Online Maps

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More Google News: Banned in Minnesota; New Developer Blog
Two more recent Google-related items: North Oaks, a rather xenophobic town in Minnesota — the streets are privately owned — has asked Google to remove it from Street View; Google has complied with the town’s request. Google’s gotten into trouble… »
Posted on Monday, June 2, 2008 at 4:06 PM
Categories: Blogs, Censorship & Security, Hacks & Mashups, Online Maps
Yahoo Maps Traffic Update
Yahoo announces upgraded real-time traffic coverage: more cities, more detail, more roads…. »
Posted on Wednesday, May 14, 2008 at 8:07 PM
Categories: Online Maps, Traffic Conditions
Longest Drives in Google Maps
Alan Taylor: “I set out to find the longest distance for which Google Maps would give Driving Directions. Now that they’ve shut down the fun ‘swim the Atlantic’ feature, things have changed a bit. It turns out there are multiple… »
Posted on Sunday, May 4, 2008 at 6:47 PM
Categories: Driving Directions, Online Maps
Errors in Online Maps
Top Causes Of Errors In Online Mapping Systems: “Causes of internet map errors range from digital mapping methodology, data errors, data interpretation errors, usability errors, and errors in interpreting user queries.” Detailed. Via Slashgeo…. »
Posted on Wednesday, April 16, 2008 at 6:56 AM
Categories: Mapping Errors, Online Maps
Yahoo Updates Imagery
I will have something on the Microsoft Live Maps/Virtual Earth update presently (once I go through all the material, and there’s a lot to go through). In the meantime, though, Yahoo Maps hasn’t been idle either, with a huge imagery… »
Posted on Sunday, April 13, 2008 at 5:20 PM
Categories: Online Maps, Satellite & Aerial
Where’s the Water?
Chad follows up on his previous post about Google’s contour lines (previous entry) with one that notes one important shortcoming of online maps: almost none of them show where the water is. To be sure, major rivers and lakes are… »
Posted on Wednesday, April 9, 2008 at 6:52 PM
Categories: Online Maps
Contour Lines and Other Stories: A Google Roundup
Contour lines have been added to Google Maps’s terrain map layer, which adds its their usefulness (especially, for example, in a mountain context). But it has some way to go before it’s a suitable replacement for a topo map;… »
Posted on Friday, April 4, 2008 at 9:31 AM
Categories: Blogs, Google Earth, Hacks & Mashups, Mass Transit, Online Maps, Topo Maps & Trails
April Fool’s and Online Maps
Roundups of April Foolery related to Google Maps and Google Earth are available at Google Earth Blog and Google Maps Mania. X-ray and thermal imagery, copyrighted landscapes, and smiley faces abound. And how is this not an April Fool’s joke?… »
Posted on Tuesday, April 1, 2008 at 6:30 PM
Categories: Fun, Online Maps
An Update: Garmin, MapQuest and Google
MapQuest’s announcement about partnering with Garmin jumped the gun somewhat; Garmin’s announcement says that the send-to-GPS feature is available with Google Maps as of today, but MapQuest only as of April 15. Announced earlier than Google, but available later. Rich… »
Posted on Tuesday, April 1, 2008 at 6:24 PM
Categories: GPS, Online Maps
Garmin and MapQuest: Send to GPS
Garmin and MapQuest are up to something. The MapQuest blog says that, “coming in April, we’ll be adding a simple drop-down link to our search results pages that allow you to download destinations or itineraries to your Garmin GPS device,… »
Posted on Monday, March 31, 2008 at 8:09 PM
Categories: GPS, Online Maps
MapQuest Traffic
