Tip of the week: Getting where you need to go

It has turned out to be a busy summer for the Google Maps directions team up in Seattle. Between last week's launch of walking directions, this week's redesign of the printed directions page, the redesigned Google Maps interface, and the recent Avoid Tolls feature, it's getting hard to keep up! We wanted to step back for a moment and give you an overview of the most common tasks for getting directions through Google Maps. Here's a brief tutorial from Ryan, one of the directions team engineers:

Posted by Elaine Filadelfo, Lat Long Blog Team

Avoiding tolls

This week we've added an 'Avoid tolls' option to Google Maps driving directions. When you are getting directions, click the 'Show options' link in the left panel of the screen and you'll see a new option to avoid tolls:

When half your wallet is already going toward gas, it's nice if you can save some money for ice cream instead of dumping it all off at the toll booth.

Posted by Dave Barth, Product Manager

Power to the print

Google Maps can help get you where you want to go, but let's face it, you can't be online all the time. Sometimes you really just need a good old-fashioned hard copy, so we're making it easier to print exactly the information you want: text directions, maps for any step, and - for the first time - Street View images.

Printing Directions with More Maps and Street View

Let's drive to a hotel in Tribeca from JFK Airport -- start off by clicking the Print link as usual.

Unfamiliar with the area? You can turn on a full-size overview map for your entire route and specific maps for each step.

Chances are, however, that you don't need that much detail for every single step, so hover directly over each step to turn that map on or off.

And if you follow directions best by using visual cues and landmarks, you can now add Street View images to your printed directions wherever coverage is available. Street View will show you what your step will look like as you approach it. For instance, below at step 14, we're on Chambers Street facing west and the directions tell us to turn right on to Church Street -- and we now have an idea of what that will look like.

You can turn on all available Street View images by selecting the "Street View" option at the top of the page. Or, you can hover over any step to see if Street View is available for that particular location, then click the "Street View" link to turn on the image for that step. If you want more control over the final print-out, simply grab and pan the image to reveal other landmarks - your Street View image will be printed at the viewing angle of your choice.

Printing Street View Directly
Now that we've arrived safely at our hotel, let's head uptown to the Natural History Museum. A printed map of the area with an image of the entrance might help us orient ourselves when we're on the street and away from the computer. Just pan your map over to the museum, and find the entrance in Street View. Click "Print" above the map to open the preview window. Finally, customize the layout to add or remove the map, and pan the Street View image to show exactly what you want. Print, pack and enjoy!

Posted by Andrew Gove and Jonathan Siegel, Software Engineers

New, blue, and better than ever

Less is more.

Before

After

With the new look for Google Maps, you can do all of the same things, but without the extra clutter. Find businesses (creamery near palo alto), addresses (6605 Delmar Blvd, St Louis, MO), and more (root beer in sf) from one search box. You might also notice the map is a tad bigger, and that it's easier to get full screen maps:


I hope the new design makes it easier to find everything you need. And incidentally, if you're ever in St. Louis, stop by 6605 Delmar. Particularly if you like root beer.

Posted by Neal Kanodia, Software Engineer

Memories of the Amazon

Last month a group of Googlers traveled to the Brazil at the invitation of Chief Almir Surui and the Amazon Conservation Team (ACT) to lead a series of workshops for members of his tribe and others who are interested in using technology to protect the Amazon rainforest. Technically we were the trainers, but the trip was an incredible learning experience for all of us. I hope you'll read the account of our trip we just posted on the Google Earth Outreach website, but there were more great stories and memories than could fit in one place. So I've asked some of my fellow Googlers to share some of their favorite moments here, starting with mine:

Fun with Gigapan
Gigapan is my favorite new toy, and made a great addition to this trip. With it you can create ultra-high resolution panoramas (up to 5000 megapixels!) that can be viewed on the web, or in Google Earth (look in the 'Gallery' Layer). Created by the Global Connection Project (a collaboration between NASA and Carnegie Mellon University), Gigapan is a powerful tool for promoting cultural exchange. Several units were donated to the Surui people and ACT so that they can document and share indigenous and Amazonian life with the world. While in the village of Lapetanha I mounted my digital camera on the robotic unit and took three panoramas of the village. If you explore the one embedded below, you can see some Googlers having lunch under a traditional thatched shelter, and others playing 'tag' with the Surui kids.



From Marcelo Quintella, Product Manager, Google Brazil:
"Seeing the Amazon from the plane is an amazing experience. It is incredible how the the forest does not start gradually. It's like a wall: on one side you have farms and city, and suddenly the forest is there, dense with trees. I think the forest used to start gradually, but with deforestation we only see this "wall effect."

