Madrid in 3D!

(cross-posted from the Official Google SketchUp Blog)

Madrid, Spain is the latest city to be introduced to the 3D Buildings layer in Google Earth.

The City of Madrid contains scores of beautiful structures ranging from art museums and classical monuments to palatial government buildings. The prevalence of architectural wonders may explain why passionate geo-modelers have created thousands of models there (using both Google SketchUp and Google Building Maker) -- the largest concentration of 3D models anywhere the world!



To start your virtual tour, I recommend you fly-to El Palacio real de Madrid (Royal Palace of Madrid), the official residence of the King of Spain. From there I'd fly over to the Puerta de Alcalá, a famous classical monument located in the Plaza de la Independencia (Independence Square), and then over to the Monumento a Alfonso XII en el Parque del Buen Retiro, a beautiful monument that is among the greatest in Europe.



And don't miss the Plaza de Cibeles where the famous statue Fuente de Cibeles is surrounded by trees and beautiful buildings, including the stunning Palacio de Comunicaciones (Madrid City Hall) and Banco de España (Bank of Spain) buildings.

If I were to visit Madrid for real, I think I'd want to stay at the Palace Hotel, which is a short walk to the famous Prado Museum (one of my all-time favorite models in Google Earth) where you can fly inside and experience the great works of art.

Fútbol (American soccer) fan? Madrid is the home to Real Madrid, who play in the Estadio Santiago Bernabéu. Olé!


Posted by Bruce Polderman, Product Manager

Find your favorite locations faster with personalized suggestions

You probably often search for the same places and categories many times. Sometimes it's the name of your city or your local airport; other times it might your go-to neighborhood restaurant or your favorite cuisine.

Now, if you're signed in with your Google account and have Web History enabled, personalized suggestions can make searching easier and faster by showing you suggestions based on past searches. Just start typing into the search box as you normally would, and relevant suggestions may appear below, letting you quickly complete your search.

For example, if you've looked at cafes on Google Maps with past searches, you might see them as suggestions when typing the word "coffee":

Often it only takes one or two characters to get useful suggestions:

Like personalized suggestions on Google.com, personalized suggestions on Google Maps are based on past searches from your Web History. If you see a personalized suggestion that you don't like, you can get rid of that suggestion and any others by clicking the "Edit" link at the bottom of the suggestions box, which takes you directly to the Web History removals page. You can also sign out of your Google account to stop seeing personalized suggestions.

We hope this new feature saves you time by making it easier to find your favorite locations faster. Sign into Google Maps to try it for yourself!

Posted by Masanori Goto, Takahito Hirano and Ryo Takahashi, Google Maps team

Seeing more from GeoEye

Since the launch of GeoEye's GeoEye-1 satellite, we've added many gigabytes of high-resolution GeoEye-1 imagery to Google Earth and Google Maps, including a scene from the 2009 Presidential Inauguration, views of the pyramids in Egypt, and images showing urban expansion in China. While we're constantly adding such great imagery, what we've published to date represents only a subset of the available imagery from GeoEye-1, which is capable of collecting hundreds of thousands of square kilometers of imagery every day.

From this stream of GeoEye-1 imagery, we regularly receive images that we think would be of special interest to Google Earth users; some of these images are of interesting places, like Mt. Kilimanjaro or Las Vegas, and others relate to current events, like preparations for the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver. However, it can take a bit of time for these images to be fully integrated into Google Earth and Google Maps given the processing time required, which includes image orthorectification and blending.

To highlight some of these broadly-interesting GeoEye-1 images before they can be fully integrated into Maps and Earth, we're excited to announce the new 'GeoEye Featured Imagery' layer in Google Earth. Included within this layer are 20-30 Featured Imagery placemarks, including a thumbnail of the image, a link to view the image in full-resolution, and a wealth of information about the scene, including resolution, collection date, and a narrative about the location. Additionally, you'll find links to other images in the collection, and links to social networking sites, including Twitter, which allow you to share favorite scenes with others.