MapQuest has added current traffic conditions for more than 100 metropolitan areas; more details and a list of the cities covered are available here. Digital Earth Blog has an early review: “A quick glance seems to show that they… »
Posted on Tuesday, March 18, 2008 at 9:23 PM
Categories: Online Maps, Traffic Conditions
Google Maps Street View and Privacy, Redux
An article in the San Antonio Express-News about the privacy implications of Google Maps Street View — there was a flurry of media coverage about this last year, so they’re definitely playing catchup — and the means available to get… »
Posted on Tuesday, March 18, 2008 at 12:35 PM
Categories: Censorship & Security, Online Maps
Market Share
In January, Hitwise reported on the relative market shares of the online map sites. MapQuest continued to lead with more than 50 percent of the market, with Google Maps second at 22 percent, and Yahoo and Microsoft trailing. But,… »
Posted on Saturday, March 15, 2008 at 10:45 AM
Categories: GPS, Industry News, Online Maps
Google Sky on the Web
I suppose a web-based standalone version of Google Sky was inevitable, once the Google Maps API supported it, and now it’s here. Highlights include infrared, microwave and historical-map layers with opacity controls and a series of image collections from… »
Posted on Thursday, March 13, 2008 at 9:10 PM
Categories: Astronomy, Online Maps
Bizarre Sights in Google Street View
The Times has the 10 most bizarre sights in Google Street View; Valleywag has the pictures…. »
Posted on Monday, March 10, 2008 at 8:56 PM
Categories: Fun, Online Maps
Yahoo Maps Updated
New updates and upgrades to Yahoo Maps include neighbourhood data, improved international coverage, and optimized map tiles (smaller files, less time to load). Update, March 17: Richard discovers that, at least in Ottawa, “the neighbourhoods are, as far as I… »
Posted on Wednesday, March 5, 2008 at 8:16 PM
Categories: Online Maps
Yahoo Adds Draggable Driving Directions
Yahoo follows Google’s lead, adding user-adjustable driving directions with a click-and-drag interface. Now that I’ve this feature for a while, I now consider it essential, especially when you have some sense of what the best route will be for at… »
Posted on Saturday, December 22, 2007 at 9:10 PM
Categories: Driving Directions, Online Maps
Google Maps Adds Terrain Layer
Relief maps have finally come — natively, that is — to Google Maps with the release of its “Terrain” layer (the Hybrid layer moves to a checkbox on the Satellite layer, hiding or revealing street data). As is often the… »
Posted on Tuesday, November 27, 2007 at 6:25 PM
Categories: Online Maps
Flickr Places
Flickr Places organizes geotagged photos into location-based pages — even my little town gets its own page. Meanwhile, Flickr’s map goes from pushpins to tags, which may necessarily not be an improvement. Announcements: Flickr Blog, Yahoo Local and Maps… »
Posted on Wednesday, November 21, 2007 at 7:41 PM
Categories: Geotagging, Online Maps
MapQuest Beta and Blog
MapQuest — still the ostensible market leader in online mapping, apparently — has taken some steps to catch up with its upstart rivals. Its new blog — yes, MapQuest now has a blog — begins with a post announcing… »
Posted on Sunday, October 14, 2007 at 8:56 PM
Categories: Blogs, Online Maps
Google Updates: Imagery and Transit
A couple of quick updates about Google’s mapping stuff — quick updates seem to be all I have time or energy for at the moment, what with the full-time contract and the resulting lengthy commute. Google Transit’s features have been… »
Posted on Wednesday, October 3, 2007 at 7:43 PM
Categories: Google Earth, Mass Transit, Online Maps, Satellite & Aerial
Google Maps: 54 Countries Added, How Many Left?
