NYC subway system on Google Maps

Friday, November 6, 2009 at 11:50 AM

My wife and I moved out to New York last week, and we sure put Google Maps to use in our housing hunt. With Real Estate listings to help find a place, Street View to scope out the neighborhood, directions to help us find our broker, and local search to find nearby amenities, just about the only thing that we needed another source for was to see where the extensive subway lines ran. Until now!

We're happy to announce that you can now see New York's subway lines drawn out directly on Google Maps as part of the transit layer. To turn it on, just point Google Maps to somewhere in New York, click on the "More..." button at top-right, and select "Transit":

The colorful lines aren't just pretty to look at, they're also interactive. When you click on any station name, a bubble pops up with the names of the line that service the station, and all the other lines on the screen fade out.

This new feature compliments the New York transit directions we launched last September, for all services offered by the MTA, including bus, ferry, commuter rail, and of course the subway. We cover much more than the Big Apple, so look for the transit layer in other cities like Paris and Tokyo, and use transit directions with over 436 agencies around the world.

Having the MTA in the transit layer will certainly help me get my way around my new hometown, as I start to familiarize myself with the nation's largest public transit system. I can even pull up the layer on my mobile phone while on-the-go (read more on the Google Mobile Blog). We're happy to say that we found a great place in Brooklyn — and based on the leafy green trees and walk-up brownstones in Street View, some friends back in California are convinced we're moving to Sesame Street!

Posted by Jesse Friedman, Associate Product Marketing Manager

Historical Imagery Updates for Berlin

Thursday, November 5, 2009 at 4:00 PM

With Historical Imagery in Google Earth, we've made it possible to use Google Earth imagery to see how the world has changed over time. We've been adding imagery since the feature launched in February, and today we announced on our Google Germany Blog that we've added historical images of Berlin from 1945 and 1953. To view these new images, you'll need Google Earth 5.0. Historical imagery can be accessed by clicking on the clock icon in the top menu bar. Here's a sample of what you'll find as you explore the imagery:

Berlin 1945

Berlin 1953

Berlin 2009

Posted by Stefanie Schneider, Google Germany

Featured Map Maker: Mihai

Wednesday, November 4, 2009 at 10:10 AM

Name: Mihai Voiculescu (Cartograful)
Day job: Web programmer at itbox.ro
Region mapped: Romania

Until last month, Romania wasn't on Google Maps. Users started a Facebook Cause and a Twitter Petition to get Google's attention on adding Romania to the map. "I found out about Map Maker opening in Romania over Twitter -- I follow Google Maps on Twitter," says Mihai Voiculescu. Mihai is now the #1 mapper in Romania with more than 5,000 map edits made since Google Map Maker opened in Romania in August, and as of last month many of those edits are now live in Google Maps for the world to see.

Like many mappers, Mihai started by mapping his hometown -- Târgu Jiu, the city in the southwest of Romania where sculptor Constantin Brancusi lived and where several of his large works of sculpture have become tourist attractions. From there, Mihai went on to help map Bucureşti (Bucharest) -- the video below shows how the map of Bucharest grew quickly from 5 highways to a complete city over a two week period:

Mihai runs a Romanian travel web site (itbox.ro) that uses the Google Maps API, and says that having a detailed and accurate map of Romania on Google Maps is important for local tourism. "Many people who came to Romania asked me why Romania isn't on Google. People think that Romania is empty, like a desert. Having Romania on Google Maps is a big plus." Mihai also uses Panoramio and has had some of his photos published in Google Earth; "I love the Web, programming and travel," he says.

Normally, Google Map Maker mappers use Google's satellite imagery to draw roads and locate schools, parks and businesses. When the satellite imagery isn't clear enough (due to clouds or low resolution) to trace from directly, Mihai uses a GPS device to create GPS tracks for roads or to locate hotels, then exports the tracks as KML files and uses the Map Maker Overlays feature to draw the roads and hotel locations accurately. He also uses KML files to locate hotels on the map for his travel web site.

Mihai collaborates with other Romanian mappers and co-created a Romania Map Maker discussion group. "I met these people online," says Mihai. However, he will soon be getting together with his fellow mappers in person as they have scheduled a Map Maker training event and mapping party in Bucharest at the Bucharest Academy of Economic Sciences on November 14th (a Google team member will also attend the event in person). "I want to thank all the people from Romania who contribute to build the map on Google."

Posted by Jennifer Mazzon, Maps Community Organizer

November Imagery Update

Tuesday, November 3, 2009 at 1:40 PM

Having worked on updates to Google Earth/Maps imagery for some time, I've always enjoyed seeing how the world changes through our regular updates. But, I've wanted to see them more often. Today, I'm happy to announce that we're increasing the frequency of our updates to bring you the world's freshest and most complete imagery.

As a part of this announcement, we're also making some changes to the way that we tell you about new imagery. We'll continue to publish a blog post for our updates but instead of our regular 'Where in the World' quizzes, we're going to start to embed a web-based Google Earth view of the updates in our blog post (like we have below), and continue to link to the KML file for viewing inside the Google Earth application.