To view all this great imagery, select the 'GeoEye Featured Imagery' button located in the Google Earth 'More' folder:

You can also download it here. Before you get started, here's a sneak preview of some of our favorite images:

Las Vegas, Nevada

Vancouver, British Columbia

Mt. Kilimanjaro

Burning Man Festival, Black Rock Desert, Nevada

Posted by Pete Giencke, GIS Data Engineer and Dylan Lorimer, Strategic Partner Manager

3 course dinners? 3 easy steps to let your customers know.

Restaurant weeks, when restaurants across a city host prix fixe menus, are starting in various parts of the world so we wanted to share a few tips whether you're looking for restaurants or you manage a restaurant.

For interested diners, finding the top restaurants has never been easier. We have continually updated our business pages with more reviews, feature ratings to measure aspects of the restaurant that might interest you, and even the ability to see updates from the owner.

We've recently partnered with the San Francisco Convention & Visitors Bureau, to help drive new patrons to Dine About Town's participating restaurants. Since many of their potential customers begin their search on Google, we wanted to share some simple steps for them to enhance their exposure on Google as a participating restaurant - and we hope these will help any other interested restaurateurs.

• First, if you haven't already signed up for Google's Local Business Center, it's a free service that allows you to add menus, photos, and videos to your Google local business listing while making sure basic address & contact information is correct on the search engine.

• Second, once you're signed up, within the "Coupon" section, you can add in details regarding your participation. For example, your offer could read:

Vinny's Restaurant
Dine About Town 2010
3-Course Dinner for $34.95

• Third, use the new updates feature in Local Business Center to post real-time messages about your participation in your local restaurant week, including menu items, specials of the day and more. Learn more here.

Why is this important? If a potential customer is searching on Google for a type of restaurant that matches your restaurant description, your listing will be up-to-date with news that you are participating in Dine About Town or any other events you are participating in. Afterwards, a personalized report allows you to see how often your listing was found on Google, and how people got there. For more information or to answer questions, please go here.

We hope restaurant weeks go well all over the country and happy dining. If you are involved in a resturant week and would like to see how we can partner up, click on this form and we can contact you.

And if you're in San Francisco or looking for an excuse to visit, you can see all participating Dine About Town restaurants for San Francisco now on a Google Map:

View Dine about Town 2010 in a larger map

Posted by Dave Kim and Ryan Hayward, Google Maps Marketing

New countries, new countrysides in Street View

When people visit the UK, they often head for the often the historic buildings that are dotted all over the country. Whether well preserved ruins or perfectly complete, these buildings and landscapes evoke scenes from classic novels and famous period movies.

Now, even without a tightly laced bodice or a top hat you can take yourself on a tour of some of these remarkable places in Street View and take a trip back in time.

Thanks to the National Trust - a charity with a love for preserving historic places and spaces across England, Wales and Northern Ireland - our Trike riders were given access to a whole host of beautiful places up and down the country. Last summer (fortunately able to ride this modern technological marvel wearing Google T-shirts, rather than chainmaill and medieval boots) they pedalled around a collection of the National Trust's iconic castles, country houses and outstanding landscapes, all 20 of which can be viewed here on our special guide.

Locations include iconic sites such as Corfe Castle in Dorset, Fountains Abbey in Yorkshire, Plas Newydd in Wales and Downhill Demesne in Northern Ireland. Others include Lyme Park (where Pride & Prejudice starring Colin Firth as Mr. Darcy was filmed) and Castle Drogo, the last castle built in England.

Lyme Park

We hope you enjoy this combination of hundreds of years of history with our newest, quirkiest mapping technology.

Fountain's Abbey

But course that's not all you can find to explore today - we're also announcing two new countries where Street View is available: Sweden and Denmark, two countries with their own share of beautiful historic landmarks.

Let's take a stroll past Copenhagen Townhall:

View Larger Map

Now let's visit the home of Hans Christian Anderson:

View Larger Map

In Taiwan and Italy, you'll find areas with new imagery as well. Our trike riders have also been pedaling around the United States. You can now visit all of the exotic creatures found at the San Diego Zoo:

View Larger Map

If seeing a giraffe habitat isn't right up your alley, you can also see the home of the Nittany Lions -- the campus of Penn State, including its stadium, received a visit from the trike:

View Larger Map

We've also added the University of Pennsylvania, and several theme parks including Busch Gardens, Sesame Place, and Water Country USA.