With detailed map data being added to more and more countries all the time in Google Maps — 54 countries were added last Thursday — the holdout countries are beginning to stick out. Now that much of Latin America and… »
Posted on Sunday, September 16, 2007 at 8:23 PM
Categories: Online Maps
Street View: City Updates and Its 1907 Equivalent
Four more cities in Google Maps Street View: Houston, Orlando, Los Angeles and San Diego. Cute: Google Maps Street View Circa 1907 — or, rather, a sample of Rand McNally’s photo auto-maps, which apparently predated road maps…. »
Posted on Sunday, August 19, 2007 at 5:31 PM
Categories: Cities, Houston, Los Angeles, Online Maps, Roads
Color Your Map
From what I read about it on Free Geography Tools and GPS Tracklog, Zonum Solutions’ online tool, Color Your Map, seems like a quick way of throwing together a basic choropleth map or even a range map, especially if, as… »
Posted on Monday, July 30, 2007 at 8:26 PM
Categories: Online Maps
GeoRSS in World Wind, KML in Virtual Earth
Work is under way to add GeoRSS support to World Wind (via Chad). Meanwhile, Peter reports that in a fall update, KML support will come to Microsoft Virtual Earth (or whatever they will be calling it by then)…. »
Posted on Monday, July 30, 2007 at 7:32 PM
Categories: Online Maps, World Wind
On the iPhone and Its Lack of GPS
To read some of the commentary about the iPhone’s implementation of Google Maps, you’d think that a mobile mapping application is worthless without GPS. But is it? All Points Blog’s Joe Francica doesn’t say so outright, but in this dismissive… »
Posted on Wednesday, July 11, 2007 at 10:17 AM
Categories: GPS, Mobile Devices, Online Maps
A Map Blog Update: GeoWeb, Cartographismes and More
The GeoWeb 2007 conference, which takes place later this month and deals with “the convergence of Web technologies, XML, Web services, and GIS,” has a conference blog. The blog associated with Krygier and Wood’s excellent book, Making Maps (reviewed here),… »
Posted on Sunday, July 8, 2007 at 8:03 PM
Categories: Art, Blogs, Conferences, GIS, Online Maps
Google Maps Russia
A Russian version of Google Maps was launched yesterday. Major cities — like Moscow, obviously — get building outlines and subway stations: the full, mature Google map treatment. Other cities — I tried Ufa, a city of one million… »
Posted on Friday, July 6, 2007 at 4:06 PM
Categories: Online Maps
Shaded Relief in Virtual Earth, Google Maps
A nice touch. In its most recent update, Microsoft Virtual Earth added shaded relief to its road maps. This is something Google Maps lacks, but Google Karten notes that the map tiles from the Shaded Relief world map (see previous… »
Posted on Thursday, July 5, 2007 at 4:24 PM
Categories: Hacks & Mashups, Online Maps
A Google Maps Roundup
About a month’s worth of links related to Google Maps from my increasingly preposterous queue. Because the news wasn’t all about Street View. The imagery update announced in early June for Google Earth was applied to Google Maps only a… »
Posted on Monday, July 2, 2007 at 9:18 PM
Categories: Hacks & Mashups, Online Maps
Wired’s July Issue: Google Maps and the Hyperlocal Future
Google Maps Is Changing the Way We See the World, from Wired’s July issue, is a far-reaching state-of-the-topic article that looks at Google’s mapmaking ventures and the tremendous amount of amateur mapmaking it’s stimulated. Covers all the bases. Noteworthy: “Today,… »
Posted on Friday, June 29, 2007 at 1:30 PM
Categories: Google Earth, Hacks & Mashups, Online Maps
Google Maps: Draggable Driving Directions
The driving directions feature on Google Maps has just received a major upgrade. Multiple stops and traffic conditions have (apparently) been added, but the big one is that you can now change the route you’re given to your destination… »
Posted on Thursday, June 28, 2007 at 7:10 PM
Categories: Driving Directions, Online Maps, Video
Miami Herald NAVTEQ Profile
It’s been a while since I’ve seen a newspaper article profiling one or the other mapping data company — i.e., NAVTEQ and/or Tele Atlas — with a focus on its local surveying efforts, but here’s a new one from the… »
Posted on Tuesday, June 26, 2007 at 5:16 PM
Categories: Online Maps, Surveying
Google Street View Privacy Roundup
A roundup of links about Google Street View and its privacy implications (mostly) that have been accumulating in my queue for the past few weeks. Slate: Google Spies on America. This Denver Post editorial also raises some concerns about “personal… »
