If visiting historical landmarks in Egypt from the comfort of your smartphone wasn’t enough, virtual jetsetters can now take a tour of Luxembourg without leaving their home thanks to Street View. Historical sites like the medieval Grund neighborhood and the Kirchberg center for European Union buildings are now at your fingertips.
Today, Google announced a partnership with the Jane Goodall Institute and Tanzania National Parks that makes it possible to take a Street View tour of the Gombe National Park in Tanzania without leaving your desktop. This virtual route retraces some of the historical steps of Jane Goodall’s groundbreaking research of chimpanzees in the 1960s.
No, that’s not where Apple Maps will take you when you ask for directions to Starbucks, but close! It’s the Liwa Desert in the United Arab Emirates, and Google Maps has captured the site in detail for exploring through Street View thanks in part to camels:
To bring this stunning desert to Street View, we fashioned the Trekker to rest on a camel, which gathered imagery as it walked. Using camels for the collection allowed us to collect authentic imagery and minimize our disruption of this fragile environment.
Street View continues to be one of the most robust features with Google Maps, and the team has recently added some remarkable locations to the Street View collection. Shared today on the company’s Europe blog, Google Street view has added new imagery of scenes from around the Swiss Alps in Switzerland:
Together with the Swiss Alpine Club (SAC) and the Swiss Tourism Board (MySwitzerland.com), we launched a contest called “Queen of the Alps.” High in the Swiss Alps, far from any road or other buildings, are picturesque huts used to spend a night by farmers and vacationers.
It often takes a full day hike to reach these out of the way huts. We ran online vote to find the favorite Swiss hut, promising to film the choice for Street View. The Swiss Alpine Club’s Lauteraarhütte-SAC in the canton of Berne (region “Grimselgebiet”) won. It took our Trekkers a five hour hike up the Grimsels Hospiz to capture this exciting imagery.
The Street View film crew also toured and captured the Winter Olympic venues in Sochi, Russia, including the Sochi Formula 1 racing track:
Stroll around the Fischt stadium which hosted the opening and closing ceremonies. Walk on the Ice Palace “Iceberg” and visit the Olympic Village, where your favorite team stayed.
In particular, take a look at the new Formula 1 track in Sochi. It is located in the city’s Olympic Park and is the only Formula 1 track in Russia. From October 10-12, Russia will host its first World Championship race.
As you can see above, you can actually tour the Formula 1 racing track as if you were behind the wheel of the car. Just search the venues on Google Maps.
Google Street View cars have been busy, adding Mason and Grand Ledge in the U.S., expanding coverage of Malaysia and adding in Argentina, reports the Google Earth Blog – the Grand Ledge Opera House shown above. This follows Google adding Cambodia and Indonesia last month.
Google has already added historical Street View links to a few locations in Argentina, the dates indicating that Google has been collecting the imagery for around a year.
Google’s Street View cars are doing more than taking photos these days, the company using some of them to detect methane leaks from corroded pipes, landfill sites and other sources. The company’s more notorious form of data-collection – wifi sniffing – resulted in a $7M settlement, the U.S. Supreme Court rejecting its attempt to appeal the lawsuit.
Google has come under fire from European Union officials on a number of fronts already. It’s been accused of unfair search results, been criticized for the way it has implemented the controversial ‘right to be forgotten‘ ruling and asked to stop describing apps which offer in-app purchases as ‘free.’
Reuters now reports that the EU believes Google is breaking the law in combining user data across unrelated services like Gmail, YouTube and Google Maps without offering users an opt-out, and the way in which it has consolidated 60 separate privacy policies into one …
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Google is rolling outs its Maps navigation features to 20 additional countries as confirmed on the company’s website (via AndroidPolice). That means users in the new countries will have access to turn-by-turn navigation features for walking, biking, and driving directions. The full list of countries included in the latest roll out is below:
The navigation features are available in the new countries to Google Maps users on both Android and iOS devices. Google notes that Countries marked with asterisks include limited coverage in only some regions of the country.
