Belgian Fries in Google Street View

Nikolaas, a reader of this blog, noticed that Pegman - the Google Street View icon - looks different for Belgium. When you try to move the icon, you'll notice that Pegman got some French fries.


"Occasionally Pegman dresses up for special events and occasions, or is even joined by peg friends in Google Maps. Some of these icons stay in Google Maps for specific locations, such as the skiing Pegman at Whistler Blackcomb Mountain and the penguin for Street View imagery of Half Moon Island, Antarctica," explains Google.

Street View was launched two months ago in Belgium, but it's not clear why Pegman looks different. Maybe because French fries originate from Belgium.

{ Thanks, Nikolaas. }

Highlight Areas in Google Maps

Rodney G., a reader of this blog noticed a new feature in Google Maps. "When you search for a city or a county or a ZIP Code, Google Maps now highlights the boundaries of what you searched for. If you are zoomed out, the whole area is shaded pink. If you zoom in a bit, it has just a big pink border with grey shading. Zoom in even more and it's a dashed boundary with grey shading."




It's a really useful feature and the nice thing is that's enabled by default. Just search for a country, a city, a state or a ZIP code and Google Maps will automatically highlight it.

{ Thanks, Rodney. }

Google Maps in WebGL

If you like the Google Maps app for Android and you wonder why it looks better than the desktop Google Maps, there's a new experimental interface that uses WebGL and it's available in Chrome 14+ and Firefox 8+. If you click "Want to try something new?" in the Google Maps sidebar and enable MapGL, you'll see a completely new Google Maps interface that shows 3D buildings and no longer uses Flash for Street View.


"We've rebuilt Google Maps from the ground up. Our enhanced Maps provide improved performance, richer 3D graphics, smoother transitions between imagery, 45° view rotation, easier access to Street View and more," explains Google.




Google says that the new interface requires Chrome 14 or Firefox 8 (beta), Windows Vista/7 or Mac OS 10.6+ or Linux and a graphics card that supports WebGL. I've tested in Chrome 14 and it works well: the animations are smooth and Google Maps looks more like a native app.

Google Maps Adds Layer Previews

Google Maps replaced the static icons for the satellite and street maps layers with interactive previews of the layers. I'm not sure if they're useful, but they look a lot better than the icons.

Corey, a reader of this blog, found a better way to describe the new feature: "When you're looking at a map in normal view, the satellite view button shows what the satellite view looks like on the little square where the button is and acts like a window to satellite view like you're looking through the regular map and it follows the map as it moves. I thought that was pretty cool."



{ Thanks, Corey. }

Transliteration Layer in Google Maps

Google Maps has a new layer that "switches between the labels in the local language and transliterated text". It's enabled by default, but you can disable it by mousing over the layer box and unchecking "English". Until now, both versions were displayed and the map looked cluttered.

Short URLs, Back in Google Maps

After a brief disappearance, short URLs are back in Google Maps. This was one of the most popular experiment from Google Maps Labs and it's now a standard feature. Just click the link button next to the search box and click the "short URL" checkbox. The new short URLs use g.co, a domain recently acquired by Google. All the URLs that start with "http://g.co" send you to Google domains, while http://goo.gl/ continues to be a public URL shortener.





Google Maps is the service that generates very long URLs with many unnecessary parameters, so the short URLs are useful not just for posting a Twitter message or sending a text message, but also for writing an email, a comment on a blog post or for adding a Google Maps URL to a document. Google Maps also needs to automatically change the URL from the address bar, so that you don't have to use the permalink button.



{ via Google LatLong }

Weather Layer in Google Maps

Google Maps added a layer for weather. Just mouse over the satellite box and select "weather" from the list of layers.



"When zoomed out, you'll see a map with current weather conditions from U.S. Naval Research Lab. And, if you look closely, you can also tell if it's day or night around the world by sun and moon icons. Enabling the weather layer also gives you an instant weather report for friends and family living around the world," informs Google. Weather reports are powered by weather.com and include information about the current conditions (humidity, wind speed, temperature) and a 4-day forecast.