Posted on Tuesday, June 26, 2007 at 10:00 AM
Categories: Censorship & Security, Online Maps
Google Maps Street View: Moral Panic Update
Boing Boing’s Xeni Jardin asks, “Would we feel differently about street-level image mapping if it were done by a government agency? … Cameras aren’t new, maps aren’t new, the internet isn’t new, nor is Google or Microsoft. So why does… »
Posted on Monday, June 4, 2007 at 8:30 AM
Categories: Censorship & Security, Online Maps
NY Times on Street View and Privacy
The story of the privacy implications of Google’s Street View (see previous entry) has now been picked up by the New York Times. Meanwhile, scouring Street View for interesting or amusing images is turning into another pastime, as it was… »
Posted on Friday, June 1, 2007 at 11:22 AM
Categories: Censorship & Security, Online Maps
Miscellaneous Google Things
Mashup makers take note: the Google Maps API now supports driving directions. Google has gone and bought photo-geotagging site Panoramio. At a Developer Day talk, Google’s plans for integrating AdSense into its map products. (Disclaimer: I make money from AdSense.)… »
Posted on Thursday, May 31, 2007 at 8:43 PM
Categories: Geotagging, Hacks & Mashups, Online Maps
Google Maps Street View and Privacy
When you consider the privacy concerns — freakouts, really — that were raised when the online map sites made satellite and aerial imagery readily available, it’s not surprising that there would be similar concerns raised about the street-level imagery announced… »
Posted on Wednesday, May 30, 2007 at 8:18 PM
Categories: Censorship & Security, Online Maps
Being First vs. ‘Cleaner and More Thoughtful’
Valleywag on the competition between Google and Microsoft on the mapping front, touching on yesterday’s Street View announcement: “The battle for mapping supremacy continues with the rush to add new features. Unfortunately for Microsoft, being first has not been a… »
Posted on Wednesday, May 30, 2007 at 7:13 AM
Categories: Online Maps
On the User-Unfriendliness of Pushpin Clusters
Daniel Jalkut has a couple of suggestions about the user-unfriendliness of tightly clustered pushpins on Google Maps: “[T]o find out what’s actually at the cluster point, I have to go back to the ugly list and click items to see… »
Posted on Tuesday, May 29, 2007 at 9:33 PM
Categories: Online Maps
Another Microsoft Imagery Update
Probably not fortuitous that Microsoft’s monthly Virtual Earth imagery update (see previous entry) also took place today: the Virtual Earth/Live Maps blog has the details; I note with interest that Ottawa, the closest city to me, is among the cities… »
Posted on Tuesday, May 29, 2007 at 6:44 PM
Categories: Online Maps, Satellite & Aerial
Google Maps Street View
The big news so far from Where 2.0 is the announcement of Google’s street-level imagery for five U.S. cities — Denver, Las Vegas, Miami, New York and (of course) San Francisco — which, in a fit of originality, they’re… »
Posted on Tuesday, May 29, 2007 at 4:28 PM
Categories: Cities, New York, Online Maps, Roads, San Francisco, Video
Some Google Maps Updates
Google Transit adds Reno and San Diego; I must have missed when they added the Japanese rail networks, domestic airlines and ferries. Google Maps for mobile supports GPS on certain devices — for example, the BlackBerry 8800 and some Windows… »
Posted on Monday, May 28, 2007 at 8:42 AM
Categories: Driving Directions, GPS, Mass Transit, Mobile Devices, Online Maps
A Year or More for Corrections and Updates
Don’t expect instant results when you submit errors to a mapping data provider. A dentist whose office is not on the map discovers that NAVTEQ can take as much as a year, if not more, to process corrections or new… »
Posted on Friday, May 25, 2007 at 10:19 AM
Categories: Mapping Errors, Online Maps
O’Reilly Radar: Trends of Online Mapping Portals
In Trends of Online Mapping Portals, O’Reilly Radar’s Brady Forrest writes, “Last week there were several announcements made that show the direction of the online mapping portals. Satellite images and slippy maps are no longer differentiators for attracting users […]… »
Posted on Tuesday, May 22, 2007 at 8:38 PM
Categories: Online Maps
Behind Yahoo’s New Map Design
