My Map of travel conditions during China's snowstorm

Posted by Qiushuang (Autumn) Zhang, Software Engineer, Google Maps

Next week, most Chinese will be celebrating Chinese New Year with their families. Millions of people in China travel home for this holiday. Because of the crowds, it's extremely difficult to get train tickets during Chinese New Year. I still remember how hard it was for me and my college classmates to get tickets from Shanghai to Harbin. Some of my friends slept at the train station overnight, waiting in line for the ticket windows to open.

However, this year the biggest problem isn't the availability of train tickets, it's the huge snowstorm that's currently affecting the central, southern, and eastern parts of China. It's the worst snowstorm in about 50 years. By now, it is estimated to have caused billions of dollars in damages. Several national highways, airports, and train stations have been closed; tens of thousands of farms have been destroyed; power outages have hit many of the provinces; and thousands of soldiers are working around the clock to clear the snow. Many of the people who want to go home for Chinese New Year are stranded.

The Google Maps team in China has put together a special My Map that shows current weather conditions and the status of China's public transit systems. Click on the train and plane icons to find out whether the train stations and airports are still selling tickets, and whether the stations are currently open or closed. You can also get information on which trains have stopped operation, the number of passengers stalled in the stations, and instructions on how to get your tickets reimbursed.


If you have information that you'd like the Maps team to include, please email us.

Find more with Google Maps

Posted by Lior Ron, Product Manager

There's a lot to discover in Google Maps: addresses, businesses, points of interest, user maps, and even photos, books, and videos. To help sift through all of this, we've added a new search option that will help you find exactly what you want. Check out the new "show search options" link near the search box. Following this link will add a drop-down menu with three options for refining your search:

• Locations - Search only addresses, places of interest or other location names. For example, searching for "storm" will bring you to the city of Storm, Finland.
• Businesses - Search only businesses. Searching for "storm" over San Francisco will show you businesses with storm in their name.
• User-created content - Search maps created by users in Google or anywhere on the web. Searching for "storm" over San Francisco will show some interesting photos from the stormy week we had in San Francisco last month.

This last option is particularly useful for exploring the world from the vantage point of true local experts. Here are some cool searches I was able to do: "Windsurfing in San Francisco" shows windsurfing spots around the Bay Area from YouTube, virtualglobetrotting and Flickr (while business search will show windsurfing business listings); "Romantic places in Paris" includes results for romantic places mentioned in mashups by francoissachs.nl, communitywalk and Platial; "Seinfeld New York" highlights locations featured on the show from Panoramio, Flickr and other highlights from Google My Maps.

Doing our homework

Posted by Anna Bishop, Google Earth Education

We know that the last thing teachers have is tons of free time to spend learning about new teaching tools. That's why I'm thrilled to point out some new YouTube video tutorials that offer up basic tricks for using Google Earth and can serve as inspiration for lesson plans. While any new user (and even some of our old hands!) can appreciate these helpful hints, it's our hunch that educators will find them particularly useful. Here's a look at one of the videos in the series:

These short clips (there are 5 total) will walk you through some of the most popular features in Google Earth. Whether it's navigating, searching, marking locations, obtaining coordinates, or geotagging photos, you'll be able to get started in no time at all. More videos are in the works, and, of course, the Google Earth User Guide is also a great training resource. We hope that you'll soon be developing and sharing your own educational content just like these awesome literary field trips!

No address required

Posted by Nick Lee, Software Engineer


Have you ever been traveling and needed to get directions from your hotel to another destination in town, like a restaurant you keep hearing about? You may have been a bit frustrated that Google Maps required you to look up the addresses of your starting and end points before ultimately getting your directions.

Well, we felt the same way. So we fixed it. Now you can type in any location where you want to go -- whether it's a specific street address, a business name like Fuzzy Buddy's Dog Daycare, or even something more general like "florist" -- and we'll help you get directions. We'll even automatically try to find the closest results for you.

