European Football Championship 2008 - Google Fan Map!

Posted by Caroline Stanghon, Google Europe

The European Championship kicks-off on 7th June 2008 in Switzerland and to celebrate Google is introducing some new features for football fanatics (that's soccer for Americans).

Fans will be able to keep track of the events of the tournament using the new Google European Football Championship 2008 Fan Map. Learn about the stadiums - the tournament kicks off at Basle's St Jakob Park and the final will take place at the Ernst Happel Stadium in Vienna on 29th June.



As well as stadium details the Fan Map includes vital information on the 16 squad lists and the tournament matches. To help organize your viewing schedule you can look up useful information on local bar and club venues where you might be able to watch matches on screen if you're not lucky enough to have tickets. You can also view photos of the surrounding areas to help you plan your football tour. Share your plans with friends and other fans by creating and uploading your own football map and discover what other fans are up to by checking out their personal European Championship fan maps.

The Google Fan Map is available in the UK, Germany, France, Spain, Italy, Netherlands, Czech Republic, Russia, Poland, Austria, Switzerland and Sweden.

As well as the Fan Map Google is celebrating Euro '08 with dedicated YouTube channels where you can upload and share videos to demonstrate your football skills, share football anecdotes and try out as the next sports journalist or commentator. You'll also be able to keep updated during the 23 days of tournament using the Euro' 08 iGoogle page with a fixtures gadget and a football game gadget to get you in the mood.

So what are you waiting for? Pick your team now!

Google Earth, meet the browser

Posted by Paul Rademacher, Technical Lead, Google Earth Browser Plug-in

When Google Maps was launched in 2005, few could have guessed the way map mashups would permeate the online world. Online maps had been just something you used to get directions or to find the ten nearest grocery stores. Google Maps and the Google Maps API proved that an online map was actually a rich canvas on which entire new applications could be built. Likewise, when Google Earth was launched, it revolutionized our view of the world, letting people fly around the planet at lightning speed and zoom in on rich high-resolution imagery, mountain ranges, and even 3D buildings. Yet there was a missing piece: there's never been a way to build your own 3D web applications using Google Earth, the way you can with Google Maps... until now.

Today, I'm happy to announce the release of the new Google Earth Browser Plug-in, which brings the full power of Google Earth to the web, embeddable within your own web site. Driven by an extensive JavaScript API, you can control the camera; create lines, markers, and polygons; import 3D models from the web and overlay them anywhere on the planet. In fact, you can even overlay your content over different planets, stars, and galaxies by toggling Sky mode, letting you build 3D Google Sky mashups. You can also enable 3D buildings with a single line of JavaScript, attach JavaScript callbacks to mouse events, fetch KML data from the web, and more. Our goal is to open up the entire core of Google Earth to developers in the hopes that you'll build the next great geo-based 3D application, and change (yet again) how we view the world.

If you already are one of the 150,000 Maps API sites, and now want to 3D-enable it, we've made that possible with just a single line of JavaScript: just add the new G_SATELLITE_3D_MAP map type to your MapsAPI initialization code, and (for most common usages of Maps API) your site will "automagically" support Google Earth via a button in the maps view, with all your existing 2D map code now functioning in 3D as well.

The Google Earth Browser Plugin is now live at http://code.google.com/apis/earth. Download it, learn from the online Developer Guide and samples, build something cool, and share it with the world!

Map of Santa Cruz Mountains wildfire

Posted by Elaine Filadelfo, LatLong Blog Team

The San Jose Mercury News has created a My Map to help those near the wildfire that's currently underway in the Santa Cruz Mountains. The map features live video and reader-submitted photos of the fire, along with information about the affected area and nearby evacuation centers.

View Larger Map

In their own words

Posted by Cathy Tang, Product Marketing Manager

We're always amazed by the innovative ways businesses use Google Maps to improve their product offering, whether it's creating heat maps to help users visualize home price trends or enabling them to search for that all-important coffee shop near their hotel. News sites are no exception; for example, KPBS and the Los Angeles Times used Google Maps back in October to report real-time on the spread of the San Diego wildfires.

I'm happy to announce that we've launched a video site to spotlight these organizations and their great work with Google Maps.

Check out what Kayak has done:

Kayak, Trulia and KPBS are the first three organizations we're featuring, but there'll be many more to come. Stay tuned!

Getting scientific with Google Earth

Posted by Ryan Falor, Systems Engineer

As part of Google's ongoing mission to make information more readily available we recently collaborated with the University of Colorado, Boulder to hold an event for scientists and researchers in the area. The event focused on finding ways to use KML and Google Earth to display and communicate scientific research with policy makers, students, and the public.

The event was hosted by the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics as part of the Electronic Geophysical Year program. As part of the event, scientists from over a dozen organizations including NCAR, NOAA, NSIDC, CIESEN, USGS, and the IPCC attended and presented their work.

Tutorial sessions for all skill levels were held to demonstrate tricks and techniques for displaying larges amounts of data, translating data formats, and using KML to describe complex data sets.

Dan Baker, the Director of the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics, explained that "[t]he interactions between the Boulder community and the Google team suggests that there is immense potential now and in the future for Google Earth and the KML tools to fill important analysis and display gaps." This was an exciting opportunity for Google engineers to interact with and hear from scientists and researchers directly in what will hopefully be only the first of many events to come.

Extra! Extra! Discover the world's news in Google Earth

Posted by Brandon Badger, Product Manager

The launch of Google News on Google Earth is a milestone in the evolution of the geobrowser. By spatially locating the Google News' constantly updating index of stories from more than 4,500 news sources, Google Earth now shows an ever-changing world of human activity as chronicled by reporters worldwide. Zoom into areas of personal interest and peruse headlines of national, regional and, when fully zoomed in, even the most local of interest. From school menus to global warming, there is now literally a world of information at your fingertips.


To activate the Google News layer, navigate to the "Layers" menu on the left-hand side of Google Earth. Expanding the "Gallery" node in the layers tree will expose the "Google News" layer. Check the box next to the Google News layer and start zooming into the places on the globe in which you're interested. Each story is represented by a Google News icon on the globe. Clicking on the news icon opens up the news story's snippet, along with links to learn more about the event.

Panoramio gathering in London

Posted by Liz Ericson, Product Marketing Manger

Since Panoramio became a part of the Google family last year, I continue to be impressed by the quality and coverage of the photos that Panoramio's users are constantly generating. But my favourite part about these images is that users can share their photos with the world, making it a richer place.

Last week, a party was held in Barcelona to celebrate the 5,000,000th photo shared on Panoramio. Contributors and friends met for an informal evening to celebrate the power of community. Below is a photo from one of the attendees, who is also a member:

from user Ulisses888

On May 22nd, members of the Panoramio team will be in London to celebrate again with the London photography community. If you're in town (and trust the weather to hold!) we invite you to join us at Google's London office for a BBQ and informal gathering of London's photo community. Space is limited to 75 people, so get yourself registered!