Map Maker's Global Mapping Competition

Let the mapping begin! Google's first Global Mapping Competition runs from December 15 - January 31, 2010. During this period, the mapper who adds the most universities, schools, hospitals, and medical clinics with high quality into Google Map Maker will win a $50,000 UNICEF donation to benefit the country of their choice for work empowering young people through technology. Google Map Maker is available in more than 170 countries and allows users to become "citizen cartographers" by adding and editing map features. To foster participation from coutnries around the world, we have versions of the site in several languages: English, Spanish, French, Russian, Romanian, and Vietnamese.

"We are delighted that Google is supporting UNICEF's efforts to

help build a world fit for children. We know that mapping is a proven method to enhance community development. Google Map Maker is a powerful tool to create better situational awareness for both young people and communities at large. It will enable organizations like ours to better deliver services, respond to crises and adapt to change," said Gerrit Beger, leader of UNICEF's innovation drive focusing on youth.

For your mapping additions to get published on Google Map Maker and eventually make it into Google Maps, other users will have to moderate (approve or deny) your changes. You will, in turn, moderate others' changes, which is why it's often helpful to map with a partner or in a small team. Moderation quantity and quality are also an important criteria for judging competition entries so don't forget to moderate as much as you map.

This global competition comes on the heels of the Latin America mapping competition that ended yesterday. More than 50 teams from all over the world registered for the Latin America mapping competition, and we've seen more than 500% mapping activity increases for several Latin American countries during the competition period. We're very excited about this participation level and are looking forward to announcing the competition winners on January 8, 2010.



The Global Mapping Competition, kicking off this week, was first announced the Global Mapping Competition at an event organized jointly by the United Nations and Google at Google's office in New York. During that event, 80 United Nations delegates from more than 20 UN agencies, including UNICEF, met with various Google product teams to explore how Google's wide array of products and services can further the UN mission and help foster innovation and new thinking.

We invite mappers everywhere to register for the competition and map for a good cause over the holidays and into 2010.

Posted by Jennifer Mazzon, Maps Community Organizer

Mapping India on Google's Internet Bus

Throughout December, Google Map Maker team members are touring around India with Google's Internet Bus to show people how to create maps of their local villages and towns. The Internet Bus Project is an initiative to educate people about the Internet, and how it can be beneficial to their lives. The customized Internet-enabled Google bus travels to towns and cities across India and takes the Internet experience to the people.

interior of the bus

When the Google Internet Bus last week made its grand entrance into the province of Kerala (after having completed the journey through Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka), the paradise of waving palms, sprawling backwaters and wide sandy beaches, bus visitors were able to view their home and neighborhood and use Google Map Maker to map their home towns and favorite destinations.

You can see other pictures of this leg of the Internet Bus tour here. The bus is traveling through the following cities throughout December:

• Kochi/Ernakulam - December 5, 6, 7, 8
• Allapuzha - December 10, 11
• Kollam - December 12, 13
• Thiruvananthapuram - December 14, 15, 16, 17
• Thrissur - December 19, 20
• Pallakad - December 21, 22
• Kozhikode - December 23, 24, 25
• Thalassery - December 26, 27

If you are from Kerala or visiting Kerala during this time, hop along for the ride and discover the art of map making on the Google Internet Bus!

Posted by Ajith Kumar, Google Map Maker Program Manager

Go beyond just a few stars: See what makes a business shine

Today, we launched a new feature to rank and show distinguishing aspects for businesses on their Place Pages. By taking a look at a Place Page, you can quickly get a better sense of what people are saying about a business and view relevant snippets about each specific aspect (say, the price, the service, or the infamous deep dish pizza) from all over the web. You can then dive deeper by going to the source and reading the full reviews. The new color-coded bars will give you a simple numeric overview of the how the business rates on each feature.

Let's say your in-laws are visiting over the holidays and you want to take them to a nice dinner while they're in town. You've heard that a new restaurant has great steak, but you want to be sure the ambiance and decor meet your standards for a special occasion.

You can check Peter Luger Steakhouse Place Page to see what reviewers are saying:

Or what if you want to get your sister a spa day for the holidays -- you may want to know if the spa specializes in massages, facials, or pedicures -- and of course, you want to make sure it rates very high on service to make sure she's pampered.

Here's what people are saying about Kabuki Springs and Spa:

Looks like a great place to get a stone massage!

In order to help you find the best of what people are saying, we've improved our ability to find reviews of places, searching more quality sources of information from across the web. We look for pages that talk about particular places and analyze content on those pages that express a sentiment (i.e., a positive or negative comment) about that place. We display snippets of the sentiment to help you discover the best sources of information about the specific topic of interest.

Place Pages help to organize and make accessible all the world's information about a particular place. We hope that these sentiment snippets will help make your browsing - and maybe even your holiday planning - a little easier.

Posted by Andrew McCarthy and Diego Nogueira, Local Search team

More information, fewer clicks

Earlier this year, we proclaimed that "1000 is the new 10" when we began showing small dots on the map for all your local search results. This has been a great way to get a better understanding of the density of certain listings - for example, figuring out where the theater district is in a city you want to visit - but sometimes you may realize that one of the dots seems to be in the exact spot you'd like to go. We've now added the ability to hover over items on the map to quickly get more information about a place without clicking.

