Ready, set, map: Latin America Map Maker competition

This past Saturday, we launched the first ever mapping competition in Latin America during a live session on Map Maker at the Campus Party Mexico 2009. The competition officially kicked off at the event in Mexico city, where tech enthusiasts from all over the country got to know first about the Map Maker competition.

Participating in the Campus Party allowed us to enjoy not only a warm welcoming from our Mexican audience but also learn about their sincere interest in improving the geographical data for their country. Our presentation included a demo on Google Map Maker main features like how to add points of interest, moderate changes from other users or edit driving directions.

There was time to discuss the brand new Google Maps Mexico (htttp://maps.google.com.mx/) and all the new & exciting possibilities Mexican users have in their country: looking for addresses, points of interest or local businesses, photos and reviews from other users, creating your own maps with My Maps, adding your business to the map through the Local Business Center or exploring one of the seven first Latin American cities available in Street View (Mexico City, Monterrey, Guadalajara, Puebla, Puerto Vallarta, Cancun, Playa del Carmen and Cozumel).

The Campus Party started in 1997 in Spain as an event for passionate Internet users and since then, it has become an essential meeting point for those interested in understanding new information technologies. Nowadays, there are four different yearly editions of the event at Valencia, São Paulo, Bogotá and Ciudad de México and almost 40.000 registered campusers worldwide.

Now, you can map the areas you know best in Latin America and possibly win a prize while you are at it! The Map Maker competition runs from November 14th until December 15th and all Latin American lovers are invited to participate. You can find all the details, Terms & Conditions and the entry form for you and your team members at http://mapmaker.google.com/competition.

We were also excited to announce the prizes for the winners of the Map Making competition. Winners will be based on those with the biggest volume and highest quality of edits and moderations during the Map Maker competition; among others, 100 laptops for a university or school from the winning city, a netbook for each member of the best team or a laptop for the top individual contributor. Winners will also enjoy an all included trip to the 2010 Super Mappers Conference, which will be an amazing opportunity to share your mapping passion with other top contributors and to get to know the Google team.

Crea tu mundo con Google Map Maker (in Spanish):

Because you know your neighborhood better than anyone, put it in the map and let the competition begin!

Posted by Genoveva Descalzo, Consumer Operations & Latin America Competition Manager

Google Earth 5.1 is now out of beta

Two months ago, we released the beta version of Google Earth 5.1.  The 5.1 release focused on one of our most important features: performance. The power of Google Earth is the seamless, immersive 3D fly-throughs that give you a sense of being "there," so we made a lot of adjustments under the hood to make flying around the globe faster and smoother. Today, after a few more tweaks and bug fixes, we're proud to say that we're ready to remove the beta tag.

This release also includes the Google Earth browser plug-in for Mac users, all in the same installation. Both Mac and PC users can explore all of the exciting Google Earth sites that our developers have made without having to mess around with another installation. You can search for universities,  or perhaps fulfill your secret fantasy of being the captain of a giant shipping vessel. Now these and many more Google Earth web applications are just a click away.

Download the latest version today at http://earth.google.com.

Posted by Peter Birch, Product Manager

Group on Earth Observations Portal enables you to see forests and the trees

Did you know that deforestation and forest degradation account for almost 20% of global warming emissions? That is more than all of the emissions from global transportation combined! Yet, it has historically been difficult to integrate avoided deforestation and degradation into climate policy plans. Why? In part, because it requires a great deal of collaboration and technical expertise to make sure that the right data are collected and made accessible and that the right techniques are available to analyze and verify the data.

Scientists, NGOs and politicians have been working on this problem for a while, but only recently has a truly comprehensive international approach been attempted. The Intergovernmental Group on Earth Observations (GEO), mobilizing national institutions, inter-governmental organizations, space agencies and the research community, has worked to facilitate access to satellite, airborne, and in situ data, and create a framework to establish technical standards for a global network of national forest carbon tracking systems. GEO, with the help of the Google Earth Outreach team, has worked to develop a forest carbon tracking portal which will become a central point for online collaboration and data collection.

Today, the first version of the portal was launched at a GEO plenary. The portal itself runs on Google Apps. I worked with GEO to create a web page that uses the Google Earth browser plugin and Appengine. The page shows satellite data provided by several space agencies, as well as the first maps that can be used to detect deforestation. It is structured to also show other types of data and maps as soon they become available. Here's the map of Mexico forest types within the portal interface. You can zoom in to see individual polygons and click on them to see the corresponding forest type.


You can read a more complete description of GEO FCT (Forest Carbon Task) here.

I'd like to thank numerous GEO FCT participants for their feedback, as well as other Googlers who've provided technical help. In particular, kudos to Roman Nurik for his original KML layer example, as well as to Matt Hancher and Rupert Breheny.

Posted by Simon Ilyushchenko, Site Reliability Engineer

New cities, features added to Building Maker

A few weeks ago, we launched Building Maker, a new way to model buildings in 3D for Google Earth. Since then, we've been excited by the community's enthusiastic response and today, we're announcing that eight new cities can now be modeled with Building Maker: Brussels, Rotterdam, Cologne, Dortmund, Boston, Los Angeles, Las Vegas, and San Jose.

