Pedaling to new places with Street View

Street View enables you to visit places around the world virtually, from the scenic Champs-Elysées in Paris to bustling Times Square in New York City. We’re able to collect imagery of most of these places with a car, but when we find an interesting place that a car can't reach, we get more creative.In 2009 we introduced the Trike, a modified bicycle outfitted with Street View equipment, to visit these locations, from towering castles to picturesque...

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You’re invited to fly to the red carpet

This Sunday night is the 83rd annual Academy Awards, which makes a dazzling presence at the Kodak Theatre in Hollywood, California. The Oscar® Awards are the oldest awards ceremony in the media, and was created to honor film achievements. However, this event has evolved into something more of a spectacle and broadcast success over the years. There’s the extravagant red carpet, infamous paparazzi, buzzing interviews, entertaining ceremony and of course the fashion commentary.Last year, I hosted an Oscars party for friends and got dressed up in high...

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Imagery Update - Week of February 21st

We’re just nearly two months into the new year but the Google Earth and Google Maps Imagery team’s aerial and satellite imagery updates keep coming!Since it’s February, love is in the air and romance is on people’s minds (I mean, why stop at Valentine’s Day). And when it comes to all things amatory, no features and locations conjure up those feelings better than châteaux, castles, and royal wedding sites. Lucky for all our quixotic Earth and Maps...

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5 great user-created maps chronicling Egypt

During the crisis in Egypt, third-party Geo developers helped the international community understand the situation and keep persons affected by the crisis safe through the use of innovative new tools. These same tools can be replicated by anyone in any crisis situation. In the developer examples below, three things jump out as particularly striking: How quickly these maps were built and put into action, some within hours of the first protests; how...

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Join us on the bridge for International Women’s Day 2011

[Cross-posted from the Official Google Blog]I lead a global team at Google and travel extensively. When I speak about my work, the questions I get are often about the efforts we make to bring more women into engineering and how I maintain my work/life balance with two young children. These are very important questions, but I’m acutely aware that they reflect a certain amount of privilege when it comes to issues of women’s equality. Despite the incredible...

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Mission Blue: Follow an Expedition off Easter Island, Chile

Have you ever dreamed of embarking on an exciting expedition? Well, now you can follow a ship traveling the ocean in Google Earth. National Geographic and Oceana scientists in collaboration with the Chilean Navy are traveling on their next Mission Blue expedition to the remote Salas y Gomez Island. This island is 250 miles (390 km) east of Easter Island. They aim to discover what lies beneath these largely unexplored waters.To follow along, open...

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Geography as art

While maps are often considered guides to get from here to there, on the Google Maps and Earth team, we’re constantly thinking of innovative ways to express geographic information. From helping you see the world from a street-level perspective with Street View, to enabling you to dive into the Ocean layer in Google Earth, new geographic visualizations are top of mind for the team. With that mapping mindset, Group Product Manager Lior Ron was struck...

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Explore our U.S. Presidents on a map

When I was in elementary school, I got two days off every February; one for George Washington and another for Abraham Lincoln. I remember classrooms were usually wallpapered with a potpourri of decorations left over from Valentine’s Day and token silhouettes of these two Presidents thumb-tacked to the bulletin board. My teachers would talk about the significance of the holiday during class but with lack of visuals to pique my interest, it was always...

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Mapping favourite romantic movie scenes

Last weekend, I was enjoying my favourite movie, Love Actually, which is a very appropriate movie to watch during the most romantic week of the year! The majority of this movie was filmed in and around my hometown of London, and as the ending film credits started rolling up the screen, I had a "eureka" moment. "I love this movie and I love Street View and Google Maps, so why not combine the two?" My virtual voyage of discovery began. For those who...

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Using My Maps for your summer sublet

[Cross-posted from the Google Student Blog]Today's guest author is Katie Corner, an Electrical and Computer Engineering student at University of Colorado, Boulder and a Google Student Ambassador. Check out more tips from students on the Google Student Blog, or submit your own to share.The spring semester ends, and the frenzy begins: Quick, everyone find someone to sublet your apartment for the summer!Hundreds of students in your university town will...

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Act Locally in Sudan with New Imagery & Maps

After years of conflict, Southern Sudan overwhelmingly opted to secede from the country's north. Many challenges lie ahead as the newly independent state negotiates the rocky path towards independence. We believe that access to high-quality, up-to-date and locally relevant maps will assist humanitarian organizations working in the region. We are encouraging users to add their local knowledge to this mapping effort through a campaign to build a better...

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Pin your love on the map

(Cross-posted on the Official Google Blog)This Valentine’s Day, tell your friends, family or significant other that you love them with a fun message from Google Maps.Location can be a powerful trigger of memories—from the Italian place in San Francisco where you went on your first date to the cabin you rented at Lake Tahoe with your roommates. For that reason, we thought it would be great to create a Valentine’s Day card that’s tied to a specific...

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Geotagging photos with Panoramio and Google Latitude

[Cross-posted from the Panoramio Blog]It is 9 a.m. and the thermometer shows -15°C. I have a Nexus S with Google Latitude in my left pocket and my new Lumix LX-5 in the right one. I am in Davos and I am ready for a fantastic day of skiing when I decide to use the new feature of Panoramio: geotagging photos with Google Latitude.Panoramio is a community photos website that enables digital photographers to geo-locate, store and organize their photographs...

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Take a trip to the Super Bowl with Google Earth

We’re two days away from one of my favorite events of the year, the Super Bowl (and I’m sure I’m not alone!). I’m one of those fans who starts watching football during pre-season and can have entire weekends ruined if my team loses. For me, the Super Bowl is the culmination of hours spent glued to the television and more hours doing post-game analysis (read: arguments) with fellow football enthusiasts. However, what I love most about the Super Bowl is the tradition around it. It’s a time when friends and family get together and stuff their faces...

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It’s Groundhog Day!

[Cross-posted from the SketchUp Blog]Today is the 125th anniversary of Groundhog Day – a tradition in the US and Canada when a weather-predicting woodchuck named Punxsutawney Phil tells us how long winter will last. Every year on February 2, a group of local dignitaries hold a ceremony at Gobbler’s Knob, about 2 miles outside of Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania. Just after sunrise, Phil emerges from his burrow in front of thousands of spectators. The legend...

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Google Hotpot now on Google.com and around the world

[Cross-posted from the Hotpot Community Blog]Back in November, we introduced Hotpot, a new local recommendation engine powered by you and your friends. Using Hotpot is simple: you rate places on google.com/hotpot—restaurants, hotels, cafes—and add friends on Hotpot whose opinions you trust. Then the next time you perform a search, Google will serve up personalized results, listing places based on your tastes, as well as recommendations from your...

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Check in with Google Latitude

[Cross-posted from the Official Google Blog]We first introduced Google Latitude to help you stay in touch with your friends and family by making it easy to share where you are. For the 10 million people actively using Latitude each month, this “where” has been a location on a map. Starting today in Google Maps 5.1 for Android, you can also connect that location to a real place by checking in there using Latitude.Connecting your location with placesYou...

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Street View takes you inside museums around the world

We’re always excited to share new Street View imagery with users, whether a botanical garden in South Africa or ski slopes in Canada. While Street View has enabled users to visit places all around the world virtually, the demand to show a broader range of popular locations has been great. Today we’re entering new territory with our experiment to take Street View technology indoors. The Art Project, developed by a group of art-loving Googlers, is...

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