Posted by Laura Scott, Google London

New imagery of Port-au-Prince

In the wake of the devastating Haiti earthquake, aid organizations have been hard at work on the ground and citizens around the world have pitched in to help in whatever way they can. On the Geo team, we've been looking for ways we can help relief efforts using our mapping tools. Last week, thanks to our partner GeoEye, we published updated satellite imagery of Haiti in Google Earth and Google Maps that illustrated the devastation and current conditions on the ground. This data was made available for public consumption and also to assist relief efforts including those by many UN organizations and the Center for Interdisciplinary Geospatial Information Technologies.

With the hope of furthering awareness and relief efforts, we arranged for a collection of the Port-au-Prince area at even higher resolution (approximately 15cm) to complement the existing imagery. Here are some examples of the kind of detail this new dataset can convey:

click to see full-size

These images were gathered on Sunday (January 17). You can currently view the imagery in Google Maps in Satellite mode. It will also be available via the Google Maps API and in Google Map Maker. We're working to make this available as the base imagery in Google Earth by tomorrow morning (and all previous imagery of Haiti will be included in the Historical Imagery feature). We're also making this imagery directly available to relief organizations.

Earlier today we updated the Haiti Earthquake KML layer (download for Google Earth) with additional information, including more imagery from GeoEye, Digital Globe, and NOAA, as well as earthquake epicenters and other maps. Aid groups can also download Map Maker data as well.

Update, 1/20 9:30am: This high-resolution imagery is now available in Google Earth as the base imagery, and has been published in the Haiti Earthquake KML layer.

Posted by Matt Manolides, Senior GIS Strategist

Making the grade by mapping Candide's journey

Before their winter break, a group of students from Edward R. Murrow High School in Brooklyn visited the New York Public Library to see the Library's exhibition Candide at 250: Scandal and Success, an exhibit that traces the history of Voltaire's classic tale of travel and misadventure. While they were there they also got a lesson from the Library's mapper extraordinaire, Matt Knutzen, on how to map out their own version of Candide's journey in Google Earth and Maps. Their work is now available on the Library's new website, and visitors are invited to add their own journeys to the map.

We're always on the lookout for innovative ways that students and educators are working with Google's geo tools, so we were happy to find out that the Library has also made the lesson plan available to the public. Teachers looking for a new way to teach the classics should take a look and get some fresh ideas.

Take it from sophomore Anna Sherman, age 15. She had to re-read the book carefully while creating her map, so that she could plot every city right. "To make it accurate, I had to really learn about the geography," she said. "This is the direction education is heading, definitely, 100 percent. It's a new way to learn. Me personally, at my age, I wouldn’t really want to read a paper with just words on it. If you have images and video, that's so much better. It helps you see the book in a whole new light."

Posted by Kate Hurowitz, Lat Long Blog Team

Take a virtual tour of the Olympics in 3D

[Cross-posted from the SketchUp Blog]

The countdown to the 2010 Winter Olympics has begun, and the Google Boulder office has been busy modeling the Olympic venues in Vancouver, BC using Google SketchUp.

Last month, we introduced photo-realistic 3D models for eight of the nine venues hosting the games.

Today, we released updates to many of the models using higher-resolution imagery, and, the last venue for the Olympics: the Bobsled Course!


With today's release, all nine venues (54 buildings in total) are completely modeled in 3D and available for viewing in Google Earth's "3D Buildings" layer (or view the collection in the Google 3D Warehouse). The collection includes 3D models that range from downtown event centers to ski lifts and spectator bleachers.

In addition, the Vancouver Organizing Committee for the 2010 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games incorporated the models into the Official website using the Google Earth plugin. To see the models, simply click on "Spectator Guide," then "Venues." You'll find a "3D View" tab that loads the 3D model.

So wax your virtual skis and take a tour!

