::: via :::
Loopt co-founder Sam Altman was onstage yesterday at Apple’s DevCon to launch the Loopt client app for iPhone. You can see it in action in this 2 minute video from ZDNet:
Loopt helps you keep tabs on your friends whereabouts from your mobile. One big difference between Loopt and most similar apps is that you don’t need to continuously update your location manually; on location aware devices this is automated eliminating the ’stale location’ problem many other apps suffered from. Loopt currently works on about 65 handsets with more on the way.
[Read more →]
Tags: loopt·Virtual Earth Maps
::: via :::
Google Map’s Street View turns one today and in celebration Google have released street view for an amazing 37 new cities. The new cities include:
* MA: Springfield
* NY: Buffalo, Rochester, Syracuse
* NJ: Newark
* VA: Virginia Beach
* NC: Charlotte, Winston-Salem
* SC: Columbia, Greenville
* GA: Atlanta
* FL: Boca Raton, Cape Coral, Ft. Lauderdale, Jacksonville, Sarasota, West Palm Beach
* AL: Huntsville
* MS: Jackson
* TN: Knoxville
* KY: Lexington, Louisville
* OH: Cincinnati, Columbus, Dayton, Toledo
* MI: Ann Arbor
* MO: St. Louis
* KS: Topeka
* NE: Lincoln
* OK: Oklahoma City, Tulsa
* NV: Reno
* CA: Bakersfield, Fresno, Sacramento, Stockton
Here is an example of street view - I think this view might be in Reno:
Google have also updated imagery in many of the cities previously covered. This means that many of the images in the sites that are compiling street view galleries will have changed.
Check Out These Street View Galleries
Via: Google LatLong: Street View turns 1, keeps on growing
___________________
[Read more →]
Tags: Google Maps Street View
::: via :::
Every now and again work comes to your attention that makes you think ‘wow’ - Daden Ltd have imported Google Maps into Second Life and it has just eaten up most of our morning.
The movie below illustrates the highlights of their work and our exploration:
Music by Destri.
Second Life is still a hard sell to local councils or local authorities, Daden’s work with Birmingham City Council is certainly interesting and we applaud the progress so far.
As for issues of copyright with regards Google Maps/Imagery in Second Life, that raises a whole different issue between cross platform usage. We cant see Google sending a cease and desist unlike the Ordnance Survey with our Second Life work…
See Daden Ltd for more info, thanks to Mal Burns and his excellent Twitter feed for the heads up.
[Read more →]
Tags: 3D·GEO Game·GEO Social·Google Maps·Imagery
::: via :::
Google Maps mashups have come a long way in 3 years. Collectively, these mashups have been widely recognized as game changing web concepts that have helped to bring geographic relevancy to millions of points of information. Back on March 13th of this year I asked you to drop me a line to tell me about an award or recognition your Google Maps mashup has received. Thanks to everyone that answered my call! Today I’m posting those submissions and others that I have pulled together. Let’s keep this an organic post that can be added on to in the form of comment posts! It will serve as a way for everyone to find those Google Maps mashups from all over the world that stand out from the rest!
2008:
2007:
2006:
2005:
Have I missed a mashup that has been given an award or special recognition? Please feel free to post a comment to tell the world about it! 
___________________
[Read more →]
Tags: Award·Google Maps·Mashups
::: via :::
Posted by Jiajun Zhu, Software Engineer
To celebrate Street View’s one year birthday, I am very happy to announce we are bringing Street View to 37 (you heard me - 37!) new areas and we have expanded coverage in 15 of our existing areas. All in all, this effectively doubles our coverage. The new cities include:
- MA: Springfield
- NY: Buffalo, Rochester, Syracuse
- NJ: Newark
- VA: Virginia Beach
- NC: Charlotte, Winston-Salem
- SC: Columbia, Greenville
- GA: Atlanta
- FL: Boca Raton, Cape Coral, Ft. Lauderdale, Jacksonville, Sarasota, West Palm Beach
- AL: Huntsville
- MS: Jackson
- TN: Knoxville
- KY: Lexington, Louisville
- OH: Cincinnati, Columbus, Dayton, Toledo
- MI: Ann Arbor
- MO: St. Louis
- KS: Topeka
- NE: Lincoln
- OK: Oklahoma City, Tulsa
- NV: Reno
- CA: Bakersfield, Fresno, Sacramento, Stockton
Now you can stroll under the iconic Reno Arch:
Along with showing you some great metropolitan areas, I’m especially excited that we’re also bringing you 10 new parks and recreational areas:
- Everglades National Park (Florida)
- Florida Keys
- Grand Teton National Park (Wyoming)
- Yellowstone National Park (Wyoming/Montana)
- Rocky Mountain National Park (Colorado)
- Joshua Tree National Park (California)
- Death Valley National Park (California)
- Lassen Volcanic National Park (California)
- Sequoia National Park (California)
- Lake Tahoe (California/Nevada)
Now you can see the boiling springs in Yellowstone National Park from a very safe distance:
And last but not least, Street View coverage has expanded in 15 of our current areas: Boise, Boston, Kansas City, Miami, Nashville, New York City, Orlando, Philadelphia, Phoenix, Portland, Richmond, San Diego, San Francisco, Tampa, and Tucson.
We’ve also been spending the past year working very hard to improve Street View image quality. In this push, we removed some of our oldest images, so say goodbye to odd coloring and funky geometric artifacts. The new images have better color and more consistent lighting.
Let’s revisit San Francisco City Hall:
And the skyscrapers of Chicago:
Now you can look up in all our images. But what goes up must come down, so with this release you can also look down as well. The roof of our car and the ‘black hole’ really aren’t all that interesting — now when you pan down the car is magically gone and you can see straight to the ground in most of our images!
And finally, in the spirit of getting better with age, the face blurring technology we began testing in Manhattan has been deployed for all of our imagery. Remember that all these new Street View images are simultaneously available in Google Earth and through Google Maps API.
[Read more →]
Tags: Earth·Google Earth·Google Maps API News·Google Maps Street View
