VerticalGeo

Below is a re-post of what appeared on the Google LatLong Blog on January 26, 2012.  We enjoy posting bicycle friendly maps for St Clair County, Illinois on our website and it is great to see that Google Maps has become even more deeply dedicated to helping out bicyclists with legends for their bicycle maps.  Great post by Dave Kim, Product Marketing Manager, Google Maps

New Biking Directions Legend

The Google Earth Blog contained this post back in April. I totally missed it. I believe the difficulty in sharing Google Earth data is one of the major problems the system has. Looks like Google is trying to address that problem with Google Earth Builder, a cloud-based storage system for Google Earth data that stores data in a similar way to Google Docs. Here is the Post by Mickey Mellen:

April 21, 2011

More about Google Earth Builder

We mentioned Google’s new “Google Earth Builder” in our wrap-up post yesterday, but decided that it deserved a bit more attention.

In a nutshell, Google Earth Builder is a new way for companies to share their vast repositories of geo data. Rather than needing to configure servers and support a local infrastructure, they can simply upload their data to Google Earth Builder and share it that way. It uses a sharing model quite similar to Google Docs (private, individual access, or public), and the data streams extremely quickly.

The implications of this could be huge. Not only will it be a great solution for large corporations and government entities, but provides a way for any company to generate data for a specific client (such as custom 3D buildings) without necessarily having to post them for the world to see.

An interesting point that Google made is that this data will be easily accessible to anyone (with permission) from their desktop, laptop, smartphone, tablet, etc. That makes sense, but currently the tablet and smartphone clients for Google Earth likely can’t handle this kind of data. Either their comments have been misinterpreted by everyone (including cnet and others), or we’re hopefully looking at some nice updates to their mobile products in the coming months.

They keys that Google seems to be pushing with this is that it’s easy and fast. Both of this seemed clearly evident in the live demo that they provided on stage yesterday. You can watch that video demonstration below:

There were a few fun facts in that video: There have been more than 700 million downloads of Google Earth and that people use Maps and Earth for more than one million hours every day. Wow!

The fact that Google Earth Builder isn’t due out for a few months (some sites say July, Google says Q3), means that it will only be getting faster and smoother. This could be a brilliant tool to help large entities deal with their vast amounts of data, and we’ll find out once it launches later this year.

On November 30 the Google Earth Blog released the following post:

Seamless Topographic USGS maps

A few months ago we showed you Matt Fox’s excellent topographic maps of New Zealand, which were quite impressive. Over the years he’s had many requests to create similar maps with seamless USGS topographic data, and now he’s starting to roll them out on his site.

As you can see from the image above, the maps are remarkably sharp. The are distributed through a rather unique system; rather than just downloading a KMZ file, you download an installation program that adds the maps to your PC as Super Overlays. To try it for yourself, Matt is offering a free download of the San Francisco area, available here.

For comparison, you can check out our “best topo map interface” post from 2006 (a free service of USGS topo maps for the US). While they were impressive five years ago, the new maps are significantly higher quality.

For more, be sure to visit Google Earth Library and read Matt’s full blog entry.

Looks like a very interesting addition to the Google Earth Library, and one that will be very useful going forward.

The Google LatLong Blog today had this great post about the most current technology adoption for Google Maps:

“Where am I?” and “What’s around me?” are two questions that cartographers, and Google Maps, strive to answer. With Google Maps’ “My Location” feature, which shows your location as a blue dot, you can see where you are on the map to avoid walking the wrong direction on city streets, or to get your bearings if you’re hiking an unfamiliar trail. Google Maps also displays additional details, such as places, landmarks and geographical features, to give you context about what’s nearby. And now, Google Maps for Android enables you to figure out where you are and see where you might want to go when you’re indoors.

When you’re inside an airport, shopping mall or retail store, a common way to figure out where you are is to look for a freestanding map directory or ask an employee for help. Starting today, with the release of Google Maps 6.0 for Android, that directory is brought to the palm of your hands, helping you determine where you are, what floor you’re on, and where to go indoors.

Detailed floor plans automatically appear when you’re viewing the map and zoomed in on a building where indoor map data is available. The familiar “blue dot” icon indicates your location within several meters, and when you move up or down a level in a building with multiple floors, the interface will automatically update to display which floor you’re on. All this is achieved by using an approach similar to that of ‘My Location’ for outdoor spaces, but fine tuned for indoors.

