UK Streetview – FULL Coverage http://maps.google.co.uk/?ie=UTF8&hq=&hnear=United+Kingdom&ll=53.343993,-5.185547&spn=8.217413,23.269043&z=6 England, Wales, Scotland and Northern…
Map and GIS News finding blog. With so many Maps and GIS sites online now it is hard to find the good from the not so good. This blog tries to cut the cream and provide you with the newest, fastest, cleanest and most user friendly maps that are available online. News has location and it is mapped.
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We often get thank you notes from users that discover, over a particular incident, the real power of waze, based on our smart, real-time re-routing. The typical story starts with a huge jam, in a place you know. Suddenly waze suggests you make a turn onto a place that seems totally unlikely…. and saves your day! we get many of these stories.
Here’s one posted yesterday by a newbie wazer nicknamed rtwolfe:
Thank you thank you. You saved me today!
“I added Waze to my iphone last weekend and already it helped me out of a big problem. I had to be at my daughter’s school, about 35 miles from my work today. I was going to be travelling over the noon hour and traffic is usually light. Nevertheless, I left early and gave myself an extra 20 minutes to get there, just in case the traffic was unusually slow. You can guess where this is going.
My work is on the east side of St Paul and as I was driving past the state capitol, I saw, on the freeway overhead message board, that there was an accident near the University of Minnesota and the freeway was limited to one lane, instead of the usual 4 lanes. Ought Oh… The sign didn’t say which side of the freeway was open and I thought I had extra time so I just drove my usual route.
I was about 4 miles from the U of M, the traffic slowed to a crawl and then stopped. Of course, I was in the left most lane. Trying to be helpful to others, I told Waze about to the Traffic jam and, when I was stopped, even sent a comment that ‘people should take an alternative route’ and ‘that the left lanes were slowest’. But, as I watched the time ticking away, it became clearer that I was not going to make it, if I stayed on the freeway. It was cool to watch I-94 turn from Yellow to Red, underneath my car icon, but….. And there must have been another Wazer ahead of me because I could see it was still Red and getting Redder ahead of me. So, with this real time knowledge about road conditions from Waze, I ‘made my move’.
I cut right and kept moving through the rightmost lanes until I was in the faster rightmost lane. I knew staying on the freeway was futile, so I exited at a midtown exit that is near the U of M. I graduated from the U so I had a vague idea of the neighborhood but I could see that I was not the only ’smart guy’ who was ‘making a move’. The backup of traffic leading to the stoplight on University Avenue, the main local road, was horrendous. But I had my Waze!
The area where I exited was an older industrial area. Warehouses, trailer yards, pretty lousy potholed ‘roads’ used by the truckers…. but the Waze on line map showed me a ‘road’ that cut left and ran parallel to University Ave. Well, I could lose 15 minutes waiting to get to the stoplight or ‘go for it’. Yep, I got out of the long line for the stoplight, zoomed up the left side to the turn lane for the ‘trucker road’. No one else was taking this route! I cut onto the trucker road. Blasted down the side streets, with Waze showing me the way. Waze showed me the name of a street 4 blocks ahead of me, that would lead me to a road I knew.
And here’s the amazing part. 2 block ahead there was a Waze Cupcake! that I had to drive through. So, ate the cupcake, *(love the sound), found my road, zoomed to the freeway entrance that I believed would be clear of the trafffic jam. Blasted back on the freeway and, I was right, the roadway was clear.
Bottom Line. I made it to Lucy’s school with 1 minute to spare. I left 20 minutes early but without Waze I’m sure I would have been 20 minutes late.
I was on time. Lucy got to hear her dad read the Jackie Robinson story Teammates to her 1st grade classmates. Joy!
Thank you! A new loyal Waze user.”
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Though fledgling driving communities have already developed in both Germany and France, today, we’re happy to announce our official launch in these countries. Bonjour and Guten tag, friends!
German and French wazers can now benefit from:
Road grids that will quickly become navigable maps
Up until recently, users in these areas needed to record roads entirely from scratch, however, we’ve received access to a comprehensive set of German and French road grids, which we’ll merge with data that local users have already contributed on their own, and – poof! – these communities will be off to a fantastic start. All that’s missing in order to turn the grid into a fully functioning map is for local wazers to validate road directions by driving on the roads themselves, and to add road names via waze’s online map editor.
Road goodies and virtual treasure chests for extra points and prizes!
