Poetry, community, and forty fabulous islands

The poet John Donne once said, "No man is an island" - and for those of us who've had the opportunity to see our users map their world, we believe in the collective knowledge of communities sharing what they know best about the places where they've lived, visited, or explored.

Not too long ago, we announced the launch of Google Map Maker - a tool that allows users to build maps of their neighborhoods, cities and countries. Today, we're excited to open up Google Map Maker to forty island nations.

For those of you new to Google Map Maker, check out this brief tutorial about how it works:

Whether it's drawing roads, adding your favorite convenience store or bird-watching spot, or editing major landmarks, we hope to continue making Google Map Maker a platform for our users to share and benefit from the local knowledge of their peers. So if you're spending these months combing the beautiful beaches, towns and trails of the world's island nations, share your local knowledge with us on Google Map Maker.

Here's a shout-out to these forty island nations: American Samoa, Anguilla, Cape Verde, Cocos Islands, Comoros, Cook Islands, Dominica, Dominican Republic, Falkland Islands, Faroe Islands, French Polynesia, Guadeloupe, Guam, Isle of Man, Kiribati, Madagascar, Maldives, Malta, Marshall Islands, Martinique, Mauritius, Montserrat, Nauru, New Caledonia, Niue, Northern Mariana Islands, Papua New Guinea, Reunion, Samoa, São Tomé and Príncipe, Seychelles, Solomon Islands, Tonga, Turks and Caicos Islands, Tuvalu, Vanuatu, Micronesia, Christmas Island, Tokelau, Wallis and Futuna.

I thought I'd leave you with a little poem our team came up with while hard at work on the fab forty launch:

Snorkeling in Maldives and Gyros in Cyprus,
Mauritius Fishing and Maltese History,
Sailing in Samoa and Camping in Tonga,
These are a few of our favorite things

As you can tell, we love islands and all the fun,
freedom and frolic they stand for. But they can
be more fun - with great maps.

Posted by Lalit Katragadda, Software Engineer

Where is Georgia on Google Maps?

The recent conflict in Georgia has raised some questions about how Google Maps has handled mapping in that part of the world. The most obvious question is, why doesn't Google Maps show any cities or roads for Georgia, or its neighbors Armenia and Azerbaijan? The answer is we never launched coverage in those countries because we simply weren't satisfied with the map data we had available. We're constantly searching for the best map data we can find, and sometimes will delay launching coverage in a country if we think we can get more comprehensive data. Some of our customers have asked if we removed map data from any of these countries in response to the recent hostilities in that region and I can assure you that is not the case. Data for these countries were never on Google Maps in the first place.

But this has generated a lot of feedback that we are listening to and learning from. We're hearing from our users that they would rather see even very basic coverage of a country than see nothing at all. That certainly makes sense, and so we have started preparing data for the handful of countries that are still blank on Google Maps. Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan, as well as other significant regions of the world will benefit from this effort.

In the meantime, much of this data, including cities in Georgia and other surrounding countries, can be found in Google Earth.

Posted by Dave Barth, Product Manager

Google Earth Geographic Web updates

Organizing the world's spatial information means benefiting from the collective knowledge and experiences of people around the globe. Making this information universally accessible enables you to discover the world and its places, not only as they are, but as you make them. That's why we now have the "Places" layer. With this release, we've combined user-generated content from sources including Wikipedia, Panoramio, the Google Earth Community, and YouTube to create a single, multi-faceted layer. A single glance. Better understanding. Endless exploration.

In the main Google Earth 3-D view, look for an icon that looks like a stack of photos to find a Place to explore. You'll notice that we've also changed the icon for Panoramio photos (now represented by a smaller photo stack) and Wikipedia (now represented by a "W").


