Wednesday, November 21, 2012

Google Indoor Maps Now on the Desktop


Indoor floor plans can now be viewed on the desktop version of Google Maps. One of the great features of Google Maps on mobile phones has been the ability to view indoor floor plans. Now you can view the same indoor maps on Google Maps for the desktop.

If you want to know which venues have floor plans available on Google Maps you can check out the list here. A great bonus for Google Maps API developers is that you don't have to do anything to get the indoor floor plans to appear in your apps, as they are now part of the base Google Maps map tiles.

Unfortunately at the moment you can only view the main floor of a venue and don't have the ability to change floors as you can on Google Maps for mobile. I'm guessing this feature will be eventually added as it exists in some indoor Street Views, for example in the White House Street View imagery.


In other news the Google Map Maker team has introduced badges for contributors to Google Map Maker. The badges can be won for a number of different contributions, from editing on Map Maker to attending Map Maker events.

You can view a full list of the available badges on the Google Map Maker website.

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