The nice thing about Google Maps layers is that you can combine them. For example, you can enable both the terrain and the weather layers, like you can see in the screenshot above.

Google Maps Removes Third-Party Reviews

Google Places pages have been updated to use the new Google+ interface, but the biggest change is that Google dropped the reviews from third-party sites like Yelp, Menupages or Booking.com, while only relying on the reviews from Google users. "Based on careful thought about the future direction of Place pages, and feedback we've heard over the past few months, review snippets from other web sources have now been removed from Place pages. Rating and review counts reflect only those that've been written by fellow Google users, and as part of our continued commitment to helping you find what you want on the web, we're continuing to provide links to other review sites so you can get a comprehensive view of locations across the globe," explains Google.

To encourage users to share their feedback and improve place pages, Google added a button for uploading photos and made the button for writing reviews more prominent. It's clear that Google Maps will become even more social and will integrate with Google+, so the reviews from your social circles will be more relevant and will help you find a nice restaurant or a fancy hotel.


While Google Hotpot added a lot of new reviews from Google users, there are still many local business that don't have reviews. What's more, the reviews from Google users are usually short, superficial and often they only include a rating.


Search Engine Roundtable speculates that Google removed third-party reviews because of Yelp's complaints. "We are unhappy with the way Google uses our users' review on its Places page. However, there is no solution to the problem… Google's position is that we can take ourselves out of its search index if we don't want them to use our reviews on Places," said Yelp's CEO. After an unsuccessful attempt to acquire Yelp, Google launched Places, Hotpot and made Google Maps results more prominent in the list of Web search results. Yelp felt that its reviews improved a competing service and asked Google to remove Yelp reviews from Google Places. Google decided that it's a good idea to blackmail Yelp and tie the Web search index with the Places reviews (Google News has a different policy and the same goes for Product Search). A such a terrible practice made Google look like a huge company that used its power to crush rising startups.

TechCrunch found that "Yelp made a presentation to a roomful of state attorneys general at the Conference of Western Attorneys General about regulatory issues in search. On that panel was Vince Sollitto, VP of Giverment Affairs for Yelp, along with Dana Wagner, a Google lawyer, and well-known antitrust attorney Gary Reback. Yelp's presentation was titled 'Google Places: A Threat To Innovation and Competition.' The basic argument was that Google strong-armed review websites into providing their content for free, and then gave their own Places product preferential treatment in search."

Instead of removing the reviews from Yelp, Google yanked all third-party reviews and made Google Places less useful. There are still links to other review sites and there's still a small excerpt from a review in the list of search results, but Google Maps is no longer a comprehensive source of reviews, while Bing Maps looks more attractive. Google Maps ratings no longer use data from third-party reviews, but I wouldn't be surprised to see that Google still uses these reviews to rank results.

Offline Maps and Transit Navigation in Google Maps for Android

The Google Maps app is a good reason to buy an Android phone. No other Google Maps version offers 3D maps, free turn-by-turn navigation, voice-guided navigation for walking directions or offline caching. No other Google Maps app is updated so frequently with cool features.

For instance, Google Maps 5.7 for Android combined Google Maps Navigation with transit directions and introduced an innovative feature called Transit Navigation. "Now, GPS turn-by-turn (or in this case, stop-by-stop) navigation is available for public transit directions in 400+ cities around the globe with Transit Navigation. Transit Navigation uses GPS to determine your current location along your route and alerts you when it's time to get off or make a transfer. This is particularly helpful if you're in a city where you don't speak the language and can't read the route maps or understand the announcements."

It's a really useful feature and the coverage is continually expanding. I suspect that Google Maps will find other clever ways to use notifications: location-based reminders, recommendation alerts ("notify me when I'm near an Italian restaurant"), social alerts ("notify me when I'm near a restaurant recommended by my friends").

Google Maps for Android also added a navigation icon next to the driving and walking directions, a photo viewer for Google Places pages and icons that categorize search suggestions.