In addition, you can share your cool new imagery finds with us using Twitter! After looking at the updates in the viewer below, tweet your cool finds and add the #GEarthIMG hashtag to your tweets. For some added fun, point the Twittersphere to the precise location using EarthURL.org. In a few weeks time, we'll follow things up with a round-up of tweets from those of you using the hashtag and share them with all of you. We'll also be re-tweeting some of your finds from @googleearth.

Updates are noted with a red frame

We hope you have fun tweeting all of the great new imagery finds from the cities, countries, and regions we're making available in this new release.

Posted by Matt Manolides, Senior Geo Data Strategist

Autumn updates for Google Transit

Monday, November 2, 2009 at 5:12 PM

The days may have just gotten a little bit shorter, but that's not going to stop the Google Transit team from working hard to add new agencies. Over the past few months, we've launched with several partners in many places all around the world.

If you're traveling to Europe, you may be particularly pleased with some of our newest additions in popular tourist regions. In France, we have completed the coverage of Bordeaux, a famous red wine hub, and an UNESCO World Heritage site. In Italy, we launched coverage for the entire regions of Tuscany, Reggio Emilia, and Brescia. If you are in need of some Spanish tapas and sun, the Asturias region in the north of Spain can offer you that -- and we can offer public transit to get you around. The Czech Republic now has the Student Agency and the city of Pardubice covered, and in the UK the launch of the East Anglia region joins the existing East Midlands and Southeast.

This represents great progress in Europe, adding partners in countries where coverage was previously quite thin. We're very excited about this, but we are still far from our end goal of having a public transit alternative for every driving directions search, so we're hoping to keep up our momentum.

We have not neglected the rest of the world, and we have launched many smaller regions in the US, such as Gainesville, Florida and Long Beach, CA. I'm particularly excited about the addition of Bear Transit in Berkeley, which is where Google Transit originated. We also launched our first routing in the Middle East, with data from the Roads and Transport Authority in Dubai, UAE. And coinciding with the announcement of the host of the 2016 Olympic games, we launched a full coverage for Rio de Janeiro. We also launched the first city in New Zealand - Wellington, the Kiwi capital.

Our mobile users also got special treatment. With the launch of Google Maps for Mobile 3.2, the transit layer is available on Symbian S60, Windows Mobile, BlackBerry, and the new Motorola DROID, and transit directions were added to the Palm Pre. This means now transit directions are available in Google Maps on all major smartphone platforms.

You can find more information about Google Transit and our current coverage at http://maps.google.com/transit.

Posted by Noam Ben Haim, Product Manager

More, more, more real estate in Google Maps

Thursday, October 29, 2009 at 2:33 PM

Since we announced the ability to see lots of real estate listings directly on Google Maps back in July, we've been working hard to make it even easier to use.  As we've added new features and updated Google Maps, with things like brand new high-resolution Street View imagery or detailed map data, Google Maps has become an even more useful tool for online real estate searching. Here are a couple of things you can look out for next time you visit.

First of all, we've made it easier to find real estate listings. Now, you can simply select "Real Estate" from the 'More' button on the top right of any Google Map to discover listings.  From there, it's a simple matter to refine your search using the left hand panel - price, bedrooms, bathrooms, and so on.  Of course, you can still pan the map to search for the perfect neighborhood and it'll automatically update with more listings.

We've also added the ability to search for rental listings in the US.  You can now find places for rent in New York or one bedrooms in San Francisco for rent simply by turning on the Real Estate layer via the 'More' button and selecting some refinements.

You'll also notice that Google Maps is now showing even more information about an area as you pan around and zoom in.  There are small icons on the map showing the names and location of businesses and prominent features of the neighborhood.  This means that during your property search, you'll be able to tell at a glance just exactly what shops can be found down the road from where you're looking, all without typing!

You can now find real estate in cities and towns across the US, Australia, New Zealand and India.

Of course, these aren't the only resources available for your new home search. You can use Street View on Google Maps to check out the neighborhood before driving to an open house; use driving directions to find out exactly how to get there; and transit information to work out what your new commute might be if you went ahead and moved house.

Also, if you're in the real estate industry and want to provide listings to be seen in Google Maps, it's really easy to get started.

Happy house hunting this weekend!

Posted by Andrew Foster, Product Manager

Google Maps Navigation comes to Android 2.0

Wednesday, October 28, 2009 at 12:30 PM

In 2005 we launched Google Maps, and later that year, we launched Google Maps for mobile, providing maps and driving directions to users on the go. Over the past few years we've continuously added new features to Google Maps for desktop computers and mobile phones, such as My Location, live traffic data, and satellite and street views. But our driving directions have always remained written in list form - not particularly useful while you're actually driving. Until now!

Today we're announcing the beta launch of Google Maps Navigation, an internet-connected GPS navigation system with voice guidance and automatic rerouting, as a feature of Google Maps on phones that run Android 2.0. Google Maps Navigation isn't like the GPS systems you might be used to - it was built from the ground up to use Google Maps services over your phone's internet connection. This means using Google search, by typing or by voice, to enter your destination (whether or not you know the address); viewing your route on 3D satellite views and in Street View; and always running on the freshest map, business, and live traffic data available from Google Maps.

Read more about Google Maps Navigation on the Official Google Mobile blog.

Posted by Iljya Kalai, Software Engineer