Now's the time: register to vote

Political participation is at an all-time high this election season, and a record number of voters have already started to cast ballots -- a few even camped out in Ohio to be the first in line for early voting yesterday.

But roughly 1 in 4 Americans still aren't registered to vote, according to the most recent Census report. Now is the time -- voter registration deadlines are less than a week away in most states.

We're trying to help increase participation by making sure you have easy access to voting information. Google's Voter Info Map currently puts registration, absentee and early voting information in one place. (If you're on a phone, you can check out our mobile version at m.google.com/elections.)

We're working closely with state and local election officials, the Voting Information Project and the League of Women Voters to centralize official voting information. Stay tuned for more posts on the project and details on how you can help confirm your local polling place address.

Leonardo DiCaprio, will.i.am, Tobey Maguire, Forrest Whitaker and a few of their friends put together the first in a series of public service announcements to encourage young Americans to register to vote -- and they include a link to our Voter Info Map.

As the Internet plays a greater role in helping people participate in elections, we're excited to help out. And you can, too. Help make sure everyone is ready for election day by reminding your friends and family to register and vote.

Posted by Katie Jacobs Stanton, Google Elections Team

Diving into the Great Barrier Reef

[Cross-posted from the Official Google Australia Blog]

Australia is home to many geographical treasures, and the Great Barrier Reef has to be one of my favourites. There's a magnitude, a depth, and a diversity of marine life that just leaves me in awe of this ecosystem that stretches more than 2,500 kilometres along the Queensland coast -- from Bundaberg up to Cape York.

You can now use Google Maps to find and explore the largest reef system in the world. Through close collaboration with the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority, we now provide map data and updated satellite imagery of the islands, reefs, cays, and rocks in Google Maps.

You can plan holiday travels, scope out your dives, engage your students, and visualise the reef with greater interactivity. Of course you can also overlay your own information on the reef system and share with family, friends, or the world.

It's also my hope that in line with the goals of the International Year of the Reef 2008, the addition of the Great Barrier Reef to Google Maps will help strengthen awareness, improve understanding, and generate action to help conserve our international treasure.

If you're lucky enough to have visited the reef, enjoy reliving your memories. If you've not yet been, happy discovering.



Posted by Raul Vera, Head of Geo Products, Google Australia

Google Earth Team trains 'non-profiteers' at Bioneers

On October 20, immediately following the Bioneers Conference in San Rafael, CA, the Google Earth Outreach team will be conducting a special one-day intensive hands-on training on Google Earth and Maps. Google Earth Outreach helps non-profit and public benefit groups put their data online in a geographic context using Google Earth and Maps. Workshop participants will explore several exceptional examples of how Google's mapping technology has improved non-profit outreach and communication with the world, and has effectively impacted policy and public understanding of local and global issues.

There are no prerequisites! Both beginners and the technically savvy are encouraged to attend, as afternoon sessions will be divided into two groups to suit everyone's needs and answer everyone's questions. In these hands-on sessions, beginner participants will learn how to start building Earth or Maps applications and learn how to use these applications for internal planning, decision-making, and an overall mapping framework for their cause. More advanced users will take a deep dive into KML, learn how to make the most of Spreadsheet Mapper from its creator, learn how to integrate databases with Earth and Maps, and take a look at the Google Maps and Earth APIs. In both sessions, participants will actually map locations, create a Google Earth project, and learn how to promote Google Earth and Maps content online.

Space is limited so REGISTER NOW! Get more information and register here. All enrollment fees will support Bioneers, a non-profit organizations that uses practical solutions and innovative strategies for restoring Earth’s imperiled ecosystems and healing our human communities.

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

Geo Education's Alaska Trip Diary - Conclusion

Looking Back, Moving On

On Saturday morning, we gathered our belongings and headed to the Nome Airport for our flight back to Anchorage. Our load was somewhat lighter, since we'd given each high school a Gigapan camera kit so that they could add their own panoramic images to Google Earth. We'd gathered a few souvenir coffee cups, t-shirts, and postcards along the way, plus a colorful certificate I plan to frame and display proudly in my office: We now belong to the Arctic Circle Club, Point Barrow, Alaska (71° 17" North 156 ° 47" West) and are fully accredited, lifetime members of the club, "having crossed the Arctic Circle in the Great State of Alaska."