Probably the most useful new feature is buried inside Google Maps Labs: on-demand maps caching. Tap the "menu" button, select "More" and then "Labs". Enable "download map area", long press on the map around the area you want save, tap on the bubble and select "Download map area". Google Maps will download the map area within 10 miles (16.09 kilometers) of the selected location and outline it. This feature only saves map tiles, so you won't be able to see satellite imagery, Street View images or get driving directions while offline.

The 10 miles limit can't be changed, but at least you can manage your downloaded maps. Use the "Cache settings" option from the menu and select "Downloaded map areas". You can rename map areas, delete them and quickly visualize them.

My Maps Becomes My Places

Google Maps updated the "My Maps" section, which now includes the places you've starred and rated. Mapplets are no longer available and custom maps aren't popular enough to have their own section, so "My Maps" became "My Places", a list of locations you've visited, bookmarked, rated or saved to a custom map.



"Items are organized by date with your most recent activity at the top, and filters make it easy to sort and view only your maps, starred locations or rated places. My Places also simplifies your ability to manage the locations that make up your personalized maps experience. Using the drop-down arrow next to each location in your list, you can easily delete any of your saved maps, stars or Google Places ratings. These personalization changes will automatically be synchronized across all other Google properties including Google Places, Google Maps, and Google Maps for mobile," informs Google.

I wouldn't be surprised to see that the list of Google Latitude check-ins is added to My Places and that the combined list becomes an optional tab on your Google Profile.

More Features in Google Maps for Mobile Browsers

One of the most underrated Google mobile Web apps is Google Maps. Most smartphones and tablets have a native app for Google Maps, so a mobile Web app doesn't seem necessary. Unfortunately, native apps aren't always updated frequently and there are many missing features. Google does a good job at updating Google Maps for Android, but Apple's Maps app for iOS rarely includes new Google Maps features.

That's probably one of the reasons why the Google Maps mobile site was updated to include most of the features from the desktop site. Another reason is that Google wants to offer "a consistent Google Maps experience wherever you use it."

The updated Google Maps mobile site has features like local business search, Google Places, driving directions, layers, My Maps, starred locations, search suggestions. If you can't find biking directions or information about businesses in the Maps app for the iPhone, you can go to maps.google.com in your mobile browser and use these features.


Just like the mobile YouTube site, "Google Maps for mobile browsers is platform independent - you will always get a consistent experience and the latest features without needing to install any updates, no matter what phone you use."

I've tried the updated mobile interface on an iPhone 3GS, a Nexus One and an iPad 2. While all the new features are great, the site is still too slow and unresponsive to be useful. Until Google solves performance issues and mobile browsers become more powerful, people will still use the native app.

Google Maps OneBox Outlines

Google's OneBox displayed when you search for the name of a country, a city or a zip code got smarter. Google added an outline around the location you want to find, so the map is even more useful. For example, try searching for [Bronx], [Detroit 48238], [Baku], [Paraguay map].

Chris, a reader of this blog, says that he used CityData before noticing the new Google feature. While CityData is only useful for the US, the Google Maps OneBox is displayed for almost any city in the world.


{ via Search Engine Land. Thanks, Chris. }

New Google Maps Navigation Controls

After more than three months of testing, the new Google Maps navigation controls have replaced the classic tabs. By default, Google shows a small preview of the satellite imagery and a link to the traffic layer, but you'll get more options if you mouse over "satellite" or "traffic".


Google lists the layers that are available (terrain, webcams, the confusingly named Buzz, videos, Wikipedia, bicycling, real estate, transit, 45 degree imagery, labels), including a list of previous searches and driving directions.



"When we launched Google Maps, we had one layer -- the map. Since then, we've added more than ten different ways to explore the world around you, including photos, transit and traffic information, as well as satellite and terrain views. We've now updated the design so that you can more easily see and switch between the various viewing options that are available," explains Google.

