Google Maps adds India

The Google Maps team has made a huge launch of streets, roads and place names for the country of India! Take a look:



Previous to this launch India showed a vast white space with the "Map" view toggled on making only satellite imagery available. The street maps that have been added for Indian cities also show symbols for various amenities such as hotels, police stations, cinemas and more. This is a significant addition for Google Maps due to the size of the population in India that will be able to take advantage of this new mapping data. Also, expats living abroad can now use the hybrid view to zoom in and look at their home city or town. This expanded data is not yet available for Google Maps API sites, but once it is (and it should be very soon) the following sites should improve their usability and coverage for India. The Google Maps mashup activity should definitely pick up in India as well, now that there is some location context to points which are plotted:

Wikimapia (India) - Individuals will now be able to positively identify structures and places with map and hybrid views put to use. This will greatly expand the number of described places on this great service.

Sightseeing with Google Satellite Maps (India) - This list should also fill up with more places confirmed.

India is now on the Google Map! :)

Google Maps: Get from point A to B.. then C & D!

A new feature from Google Maps will help you plan your next roadtrip:

The core Google Maps service has improved its directions feature by allowing you to enter more than 2 locations to plot directions between. Now when you plot directions between 2 points a link appears at the bottom of the instructions to the left labeled "Add Destination".

Click this link to enter more places to add to your route plotting. It doesn't appear to have a limit for the number of locations you can add and it will also auto-complete places from your 'Saved Locations' area if you have this feature enabled. This looks to be active for most Google Maps countries: USA, Canada, UK & Ireland, Japan, Germany, Spain, France and Italy. Perhaps the next feature addition will help NASA plot directions from Earth, the Moon.. then Mars! :)

Google Map Creator makes thematic mapping simple

Quoting from this blog post from Digitally Distributed Environments:

Google Map Creator is a freeware application designed to make thematic mapping using Google Maps simpler. The software is part of the GeoVUE project at CASA, sponsored by the ESRC as a node in the National Centre for e-Social Science.

Available as a free download the software enables a user to import a .shp files and export the data overlayed on Google Maps. Using Google Map Creator it is a simple three step process to go from raw data to visualization on your own webserver. Differing considerably from other similar .shp convertors, the software is available as freeware and aimed at ease of use.

In the pre-release stage a variety of thematic map for different parts of the world were produced to test the viability of the application with real data on production web servers. A complete set of help documentation is provided as well as a worked example providing a step by step guide to creating your first Google Map from .shp data.

Example maps created using this app:

• 1998 Global GDP (data from the world bank)
• Dan Vickers' Output Area Classification
• eSociety classification

Download Google Map Creator and view online documentation here..

25 Things to do with Google Maps mashups

1. Measure your run route or commute
2. Check the time in a world location
3. Look up a US zip code
4. Measure Area
5. Make your own Google Map out of any map
6. Map your photos
7. Check what's on the other side of the world
8. Find a person in the US
9. Check the weather anywhere
10. Find the nearest Starbucks
11. Discover an eBay real estate deal
12. Find airport parking in the US.. or the UK
13. Create a running route
14. Watch a travel video
15. Find Fast Food in the US
16. Buy beer in Ontario
17. Check the news for your zip code
18. Avoid disease outbreak
19. Beat traffic
20. Make your own Google Maps mashup
21. Avoid red light cameras
22. Find cheap gas
23. Check sunrise or sunset times
24. Convert currency
25. Find a place to live in the US

25 More things to do with Google Maps Mashups here..

[Digg this..]

Turn any image into a Google Map

Update: Maplib no longer exists so all links have been removed from this post

This next tool is one of the cooler new apps I've come across that has been built using the Google Maps API.. Maplib is an extremely simple app created by Xiao Yisheng that allows you to upload a large image and instantly apply the Google Maps interface to it for easy viewing. Upload an image as large as 6000 x 6000 and host it on MapLib (or embed it on your blog or website) with its own URL and Google Maps viewing interface.

Think of the uses for this! (Examples)
- Maps in various image formats can instantly be uploaded and turned into a Google Maps viewing experience!
- Large images with abundant depth and detail can be annotated
- Detailed business related product photos can be described by owners or other visitors to the image.
- A large photo with many people or places can be annotated like a Google Map!

The list goes on..

To get started, register for an account via a quick email confirmation process. Then get started with creating a map by uploading an image from inside the "My Maps" tab. Settings for each map include title, description and control for who can add map markers. You can have this set for only you, or you can let visitors to the map annotate the image as well. Once the image is live you can send the link to it or embed it onto a website. Here is an example for a large image I uploaded of a recent tradeshow I attended:


More Google Maps Creation Tools can be found here..