For example, if you search for "blueberry pancakes in san francisco", you'll find that there are a lot of options available. Hovering your mouse over these results now gives a tooltip, giving you enough information to let you decide if you want to click to investigate further. When hovering over a cluster of multiple results, a list of everything underneath the mouse pointer is shown, including the number of stars for a business listing. This makes exploring large sets of search results quicker and easier.

Here's some information about an option in Russian Hill:

And here are two options next to each other near Lombard Street:
This also works for many other things on the map, including transit stations, photos, and more. Next time you're searching, just hover and discover!

Posted by Michael Bürge, Software Engineer

Exploring climate solutions: One tour at a time

As part of the lead-up to COP15, we have been releasing a series of Google Earth tours that illustrate climate change issues and solutions. Many of these include tours created by NGOs, which guide you through their efforts to tackle some of the impacts of our changing climate on human life, wildlife, and our environment.
Recently, we have added six new tours to the series, and they cross a wide breadth of issues, including climate change science, human health, renewable energy, wildlife migration and ocean conservation.

View them now at www.google.com/cop15.

• In Projecting Future Climate Change, Stephen Schneider, climate scientist and professor at Stanford University, introduces us to the factors that affect future climate change, how scientists make projections, and what we can do to prevent the worst impacts.

• In Climate & Health in Africa, the International Research Institute for Climate & Society (IRI) guides us through some of the work they are doing to project where meningitis may impact humans in the future under a changing climate, and illustrates their work with groups on the ground in Africa.

• In Harnessing Coal River Wind in Appalachia, the Coal River Wind Project describes a more renewable energy option -- wind farms -- in the Appalachian Mountains that they are fighting for as an alternative to mountaintop removal for coal mining.

• In Greenfreeze and SolarChill, Greenpeace describes Greenfreeze, a market-proven, revolutionary environmentally-friendly refrigeration technology that doesn't release greenhouse gases. The SolarChill project brings solar-powered fridges to Africa for food storage, and a refrigeration method that meets the WHO standards for vaccine storage.
  
  

• In Protecting the Arctic Ocean, Oceana guides you through the problems that the Arctic Ocean is facing due to climate change, and introduces you to the positive changes that have been made due to policies protecting certain parts of the Arctic from commercial fishing and other activities.
  
  
• In Saving North America's Wildlife in a Warmer World by Freedom to Roam, learn about wildlife corridors for some of the continent's flagship species to enable them to migrate north and to higher altitudes as the globe warms.

Get started now - go to www.google.com/cop15 and pick a tour.

Posted by Karin Tuxen-Bettman and Tanya Keen, Google Earth Outreach

The Motor City goes 3D

[Cross-posted from the Official Google SketchUp Blog]

A few of us on the SketchUp team either have roots in Detroit or grew up there, so we're especially happy to announce that Detroit, Michigan as been added in 3D to Google Earth. From sports venues like Joe Louis Arena (home of the Red Wings) and Comerica Park (new home of the Tigers), to great watering holes and eateries, like The Old Shillelagh and the legendary Lafayette Coney Island - home of the world's best 2am coney dog - they are all there in 3D.



Being able to cruise through Detroit in 3D reminds us of how much history this great US city has. We're excited that users around the world will now be able to discover this city virtually, for themselves.


Posted by Chris Dizon and Steve Dapkus, Google SketchUp Team

Mars in Google Earth imagery update

We just launched new imagery and terrain for Mars in Google Earth! If you have the Google Earth plugin installed, you can view the updated areas highlighted in red (imagery) and white (terrain) below. Alternatively, you can download this KML, for viewing while using Mars in Google Earth.

The updates are from the High Resolution Stereo Camera aboard the European Space Agency's Mars Express orbiter. With these updates, nearly half of the martian surface is covered by imagery having a nominal resolution of 25 meters per pixel. As such, there are many exciting, newly-visible surface features to see. We've indicated some of these sights with color-coded arrows on the globe below:

Red arrow: Layered deposits on the floor of Hebes Chasma.

White arrow: Voluminuous lava flow fields adjacent to, and associated with, the Tharsis volcanoes Ascraeus and Pavonis Mons.

Blue arrow: New imagery of Olympus Mons' Aureole and the huge glacier-like structures along its north-west flank.

Yellow arrow: New images of the Shalabanta Valles (a deep canyon) section north of Orson Welles Crater showing huge landslides that occurred with such force that the debris (having an area the size of Chicago) flowed half-way up the other side of the canyon.

Green arrow: Dust and ice layers that comprise one of the Mars' most active geologic features, the ice cap of the north polar plateau, Planum Boreum.


Imagery and terrain updates are noted with a red and white frame, respectively

As a reminder, you can view Mars in Google Earth by clicking the 'planets' button on the toolbar:


Click here to find out more about Mars (and Moon!) in Google Earth.

You can also share your cool new imagery finds with us using Twitter! After looking at the updates in the viewer above, tweet your cool finds and add the #GEarthIMG hashtag to your tweets.

Posted by Eric Kolb, Geo Data Strategist