From Mark Aubin, Software Engineer, Google Earth:
"Seeing two Amazonian Indians from opposite sides of the Amazon meet and embrace for the first time was a powerful moment for me. They communicated easily with smiles and embraces, but speaking proved quite challenging. Wuta (left), a cartographer for ACT Suriname, speaks Tiriyó. Chief Almir's father, Maribop Surui (right), speaks Tupi-Monde, the native language of the Surui. As Maribop spoke, Almir translated to Portuguese, then Vasco would translate to English, and then Skappie, Wuta's Surinamese colleague, would finally speak Tiriyó to Wuta. Despite this game of 'telephone' I could see from their faces that they shared a common bond that goes very deep." (Photo courtesy of Andrea Ribeiro)

From Amit Sood, Google Europe:
"As our training session started off, I scanned the room to gauge the students' levels of knowledge. It was clear that some students are more comfortable than others. A few minutes into the session I noticed a group of four women sitting quietly, staring at their monitors and not participating in the training exercises. I investigated, and learned that they were not familiar with the mouse or the other strange equipment that is such an everyday part of my life. A fellow instructor, Eduardo, focused his attention on them while I continued the training. At the end of the day I witnessed something that made me feel both proud and sad: all four women were chatting away on the Internet, searching, moving the mice as if it were something they had always known. Smiles all around, no sense of apprehension: The Net had found four more addicts."

There were no cameras around to capture that particular moment, but here is a nice one of Amit during the training (and me, on the far right):

If I've piqued your interest and you want to learn more, Rebecca Moore, Manager of Google Earth Outreach, has posted her thoughts about the trip on the Official Google Blog.

Posted by Sean Askay, KML Evangelist, Google Earth Outreach

Two new case studies

A couple months ago, I told you about a site we created to highlight organizations and their great uses of Google Maps. Because there are so many amazing examples out there, we've added two more case studies to our gallery.

Both The New York Times and Tripadvisor have created many innovative mashups -- from tracking The New York Times' Frugal Traveler on his national roadtrip, to mapping crime in New York City, to creating applications that millions of people use to rate restaurants. Take a look at this video to see what else Tripadvisor has done:

Visit our case study site to learn more about what these groups are doing with the Google Maps API. 

If you've created a great Google Maps mashup, we'd love to hear about it! Let us know by filling out this form, and you could even be featured in one of our upcoming case studies.

Posted by Cathy Tang, Product Marketing Manager

Pound the pavement

It's summer in the Northern Hemisphere, and when it's not too hot, it feels like a waste of gorgeous weather to get behind the wheel or hop in a cab. Doubly so when you're traveling to a city you'd love to explore, and you're pretty sure that you could walk from your hotel to the aquarium, if only you could figure out the way. You could try to use driving directions from Google Maps, but city centers are always a maze of one-way streets and no-left-turns. These driving directions from a local hotel to the Seattle Aquarium require numerous contortions in order to obey one-way streets and find a route under the freeway, taking you out of the way of where you could go by foot:

Starting today, you can tell Google Maps that you want walking directions, and we'll try to find you a route that's direct, flat, and uses pedestrian pathways when we know about them. Just get directions as you normally would. If you're going 10 km or less (some call this 6.2 miles), we'll show you a link that you can click to get "Walking" directions:

Our walking directions for the same hotel-to-aquarium route ignore the direction of one-way streets and make use of a pedestrian-only path under the freeway. This route is more than half a mile shorter than if you were to drive:

If public transit directions are available for Google Maps in your area, you'll seen an improvement to them as well. We used to point to your destination from the nearest transit station, but unless you could fly these directions needed some tweaking.

Now, we'll give you step-by-step directions for the portion of your trip on foot:

Walking directions are a new feature for Google, and while I'm pretty excited about it, there are some rough edges that compel us to release it in "beta." Walking directions work well for short trips in urban areas, but we don't always know if a street has a sidewalk, or if there's actually a special pedestrian bridge for crossing a busy street. There are still a lot of pedestrian pathways we don't know about, and they might save you some time if you find them. We're working on collecting new data on pedestrian pathways and on more effective ways to solicit your feedback, so that we can steadily improve this feature and get you where you need to be as efficiently as possible.

Walking is a great way to learn about a place, to get around, and to get some exercise when the weather is nice. You'll notice shops, parks, and public art that you've been accustomed to zooming past, and come away feeling like you've really gotten the insider's take on a neighborhood or city. Of course, don't get too caught up in enjoying the sights! Please be careful, and be particularly attentive in high traffic areas. Just like if you were driving, follow road signs and signals along your route, and use good judgment about streets that can't be walked (there are many useful websites containing safety tips for pedestrians).

Now if you'll excuse me, I think I'll get out of the office for twenty minutes and take a stroll.

Posted by Andy Schwerin, Software Engineer