Starting today, French and German users will find that most roads will be marked with plenty of ‘road munching’ dots – GPS points that, when driven over, set the road’s direction, helping to increase map quality and navigability, while providing them with tons of extra points. The process of validation is incredibly quick – within just a couple of weeks, these maps will be fully navigable and highly accurate. We’ll also be adding candy and cupcake ‘road goodies’ – small icons worth 3 and 5 bonus points, respectively – to the map in areas where the system needs validation.
…And don’t forget the best part: waze’ll be distributing VIRTUAL TREASURE CHESTS (!) on the roads that, when driven over, have the potential to reward users with an Amazon gift card – so French and German wazers, get out there and find ‘em!
What’s to come?
Stay tuned to the waze blog for the official launch of driving communities in other areas…we’re working on a bunch of stuff that you’re gonna want to know about…
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55 people wanted the QStarz 5Hz GPS recorder we were giving away and the winner was commenter #48 “inw” who left one of the most boring comments:
inw Says:
March 6th, 2010 at 11:37 am
This looks pretty nice.
Congrats. We’ll get in touch with you for your address.
If you want to know more about the QStarz BT-Q1000eX check out their Facebook page.
Brought to you by your GPS navigation site NaviGadget.
QStarz 5Hz GPS recorder winner
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As well as today’s huge update to Street View in the UK Google have also unveiled Street View in Hong Kong and Macau.The Macau TowerStatue of Guan Yin, MacauMiu Fat Buddhist MonasteryWestern MarketTing Kau Bridge________________
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googlemapsapi: Twitter.com is turning on “Tweet with your Location” that uses the @GoogleMapsAPI – Click pin here: http://bit.ly/dlgy6C to see it in action
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Radio stations are always looking for the “phrase that pays.” That’s passé. When it comes to local businesses on the web, it’s praise that pays. Whether it’s Yelp reviews, FourSquare check-ins, or customer feedback provided in Intuit’s ongoing Love A Local Business competition.
This mashup uses APIs to enhance its message and improve a user’s ability to find a business. Search results are plotted using Google Maps (our Google Maps API profile), but are not a core part of the site.
Similarly, Intuit has used location-sharing service FourSquare (our FourSquare API profile). Optionally, users let Intuit connect to FourSquare to access recent check-ins. After all, places where users go often are bound to be ones they’d nominate for such a competition.
Each month Intuit selects five businesses to win grants of at least $5,000. Most are selected via a raffle, with each user vote counting as a “ticket.” Then, based on user comments, a grand prize of an additional $30,000 may be awarded.
Want to earn some dough for your favorite business? This contest could be just the ticket.
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Cities and local governments around the world are beginning to realize that it takes more than a traditional website to get discovered. Millions of people around the world are touring the planet or searching for businesses through free geospatial tools like Google Earth and Google Maps. Imagery, terrain, and 3D models all help these virtual visitors to formulate a picture in their mind.
The City of Fredericton uses Google Earth for city planning and other official uses. They had access to 3D building data so when they learned about Google’s Cities in 3D Program they offered to contribute their data to Google in the hope that it might appear in Google Earth. In addition to Google Earth, 3D data contributed to Google is used to display 3D buildings in Google Maps, which will benefit anyone trying to find a specific location in the City. If you’re a city or local government, have access to 3D data, and would like to “get on the virtual map”, we encourage you to learn more by visiting our Cities in 3D Program website.
About Fredericton
The City of Fredericton is the riverfront Capital of the province of New Brunswick, which is one of four provinces that make up Atlantic Canada. The population of New Brunswick is around 750,000 with urban and suburban areas extending into rural. The population of the city is 50,535; with a total of 85,688 people living in Greater Fredericton. Fredericton was named the Capital in 1785.
Today, Greater Fredericton is home to more than 70% of New Brunswick´s Information Technology industries. The city is the New Brunswick centre for information technology, engineering and environmental technology industries. Fredericton is also home to two universities (St. Thomas University and the University of New Brunswick) and a variety of training colleges and institutes.
Fredericton offers a balanced lifestyle to its residents, with abundant recreational and cultural amenities. The City is an ISO 9001:2008 certified organization delivering more than 150 programs and services to residents and visitors alike.
