Google Maps added street view imagery for many major cities in the United Kingdom and the Netherlands. London, Liverpool, Birmingham, Glasgow, Belfast, Amsterdam and Rotterdam are some of the cities added to Google Street View.
"Having checked my old house in Sheffield, which I moved out of last year, I can tell that the photo was taken in the last nine months, so it's much more up-to-date than the Google Maps imagery for the area," noticed Tony Ruscoe.
Google Street View has a new option to show photos uploaded to the Google-owned Panoramio. "Now you can browse user-contributed photos that have been precisely-matched to Street View images. Gorgeous photos from Panoramio allow you to see some of the world's most famous landmarks at an even closer level," explains Google.
Whenever you visit in Street View a location that has user-contributed photos, you can click on one of the photos for a different perspective. You'll find many Panoramio photos for popular places like Tour Eiffel, Duomo di Milano or Times Square.
Google Maps shows more local search results: instead of showing only the first 10 results, you can explore the most relevant 1000 local businesses in a single view.
"Ever wish you could see more than just ten local search results at once? Us too. So we've added a search layer for local search results that activates when there are more relevant results than we can show on one page. Instead of just plotting the first page of business results on our map, we plot more of them as small circles. You can click on the circles to get more information about the businesses they represent. The top ten results will still appear in the left-hand pane and as pins on the map," mentions Google Lat-Long Blog.
"Google has for several years been investing very heavily in Maps (and Earth), as well as distributing Google Maps across the internet via its API. The features and capabilities developed for Google Maps are more extensive and widely known than those of its competitors. (...) Google steadily built out a large number of features that consumers and the market have found compelling. More importantly, Google has regarded Maps as a strategic product, arguably its most successful after core search," suggests Greg Sterling.
Ironically, when Google Local was launched in 2004, Google used MapQuest as a provider for maps.
When you search for the name of a city or an address, Google Maps lists interesting places from that location and illustrates them with excerpts from Wikipedia articles. To find other locations that have Wikipedia articles, click "More" on the map and select "Wikipedia".
The latest version of Google Maps for Mobile adds a new feature that lets you share your location with friends and see their locations in real-time. Google Latitude is the first step for adding more social features to Google Maps and to other Google services.
"How often do you find yourself wondering where your friends are and what they're up to? It's a pretty central question to our daily social lives, and it's precisely the question you can now answer using Google Latitude," explains Google's blog.
After installing Google Maps Mobile 3.0 (only available for Android, BlackBerry, Windows Mobile and Symbian S60 right now), you can share your location automatically or set your location manually. You can also post a short status and choose a profile photo.
After selecting yourself, you can: - Change your status message across Google products. Your status will only be shared with your current Google Talk or Gmail chat friends. - Change your photo across Google products. - Submit or edit your phone number in Latitude for your friends. - Edit your privacy settings for all friends.
After selecting a friend, you can: - Show the friend in map view. - Search for places near your friend. - Call if a phone number is available in your Google Contacts or Latitude. - Chat using Google Talk or Gmail chat if available. - Send an email. - Get directions to the friend's approximate location. - Set sharing options. You can choose to hide your location or share only city level location with individual friends. - Remove the friend. Your friend cannot see your location and you cannot see the friend's location.
"Everything about Latitude is opt-in. You not only control exactly who gets to see your location, but you also decide the location that they see. For instance, let's say you are in Rome. Instead of having your approximate location detected and shared automatically, you can manually set your location for elsewhere — perhaps a visit to Niagara Falls. Since you may not want to share the same information with everyone, Latitude lets you change the settings on a friend-by-friend basis. So for each person, you can choose to share your best available location or your city-level location, or you can hide."
If your mobile phone is not yet supported by the new version of Google Maps, you can add an iGoogle gadget that has similar features.
Location-based services will be increasingly popular now that mobile phones with GPS and fast Internet connections become the standard and the privacy expectations are changing. Eventually, you'll be able to share your location with other applications and obtain personalized information, alerts and even recommendations. From this perspective, Yahoo's Fire Eagle is better-suited for shaping the future of location-based services.