Mall of America in Minneapolis before and after, with a floor selector

San Francisco International Airport before and after, with 3D tilt

We’ve initially partnered with some of the largest retailers, airports and transit stations in the U.S. and Japan, including:

• Mall of America, IKEA, The Home Depot, select Macy’s and Bloomingdale’s, Daimaru, Takashimaya and Mitsukoshi locations and more. Watch an IKEA demo here.
• Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport (ATL), Chicago O’Hare (ORD), San Francisco International Airport (SFO) and Narita International (NRT), among others.
• JR and Tokyu Corporation

For a detailed list of participating locations, please visit our help center. And this is just the start–we’ll continually add new indoor maps to public buildings across the world. If you’re a business owner interested in getting your location’s floor plan included in Google Maps, visitmaps.google.com/floorplans.

We’re thrilled Google Maps continues to provide you with new and helpful perspectives—whether you’re rushing through the airport or finding your way around a mall. To visit our website and learn more about indoor Google Maps and other features, start here.

Posted by Brian McClendon, VP of Engineering, Google Earth and Maps

Strange turn of events in my last two blog posts.  In this post Google announces the introduction of usage limits on their Google Maps API.  This post comes just after the ESRI Insider post highlighting ESRI’s effort to offer free web-based GIS For Everyone by Anyone.  Google has made their pile of money through advertizing while offering free services to their many users, and ESRI has made their pile of money through very high priced, but incredibly good, mapping software.  These two posts are opposite of what I would expect.  Kudos to ESRI on making crowd sourcing and community mapping a new part of their corporate direction.  They have talked about it for years and now they have done something about it.  Congrats to Bern Szukalski and the ArcGIS Online Team.

Google has made some changes to their Google Maps API Terms of Service; adding usage limits to the free API and beginning to charge for usage that exceeds the limits.  I hope they will reverse this policy now that ESRI’s ArcGIS Online offers capabilities similar to those of Google Maps.  Competition is a good thing, something that Google excels at.  Who would have thought with the history of both companies that Google would be charging for a service similar to one that ESRI offers for free.

Here is the entire GeoDeveloper Blog post as written by Thor Mitchell:

When the Maps API Terms of Service were updated in April of this year we announced that usage limits would be introduced to the Maps API starting on October 1st. With October upon us, I’d like to provide an update on how these limits are being introduced, and the impact it will have on your Maps API sites.

The usage limits that now apply to Maps API sites are documented in the Maps API FAQ. However no site exceeding these limits will stop working immediately. We understand that developers need time to evaluate their usage, determine if they are affected, and respond if necessary. There are three options available for sites that are exceeding the limits:

• Reduce your usage to below the limits
• Opt-in to paying for your excess usage at the rates given in the FAQ
• Purchase a Maps API Premier license

To assist in evaluating whether your site is exceeding the usage limits we will shortly be adding the Maps API to the Google APIs Console. Once available you will be able to track your usage in the APIs Console by providing an APIs Console key when you load the Maps API. If you find that your site does exceed the usage limits each day you can opt to pay for your excess usage by enabling billing on your APIs Console project. We will then start billing excess usage to your credit card when we begin enforcing the usage limits in early 2012.

For very popular sites Maps API Premier is likely to be a more cost effective option. It also offers a number of additional benefits, including terms that permit for-fee and internal use, enterprise technical support, a Service Level Agreement, fixed and invoiced annual pricing, and increased quotas for the Maps API Web Services. For more information on how Maps API Premier could benefit your application please contact the Sales team using this form.

We will announce the availability of the Maps APIs in the APIs Console on this blog later this quarter, and provide more details on how to set up an APIs Console account and update your Maps API application with an APIs Console key. We will also provide at least 30 days notice on this blog before enforcement of the usage limits and billing for excess usage begins.

We understand that the introduction of these limits may be concerning. However with the continued growth in adoption of the Maps API we need to secure its long term future by ensuring that even when used by the highest volume for-profit sites, the service remains viable. By introducing these limits we are ensuring that Google can continue to offer the Maps API for free to the vast majority of developers for many years to come.

Posted by Thor Mitchell, Product Manager, Google Maps API

The Google LatLong Blog had the following post by Bernd Steinert today:


This month’s update to 45° imagery in Google Maps includes U.S. and international imagery.

Let’s just begin with Graz. It’s the second largest city of Austria (behind Vienna), located in Steiermark. It is a typical Austrian town with a vivid university life, a charming historic center mostly of the Gothic period and is significantly influenced by mediterranean climate which manifests being among the sunniest places in Austria due to its location at the southeastern rim of the Alps. Arnold Schwarzenegger – bodybuilding world champion, movie star and former governor of California – was born and raised nearby.