Fredericton was added to the Smart 7 Communities List for 2009 by the Intelligent Community Forums – for the second year in a row. Environmental awareness is top of mind for the City of Fredericton. In 2009, the City was named a national leader in the Partners for Climate Protection (PCP) program by the Federation of Canadian Municipalities. Fredericton is only one of four Canadian cities to achieve the highest level of program requirements for greenhouse gas measurement and reduction in municipal operations in Canada.
Other awards and recognitions that the city has won include:
Fredericton & Cities in 3D Program
Rob Lunn, GIS Coordinator for the City, told us that he discovered the Google Earth 3D building models and SketchUp utility at the GeoWeb Conference in 2008. City employees were already using Google Earth for work or personal purposes.
Rob Lunn said, “I knew there was a program to upload data to Google and getting data to Google was a big initiative for us. We wanted to find avenues to release available data and information to be public at large and the Cities in 3D Program seemed like a perfect solution.”
“We decided to go through the Cities in 3D Program because of time and having Google folks involved helped speed it up. We want our city to be discoverable through Google as well as through our local website. But if there are people going straight to Google, we want them to discover it there too.”
History of Sharing
The City of Fredericton has a partnership with the local Military in New Brunswick, Canadian Forces Base Gagetown. The CFB Gagetown is one of the largest military bases in Canada. “We provided data for creating models (building footprints with heights, DEM, aerial photography, oblique angle aerial photography collected by a firm with an ultra light plane and street level photography) and they built up the data sets. The group is the Army Learning Support Center for Tactics School and one of the largest bases in Canada,” says Rob Lunn. This high-tech military group took this model and integrated it into a first person tactics game. They wanted a real life model for training purposes.
“We also meet PSAB (Public Sector Accounting Board) legislation for tracking assets. From a city perspective, we have to know the tree cover, quantity of trees, park benches, how many meters of sidewalks, how many meters of sewer pipes, etc. We truly have to know what we have because they have to be accounted for. There’s an expense and you have to replace the sidewalk, etc. We have to have a good understanding of what we own.”
Fredericton in Google Earth
“Of course, we’re interested in promoting Fredericton and have people discover the 3D models, that’s wonderful for us. For staff it is important to be able to see the impact that buildings or other structures (e.g signage) have on the streetscape. Right now, we’re using the models more for tourism and economic development, but plan to expand into more areas. What motivated us to contribute our data was the opportunity to make the information available to a wider audience through a tool (Google Earth) that they are already using.
Over 100 photo-textured 3D buildings in Fredericton were added to Google Earth in January 2010. The buildings included government offices, commercial buildings and parking structures. To visit Fredericton, download Google Earth and search for “Fredericton, Canada” and make sure the “3D Buildings” layer is checked.
Posted by Bruce Polderman, Cities in 3D Team
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I get calls all the time asking for suggestions for “someone” to talk about “something” geo as the keynote speaker at a conference. I want to crowdsource the latest one to get some new faces and ideas out there! Here’s the basic outline of what’s…Read more
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Google’s Share Your Ride SweepstakesTo celebrate today’s release of Biking Directions on Google Maps, Google are giving away a new bike to the lucky winner of the Share Your Ride Sweepstakes.To have a chance of winning a voucher worth $2,500 USD, for use at American Cyclery, all you have to do is write a message on Twitter which includes the hashtag #bikewithgoogle, before 12:00:00 pm PST on
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WHERE, the LBS platform for ULocate now has an advertising component, WHERE Ads. – VentureBeat Junaio 2.0 is launching at SXSW this week. The big news for augmented reality platform? It works indoors using GPS and compass-based geo-information….Read more
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Google has hinted about adding bike directions to Google Maps and now it’s here. The beta app was announced at the National Bike Summit in Washington, D.C. Google sent a note to journalists about the desktop only, USA only tool. A mobile version is i…Read more
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googlemaps: Wondering how we built the new biking directions feature? This LatLong post explains: http://bit.ly/bfV32i #bikewithgoogle
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from the ArcGIS Explorer blog:
A new version of ArcGIS Explorer (build 1200) is now available for download at:
http://www.esri.com/software/arcgis/explorer
http://resources.esri.com/arcgisexplorer
If you’ve not installed ArcGIS Explorer before, you can run the system check utility or review the platform requirements
before you install. If you are already using ArcGIS Explorer on the
same machine as ArcGIS Desktop, please note that the uninstall may take
a few minutes…
Read more from the ArcGIS Explorer blog.
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