Google Maps find: Large face found on hilltop in Canada

The latest Google Maps satellite image discovery this week comes to us from my home country of Canada. Google geo-spotters have come across what resembles the side profile of a face etched into the top of a flat rock formation, in the hills of Alberta just east of Medicine Hat. Like many of the  interesting Google Maps sights that have popped and have been discussed from around the blogosphere, this hill-face has also been featured on Digg (link dead).



Is that an iPod he's listening to?

In fine fashion Sydney Morning Herald journalist Stephen Hutcheon has added some humor to the find by pointing out that it looks like this guy is listening to an iPod. His story in The Herald's Tech section titled "This iPod user rocks" points this out. In reality, this is a road that leads to the area that would be his ear on the profile and the image makes it looks like he's listening to an iPod. Stephen also created a cool little vid that he uploaded to YouTube that uses Google Earth to show you where this face is located. I'm embedding it in the post here:


(If the video doesn't appear below click here..)

TripAdvisor + Google Maps = The best hotels on the map!

+

The good folks at TripAdvisor stopped by to let me know about how they're mashing up millions of hotel reviews to show the most popular hotels in any given area on Google Maps. For an example check out New York City. The cool part about this site as a travel mashup is that it isn't just plotting the location of hotels like many other travel mashups do, but rather plotting the most popular, as chosen by millions, upon millions of reviews on the site. When you're looking at the map, you're only looking at the best. You'll find links to these new Google Maps throughout the site on each of:

• Hotel overview pages for 32,000 featured U.S. cities and towns
• 17,000+ Pages covering U.S. attractions
• 135,000+ Pages covering U.S. restaurants

The map interface has been customized to match the look and feel of TripAdvisor by modifying the map controls to give them a softer, seamless look. Each map pin features a tab where you can link off to book at that hotel as well as candid traveler photos and other info about each hotel. TripAdvisor lets you research before you make your reservation. Keep in mind when you shift the map around you need to hit the reload button to re-display the locations. If the map could "auto-magically" know you have shifted the map and display locations for that current map view, it would be a great future site usability improvement.

Be sure to add this one to your list of Travel Google Maps Mashups!

Live Google Map of UK trains

+
= Realtime UK Rail Map!
Remember Dartmaps, the realtime Dublin commuter mashup that plots the real-time locations of trains on a Google Map? A similar Google Maps mashup has been created for trains in the UK National Rail Network: Live UK Rail Map

The map, created by Matthew Somerville shows all trains which are currently inbound to a particular station. Yellow pins mark station stops and red pins indicate trains in motion. Zoom in close to see them chugging along the tracks and an info-window will tell you the departing and destination stations along with the time if left. Google Maps is being mashed up with real time data from the National Rail website. Those who are just tuning into Google Maps Mania for the first time might not know I get very excited about Google Maps mashups that map real time objects or vehicles. I think it can mean great user applications in the area of transit, sport and even public safety!

[Found Via ProgrammableWeb]

Google Maps adds address search for Australia and New Zealand

Google Maps has added the long awaited address searching for the countries of Australia and New Zealand making the previous released street maps even more useful. When Google released this map data for Australia and New Zealand the maps could only be browsed, but not searched by address. Now this is possible. Local business search and driving directions do not yet appear to be working.

Example (Australia): 5 Lowanna Place Hornsby, New South Wales 2077 Australia

Example (New Zealand): 20 Holly Rd, St Albans, Christchurch, New Zealand

This might also pave the way for Australia and New Zealand geocoding support within the Google Maps API and more mashups from these countries!

Update: Sept.7/06 6:41AM: As expected the folks at Google have announced geocoding support for Australia and New Zealand over on the Google Maps API Blog!

[Thanks to Ed Groenendaal for the tip!]

Google Maps on your site in 60 seconds using Wikimapia

I've always been a big fan of Wikimapia, the Google Maps site that lets you describe locations in much the same way that Wikipedia allows you to add to articles in its database. It's a great way to share information and also to add some context to the vast amount of satellite map viewing available from Google Maps.

Until recently Wikimapia was only able to viewed from the site itself. This has changed with a new feature that lets you frame an area on Wikimapia and add it to your own site or blog instantly! To put this feature into action head over to Wikimapia, zoom to the location you wish to display and click Wikimapia from the top right corner, then select "Map on your page" from the list. Frame up the area that you wish to put on your website or blog, then copy the code that is provided. I did the following in about 60 seconds:



(Hit "Refresh" in your browser if the map is not displaying)

Here are some more examples of it on some other sites:

• The Bostonist
• AimK @ Blogspot

This new feature will let you share an area of the map (College campus, tourist area or your hometown) on your website so people can interact directly with Google Maps and add details to Wikimapia without leaving your site! Wikimapia has at present 660,000 described locations after just 2 months of being operational. The Russian developers behind this great tool expect that by 3 months they'll be displaying 1 million spots on the map. Keep in mind as well that the multi-language functionality means that Wikimapia is being used in nearly 40 languages!