Each "Place" is a specific spot on Earth we think you'll find interesting (we gauge that interest level by noting much community content exists about that place). Click on a Place icon to see a bubble rich with relevant content about that place... flip through photos, play videos, and download KML files from the Google Earth Community. Here's the bubble for the Golden Gate Bridge:


We've also broadened our "Wikipedia" layer. As Wikipedia expands in breadth across languages, so do we! Google Earth's Wikipedia content will now match your Google Earth client's language for eighteen supported languages. If Swedish is your primary language, for instance, you'll be greeted with fully internationalized bubbles like this:



Posted by Cris Castello, Jason Shields and Daniel Calvelo Aros; GIS Data Engineers

Off to the Games!

The 2008 Summer Games will soon commence in Beijing and will run from August 8th to August 24th. You may have noticed that we recently updated our satellite imagery in Beijing, have added detailed bilingual maps in China, and have created a collection of 3D stadiums using Google SketchUp.

In addition to all of this, today we're launching the 2008 Summer Games on Google Maps. It's a one-stop shop for viewing live updates from the Games, including up-to-date medal counts by country, events by date, and results by sport.

To track medal counts, click on the 'Medals' tab and zoom or pan the map to see updates around the world. Clicking on a country or region will display medal information as it's received. Use the 'Events' tab to view the latest schedules by date, country, and sport. All data--including country and region participants, sport results, and medal counts--is provided through an official feed from the World News Press Agency (WNPA).

As a bonus, we've also included a way to view sports stadiums and venues in 3D. By clicking the 'Earth' tab, PC users can access the Google Earth plug-in and virtually explore the Beijing Village. Not a PC user? No problem. All users are also able to preview the venue information and 3D fly-through videos within the map.

If you'd rather follow the Games from your desktop, we've launched a Google Earth KML that highlights similar information and provides a unique virtual experience. To whet your palate, here's a video tour of the 3D Village:

Posted by Brittany Bohnet, Google Maps Special Projects

Tip of the week: Link directly to a Mapplet

Have you ever found a Mapplet you really wanted to share? You might have tried the "link" feature on Maps, and been frustrated that it only links to the My Maps tab instead of directly to whichever Mapplet you selected. Well, there is in fact a simple method to link directly to a Mapplet, and it will even get rid of the Mapplets interface typically shown in the My Maps tab.

The trick is to construct a URL in the following format:

http://maps.google.com/maps/mpl?moduleurl=[insert URL to Mapplet XML]

You can get the URL from the 'View source' link on a Mapplet's page:


For example, the following URL will send you directly to the USGS Earthquake Mapplet:

http://maps.google.com/maps/mpl?moduleurl=http://earthquake.usgs.gov/eqcenter/mapplets/earthquakes.xml

This gives you the ability to link directly to Google Maps and keep your user interface front and center - I'm looking forward to seeing how you use it.

Posted by Abe Murray, Product Manager

More streets in more places

Earlier this summer we launched our first international Street View coverage with the Tour de France route. Today I'm excited to announce we're bringing Street View to new corners of the globe as we launch imagery in Japan and Australia.

Our Japan launch includes a number of major cities including Tokyo, Osaka, Kyoto, and Kobe, among others across the country.

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Our imagery for Australia includes extensive coverage throughout the country, featuring cities such as Sydney, Perth, and Melbourne - and many places in between. Here's a slideshow of some images from around Australia:

As if that was not enough, we're also extending our coverage in the US with over 30 new cities including New Orleans (LA), Baton Rouge (LA), El Paso (TX), Wichita (KS), Savannah (GA), and Colorado Springs (CO). And to give you even more of a reason to explore Street View, we've hidden a special surprise somewhere in our US imagery so keep your eyes peeled as you take in the views!

Posted by Stephen Chau, Product Manager

Olympic imagery update

I'm very pleased to announce that we've published brand new imagery of Beijing in time for the Olympics, and that some of the new imagery is less than 2 weeks old! Everyone on the imagery team is very excited to make this data available to you just before the start of the games; it's very hard to get good satellite photos of Beijing due to clouds and other atmospheric conditions, but our partners GeoEye and DigitalGlobe pulled through and were able to get us some really amazing shots. Some updated areas include Beijing, Tianjin, Shenyang, and Quindao -- you can check out the new data in both Google Earth and Google Maps.

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Posted by Matt Manolides, GIS Specialist