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Google Maps for iOS updated with snappier Street View

Mark Gurman May 20 2014 - 10:52 pm PT

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Google has updated its Google Maps application for the iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch with improved Street View and various bug fixes:

• Smoother, faster transitions when you move through Street View
• Bug Fixes

The update is (of course) free in the App Store.

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• Tech Industry
• Google Maps
• India
• statistics
• elections

Google’s India election map helps keep track of over 500 million votes

Mark Hearn May 16 2014 - 2:56 pm PT

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It’s election season in India and Google is counting the votes. Not in an official capacity, but the tech giant is running a real-time tally of the numbers and placing them on an interactive map to keep track of the statistics on a regional scale. Whether you’re participating in the process as one of the election’s 500 million-plus voters, or you’re someone who follows global politics, this layout is a sight to behold.

To bring this project together, Google has leaned on Nielsen to help keep track of the results as they happen. The portal also provides fast access to each district’s local votes as they roll in, making it fairly easy to follow an entire nation’s transition of authority.

• Google Maps

Google Maps adds elevation data for bike routes

Jordan Kahn May 16 2014 - 12:12 pm PT

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As noted by TechCrunch, Google has recently added elevation data to bike routes in Google Maps. Google confirmed the new feature, which it left out of announcing in its big Maps updates earlier this week.

Just look for a route on Google Maps, choose the biking directions and look for the new elevation profile. Besides the graphical representation of those hills you will have to climb, the new card also shows you the total number of feet you will have to climb on your route (and those joyous miles you get to just kick back and try not to die while you barrel down the hill on the other side).

The new elevation data is available in Google Maps when looking at biking routes on the desktop (except for routes that happen to be mostly flat), but the feature is unfortunately not yet available to users of the Maps mobile apps.

• Google Maps

Google Maps adding public transit data for the UK tomorrow

Jordan Kahn May 13 2014 - 4:59 pm PT

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 Update: Google has just made things official and also let us know its adding bus lines in Vancouver and Chicago. In addition, it also released some updated stats on the progress of transit directions in Maps (pictured below).

• On the other side of the globe, Vancouverites looking for sun can now get real-time updates on whether a bus to Kits is faster than one to Third Beach.
• In Chicago, Cubs fans can now zip to and from Wrigley Field, armed with the real-time information they need to hop on a bus and avoid congestion on Lake Shore Drive.

Google is about to expand its public transport data in Maps for both desktop and mobile users in the UK. The Guardian notes that the public transport directions were previously only available to users in London but starting tomorrow the feature will become available to users across England, Scotland and Wales with nearly 17,000 new routes. 

Users can currently access public transport information for London and the south east, but from Wednesday users on iOS and Android apps and on the desktop version will all be able to search National Express and Traveline data, as well as 1,500 local and national operators such as Centro and Merseyside. Nearly 17,000 routes are included and 34,000 stopping points, ferry ports and stations.

Product manager for public transport in Google Maps David Tattersall gave the following comment to The Guardian:“In Britain, public transport is part of the national psyche.  The biggest changes will be on mobile, as devices are becoming more and more powerful and they’re things we spend a lot of time with. We’re aiming to really improve users’ lives.”

Google also plans to add public transport routes for Norther Ireland once it gets its hands on the data.

• Google Maps has transit data for 15,000 cities and towns across 64 countries and 6 continents.

• Buses, trains and ferries included on Google Maps travel 200 million kilometers every day—that’s the equivalent of driving every single road in the world three times!

• Over 2.3 million transit stations can be found on Google Maps

• Fun Fact! In the 10 seconds it takes to read a social post, over 30,000 vehicles found on Google maps have left their stations.

• Apps & Updates
• Google
• Apps and Updates
• Google Apps
• Google Maps
• Uber

Google Maps for Android updated with lane guidance, improved offline maps, Uber integration

Zac Hall May 6 2014 - 9:22 am PT

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Google announced on its blog today a big update coming to Google Maps on both Android and iOS including integration with Uber.
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• Google Maps

Waze CEO says Google paid $1.15B for the company

Jordan Kahn Apr 7 2014 - 11:09 am PT

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In a blog post today published on LinkedIn from CEO and co-founder of mapping company Waze, we learn what we didn’t know at the time of Google’s purchase of the company back in June. While industry estimates at the time put the value of the deal somewhere in the neighborhood of $1.1 to $1.3 billion, today Noam Bardin confirmed that the final purchase price was $1.15 billion.

Not only did Bardin reveal the exact price paid— although there was no mention of whether that number is in cash or otherwise— he also seemingly mentions that the deal was made due to pressure from investors:

One of Waze’s mistakes was the valuation of its A round which significantly diluted the founders. Perhaps, had we held control of the company, as the Founders of Facebook, Google, Oracle or Microsoft had, Waze might still be an independent company today.

You can read Bardin’s full blog post here, which has more details about the deal and what was going on at Waze leading up to the acquisition.