Our week in Alaska is now a blur of friendly faces, vast expanses of mustard-colored tundra, golden trees, snow-capped mountain peaks, sharp winds, crowded airports, and high school classrooms buzzing with activity. Three towns, 30 teachers, and about 600 students—we all worked hard. As teachers, the team from Google and University of Alaska Fairbanks probably gained as much or more knowledge than our students. Primary lessons learned include:

• Keep it simple. All of us ended up revising our original lesson plans, paring down the information to focus on the essentials and drive home one or two main concepts and skills.
• Make it relevant. Students responded best when we dealt with familiar places and data that related to their town or homes. They were thrilled to see the gold dredge in Nome waters, the rooftop of their house, the dog tracks at their family's subsistence camp. The Rumsey Historical map of Alaska in 1867, when the US purchased the territory from Russia, was even more interesting when we zoomed in on their town to see what was known about the geography at that time (topology was very accurate), and which places were already in existence with small settlements (Point Barrow is clearly listed; Nome is missing since it wasn't founded until the 1901 Gold Rush).
• Keep moving! It's hard to sit still, be quiet, and pay attention for 45 minutes. Our lessons needed to include a variety of activities and to actively involve the students with tasks to perform using Google Earth.
• Be ready to change and adapt on-the-fly. By Day Three, we were measurably more effective in the classroom than we'd been on Day One. We'd all gone back to the drawing board and revamped our presentations according to events of the first day. Every student and every class had different needs, personalities, and skill levels. Although many of us had prior teaching experience, this week enforced our admiration and respect for the classroom teacher.

I think we've returned to Google with even more enthusiasm for our mission to help teachers bring Google Earth into the classroom. Some of the areas we plan to focus on in the near future are

• Lessons plans - We want to expand our current work and post new lesson plans on our Geo Education website.
• Teacher training - We'd like to create additional training modules for teachers and present in-service sessions.
• Strengthening alliances with leaders in K-12 geography education - This trip was organized jointly with the University of Alaska Fairbanks Department of Geography. UAF plans to conduct follow-up surveys with the high schools we visited, which will help us evaluate the trip and plan future efforts in the field.

For now, we're all short on sleep, knee-deep in unread email, and very eager to post our photos in Picasa and Panoramio (check out a few of our favorite shots from Anchorage below). In the days ahead, we'll be checking back with our schools in Barrow, Kotzebue, and Nome. And we're eager to see the content our students post in the form of Gigapan images, Panoramio photos, and My Maps. Thank you, Alaska!

Posted by Josie Wernecke, Technical Writer, Google Earth

Tip of the Week: Finding your nearest transit station

In the spirit of this week's launch of transit info for New York City, here's a tip on how to get the most out of the trip-planning feature, especially if you live in a suburban or rural area without dense transit coverage. Try adding "station" to your search term; for example "huntington station" instead of just "huntington". This should help make sure we show any available routes, and is especially useful if you're commuting to a transit station by car, bike, or other means.

Posted by Raphael Leiteritz, Product Manager

Google Map Maker launched to 17 more countries in Asia

We are happy to announce the launch of Google Map Maker in seventeen more countries, extending to many countries in Asia such as the Philippines, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Iran, and Mongolia - covering close to half a billion more people. With every launch, we hope that Google Map Maker continues to empower users to bring their local knowledge and passion for their neighborhoods to the collective endeavor of creating great maps, especially in countries for which there is a lack of comprehensive local information.

We'd like to take this opportunity to celebrate the inspired efforts of our users from our very first launch and celebrate their contributions. Big kudos to our users in Pakistan, Vietnam, Cyprus and Iceland, who have mapped entire cities from scratch in many instances, and in other instances provided in-depth coverage of their neighborhoods by putting schools, places of worship, apartment buildings and their favorite businesses on the map. 

To shine the spotlight on our users' tremendous efforts, we've included a few timelapse videos below, showcasing how a few of these cities were mapped by our users over time. For more of these timelapse videos as well as Google Map Maker user help videos, check out the Google Map Maker YouTube channel.

Lahore, Pakistan

Nicosia, Cyprus

You can view the complete list of the 77 launched countries but here's a quick shout-out to our seventeen newest additions: Armenia, Azerbaijan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Cambodia, Iran, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Laos, Mongolia, Myanmar (Burma), Nepal, Philippines, Sri Lanka, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan.

Posted by Lalitesh Katragadda, Software Engineer and Sanjay Jain, Product Manager

Flooding in the Kosi

The monsoon floods along the River Kosi continue to challenge the resources of the relief agencies in the Bihar region of India and in Nepal.   To assist with the relief efforts, and to keep people around the world up to date, we have pulled together some mapping resources.

Fresh Imagery

German Aerospace Center (DLR) has published some maps and images of the flooded area, and these have been processed into KML image overlays for easy access by anyone. To view them in Google Earth, click here to download the KML file. This KML contains all flooding related images, and will be updated as more become available.  To get the latest, simply right-click the folder in Google Earth and select "refresh".  

The initial KML contains imagery provided by the German Aerospace Center (DLR) from the TerraSAR-X StripMap and ScanSAR data, acquired on 30th August and 1st September, 2008.  It also contains imagery for Patna city provided by GeoEye from their Ikonos satellite, acquired on 11 September, 2008.

Maps and Other Resouces

The Google Map Maker team has been working with NGOs to update maps of the region.  We encourage people who know the region or have current maps to help edit the online map at: mapmaker.google.com.

The Google India team has put together a resource page that links to some of the relief agencies working in the region. 

Posted by Ujaval Gandhi, Senior GIS Specialist and Sanjay Jain, Product Manager