitter alerts for registered users if fires are reported in the vicinity).

Notable Mashing Achievements ($2,500 prize) were awarded to:

• In Their Honour
• LobbyLens
• Flip Explorer

Best Student Entry and $2,000 in prize money was awarded to Suburban Trends (yes, again) and Suburb Matchmaker

People’s Choice Award and $2,000 in prize money went to In Their Honour, with the following citation: “The clear winner of the People’s Choice Award was In Their Honour — which is consistent with the judge’s thoughts on its usability. As commenter Nerida Deane said, ‘I just looked up my Great Uncle Al and found the site easy to use and I liked the information it gave me. Maybe one day I’ll have a chance to visit his memorial.’”

Student Entry — Commendable Effort ($1,000 prize):

• Earth: Australia
• Community Rivers — River Health Monitoring

Transformation Challenge ($1,000 bonus prizes for mashups which enhanced and/or made the provided data available for reuse programmatically):

• geo2gov
• Neogopher
• absxml

Via: All Things Spatial
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Google Map of Cultural Events in A Coruna

Espazo Cultura Coruna

This Google Maps mashup maps cultural venues and events in A Coruña, Galicia, in Spain. The site includes two Google Maps for this northern coastal town, a places map (Espaxos) and an events map (Axenda).

The locations on the map can be filtered by category and a dynamic list is generated in the map sidebar and the relevant markers displayed on the map. Users of the map will also soon be able to add and edit places and events on the map.

The Espazo Cultura Coruna map also has the distinction of being the first to be featured on Google Maps Mania in the Galician language.

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Street View Mexico Collection

Mexico Street View Directory

Mexico has had Street View imagery for over a month now, so it was about time we had a dedicated Mexican Street View gallery.

Mexico is the first Latin American city to display images from Google Street View and this site is collecting the most interesting sights. Users can submit their own favourite images found in Street View and the Street View image is displayed directly on the Mexico Street View site.

Also See

• Streetviewr
• Street View Fun
• Street View Gallery

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The History of Water Conflicts on Google Maps

Water Conflict Chronology Map

In an ongoing effort to understand the connections between water resources, water systems, and international security and conflict, the Pacific Institute has tracked and categorised the history of conflicts over water.

As part of this effort the Pacific Institute has used Google Maps to map the history of water conflicts from 3000 BC to the present day. Currently the map shows over 200 water conflicts, which can be sorted by geographical region, conflict type and date range.

The map uses a numbered marker system which numbers the conflicts in chronological order. The conflicts are also listed chronologically in the map sidebar.

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