Many of the products and services that Google releases are usually geographically limited to the United States. After an initial rollout in the US last October, YouTube Red is now available in Australia and New Zealand.
YouTube Gaming, the platform the company first unveiled back in June to bring live gameplay broadcasting to YouTube, is today expanding to new territory including Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and Ireland.
The backpack-based Google Trekker tours have taken us to some pretty spectacular places in the past, and the latest addition won’t disappoint. The Street View imagery covers seven of New Zealand’s world-famous ‘Great Walks,’ including some of the settings for the Hobbit movie trilogy …
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[tweet https://twitter.com/googlemaps/status/269499168354091008]
As noted on the Google Maps blog, Google continues to update maps with new aerial, satellite, and 45-degree imagery for many cities in the U.S. and abroad. Google’s most recent addition to maps is a new collection of 45-degree imagery for 60 new cities—40 in the U.S. and 20 internationally— in places like Switzerland and Luxembourg. That brings the total number of cities with updated aerial and satellite imagery in Maps and Google Earth up to 164 cities in 108 countries. Google walked through a few of the recent updates, such as the Space Needle in Seattle and Bridges in the Sky art installation in Austria, but also provided a full list of cities with new high resolution imagery (below):
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Google’s Business Photos program, which was previously only available in the United States, United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, and France, is now being expanded to Canada, Ireland, and the Netherlands due to the service’s positive feedback.
According to the Official Google Lat Long Blog:
Since April 2010, we’ve been testing and developing the Business Photos program, which gives users a virtual peek inside businesses through interactive 360-degree imagery. After hearing your positive feedback about how showing off panoramic views of your business interiors helps you attract potential customers, we’re excited to announce further expansion of this program. Starting today, in addition to the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand and France, this service is now available in Canada, Ireland and the Netherlands.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iQ48ZKAU2jw&w=670&h=411]
Just as Verizon Wireless announced Thursday launch of Sony Ericsson’s Xperia Play handset in the US, the New Zealand branch of the big red carrier tweeted Monday that the entire shipment headed to that country had been stolen.
Regret to advise the Xperia Play launch will be delayed. Major security breach. The shipment of phones has been stolen.
Turned out that was just a clumsy marketing gimmick that had cleverly exploited the whole Sony-versus-hackers brouhaha in an effort to drum up publicity ahead of the Xperia Play launch in New Zealand. To make the whole thing appear realistic, the carrier even released security footage, allegedly from the Vodafone store, seen above. They were “investigating” the theft, per this tweet:
Our fraud team are investigating the stolen Xperia Play phones and have released footage of the break-in. Can you help?
Needless to say, it opened a can of whoop ass…
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