Google announced today that it’s launching new features that make creating and sharing custom maps with others easier. Google is now letting users share and browse publicly shared maps from others through its Google Maps Gallery website, a site that was previously dedicated to Maps curated by Google and created by Google partners. Starting today the service is open to everyone and Google is also launching a revamped tool on both the web and Android for creating and sharing custom maps that include images, descriptions, custom icons and more.
Street View is much more than a tool for taking an early look at the local scenery of an upcoming road trip, it’s now an easy and affordable way to see parts of the world that were once limited to a privileged group of jetsetters. Today Google announced the addition of a grand new virtual tour that lets you visit some of the biggest monuments of Ancient Egypt from the comfort of your computer.
In the second article in a series exploring some of the techniques Google uses to make its maps, the company today gives us an inside look at its Cartographer backpack. Google of course already has its fleet of camera equipped vehicles collecting StreetView imagery, but the backpack is particularly useful for things like indoor mapping where other vehicles can’t access.
To go along with giving us a glimpse of its new Cartographer backpack, Google also announced its releasing six new indoor maps captured with the device. Here’s how it works:
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In a blog post today detailing its Ground Truth data collection program for Google Maps, Google announced some new features rolling out to users in Taiwan, Russia and Malaysia. As part of the Ground Truth program rolling out to 5 new countries today, Google is also making its Google Map Maker and Report a Problem features available for users in Taiwan, Russia, and Malaysia to contribute:
Today, we’ve reached our 50th Ground Truth country with the addition of five new countries: Taiwan, Malaysia, Poland, Romania, and the last regions of Russia. We’re also rolling out Google Map Maker and Report a Problem—our crowdsourcing map tools—to Taiwan, Russia and Malaysia, giving anyone in those locations the ability to share and contribute their local knowledge directly to Google Maps.
Google also notes that it will be publishing more articles over the next week sharing more details of how its Ground Truth program and Map Maker work to let others contribute to improving Google Maps.
The next big probably-hit from the famed game studio behind Halo is about to be released, and to help promote it Bungie has teamed up with Google Maps to create a virtual world built to resemble that of the one in-game. It’s called Destiny Planet View, and you’ll find the way you navigate the first person shooter’s worlds within the new website to be very familiar.
HERE, the competitor to Google Maps initially available only on Windows Phone, has arrived on Android for the first time. Initially, the beta version of the Android app will be limited to Samsung Galaxy smartphones.
The main claim to fame of the app is that it offers the ability to download entire regions or countries for offline use, in contrast to Google Maps which only allows you to cache areas you have viewed while online. HERE maps currently cover around 200 countries, though turn-by-turn directions are so far limited to about half of these …
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After first rolling out Street View imagery in Google Maps for Hawaii back in March, Google is today adding more imagery for Oahu’s most popular hiking trails, parks, historical sites and beaches.
See 360-degree views of Oahu’s most amazing locations, including Waikiki Beach, Makapuu Lighthouse Trail, Sunset Beach, Byodo-In Temple, and many more. Whether it’s gauging the terrain of a hike or virtually exploring some of the world’s best beaches, the natural beauty of Hawaii is now at your fingertips.
Google notes that it collected the imagery with help from the Hawaii Visitors and Convention Bureau as part of the Street View Trekker Loan Program. It also highlighted a few of the new locations included in today’s roll out: Waikiki Beach, Makapuu Lighthouse Trail, Sunset Beach, and Byodo-In Temple. More highlights of the new Hawaii imagery are available in a Street View collection here.
The official Google Search app for Android has been updated with navigation cards that resemble those found in Google Maps. When you search for a destination or directions between two locations, the navigation card displays a map that outlines the trip, with the approximate travel time, distance, suggested and alternative routes, desired mode of transportation and step-by-step directions, all without needing to open Google Maps.