Posted by Bruce Polderman, Product Manager

Cincinnati now in 3D

[Cross-posted from the SketchUp Blog]

We're pleased to announce that we added Cincinnati, Ohio to Google Earth in 3D today. Start exploring by opening Google Earth and searching for "Cincinnati, OH"; make sure the "3D Buildings" layer is turned on.

This city is a great example of how multiple sources have been used to populate Google Earth with 3D buildings. The city contains a large number of user-generated models (made with SketchUp), Google-generated models, and untextured 3D models contributed via theCities in 3D Program. Have fun exploring Cincinnati in 3D!

Posted by Bruce Polderman, Product Manager

Make Google Place Pages your business' megaphone

If you're a local business owner, we've just added two new features that can help you reach existing and potential customers even more effectively on your business' Place Page. Both of these features are available by claiming your business through Google Local Business Center.

Post to your Place Page

Holding a special event today? Want to post a coupon for 5-7pm tonight? Have a new product in stock? You can now get the word out by posting to your Place Page directly from your Local Business Center dashboard. Once you've logged in and are on your business' dashboard, post an update and it will go live on your Place Page in just a few minutes.

To see an example, check out the Place Page for Mission Mountain Winery which posted to introduce a new wine.

Badge for Your Claimed Place Page

We are also introducing a badge for listings that have been claimed in the Local Business Center. This helps our users identify listings that have been updated and improved by their business owners, helping them to trust that the information about your business is as accurate as possible. We are also making it even easier to claim your listing directly from the Place Page by following the "Business owner?" link.



We're excited about how Place Pages can help business owners connect with the large number of new and existing customers who visit these pages each day. These users come to Place Pages to easily find basic information, photos, and reviews about your business, as well as a map, Street View photos, and nearby transit information to help them get to your doorstep.

If you haven't been keeping up with our latest improvements for business owners, you may also want to check out the new mobile coupons feature in Local Business Center as well.

We hope you find these features useful in reaching out to your customers and providing them with even more relevant and timely information about your business.

Posted by Jana Urban, Nick Dower, and Lori Meiskey, Google Place Page team

Haiti imagery layer now available

We've worked closely with GeoEye throughout the afternoon to make their most recent satellite imagery of Haiti, taken at approximately 10:27am EST today, available as a KML overlay for Google Earth. You can download the KML here and open it in Google Earth, or look at it via the browser plug-in below. As you'll see, the imagery shows a powerful glimpse into the destruction in Haiti. Here are before-and-after screenshots of the Presidential Palace and an area of Port-au-Prince:

click to see full-size

We will continue to automatically update the layer (you'll only need to download it once) as we are able to make more imagery and data available.

Update: For more information about relief efforts and to find out how you can help, please visit this page.

Posted by Michael Rubinstein, Christiaan Adams, and Pete Giencke, Google Crisis Response Team

Imagery & maps in the wake of the Haiti Earthquake

Update (7pm): The layer is now available -- see more details in this post.

Yesterday a 7.0 magnitude earthquake struck Haiti, causing significant destruction and devastation. Since then, we've received numerous requests from relief organizations and our users to share recent satellite imagery of the country. One of our imagery partners, GeoEye, has just provided us with post-earthquake imagery from Haiti. We're working on making it available as a KML overlay in Google Earth as soon as possible; in the meantime, here is snapshot of the imagery we'll be providing. The image was taken at approximately 10:27am Eastern today and this photo shows Port-au-Prince.


We will update this blog post as soon as the layer is available.

We hope that Google Map Maker can also play a role in disaster relief efforts. We originally opened Haiti on Google Map Maker in response to hurricanes that hit the region over a year ago. Since then, many committed individuals have contributed rich data for the country, and now maps of Haiti appear on Google Earth and Google Maps. Today, we have made this Map Maker data for Haiti available to the UN in its raw form for the earthquake relief efforts. If you have any local knowledge to share, please help us continue to build a better map of Haiti with Google Map Maker. The latest, up-to-date Map Maker information will be immediately accessible through the Google Maps API as a map tile set and through this Mapplet.