Google Maps already shows information about public transportation when you get directions, but now you can see more transit data in a new layer. To enable the layer, click on "More..." and select "Transit" if the option is available.
Google Maps blog lists the cities where the new layer has been enabled and some of them aren't covered by Google Transit yet. "Whereas the main Google Transit product has the goal to provide full schedule information and routing, the objective of the Transit Layer is to overlay lines visually on Google Maps. Think of a virtual metro map on top of Google Maps -- even when we don't have itinerary planning available, we want you to be able to see public transit options that are available."
Google Maps shows a list of the people that contributed with the most customized maps, reviews and edits related to a location. In some cases, you'll find helpful maps that show hidden parks, interesting museums or landmarks.
Google has also released a customized maps editor for Android. "With this application you can create, edit, share, and view personalized maps on your Android powered phone synchronized with the My Maps tab on Google Maps. Create a map on your desktop computer using Google Maps and then take it with you on the go and update it on location."
After adding street-level imagery for Australia, Japan, Spain, France, Italy, and New Zealand, Google's mission for the US is almost completed. "Today marks our biggest launch of Street View imagery to date: we're doubling our coverage in the United States. Several states — Maine, West Virginia, North Dakota, and South Dakota — will be getting the Street View treatment for the first time. We've also added imagery for Memphis, Charleston (SC), and Birmingham, and we've filled in lots of gaps across the country," explains Google's blog.
Many people complained that the recent Google Maps redesign made it more difficult to find places that have street-level imagery, but this should no longer be necessary, at least for the US.
Google Maps borrowed the navigation controls from Google Earth and made the transition to Street View smoother. Just click on the small yellow man to see the street view imagery for the current location or drag the icon to the correct location.
Google Maps shows small previews when you drag the icon so you can adjust the position. Street View opens in full-screen and the mini-window displayed at the bottom of the map can be maximized when you want to change the location.
Google Maps will probably add a new tab for the Google Earth plug-in, so this change will make the navigation consistent.
Here's a screenshot from June that shows the old interface:
Spain is the fifth country from Google Street View's map. You can now view street-level images for the biggest 4 Spanish cities: Madrid, Barcelona, Valencia and Seville.
Unlike the previous launches, I was able to find low-quality photographs in less than two minutes, right next to the Royal Palace of Madrid.
The French blog Zorgloob found some interesting information about Google Street View, the project that wants to capture street level photographs all over the world.
After launching Street View in the US, Australia, Japan and France, Google will expand the coverage to Spain tomorrow. The next countries will be Italy, Germany, UK and the Netherlands. Google has just started to capture photos in the Eastern Europe, as you can see from these images taken in Bucharest, Romania.
Zorgloob estimates that Google's cameras take 8 simultaneous photos every 5 meters and each compressed photo has about 1 MB. That means each kilometer adds 1.6 GB of data.
And when Street View cars aren't allowed, Google uses tricycles. Capturing street-level imagery is a big effort (Zorgloob says that Google Street View costs 500 million Euro) and it may seem that the benefits aren't very significant, but Street View makes Google Maps more valuable and it's a great opportunity to connect Google with the real world.
After including Tour de France's routes in Street View, Google expands the coverage for France, by adding Paris, Lyon, Marseille, Nice, Lille and Toulouse. The French blog Zorgloob links to a video prepared for the launch:
The latest version of Google Maps for mobile phones brings two popular features that were only available in the desktop version: Street View and walking directions. You can download the application by visiting www.google.com/gmm from a supported mobile phone.
Street View is integrated in the local search results and you can see Street View imagery next to each step from driving or walking directions.
I tried to install the new version, but Google Maps linked to GMM 2.2.0, an earlier version launched in June.
Update. Here are the direct links for Google Maps 2.3.1:
"My name is Michael Weiss-Malik, and I work for Google. I don't work on the Street View team, but I interact with them pretty regularly. They decided to coordinate a pre-announced Street View run outside Google's Mountain View offices, with the idea that Googlers could line up along the street and appear in the imagery. So I put together my "Proposal 2.0" billboard and showed up, hoping that it'd be readily visible. And it was," explains Michael on his site.