We've found this particularly handy for pizza runs from our office; now we can just put in "651 N. 34th Street Seattle to pizza" and choose from our options. And if you're ever in town visiting us and want to go to dinner from your hotel, you might try "Andra Hotel Seattle to Wild Ginger" (make sure to try their seven-flavor beef).

First Google Earth layer update of 2008

Posted by Wei Luo, Senior GIS Specialist

Happy New Year! We're starting things off with a number of exciting updates.

With help from a team of USGS scientists, we reengineered the Earthquake layer to be more accurate and informative. And to top it all off, we gave it a fresh new look. This layer presents historic earthquake epicenters of magnitudes greater than 3 for the entire world over the last 40 years. It's very fun to look at if you're interested in geology. For instance, did you know that large earthquakes happen most frequently at tectonic plate boundaries? If you zoom far out and connect the large earthquake dots, you will get a rough graph of these areas. The information balloons that appear on the map tell you the magnitude, depth, and date of the earthquake. And if you're interested in tracking earthquakes happening in real time, you can download the USGS Real-Time Earthquake KML file from any of the earthquake bubbles. The KML file will be added to the "Temporary Places" panel on the left, and it will automatically refresh every 5 minutes, showing the latest earthquakes around the world. So if you're feeling a jolt under your feet but not sure if it's an earthquake or your neighbor playing Wii, now you have a way to find out.


We expanded one of our most popular layers -- National Geographic -- to three more continents: Europe, Asia, and South America. These new additions feature interesting stories about everything from China's fearsome Taklimakan Desert, where Marco Polo traveled, to the hyacinth macaws of Brazil.


And finally, we added and updated roads in 26 countries: Russia, Malaysia, Thailand, Aruba, Bahamas, Belize, Bermuda, Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Cuba, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, St. Kitts and Nevis, Trinidad and Tobago, Uruguay, and Venezuela. Place names in Taiwan, Russia, Australia, New Zealand, Brazil, and Turkey will now be labeled in their local language, and bodies of water will be labeled in the language you have Google Earth set to.

Making changes

Posted by Charles Spirakis, Software Engineer, Google Maps

At Google, we're encouraged to move to different groups and learn new skills. I recently transitioned to the Maps team -- specifically, to the group that empowers local experts like you to improve your virtual neighborhood on Google Maps. You may remember that not too long ago we launched a feature that enables people to correct marker locations.

I previously focused on behind-the-scenes kernel work, so switching to something as well-known as the Google Maps user interface was quite a refreshing change. Excited and inspired, I got to task by working on a Maps 'recent edits' viewer that provides a real-time view into a sampling of the user edits taking place across the globe. You can just sit back and watch the world's information improving bit by bit, edit by edit. I warn you, though, it's highly addictive (almost as addictive as helping make the improvements yourself!).

Now that it's complete, I'm excited to know that something I've worked on is actually a visible part of the Maps experience, and helps encourage people to improve the information about the world around them. And as a bonus, after all these years, when Mom and Dad ask "So what exactly do you do again at Google?", I can simply point to http://maps.google.com/recentedits and say, "That's what we do!"

Reordering features in My Maps

Posted by Brian Cornell, Software Engineer, Google Maps

Many people have used the My Maps feature of Google Maps to store, organize, and share their geographic data. In fact, more than 7 million maps have been created, on topics ranging from skate parks and historic pubs to real-life superheroes. You can add local businesses, mark favorite spots, draw a few lines, and then label and color code everything to make it easier to read. But lately, a lot of users have told us that they want the ability to reorder the placemarks, lines and shapes in the left panel when they edit their maps.

Well, we're happy to let you know that now you can drag and drop items in the left panel to reorder them. If you have a large map, you can also move features to the previous or next page by dragging them to the special targets that appear before and after the list of features. After you're finished rearranging everything, just click save.

With this new feature, you can finally sort your placemarks the way you want. You can put the most important ones on top, or sort them by date or alphabetically. You can also arrange your markers into groups -- geographically, east to west, north to south, alphabetically by city, or any way you like. Now the choice is yours!