(via TNW)

• Google Maps
• Google Street View
• imagery
• Grand Canyon
• Colorado River

Explore the Colorado River while you still can with Street View

Jordan Kahn Mar 13 2014 - 8:53 am PT

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[youtube=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IdVXrVxziXc]

Senior Vice President of Conservation at American Rivers Chris Williams announced today on the Google Maps blog that the organization has partnered with Google to add high-resolution imagery of the Colorado River running through the Grand Canyon to Street View:

For 6 million years, the Colorado River has flowed through the heart of the desert southwest, its waters slowly carving out a canyon so vast it can be seen from space—yet so remote it didn’t appear on early maps of the region. It wasn’t until 1869, when John Wesley Powell led a small exploration party on a rafting trip, that the natural wonders of the Colorado River and the Grand Canyon came fully into view.

Start at an iconic spot like Deer Creek Falls or North Canyon, or climb up to the Nankoweap Granaries. Geology fans will enjoy formations like Hermit Shale and Tapeats Sandstone. On your journey, look out for wildlife like big horn sheep and signs of a volcanic dam that naturally occurred centuries ago.

The project was an important one, as Google noted in its blog post, the Colorado River has long been at risk:

While you admire its grandeur, remember that the river is also at risk. One of the United States’ most important resources, the Colorado River provides drinking water for 36 million people from Denver to Los Angeles, supports a $26 billion recreation industry, and irrigates nearly 4 million acres of land that grow 15 percent of our nation’s crops. But it’s also one of the most endangered, dammed, diverted and plumbed rivers in the world, thanks to a century of management policies and practices that have promoted the use of Colorado River water at an unsustainable rate. By the time it reaches the Gulf of California in Mexico, the river is barely a trickle—a ghost of its once magnificent self. You can see evidence of the river’s decline In Street View, like the high water mark (showing 1950s driftwood on top of the rock), or sedimentation along the river’s edge down by Lake Mead.

Google has a new collection of imagery from the Colorado River here and a new webpage taking you behind the scenes of the project here.

• Google Maps
• beta
• preview
• worldwide

Google brings the new Maps out of preview, rolling out to desktops worldwide in coming weeks

Jordan Kahn Feb 19 2014 - 10:52 am PT

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Google first introduced us to the new Google Maps back in May during Google I/O and since then users have been able to opt-in to a preview of the redesigned desktop Maps experience. Today, Google announced on its Maps blog that its officially bringing the redesigned app out of beta and making it available to all worldwide. Google said the new app will roll out over the coming weeks for all users.

Apart from a redesigned, streamlined UI, Google notes that the new Maps web app for desktop users includes smarter results for points of interest, improved directions with time and distance, real-time traffic reports, Street View previews, and a new “carousel” view for browsing 3D and Street View imagery.

If you had not previously opted into the Google Maps preview, you should start to see the new experience over the coming weeks.

• Google
• Google Maps
• Google Earth
• BBC
• imagery

A behind the scenes look at building a Google Maps satellite

Jordan Kahn Feb 12 2014 - 1:49 pm PT

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An interesting story from the BBC goes behind the scenes with the satellites that are used to take imagery of earth that eventually land in Google Maps and Google Earth.

Behind a long rectangular window, in a high white room tended by ghostly figures in masks and hats, a new satellite is taking shape. Once in orbit later this year, WorldView-3 will be one of the most powerful Earth observation satellites ever sent into space by a private company. Spinning around the planet some 600 kilometres (370 miles) above us, it will cover every part of the Earth’s surface every couple of days.

Google gets the majority of its imagery from DigitalGlobe and Ball Aerospace is currently constructing new satellites for the company, as highlighted in the BBC report. The new WorldView-3 satellite will be capable of capturing objects 25cm (10 inches) across, but the report notes Google and customers other than the government only get access to “images with a resolution of 50cm (20 inches).” It’s likely much of the updated imagery you see on Google Maps and Earth over the next year will come from the new satellite once in orbit. The whole article is worth a read if you’re interested in learning more about how the satellites are built and capture imagery once in space.

• Google
• Google Maps
• Google Street View
• Russia
• Sochi

Google expands Russian Street View coverage in run-up to Winter Olympics

Ben Lovejoy Jan 31 2014 - 6:31 am PT

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While technology hasn’t quite reached the stage of allowing us to watch the Winter Olympics from within Google Street View,  you can now take a virtual wander through the host city of Sochi. The games are scheduled to take place there from 7th to 23rd February.

Street View coverage in Russia also now includes Vladivostok, Irkutsk and Yakutsk – though you may want to put on your coat for the latter: as the city with the greatest seasonal temperature swings on Earth, the lowest recorded winter temperature was a bracing -83.9F (-64.4C).

Google also added its first imagery in Slovenia, making the central European nation the 56th country to be added to Street View.

Check out some other cool (not all of them quite so literally) places you can visit on Street View with our roundup here.