We've also made some useful improvements to the product, including: the option of a Google Earth-view when you're choosing a location to model, the ability to save models as drafts before submitting them for review, and a new tool for tracing buildings.

For more information about this announcement, have a look at our post on the Google SketchUp blog.

Posted by Spudde Childs, Software Engineer

Online and offline globetrotting come together with voyage around the world

For the last three years I've been friends with the author of the Google Earth Blog, Frank Taylor. Besides being a Google Earth enthusiast, Frank is also quite the thrill-seeker; he didn't hesitate to let me fly his plane while he shot photos of the 2006 X-Prize Cup. However, Frank is about to embark upon a mission requiring even more bravery.

Frank is moving from virtual, to actual globetrotting - he and his wife are embarking on a five-year trip around the world in their sailboat, Tahina. But, Frank isn't leaving his passion for Google Earth on dry land. For the next five years, Frank will share maps of his GPS tracks, videos, 360-degree panoramic photos, aerial photography captured from a kite (see an example here), and more, with regular updates to Google Earth. You'll also be able to follow Frank's progress on his website, www.TahinaExpedition.com and, thanks to his partnership with National Geographic, on their site as well.

Frank has told us that one of the goals of his trip is to raise awareness about issues like climate change, pollution, coral reef disease, and the need to create more marine protection areas. We're excited to help him share his amazing trip with the world.

Frank, we wish you bon voyage and bonne chance, especially battling the sea, weather, boredom, pirates, and those sea monsters depicted on old maps.

Posted by Robin Ziegler, Community Development, Google Earth

An update to Google Earth for the iPhone

Just over one year ago, we unveiled Google Earth for the iPhone and iPod touch. Google Earth quickly became one of the most popular applications in the App Store, and after only six months, was the second most-downloaded free application overall. A big thank-you to the over 220,000 users have taken the time to write a review!

Today, we're proud to announce version 2.0 of Google Earth for iPhone. We've added some exciting new features, including the ability to view maps that you create on your desktop computer right from your iPhone, explore the app in new languages, and improved icon selection and performance.

View your maps wherever you go
Have you ever wanted to view a custom map with Google Earth on your iPhone? Well, now you can. By logging in directly to your Google Maps account, you can view the same maps that you or others have created, using the My Maps interface. Maybe you're on a trip and want to see where Tony Wheeler, the co-founder of Lonely Planet, most likes to travel. Or perhaps you're walking around looking for a restaurant and you want to see where world-famous chef Ferran Adrià likes to eat. All you have to do is click "Save to My Maps", open Earth on the iPhone, log in with the same account information, and voilà, you have your same collection of My Maps right in your pocket.



It's fun to create and view your own maps as well. Here's an example of a map that I created that shows the two attempts my friends and I made to summit Mount Ritter in the Sierra Nevada mountain range. As you can see, we didn't quite make it (the red line is the intended route, and the blue and green lines are our 2008 and 2009 attempts, respectively). Next year we'll get it for sure! I created this map by using the desktop version of Google Earth to read the tracks directly out of my GPS device, saving the resulting tracks as a KML file, and then importing into My Maps in Google Maps. You can learn more about My Maps here.

Browse businesses, photos, and places more easily

Browsing the world from the palm of your hand can be a thrilling experience, and viewing photos, Wikipedia articles, and place information is a great way to discover new parts of the globe. With the latest version of Google Earth for iPhone, we've made this even easier. Now, when you touch an icon, a small glow appears under your finger to let you know which icon you have picked. If your finger touches more than one icon, you'll be taken to a list of all icons, so you can select the one you are interested in.

New languages

We've also included new languages in this release, bringing the total to 31 languages from the original 18. The complete list of languages is: English (U.S), English (UK), French (France), German, Traditional Chinese, Simplified Chinese, Dutch, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese (Brazil), Portuguese (Portugal), Danish, Swedish, Finnish, Norwegian, Korean, Japanese, Russian, Polish, Turkish, Ukrainian, Arabic, Thai, Czech, Greek, Hebrew, Indonesian, Malaysian, Romanian, Slovak, and Croatian.

We hope you enjoy our latest release. Please note that the app will be rolling out around the world over the next twenty-four hours - if you don't see it immediately, be sure to check back soon. You can download Google Earth for iPhone here.

Posted by Peter Birch, Product Manager, Google Earth

Explore Valencia in 3D

[Cross-posted from the Official Google SketchUp Blog]
As of today, you'll be able to see Valencia, Spain in 3D by opening Google Earth and flying down to one of the most beautiful cities in Mediterranean Spain. When you have Google Earth open, make sure the "3D Buildings" layer is checked to get the full effect. Watch the video below to see a fly-through animation of Valencia.



If you want to see some impressive buildings in Valencia, we recommend flying down to these places:

• City of Arts and Sciences (open kmz file)
  
• Plaza de Toros (open kmz file)
  
• Saint Mary of Valencia Cathedral (open kmz file)

Posted by Nicole Drobeck, 3D Modeling Specialist