Super Tuesday = Super Map

Posted by Steve Grove, Head of News and Politics, YouTube

Super Tuesday (February 5) is another important stage of the 2008 political season, as residents of 24 states help nominate each party's presidential candidates. Google Maps closely followed the caucus results from Iowa and primary results from New Hampshire, but we decided to do something a little bit different in honor of Super Tuesday: YouTube is implementing a Google Map to create the Super Tuesday YouTube Channel.

Anyone -- from candidates and voters to members of media -- can upload videos to YouTube and geotag them so they can be tracked and viewed on a Google Map that resides in the Super Tuesday channel. There will be unique markers for voters, Democratic campaigns, Republican campaigns, and news outlets so that viewers can easily determine the source of the video. The site will feature a wide range of content, from predictions and interviews to personal reflections. To check out the videos, head over to the channel, then zoom in on your state or hometown to see what's been uploaded in your area. We hope this will be your go-to spot for all videos leading up to this important day.

I'll be heading to the polls in my home state, California, so I definitely plan to follow this new YouTube channel closely to stay informed. And even if you're not in a Super Tuesday state, you can still tune in to catch all the action.

The many uses of Transit

Posted by Chris Harrelson, Software Engineer, Google Transit

We've always been proud of the practical uses and environmental benefits of Google Transit, but it turns out that it's an extremely helpful tool for another very important reason. Read about one Googler's own unique perspective on why it's an invaluable resource for people with no and low vision.

We're continuing to add more agencies to the Transit fold (Fredericton Transit, Canada; Pioneer Valley Transit Authority, Massachusetts; and Sage Stage, California are recent additions), and we'll keep you posted on our progress.

Lost on Maps

Posted by Jessica Lee, Product Manager, Google Maps

If you're as excited as I am about the fourth season of Lost, starting on Jan 31, then you might find this Lost fan map very useful for refreshing your memory. It includes all the places mentioned on the show, such as where Sawyer grew up, the flight path of Oceanic 815, and the locations of the Hanso Foundation offices. It also has a ton of interesting trivia. For example, did you know that the characters were lying whenever they mentioned Canada? I never noticed that.



And here are some links to other TV show maps:

Amazing Race 12 - Great map of the current season
Sopranos - Locations that appear on the show
American Idol Geography - Hometowns of past winners
American Idol Season 7 Auditions - Locations of the auditions for the new season
The Faces of Grey's Anatomy - Hometowns of the cast
One Tree Hill Locations - Notable places in the Cape Fear region that have appeared on the show
Veronica Mars filming locations - Parts of Southern California where Veronica Mars was taped

Mapping the campaigns and primaries

Jonathan Goldman, Software Engineer, Google Maps

If you've been following the news this month, you're probably aware that the presidential primary season is in full swing. The Internet has provided all sorts of tools to enhance participation in the campaign process, and we've been extremely pleased to discover the ways in which people have been using maps to share information.

One common theme is using maps in one form or another to coordinate meet-ups among supporters of candidates. Here are some API maps showing meeting locations for supporters of John Edwards, Mike Huckabee, and Barack Obama. Supporters also seem to be using maps to showcase their candidate, as in this collection of a staggering number of John Edwards videos from YouTube, and this map of testimionials about Rudy Giuliani from across the country.

Maps have also proved particularly useful for visualizing data, like in this map showing the results for Ron Paul in various straw polls. Or of course the mapplets we've featured that showed real-time results for the Iowa caucus and New Hampshire primary.

Maybe you'd like to get involved yourself? Try a search for a candidate's office in the state of an upcoming primary ("john mccain in south carolina" or "obama in nevada," for example) to find local campaign information.

The next generation of Google Sky

Posted by Ryan Scranton, Google Sky Team, and Andy Connolly, Visiting Faculty, University of Washington

The new year is here and it's time to unveil a new set of features and content for Sky in Google Earth. This update is particularly exciting for us because most of the new images, views and sounds have been developed by the Sky community. From views of the sky across the electromagnetic spectrum to exploring how the sky changes over time, there's something to satisfy everyone's interest in the stars.

