Maps

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HouseinCity is a Google Maps based real-estate engine for a number of Indian cities. HouseinCity allows house hunters to search for a property by location, price, the number of bedrooms and by the property's builder. In what I think is a first for Indian real-estate websites, HouseinCity also offers users the option to search by commuting time. The map includes two commuting time options. 'Metro Connectivity' overlays a heat map of metro travel times on the map. The heat map shows the average commuting time for a morning commute on the metro. Alternatively, for the driving times of a commute in morning traffic, users can use the 'Project Connectivity' option. It is also possible to display local amenities, like schools, shopping malls etc. on the map. If you select any of the local amenities on the map you can instantly view the travel time that it will take to reach the amenity from your selected location.

We told you about the Street View “trekker” a few months ago; the amazing backpack-based camera system for adding Street View imagery from remote locations. The folks from TechCrunch have been digging deep into Google’s technology (including great insight into how underwater Street View works), and they’ve spent some time looking at the trekker. The backback weighs in at around 40 pounds, though it’s apparently a bit top-heavy (as you’d expect).  However, humans aren’t the only vehicle that Google is considering for the trekker: I asked Silverman whether we might see the Trekker make its way to the backs of other beings beyond humans, and he said that they are indeed mulling the idea of strapping versions of it to beasts of burden to help them continue to map the world in images. There are also plans in the works to mount it to remotely operated robots and small vehicles to help get imagery that otherwise wouldn’t be easily reachable by a human Trekker. TechCrunch writer Darrell Etherington spent a few minutes talking to Google’s Steve Silverman about the trekker, which you can watch here: Google is really making some bold moves with their various imaging technologies, and the continued expansion of Street View into new areas is only helping to make their products more useful. Check out the full TechCrunch article to learn more. The post The future of the Street View Trekker appeared first on Google Earth Blog.

Screenshot from one of the tutorial videosLast year we invited a group of geography school teachers into the school of Geography and the environment at Southampton and asked what we, as local university, could do to help them. The most popular request was 'train us to teach GIS'. So today I am pleased to announce the launch ofGEFT (Google Earth for Teachers) a miniMOOC designed to help teachers use Google Earth to teach GIS in schools. It's still in Beta (i.e. I'm going to continue improving it) so feedback would be very welcome.A miniMOOC? I realise that a mini massive open online course is a bit of an oxymoron but it captures the important characteristics of the course:There is no organised start date, you just access the materials as and when. I may organise course presentations in the future.Its the online equivalent of a half INSET day I've been running for several yearsBeen Here Before: When Google Earth first appeared in 2005 I recognised that it had fantastic potential as a teaching tool. I also thought that video was a powerful medium for teaching software and so in 2006 I launched Kokae which was an early kind of xMOOC teaching anyone how to use Google Earth to make maps. Turns out I was more or less right about Google Earth (it is the most common GIS in schools, but less commonly used in Universities) and really right about video as 2006 was also the year Khan Academy started. However, unlike Khan academy Kokae didn't take off so I abandoned it for other experiments in open learning (videos in Google Earth, text based materials). Now I'm back to a similar format to Kokae once more.

gsalr.com is a garage sale, yard sale and estate sale listing service with a handy Google Maps interface and trip planner that can help you plan your weekend garage sale trips. If you select a sale's marker on the map you can view details of the sale and click on the 'add to trip planner' button to add the sale to your personal trip planner. After you have selected all the sales that you plan to visit you can then click on the 'View Route and Directions' button in the side panel to open another map with a planned route and the directions to all your planned sales.

