Maps

It was an exciting year for Maps at Google I/O. Starting with the launch of the new Maps in the keynote, we had a lot going on! Here are some highlights: We announced that Google Maps is now on one million websites, seen by over one billion people every day. The Google Maps JavaScript API v3 got a visual refresh. There were and updates to the Google Maps Android API v2 and the Google Maps SDK for iOS. We had a wild sandbox with a map diving experience, a Mercedes, Google Earth controlled by a Leap Motion controller and viewed with an Oculus Rift and more! 17 sessions and a codelab. And much more. We’ve put together a playlist so you can check out all the sessions: Posted by Mano Marks, Maps Developer Relations Team

The Atlas of Public Stocks is a searchable Google Map of publicly listed companies around the world. The map allows users to locate public companies within definable distances from a given address. If you select a marker on the map you can view detailed information about the company, including the postal and website address. The details include which sector the company is in. Probably the only thing missing on this map is the ability to filter the companies by the sector. It would be nice to be able to search the map by sector as well as by distance. The data is there so it should be a simple task to add that option to the map.

Here's someone building -- by hand -- a scale model of Westeros. Updated with photos at every step of construction. Madness! I approve. Via Boing Boing.

You're reading an entry from Google Sightseeing, which is copyright © 2013 Alex Turnbull & James Turnbull and must not be reproduced without permission.

xkcd Fame for GeoGuessr GeoGuessr has rightly been getting a lot of great coverage lately. It has now even been featured in an xkcd strip. Google Maps has featured a number of times over the years on xkcd. I think however this is the first time that a specific application using the Google Maps API has starred on its own. Fame indeed! Just in case you still haven't played GeoGuessr: The game drops you into a random Street View and then asks you to guess where in the world you are. Points are awarded for how close your guess is to the actual location. Four Seasons in One View Daniel Shwarz has been scanning Google Maps aerial imagery in search of locations where images taken at different times of the year have been stitched together. His post, 'Justapose', includes screenshots of a number of examples. I think the images are rather beautiful. Street View Rock Video It has been a while since we last featured a music video created with Google Maps Street View. Here's one from band Tereza. It is worth watching beyond the initial timelapse sequence. Later in the video the band member's heads have been superimposed over the blurred out heads of people in the Street View images. Via: Google Street View World

Abandoned amusement park near Beijing, China. This is the Magic Castle copy. Just south of here is the large parking area. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wonderland_Amusement_Park_%28Beijing%29

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.