geo2web.com

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Hi! I’m Katsuomi Kobayashi, a developer from Osaka, Japan. I’m delighted to write as a guest on this blog.

2D Driving Simulator on Google Maps is a personal project of mine. With the power of Google Maps, you can drive around the world without having to worry about spending money on expensive gas. And it is using the brand-new Flash API which Google released two weeks ago.

My original 2D Driving Simulator is a Flash toy that simulates car parking and trailer movement. In my second release of the toy, I added in wide courses to make it a bit more fun (and less crash-prone). When I tried to add in more natural courses and realized how difficult it was, I decided to test out using the real roads of Google Maps as a backdrop.

At the time of that decision, the Google Maps API was only available in Javascript - so I actually had to find a way to overlay the Flash toy on top of a Javascript map and synchronize them. Amazingly, it actually somewhat worked. Unfortunately, it’s ’success’ relied on the troublesome wmode=transparent Flash parameter, and on having to call JavaScript from Flash 20 times a second (certainly not a typical thing to do).

So, the release of the Google Maps API for Flash was truly happy news for me. I implemented it right away. It was easy to replace the JS API; it only took a few hours. All I had to do was to add a com.google.maps.Map child on the main Sprite, copy the JavaScript functions to ActionScript, and adapt them according to the API’s minor differences.

The result is very impressive: there is both an increased frame rate (from 15-20 fps to 40 fps) *and* a decreased CPU usage. Moreover, the map perfectly follows the vehicle’s movement. Quite natural!

The Google Maps API for Flash has enabled us developers to create real-time Google Maps applications. I believe this excellent API has unlimited potential and look forward to using more of it in the future.

Posted by Katsuomi Kobayashi, Community Developer

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Henrik Stewenius, Software Engineer, Google Zurich

Have you ever looked at a photo and wondered what was beyond its edges - just what was left of that castle or what the facade of Notre Dame looks like from close up? We certainly have, which is why I’m happy to tell you about a new feature we’ve just introduced for Panoramio, Google’s site for sharing geo-tagged photos.

Panoramio enables photographers to geo-locate, store and organize their photographs and to view those images in their geographic context. You may already have seen photos from the Panoramio layer while zooming around in Google Earth or Google Maps (just click the “more” button), but have you visited the Panoramio website? Now, when browsing photos on the site you can explore multiple images of a particular location in a more seamless way.

For select photos on www.panoramio.com, you’ll find a new link below the photo:

When you click it, a pop-up will appear that looks like this:

When you mouse over an image, you’ll see polygonal frames appear. Each of these frames represents a photo of the same location taken from a different angle or perspective. Just click on the frame to view that photo, and continue exploring. You can also click the thumbnails on the right-hand panel.

Follow the “Look around” link from this photo of Notre Dame in Paris or St Basil’s Cathedral in Moscow to see them from all different angles. Take a look at these beautiful photos of the Astrological Clock in Prague.

We’re experimenting with this new feature, so you won’t find the “look around” link for all of the over 5 million photos shared in Panoramio. For now you’ll find it primarily on photos of popular tourist attractions, but, as with our other tools and services, we plan to keep tinkering with it, so keep an eye out for new developments.

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Google Maps adds ‘More’ and Explore

Google Maps has added Wikipedia and Photos from http://www.panoramio.com/

This enhances the online mapping application into a more powerful and visual locating tool.

Clicking the ‘More’ exposes the new available layers.

See it in action

These features seem to be spawned from the Google Earth Desktop application and now made available in the web browser.

So when will Google Maps do 3D?

Source and more information available at Google Maps Mania

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We are pleased to announce the availability of our booklet: Digital Geography - Geographic Visualisation for Urban Environments. Printed in full colour the 10 x 8 inch booklet runs to 64 pages of insights and tutorials on Virtual Earth, Google Earth, Google Maps, Panoramas and Second Life.
With a focus on Neogeography, Web 2.0 [...]

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If you are a Google Earth user, you can view all kinds of fascinating free geo data available on the web. For example, this morning, I went exploring on the US Forest Service website and poked around the FSGeodata Clearinghouse. This collection offers interesting vector and raster-based mapping data for USFS lands in [...]

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Don’t take the title too seriously; I haven’t run off to trademark it (too late) or set up a series of conferences, but I do see some new technologies coming together with some old favorites to deliver a platform for web mapping and GIS like we haven’t seen in the past. Recent news [...]

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If you are a Google Earth user, you can view all kinds of fascinating free geo data available on the web. For example, this morning, I went exploring on the US Forest Service website and poked around the FSGeodata Clearinghouse. This collection offers interesting vector and raster-based mapping data for USFS lands in [...]

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Yesterday, several of us presented at the California Council of Land Trust conference in Sacramento. Member groups of this organization work on land conservation issues, which is a cause near and dear to my heart.
Land trust organizations often use GIS to plan projects and educate donors and the public about their work. Non [...]

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Nokia GPS Internal vs External
“The Nokia Bluetooth GPS Module LD-4W is for you if you’re looking for a navigation solution to send you effortlessly on your way. The lightweight, slim design makes this technology a great travelling companion” (AND DON’T HAVE AN INTERNAL GPS BUILT TO YOUR MOBILE PHONE)

Nokia GPS Module - it’s [...]

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There’s a lot to discover in Google Maps: addresses, businesses, points of interest, user maps, and even photos, books, and videos. To help sift through all of this, we’ve added a new search option that will help you find exactly what you want. Check out the new “show search options” link near the [...]

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Happy New Year! We’re starting things off with a number of exciting updates.
With help from a team of USGS scientists, we reengineered the Earthquake layer to be more accurate and informative. And to top it all off, we gave it a fresh new look. This layer presents historic earthquake epicenters of magnitudes greater [...]

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MSN Map Search in China

Detailed Searching now available in China

Mapping at street level with local search terms
“MSN today launched its latest online map search in China. Based on Microsoft’s virtual earth platform, the new service will include detailed information on 114 cities in China, including information on the public transit system in 11 [...]

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Google Maps Iowa Caucus Results: Mapped results, YouTube videos, News and helpful reference links.
Iowa Democratic Party Results (Blue noting the Obama victory):

Republican Party of Iowa (Blue notes Huckabee victory):

For more background on this Google initiative and for more ways to follow the 2008 election, read Brittany Bohnet’s post on the Google Lat Long [...]

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3D plugins, browsers and languages come and go, Virtual Reality Modelling Language (VRML) rode a wave of hype only to suffer as a result of being before its time. Viewpoint, our personal favorite of a few years ago, rode a similar wave attracting a strong community of developers before rather foolishly locking them [...]

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Microsoft Windows Update Kills ArcGIS Help
“ESRI® announces the ArcGIS 9.2 Desktop Help Search Patch. This patch solves an issue where the search tab in ArcGIS Desktop help becomes inoperable. We recommend all ArcGIS Desktop 9.2 users download and install this patch at their earliest convenience to ensure the highest quality experience when working [...]

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