I find the new interface more confusing, but I admit that it will better accommodate the new layers that will be released. Until now, if you wanted to switch to the satellite mode, you clicked the "satellite" button and that was it. Now Google shows a lot more options when you mouse over the button and you might even forget what you wanted to do.

Google Maps 5 for Android: 3D Maps and Offline Caching

Google Maps 5 for Android comes with two features that make Google's mapping software a lot more useful. Google now uses vector graphics instead of map tiles and it caches some of your most frequently used maps so that they are available offline.

Vector-based maps allowed Google to add a lot of cool gestures:

Tilting: Drag down with two fingers to tilt the map. Tilt while zoomed in on one of the 100+ cities around the world with 3D buildings to see a skyline spring to life.

Rotating: Twist with two fingers to rotate the map. After tilting to see 3D buildings, rotate around them to gain a new perspective from any direction.

Smooth zooming: Slide two fingers together or apart, and see the map and labels continuously scale to any zoom level, stopping when your fingers stop.

Compass mode: Center the map on your location, and then tap the compass button in the top right corner. The map will flip into 3D mode and start rotating to match your perspective, while still keeping all the labels upright and readable.

The new 3D view makes maps more intuitive and easier to use, but that's not all. Since Google no longer has to download map images from its servers and vector-based maps require 100 times less data for all zoom levels, it's feasible to cache data. "Rather than having a static set of maps when installed, Maps will automatically start caching the areas you visit the most when your device is plugged in and connected to WiFi (e.g., the nightly charge)." You can't manually control caching, but it's an important first step toward an offline Google Maps.

Google also promises to add offline rerouting to Google Maps Navigation. "You'll still need a connection to start a route, but if you miss a turn along the way, we'll quickly get you back on track, even if you don't have an Internet connection."

Google Maps 5 for Android uses about 70% less data than the previous version, so it loads maps much faster. The new features require Android 2.0+, but not all devices support them. The list of devices that support all multi-touch gestures includes: Samsung Nexus S, Samsung Galaxy S, HTC G2, HTC Incredible, HTC Evo 4G and Motorola Droid/Droid 2/Droid X, while HTC Nexus One, HTC Desire, Sony Ericsson X10 and LG Ally don't support rotating gestures.

Vector-Based Google Maps for Android

Google's Andy Rubin showed at the Dive Into Mobile conference an early prototype of a Motorola tablet running Android Honeycomb and demoed a new version of Google Maps for Android with vector-based maps and offline caching.

Engadget says that Google Maps 5.0 for Android will be available in the coming days, but not all Android devices will support the new features. "The biggest visual change is dynamic map drawing: vectors instead of flat images that scale without render hiccups and will show the buildings fleshed out for over 100 cities -- we gotta say, it looks great. Even more fun is that you can now use two fingers to tilt and rotate around the map (in addition to moving and pinch-to-zoom, of course). We've been told it's a much snappier experience, and the storage for these vectors is much smaller than the current images, which brings us to... offline caching. Maps will keep on file the locations that you go to (and search) most often, and it'll be able to reroute while offline in Navigation."

{ Thanks, Daniel and François. }

Why Google Maps Labels Look Better

If you've ever wondered why Google Maps labels look more readable than the labels used by Bing Maps or Yahoo Maps, Justin O'Beirne has some answers.

"The white outlines of Google's city labels are thicker, and you can't see maps' background details (roads, rivers, etc.) behind them. (...) Google typically uses more classes of city labels, at a time, than the other two sites. (...) While the primary difference between each site’s city label classes is their size, Google takes this one step further by also using color to differentiate its city label classes. In that, the smallest city labels on Google’s maps are significantly lighter in color than the largest ones. These lighter labels, in turn, enable smaller cities to fade into background, while allowing the larger cities to stand out."


{ Image licensed as Creative Commons by Justin O'Beirne. }

Google Maps Will No Longer Support Mapplets

Three years ago, Google introduced mapplets, a special flavor of gadgets that added new features to Google Maps. "Mapplets are Google Gadgets that are made especially so that they can be loaded by a user on maps.google.com, and have access to the main shared map. Users can load multiple Mapplets simultaneously for a quick and easy way to mashup content from multiple sources."