Using NASA's space telescopes, you can view how the universe looks at many different wavelengths -- from X-rays, ultraviolet and infrared light all the way through to radio waves. You can also play with the transparency of the different overlays for the Sombrero galaxy to see how different parts of the galaxy light up in different wavelengths.

For the nighttime sky observer, the Earth & Sky layer provides podcasts to let you know about upcoming events in the sky. Pull up a chair and sit back to hear about everything from meteor showers and eclipses to the latest news from the world of astronomy.

In addition to showing you the latest from the world of astronomy, the new version of Sky also brings you glimpses of the sky as seen by astronomers in the 17th century. Constellation maps from the David Rumsey collection and the U.S. Naval Library show the astronomical state of the art, three centuries ago (there be dragons).

Also, we now have a community layer that highlights contributions that Sky users have posted on the Google Earth Community site (http://bbs.keyhole.com/ubb/postlist.php/Cat/0/Board/sky).

Finally, we're excited to announce the availability of Sky, Moon and Mars imagery in the Google Maps API. This allows any developer to build interesting applications and websites using Sky imagery, and extend the Sky experience to any place on the web. Some early examples of these applications include the Cosmic Visibility page and even an iPod touch hack.

We welcome you to come and explore the new dimensions of Sky.

Our primary colors

Posted by Brittany Bohnet, Elections Program Manager

A few days ago, we announced that Google Maps would be presenting real-time U.S. presidential nomination results for the Iowa caucuses. The map was so popular that we've decided to do it again, this time for the 2008 primary in New Hampshire.

Beginning today, users can direct their browsers to maps.google.com/nhprimary2008 and watch as live results stream in from towns across the state of New Hampshire. As the first official primary of the 2008 presidential race, these results play a large role in guiding decisions for primaries in other states. They may be a determinant of which candidates decide to stay in the race, and which decide to withdraw. It is also worth noting that from 1952, the first year the primary gained its influence, to now, almost every elected president won his party's New Hampshire primary.

If you'd like to take a 3D tour of the results, make sure to check the map tonight for a KML file presenting the results within Google Earth. Either way you view it, we hope you'll join us as we present these important decisions.

Let it Snow

Posted by Evan Parker, Software Engineer

I love heading up to Tahoe in the winter to go snowboarding, especially when there is good snow in the form of lots of fresh powder! Unfortunately, good snow for snowboarding often means bad road conditions, and making the decision to chance the weather or stay home can be tough without a good source of information. So I was delighted to find this great map of snow conditions in Tahoe that the Reno Gazette Journal put together during the heavy snow storms in Tahoe over the past several days. I was even more delighted to see the editors at the Journal use two recent Google Maps features by embedding the map in one article and inviting people to collaborate with them on the map in a second article.

So if you're thinking of going skiing or snowboarding this winter, search user created content on Google Maps for maps like this, or consider creating your own map of winter conditions if you don't find one in your area. And above all, drive safely, and have fun in all that great snow!

Got caucus results? We do.

Posted by Brittany Bohnet, Elections Program Manager

As the first step in deciding nominees for the 2008 United States presidential elections, the Iowa caucus has always been known as a pivotal event for each White House hopeful. In fact, candidates have been targeting almost all of their campaign energy in Iowa for the past month, as results here set the precedent by which other states will make their own voting decisions.

Tonight, Iowans will gather in locations throughout the state to discuss and debate candidate support prior to making their nomination decisions.

Meanwhile, the rest of the nation can follow caucus events simply by pointing their browsers to our new Iowa caucus map on Google Maps. The map displays live news and events from across the state, and beginning tonight, both the Democratic and Republican parties of Iowa will be partnering with us to present real-time caucus results by county and by party. Users across America will be able to watch a stream of results show up on Google Maps at the same time as these important decisions in Iowa are being made.

To view more caucus coverage, check out our latest post on the Official Google Blog highlighting an Iowa Caucus YouTube channel, the recently launched Elections section of Google News, and our very own Elections 2008 iGoogle gadget.