Brian McClendon, VP of Google Maps and Earth posted a great overview of Google Maps new Graphics Library feature today on the Google LatLong Blog:

You’re now one step closer to experiencing and interacting with a 3D mirror of the real world within your browser with Google MapsGL. Google MapsGL takes Google Maps and harnesses the power of Web Graphics Library (WebGL) to create far richer visuals and animations.

WebGL is a new technology that brings hardware-accelerated 3D graphics to the browser without additional installed software. With WebGL your maps experience is much better with 3D buildings, smoother transitions between imagery and the ability to instantly “swoop” into Street View without a plugin.

Starting today, if you’re using supported browsers (such as Chrome 14+ or Firefox Beta) with compatible video cards, you can opt in to the early beta release. Visit maps.google.com and click “Try it now,” or visit maps.google.com/gl to learn more.

We’ve been using WebGL to create experiences like our Chrome experiments “3 Dreams of Black” and “All is Not Lost,” which happen right in the browser. Previously, such sophisticated 3D graphics have only been possible on traditional desktop applications and have required manual installation. WebGL ushers in a whole new generation of graphics on the web, and with that, we can begin to redefine the expectations of an online map.

Check out Chrome Experiments WebGL for more WebGL-powered applications, and opt in to Google MapsGL to begin using the next generation of mapping today.

Google posted this great video and update last week on their GeoDeveloper’s Blog about the Google Maps API:

http://googlegeodevelopers.blogspot.com/2011/09/geo-apis-summer-learning-series-map.html

Great stuff.

SlashGeo conducted a poll to find out which platform people preferred with regard to the ESRI ArcGIS Online vs Google Earth Builder debate.  The results are totally split.  Here are the results of the poll:

ESRI ArcGIS Online will prevail:  24%

Google Earth Builder will prevail: 24%

Both will be successes in their own way: 42%

Microsoft Bing Maps will rule them both: 2%

VerticalGeo is an avid user of both ESRI and Google Products.  This poll should have been a little more explicit in the question it asks.  ArcGIS Online and Google Earth both both do a great job with the presentation tier when producing geospatial data.  Neither do a very good job with the data authoring tier when producing geospatial data.  As far as VerticalGeo is concerned the ESRI suite of software products can’t be beat with it comes to authoring geospatial data.  The ESRI suite of software tools though is very expensive.  I believe there will soon be a proliferation of open-source geospatial creation and presentation tools that will compete against both ESRI and Google Earth.  What we really need if we want to develop a geospatial powerhouse are the robust tools that ESRI provides with the open source pricetag.  VerticalGeo will be venturing into the open source market to help provide just that.  We intend to combine cloud computing, open source tools for geospatial data authoring and maintenance, with a top notch presentation layer, all with a web-based interface, for free, in an attempt to help guild a community of geospatial users that will have a new alternateive to the ESRI vs Google Earth debate.

Thanks to Google’s LatLong Blog for posting this on Friday:

Getting directions is one of the most popular features on Google Maps, whether it be for driving, walking, biking or transit. Today, we are launching a new feature that allows you to bring your upcoming trip to life, by allowing you to preview your route in 3D.

Let’s say you’re planning a road trip down the beautiful coast of California’s Highway 1 and want to be able to see what the route really looks like. California’s rugged coastline is not to be missed, but the top-down view really doesn’t give you a good sense of what this majestic terrain is like. Using the 3D preview; however, you can get aerial view of the route, as if you were in a helicopter flying above the road.

To preview your own route, it is as simple as clicking on a button. Start by entering your starting point, destination, and mode of transport like any directions; in this case, driving directions from ‘Carmel CA to Big Sur CA.’ Then, just click on the “3D” play button. The map will switch to Earth view and automatically start flying you along your recommended route.

You can pause the flight at any time by clicking anywhere in the 3D view or on the pause button in the lower left. While the flight is paused, you can explore the surrounding area in 3D by clicking and dragging the map. When you are ready to resume the flight, simply click on the play button in the lower left of the 3D view.

To help you keep track of which step you are on, the current leg of the trip is highlighted in the left panel. You can also jump to a different part of the trip by clicking on a different step.

You can get back to 2D mode by clicking on the “2D” button in the left panel at any time.

We hope you enjoy your flight.

Paul Yang, Google Maps engineer