The image has been added on August 5 and it shows eclectic messages like "Proposal 2.0: Marry me, Leslie", "Hi mom" or "I love Street View".
For those that hate the most recent Google Maps redesign and miss some of the features that were removed (the multiple search boxes, reordering destinations, collapsing directions), there's a link for the previous interface: http://maps.google.com/maps?f=d&view=text. The explanation is that Google didn't update the interface for the "text view", an option that minimizes the map and focuses on the search results.
This is just a temporary workaround until Google adds the missing features.
Google Maps has changed the layout to the one tested in May. The new interface is less cluttered and it emphasizes the powerful search box that can be used for finding businesses, locating addresses and even for directions. For some strange reason, the directions can't be collapsed and you can no longer reorder the destinations if you enter more than two.
When you print the directions, you'll notice that there are more options: Google can display a map or street view imagery for every step or only for some of the steps. There's also an option to print a large road map. Google suggests to "save trees and go green" by downloading the mobile Google Maps application and using it to get driving directions.
As anticipated two weeks ago, Google Maps added walking directions. "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," informs Google LatLong blog.
The feature is still in beta because Google has incomplete data about pedestrian pathways. Google Maps advises you to "use caution when walking in unfamiliar areas".
Tip. If you only see driving directions, copy the permalink of the page by clicking on "Link to this page", append &dirflg=w and paste the new URL in the address bar.
As usually with Google Maps directions, you can print them, email them, obtain a permalink that can be bookmarked or embed them in a site. Another option is to save the directions as a custom map: just click on "Link to this page", copy the link, add &output=kml at the end and then create a new map in the My Maps tab by importing the KML file.
Until recently, Ask.com offered walking directions, but the feature is no longer available because Ask.com decided to replace its mapping service with Microsoft Virtual Earth.
Google Maps tests a new feature: walking directions. You can already get driving directions and, for a small number of locations, Google Maps has transit directions, but these directions are not always useful if you don't use a car or a bus.
Google suggests to "use caution when walking in unfamiliar areas", since the "walking directions are in beta". Chris, who sent this tip, spotted the feature for New York, but it's likely that Google randomly selected a small number of users to try the new feature and send feedback.
Update (July 22): Search Engine Roundtable noticed that the walking directions are live. The new feature is available in most locations where Google offers driving directions.
As a special present for the upcoming Tour de France, Google added Street View imagery for Tour de France's routes. The coverage is really limited, but Google will extend it in the next months, when Street View will be available in many European countries (UK, France, Germany, Spain, Italy and others).
Wikipedia has some details about this year's edition of the largest cycling race in the world. "The event will take place from July 5 to July 27, 2008. Starting in the French city of Brest, France, the tour will enter Italy on the 15th stage and return to France during the 16th, heading for Paris, its regular final destination, which will be reached in the 21st stage."
An obvious use of the GOOG-411 service is to add speech recognition to Google's mobile mapping application. Microsoft already has voice support in Live Search for Windows Mobile and that's an important differentiating factor when you are on the go and you need a quick answer.
Google started to test Google Maps with voice search for three Blackberry Pearl models: 8110, 8120, 8130 and only for the US. Instead of typing when you want to search for a local business, hold the left-side key, say what you want to find and then release the key. Google Maps Mobile will display the search results on the map.
"Similar to other voice-recognition technologies, the accuracy of voice recognition will improve over time as more people use the voice search feature," says Google Mobile Blog. In fact, the main reason why GOOG-411 has been developed was to obtain data to train Google's speech recognition algorithms. "Whether or not free-411 is a profitable business unto itself is yet to be seen. I myself am somewhat skeptical. The reason we really did it is because we need to build a great speech-to-text model ... that we can use for all kinds of different things, including video search," explained Marissa Mayer from Google.
Speech recognition could greatly facilitate the way we interact with mobile phones and it's not hard to imagine that voice search will be the main way we'll use search engines in the future. This will change the way people formulate queries and processing natural language will become increasingly important. Microsoft's acquisition of Powerset, a so-called semantic search engine, could improve the way Live Search handles complicated queries, even though it's difficult to scale the computationally-intensive process of parsing text to the web and to all languages.