The Galapagos Islands are some of the most biologically unique ecosystems in the world. Explorers and scientists alike have long studied and marveled at these islands—made famous by Charles Darwin. The Ecuadorean Government, local conservation groups and scientists are working to protect the Galapagos from threats posed by invasive species, climate change and other human impacts. It’s critical that we share images with the world of this place in order to continue to study and preserve the islands’ unique biodiversity. Today we’re honored to announce, in partnership with Charles Darwin Foundation (CDF) and the Galapagos National Parks Directorate (GNPD), that we’ve collected panoramic imagery of the islands with the Street View Trekker. These stunning images will be available on Google Maps later this year so people around the world can experience this remote archipelago. Daniel Orellana of Charles Darwin Foundation crossing a field of ferns to reach Minas de Azufre (naturally-occurring sulfur mines) on the top of Sierra Negra, an active volcano on Isabela Island. The Google Maps team traveled for more than 3 hours, hiking and on horseback, to reach this remote location. Images, like the one you see above, are also an important visual record that the CDF and GNPD will use to study and protect the islands by showing the world how these delicate environments have changed over time. Daniel Orellana of the Charles Darwin Foundation climbs out of a lava tunnel where he was collecting imagery. The dramatic lava landscapes found on Isabela island tell the story of the formation of the Galapagos Islands. Our 10-day adventure in the Galapagos was full of hiking, boating and diving around the islands (in hot and humid conditions) to capture 360-degree images of the unique wildlife and geological features of the islands with the Trekker. We captured imagery from 10 locations that were hand-selected by CDF and GNPD. We walked past giant tortoises and blue-footed boobies, navigated through steep trails and lava fields, and picked our way down the crater of an active volcano called Sierra Negra. A Galapagos giant tortoise crawls along the path near Googler Karin Tuxen-Bettman while she collects imagery with the Street View Trekker in Galapaguera, a tortoise breeding center, which is managed by the Galapagos National Park Service. Life underwater in the Galapagos is just as diverse as life on land. We knew our map of the islands wouldn’t be comprehensive without exploring the ocean that surrounds them. So for the second time we teamed up with the folks at the Catlin Seaview Survey to collect underwater panoramic imagery of areas being studied by CDF and GNPD. This imagery will be used by Catlin Seaview Survey to create a visual and scientific baseline record of the marine environment surrounding the islands, allowing for any future changes to be measured and evaluated by scientists around the world. Christophe Bailhache navigates the SVII camera through a large group of Sea Lions at Champion Island in Galapagos. Image courtesy of the Catlin Seaview Survey. We truly believe that in order to protect these Galapagos Islands, we must understand them. As they say, “a picture is worth a thousand words.” We hope this Street View imagery not only advances the important scientific research, but also inspires you to learn more about this special place. Stay tuned for updates on this collection—the first time we’ve captured imagery from both land and sea! We can’t wait to share this amazing imagery with you later this year. Raleigh Seamster, Project Lead, Google Maps

Today I came across this Open Street Map of aerial imagery showing the devastating damage caused by the tornado in Moore, Oklahoma. Unfortunately the map doesn't have any zoom controls or an option to view aerial imagery of the same location before the tornado struck. The map, however, does include a dynamic URL that gives the latitude and longitude of the current view. Therefore, if you want to compare before and after views of the tornado, you can grab the latitude and longitude of a view and paste it into Google Maps. The aerial view above shows Plaza Towers Elementary School. Below is the aerial view of the same school on Google Maps, taken before the tornado. Update: Google Crisis Map now also has the same post-tornado imagery. The Google Crisis Map also includes aerial imagery taken at the end of April, so users can compare the pre and post-tornado imagery on the same map. The New York Times has also created two evocative custom Street View images of the devastation caused by the tornado in Moore, Oklahoma - Before and After: 360° Views From Moore.

Since 1997 German artist Gunter Demnig has been creating memorials for individual victims of the Holocaust. Demnig's stolpersteine (stumbling blocks) are small, cobblestone-sized memorials for individual victims of Nazism. Each stolperstein is placed in the sidewalk outside the victim's home. Stolpersteine Online is a Google Map of the memorials that have been erected. The project has created about 35,000 stumbling blocks so far. This is a very small percentage of the total number of victims of the Holocaust, however if you zoom in on any German city on this map you still can't be overwhelmed by the sheer scale of the Nazis Holocaust.

Trimble (the company that purchased SketchUp last year) has just released SketchUp 2013 with a variety of upgrades and enhancements. Extension Warehouse The new Extension Warehouse is designed to be a “one-stop shop for anyone looking to customize their copy of SketchUp”, with tons of new features included. LayOut in SketchUp Pro 2013 New in 2013 they’ve “added hatching and other pattern fills, speedier vector rendering, better zoom, more useful callouts and other improvements we think you’ll love”.  Here is more info about LayOut from the SketchUpdate Blog. SketchUp Make The free version of SketchUp now has a new name: SketchUp Make.  The word “SketchUp” now refers to the family of products, with includes the “Pro” and “Make” verions. All told, there are quite a few great updates in the latest releases of SketchUp.  While SketchUp isn’t being used for Google Earth as much as it used to (due to the automated 3D Imagery continuing to be rolled out), it is still an amazing tool for creating 3D models. You can read more about this update in the SketchUpdate Blog. The post SketchUp 2013 released appeared first on Google Earth Blog.

Map of the Week: Cambridge Cluster Map Why we like it: The Cambridge Cluster Map is a simple, visually appealing map that shows off the power of using a map to make a meaningful data visualization. According to their site, “The Map is designed to open the Cambridge technology cluster to the world. Through visualisations, reports and directories the Map paints a vivid picture of the business community that’s grown up over forty years.“ The map uses Circles, custom icons, InfoWindows, and Styled Maps to show data in various data sets, including fast growing companies, billion dollar companies, spinouts from Cambridge University, and much more. One interesting feature is the use of circles, which the map places under a marker to show the amount of revenue generated in that location. The bigger the circle, the bigger the revenue. The custom icons serve double purpose, showing both the number of employes and the kind of building, with multiple companies or a single one. All in all a beautiful map which also manages to convey a lot of information. Posted by Mano Marks, Maps Developer Relations Team