Cartifact was involved in Yahoo’s new map design, which was launched last week. From the press release: “Cartifact contributed features not found in other online maps. At higher zoom levels, shaded relief conveys a sense of terrain and elevation,… »
Posted on Monday, May 21, 2007 at 11:07 AM
Categories: Online Maps
MacArthur Maze vs. U.S. Route 90
Some more material about updating road data after disasters that I missed the first time around (and am only getting to now). Via Mapping Hacks, a San Francisco Chronicle article that discussed updating driving directions in the wake of… »
Posted on Wednesday, May 16, 2007 at 5:03 PM
Categories: Driving Directions, Hurricanes 2005, Online Maps, Roads, San Francisco
Yahoo Moves to New Map Platform
Yahoo moved its maps to a new platform today, IDG News Service reports: “[W]ith the new platform, developed in-house, Yahoo Maps will perform better, offer more precise results and make backend upgrades easier to implement, Yahoo said. … The… »
Posted on Wednesday, May 16, 2007 at 2:14 PM
Categories: Online Maps
Google Finally Gets a Map Blog
Yahoo and Microsoft have had mapping blogs for a while, but not Google — at least not until today, when the Google Lat Long Blog, which covers Maps, Earth, Local and the mapping API, made its debut. Now where’s the… »
Posted on Wednesday, May 9, 2007 at 8:00 PM
Categories: Blogs, Google Earth, Hacks & Mashups, Online Maps
How Online Maps Update Their Data After Major Road Closures
This week has revealed a lot about how the online mapping sites respond to disasters that close major routes and affect driving directions. Within two days of the MacArthur Maze freeway collapse in Oakland, Google Maps, Yahoo Maps and MapQuest… »
Posted on Thursday, May 3, 2007 at 8:28 PM
Categories: Driving Directions, Online Maps, Roads, San Francisco, Seattle
Virtual Earth Imagery Updated Monthly
Virtual Earth imagery updates are apparently a monthly thing now: here’s news of the latest, which includes updates for Italy, France, Mexico, Canada and the U.S., including more U.S. bird’s-eye imagery…. »
Posted on Friday, April 27, 2007 at 6:08 PM
Categories: Online Maps, Satellite & Aerial
Google Maps Updates in Asia, Eastern Europe
Reports from Google Maps Mania and Google Karten that city and road data for several more countries have been added to, or upgraded in, Google Maps. In Europe, which first got streets a year ago, Croatia, Slovenia, Estonia, Lithuania and… »
Posted on Thursday, April 26, 2007 at 3:26 PM
Categories: Online Maps
Yahoo India Maps
Mapperz discovers that Yahoo India has maps (or possibly that Yahoo Maps has India). I am bemused to see that India’s borders are exactly where the Indian government says they ought to be. Street data does not extend beyond those… »
Posted on Wednesday, April 25, 2007 at 1:59 PM
Categories: Online Maps
3D Buildings in Google Maps
Building outlines for some U.S. cities arrived in Google Maps a couple of months ago; now Stefan reports that the 3D buildings layer from Google Earth has been repurposed for Google Maps, as semi-transparent, oblique building shapes at the… »
Posted on Thursday, April 12, 2007 at 9:45 AM
Categories: Online Maps
The Low Profile of Microsoft’s Mapping Effort
Why does Microsoft’s online mapping service get so little attention compared with Google’s? Peter Laudati thinks it’s because it’s gone through so many name changes, from Virtual Earth to Windows Live Local to whatever they’re calling it now — he… »
Posted on Tuesday, April 10, 2007 at 2:36 PM
Categories: Online Maps
Mapping Popular Locations in Online Maps
In a workshop paper called How We Watch the City: Popularity and Online Maps (PDF), Danyel Fisher of Microsoft Research describes how he generated a heat map based on the server logs for Virtual Earth’s image tiles. The brighter… »
Posted on Saturday, April 7, 2007 at 8:33 AM
Categories: Online Maps
Google’s My Maps: A Roundup
O’Reilly Radar notes the fact that the maps are not only shareable, but searchable. Free GeoTools tests the accuracy of position markers generated in My Maps when they’re imported, as KML, into Google Earth: the test location was off by… »
Posted on Friday, April 6, 2007 at 7:12 PM
Categories: Hacks & Mashups, Online Maps
Google Maps Adds My Maps Feature
Clearly I go to bed too early. Late last night, Google Maps added a new feature called “My Maps,” which seems to be Google’s response to the collections feature in Microsoft’s Virtual Earth/Windows Live Local/Live Maps. In a nutshell, it’s… »
Posted on Thursday, April 5, 2007 at 8:23 AM