Posted by Dylan Lorimer, Product Manager and Jessica Pfund, Google Map Maker team

Finding your way in 18 new countries

In certain parts of the world, getting around is a challenge. Not only are cities in emerging economies evolving rapidly, oftentimes there are no online services to help people navigate.

One of the most requested features on Google Maps in Asia and Eastern Europe is driving directions. Google Map Maker users in these countries have been busy adding detailed data like turn restrictions, road priorities, speeds and one-ways. Using that rich data, we've been able to launch driving directions in 18 Eastern European and Asia-Pacific countries. You can now navigate using Google Maps in Albania, Belarus, Macedonia, Moldova, Montenegro, Romania, Serbia, Bangladesh, Cambodia, French Polynesia, Guam, Kazakhstan, Mongolia, Nepal, New Caledonia, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Vietnam.

Routing from Lahore to Karachi or Bucharest to Minsk has never been so easy! Next time I visit my favorite city, Hanoi, I'll be able to get around with ease.

Map Maker was created with a vision of enabling users to contribute high quality, up-to-date, routeable maps data. With this launch, for many of these countries, this is the first time users have had any directions. This has become a reality only because of our passionate users.

If you live or are visiting one of these countries, do give it a try and tell us what you think on Twitter at @googlemapmaker. As always, these are your maps - in case you don't find a road, a turn or one-way is incorrect in your neighborhood, you can map it at mapmaker.google.com.

Posted by Vishwajith Krishnamurthy, Software Engineer, Google Map Maker

Latin America Mapping Competition Winners

When we launched the Latin America Mapping Competition at Campus Party in Mexico City on November 14, 2009, we weren't sure what to expect. This was Google's first ever mapping competition, after all. When the competition closed on December 15, 2009, we were impressed with the results. For example, mapping activity increased more than 1000% in some areas of Latin America.

Timelapse of Rosario, Argentina where most roads were mapped in one day for the Latin America mapping competition.

Hundreds of mappers entered the competition. Here are the winners:

Individual Prize
Winner: Daniel Mugaburu
"I've mapped several cities in Peru (my country of origin) because I know it very well, and a lot of areas need urgent updates. I've been mapping for almost one year already and I plan to keep on doing it. My motivation has always been helping others to find streets, hospitals, etc... in order to increase their life quality."
Born and raised in Peru, Daniel currently lives in Connecticut, USA.

Team Prize
Winner: The "Ukrainian Team" consisting of 8 mappers in Austria, France, Peru and the Ukraine who used Gmail, Google Wave and Google Docs to coordinate their mapping efforts.

• Anton Berezhnyi, team leader
  
• Boris Villagarcia
• Cesar Adrianzen
  
• Christian Monzon Cardenas
• Matthieu Abribat
• Olga Sokalska
  
• Vasiliy Saenko
• Yevgeniy Kolesnyk
  

City Prize
Winner: Lima, Peru
La Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos will receive the 100 laptop donation.

Congratulations to all the Latin America Mapping Competition winners, and we invite mappers everywhere to participate in the Global Mapping Competition benefiting UNICEF that runs through January 31st.

Posted by Jennifer Mazzon, Maps Community Organizer

Find us at the National Retail Federation Big Show in NYC next week

Shoppers are increasingly turning to Google.com and Google Maps to find, learn about, map, and get directions to retail locations. We offer several tools that help retail businesses connect with these shoppers, such as Local Business Center to make sure your listings are accurate and contain many relevant details, and embeddable Google Maps to power your online store locator.

That’s why several of us from Google will be attending, presenting, and demonstrating products next week at NRF 2010, the National Retail Federation’s annual convertion and expo at the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center in New York City. We’ll be speaking at a session on Tuesday (January 12) at 11:30am (EXPO Hall, 3D04) called Helping Shoppers Find You.

We’ll also have a booth in the Expo Hall (Booth #365) so attendees can chat with us directly about Google Maps and Local Business Center. Any question is fair game! Look for the Google logo on our booth wall and a big map of Manhattan at the floor of the booth. We hope to see you there.

Posted by Andrew Chang and Ryan Hayward, Product Marketing Managers

Look who's modeling!