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Google has announced that its Google Maps StreetView feature is now available for users in Cambodia and Indonesia.
Full support for StreetView across Cambodia comes following the launch of a StreetView tour for the thousand-year-old temples at Angkor Wat in Siem Reap, Cambodia in April. Google has put together a collection of imagery from Cambodia you can check out on its Views website.
Another Maps improvement rolling out today is support for navigation in Panama, as noted by AndroidPolice. Google also confirmed the roll out by adding Panama to the list of supported countries for navigation on its website.
The new features are available in the latest version of Google Maps for Android on Google Play.
Aside from allowing you to virtually travel down just about any street you can imagine without actually being there, Street View in Google Maps has offered up some interesting features in the past. From virtual recreations of college campuses to steps back in time with dated maps of locations, Google has thus far been able to offer up some novel uses for the product.
The latest use case for Google Maps Street View? Mapping out the sets of various Emmy Award nominees. Depending on the specific show’s set that’s mapped out, the feature offers up a creepy/awesome/eery experience. You can check out the sets of Breaking Bad, House of Cards, Game of Thrones, Downton Abbey, and more here.
Google has added a gorgeous new set of Street View imagery, quoting Tales of Iceland author Stephen Markley in describing the views as “soul-enriching, breath-taking, life-affirming” …
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Google has acquired Jetpac, a city guide application for iPhone, the app’s developers announced today (via The Next Web). The free app (and others by the Jetpac team) will be removed from the App Store in the coming days, and the service that powers it will be shut down on September 15th.
Google hasn’t said exactly what it plans to do with the company’s technology, which automatically scans users’ photos to detect local points of interest like coffee shops or “hipster hangouts.” The service featuerd data for over 6,000 cities, according to the App Store description. It seems logical, however, that Google would attempt to integrate these features with Google Maps or a location-based Google Now feature.
You can grab the Jetpac app for free on the iTunes Store, though it won’t be very useful beyond its mid-September shutdown.
Google’s Street View has been around for a little more than seven years and while Mountain View’s touring software has made a lot of progress since its launch, there’s still plenty of room for improvement. Aware of this, a hearing aid manufacturer named Amplifon is looking to update Street View’s silent movie feel by introducing a new concept called “Sounds of Street View.”
Google announced today that it’s completely turning down Google Maps API for Flash on September 2nd. This decision follows suit with the company’s initial depreciation period, which started almost three years ago. Developers now have three weeks to migrate their outdated applications to JavaScript Maps API v3 in order for them to remain relevant.
Google announced today that it’s added Street View imagery for a long list of new university campuses in Google Maps. The new schools, which include campuses across the U.S. and Canada, are available to explore starting today.
Google notes that these new additions add to the hundreds of school campuses you can already explore in Google Maps. It highlighted a few of the new campuses rolling out today in its announcement including Georgetown University, University of Miami, and the University of Regina in Canada.
To see if a Street View tour of your dream school is available, search for a particular university on Google Maps and click on Pegman to enter the Street View imagery. Visit our Street View gallery for global highlights and other popular universities around the world.
Google quietly launched an interesting new feature within Google Maps yesterday: the ability to explore both Mars and the Moon. As you may know, you’ve been able to do this with the desktop Google Earth app for quite some time — but this is the first time it has come to the web via the ubiquitous mapping platform. To access the new feature, head over to Maps, click the “Earth” button in the bottom-right, zoom all the way out, and wait for the ‘Moon’ and ‘Mars’ options to appear as seen in the screenshot above. Alternatively, you can just click these links: goo.gl/OopkP0 (Mars), and goo.gl/CoVGQ9 (Moon).
A beta for Google Maps navigation is now available in El Salvador, Libya, Nicaragua, Paraguay, and Tunisia. While some countries may take this feature for granted, other territories don’t widely have access to this type of free software. For example, residents of North Korea have combined their efforts to produce a community developed version of Google Maps.