Categories: Online Maps
New Version of Live Maps
A new iteration of Live Maps — which appears to be the latest name of Virtual Earth or Windows Live Local or whatever Microsoft comes up with next; this’ll be the third name in as many years — was announced… »
Posted on Tuesday, April 3, 2007 at 9:07 PM
Categories: Online Maps
Google Reverts to Pre-Katrina New Orleans Imagery
Google has apparently replaced post-Katrina images of New Orleans with imagery from before the hurricane clobbered the city, and people are upset about that, the AP reports (choose your source for the same article: Boston Globe, Guardian, Houston Chronicle,… »
Posted on Friday, March 30, 2007 at 8:42 AM
Categories: Hurricanes 2005, New Orleans, Online Maps, Satellite & Aerial
More Virtual Earth Imagery Updates
Hot on Google’s heels, there’s a major imagery update for Virtual Earth, with dozens of cities in Europe and the U.S. getting bird’s-eye photography, as well as high-resolution orthoimagery coming to a number of U.S. and Canadian locales. Previously: Virtual… »
Posted on Friday, March 30, 2007 at 8:07 AM
Categories: Online Maps, Satellite & Aerial
Trans-Atlantic Driving Directions
For a giggle, have a look at Google Maps’s driving directions from New York to Dublin, Ireland. Take special note of step 23. Lord help us if this makes its way into dashboard navigation systems. Via Kottke. Update: The MetaFilter… »
Posted on Thursday, March 29, 2007 at 9:33 AM
Categories: Driving Directions, Online Maps
Interest in Old Maps Surges in Japan
Yahoo Japan’s “Tokyo Tours With Old Maps” feature, which launched in January, has apparently kindled an interest in antique maps in Japan, The Japan Times reports. Not only is Yahoo’s site — not that I can read Japanese, but does… »
Posted on Thursday, March 29, 2007 at 9:18 AM
Categories: Antique Maps, Online Maps
MapQuest’s Send-to-Cell Feature
Gizmodo disses on MapQuest’s send-to-cell feature, now in beta, which sends directions via SMS to your mobile phone: “In this day and age of mobile Google Maps and Windows Live Maps already on smartphones and dumbphones, only a few people… »
Posted on Monday, March 26, 2007 at 9:54 AM
Categories: Mobile Devices, Online Maps
An Online Maps Roundup
Minor news items from the major online mapping services. Photos come to Google Maps — or at least photographs of businesses can appear in info windows when searching for them using local search. The Live Maps/Virtual Earth blog has been… »
Posted on Monday, March 12, 2007 at 8:31 PM
Categories: Online Maps
More Google Imagery Updates
Recent updates to the satellite and aerial imagery in Google Maps and Earth include 50-cm resolution imagery for Switzerland and Denmark, high-resolution (10 m) terrain for Switzerland, several French cities, full coverage for Utah and Wyoming, and a number of… »
Posted on Thursday, March 1, 2007 at 1:39 PM
Categories: Google Earth, Online Maps, Satellite & Aerial
Google Maps Adds Traffic Conditions
Google Maps adds traffic conditions for 30 U.S. cities, appearing as another mode beside Map, Satellite and Hybrid: “If your route shows red, you’re looking at a stop-and-go commute; yellow, you could be a little late for dinner; green, you’ve… »
Posted on Wednesday, February 28, 2007 at 6:12 PM
Categories: Online Maps, Traffic Conditions
NAVTEQ vs. Tele Atlas
If you’ve been following this blog for a while, you’ll recall that the mapping data for most of the online mapping services, and for the driving directions on GPS navigation systems, invariably comes from one of two map database suppliers:… »
Posted on Monday, February 26, 2007 at 4:44 PM
Categories: GPS, Online Maps
A Google Maps Roundup
Last week, Google launched Google Maps Australia, adding driving directions, business listings and mobile devices support to preexisting maps. (Previously: Australia, New Zealand Geocoding in Google Maps; Google Maps Adds Streets for Australia and New Zealand.) Last month, Google added… »
Posted on Monday, February 12, 2007 at 9:05 PM
Categories: Online Maps
James’s Adventures in Online Mapping and Real Estate
It’s one thing to talk about online mapping tools in the abstract, or to play around with them a little bit, but quite another to use them to achieve a specific goal. James Fee’s recent experience using a few different… »
Posted on Thursday, February 8, 2007 at 8:46 AM
Categories: Online Maps
What Virtual Earth Bugs Do You Want Fixed?