[Cross-posted from the Google SketchUp Blog]

The Google Model Your Town Competition is running full-steam ahead with over 400 pins in the world map representing teams from six continents. From places like Cauquenes, Chile to Cape Town, South Africa to Suva City, Fiji to Alirajpur, Madhya Pradesh, India to Aberdeen, Scotland to Tallin, Estonia and Burlington, Iowa people have taken on the challenge of representing their communities.

Folks in Iowa, Colorado, and British Columbia are motivating community members by building their own websites, garnering local press, tweeting, and soliciting help in online forums. Some are offering training on how to model to anyone interested. Iowa is asking middle and high school educators to form and advise teams of students.

There are still many people looking for team members. Visit the official group to meet folks in your area, or to post your own questions, ideas, or comments about the competition. The deadline for entering is March 1st of this year. Start the entry process by adding a pin to the map on our Get Started page and follow us on Twitter @modelyourtown.

Posted by Allyson McDuffie, Model Your Town Competition Team

Shaking things up

At around 10:00am in Mountain View, our building shook. Really shook. Coming from the Midwest, earthquakes have always intrigued me (I wondered things like: Does it really feel like you're standing next to a freight train? Answer: Yes). So being the earthquake-phile (or earthquake-noob) I am, I immediately jumped into Google Earth to check out what had happened. Thanks to the real-time USGS Earth feed, I was able to quickly find out the details. Opening up the 'Gallery' folder and clicking on 'Earthquakes' I was able to see that it was a magnitude 4.1 earthquake, with an epicenter just across the bay -- yikes!

The USGS also maintains their own KML file, which contains links to even more details. Here's that file embedded in the browser-based Google Earth plug-in:

Armed with this information in real-time, I was able to share the details in real time with my jealous (and some not-so-jealous) friends still in the Midwest.

Posted by Pete Giencke, GIS Data Engineer

Google Map Maker Ambassadors -- party on!

All around the world, our Google Map Maker users have been in high-gear over the past six weeks, becoming Map Maker Ambassadors by organizing local events to spread the word about how people can map the places they know and love. Supported by Google, these dedicated mappers have secured event locations at local universities, translated presentations and brochures, publicized the events and coordinated with the local mapping community.

Power-mapper Mihai organized a Map Maker event in Bucharest, Romania in mid November:

Serbia mapper Jovica organized a Map Maker event at Novi Sad University in early December:

Ulziisaikhan & Tsengel organized several "Map Maker Fairs" in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia in December:

Tilek Mamutov, a Dublin-based Googler and a top Map Maker user in Kyrgyzstan organized two Map Maker events in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan and Almaty, Kazakhstan in late December:


And to ring in the new year for mappers in Pakistan, super mappers Faraz and Jabran, with help from fellow mappers Omer and Khurram organized a mapping party in Lahore on January 2nd (more pictures here):


Here's a big shout-out and thank you to our Google Map Maker Ambassadors, and we're looking forward to similar events being organized in Kerala, India (February 5th) and elsewhere. In the meantime, check out the Google Map Maker Global Mapping Competition benefiting UNICEF that runs through January 31st.

Posted by Jennifer Mazzon, Maps Community Organizer

Google Maps on Nexus One

We're really excited about today's launch of Nexus One. The device is the newest phone to run on the Android platform with Google Maps for mobile pre-installed, and the app has never run better. Nexus One has a super fast 1GHz processor and feels as fast and responsive as any phone.

But my favorite thing about Nexus One is the beautiful, 3.7" high-resolution AMOLED display. I use Google Maps Navigation (beta) constantly for turn-by-turn guidance and traffic, and having such a large, clear display makes a world of difference. Maps are more readable, and satellite and street-level imagery look amazing. And when I pull up to my destination and a large, crisp Street View is shown automatically, I know exactly what to look for.

Nexus One ships with Android 2.1, including the latest version of Google Maps and Navigation. It also has all the other new features we've launched in the past year, such as Google Latitude, layers, and labs.

To learn more about Nexus One, visit google.com/phone.

Watch the video on YouTube to preview Google Maps Navigation on the Nexus One:

Posted by Michael Siliski, Product Manager