In May, Google announced the deprecation of mapplets, but only developers cared about that. Users could still go to the "My Maps" section from Google Maps and add a mapplet from the directory. Unfortunately, Google Geo Developers Blog informs us that the directory will be closed and all the links to mapplets will be removed.

As part of the deprecation plan for Mapplets we will shortly be switching from rendering Mapplets within Google Maps, to rendering them on a dedicated Mapplets page. (...) Bookmarks for existing Mapplets will continue to work. They will be automatically redirected to the new Mapplets page for the relevant Mapplet. (...) However because the Mapplets page is not part of the Google Maps application, Mapplets will no longer have access to Google Maps user profiles. (...) The above changes will be made on or shortly after Wednesday December 8th 2010.

Google Maps Directory includes 1550 mapplets that show crime information, weather data, information about population density, earthquakes, airports, hotels, golf courses and much more.

If you've added one or more mapplets to the "My Maps" section from Google Maps and you want to use them even after the links are removed, find them in the Google Maps Directory, convert their URLs and bookmark them. For example, replace:

http://maps.google.com/gadgets/directory?synd=mpl&url=http://www.google.com/mapfiles/mapplets/distance/distance.xml

with:

http://maps.google.com/maps/mapplets?moduleurl=http://www.google.com/mapfiles/mapplets/distance/distance.xml

Germany's Blurry Street View

Google has finally added street level imagery for some of the biggest cities from Germany: Berlin, Hamburg, Frankfurt, Munich and 16 other cities. Unfortunately, many of the images are blurred because of privacy concerns. According to Spiegel, the launch has been delayed for several years.

In contrast to other countries, the launch of Street View was met with considerable resistance from politicians and privacy protection advocates in Germany, including the country's consumer protection minister, Isle Aigner of the conservative Christian Social Union, who criticized the service as an incursion on people's privacy. (... )

As was widely expected, one doesn't have to look very far in Street View to find homes that have been blurred out. Prior to the introduction of the service, more than 244,000 households in the first 20 cities to be placed online submitted requests to have their homes blurred out. Google claims the figure represents only 3 percent of households. (...)

Nevertheless, there are considerable obstructed images in the German version of Street View. In any instance where an apartment renter asked to have their flat pixilated, Google blurred out the entire building they live in. Data protection authorities believe that up to a million households across the country have been blurred out by the company.

Google Maps Navigation for Australia and New Zealand

Google's free navigation software is now available in Australia and New Zealand. "Google Maps Navigation is a feature of Google Maps for Mobile that provides voice-guided turn by turn directions in real time. That means that instead of printing out your directions in advance, or having your co-pilot read aloud from list of directions, you can use your Android smartphone to guide you there directly," explains Google. To use this feature you need a smartphone that runs Android 1.6 or a more recent version of Android.


At the moment, Google Maps Navigation is available in 17 countries, but this number will increase when Google starts to use its own mapping data in other countries. As Greg Sterling points out, "at some point during the course of the past couple of years, perhaps catalyzed by the shock of Nokia's roughly $8 billion acquisition of Navteq, Google decided it needed to 'own' maps top to bottom. Since that time the company has been making a systematic effort to collect and improve the base data for this highly strategic product. That's partly what Street View driving is about: getting roads and other data for Maps (and now Navigation) in addition to imagery and WiFi hotspot locations."

Google Maps Tests New Navigation UI

Dave P., a reader of this blog, spotted a new UI for the views and layers offered by Google Maps. The new interface enlarges the buttons that let you switch to the satellite view and to the embedded Google Earth, removes the button that lets you switch to the traditional view and adds a layer panel that's only displayed when you mouse over the satellite button.

Another change is that the list of recent searches and Google Maps views is displayed in the layer panel, so you can quickly switch between custom maps, driving directions, local search results and Google Maps layers.


{ Thanks, Dave. }