The Windows Live Local/Virtual Earth blog is asking for users’ top five bugs they’d like fixed: “List your most nagging bugs. Tell us about the usability issue that bites you everyday. Or the feature of the site that if tweaked… »
Posted on Tuesday, January 30, 2007 at 7:19 AM
Categories: Online Maps
Around and Around and Around and Around
Google gets a bit confused on the road to North Brunswick, New Jersey, Valleywag reports. Update, 1/23: Google has corrected the directions, but Chad has screenshots if you missed it…. »
Posted on Monday, January 22, 2007 at 10:20 AM
Categories: Driving Directions, Mapping Errors, Online Maps
Virtual Earth Bird’s Eye Imagery for Europe
New bird’s-eye imagery for Virtual Earth, this time covering more than 100 European cities — mostly in Italy, France and Germany, but also the Netherlands, Spain, and one city in Norway. (Though technically we should also say Monaco, since Monte… »
Posted on Monday, January 22, 2007 at 7:40 AM
Categories: Online Maps, Satellite & Aerial
Correcting Directions
Dave Winer discovers a better route than the directions suggested by Google Maps, and wonders: “So — when does mapping become a two-way app? I’d be willing to tell their software that I have a better route, it’s one that… »
Posted on Saturday, January 20, 2007 at 7:05 AM
Categories: Driving Directions, Online Maps
Microsoft Inks Deal for Improved Imagery
And the satellite imagery arms race continues. Via James comes news of a deal between Microsoft and GlobeXplorer that will add more than a million square kilometres of high-resolution imagery to Virtual Earth…. »
Posted on Tuesday, January 9, 2007 at 7:36 PM
Categories: Online Maps, Satellite & Aerial
iPhone Includes Google Maps
During his Macworld keynote presentation today, Apple CEO Steve Jobs just announced the iPhone, Apple’s mobile phone that doubles as an iPod and Internet communicator. One of the features announced for this phone — which won’t be shipping until… »
Posted on Tuesday, January 9, 2007 at 3:01 PM
Categories: Macintosh, Mobile Devices, Online Maps
Maps and Directions for the Blind
A couple of recent items about maps and directions for the visually impaired. Rachel Magario, a blind graduate student at Kansas University, is working to create tactile campus maps — “maps for the blind that are created by the blind”… »
Posted on Wednesday, December 27, 2006 at 11:49 AM
Categories: Miscellany, Online Maps
Google-Endoxon Update
I didn’t know much about the implications of Google’s Endoxon purchase when I blogged it last week, but your comments helped a great deal. Stefan at Ogle Earth has even more information, with more on Endoxon itself; he also links… »
Posted on Tuesday, December 26, 2006 at 9:24 PM
Categories: Online Maps
Yahoo Integrates Maps and Mail
My impression of Yahoo’s mapping stuff is that it lags behind the competition in terms of satellite imagery and mashups, but they’re ahead of the game in terms of integrating it with their other services (Exhibit A: Flickr maps). The… »
Posted on Friday, December 22, 2006 at 8:57 AM
Categories: Online Maps
Virtual Earth Updates: 3D City Textures, Italy
A major update to Virtual Earth this week: new three-dimensional city textures for Minneapolis-St. Paul, Tacoma, Sacramento, the L.A. suburbs and Irving, Texas on the one hand; a massive imagery and terrain update for Italy on the other. James explores… »
Posted on Wednesday, December 20, 2006 at 8:23 AM
Categories: Online Maps, Satellite & Aerial
Google Maps Updates: India, Singapore, Hong Kong
Google Maps Mania reports Google Maps updates — streets and roads, place names, cities — for India, Singapore and Hong Kong. Previously: Google Maps Africa Update; Google Maps Updates for Brazil and Japan…. »
Posted on Wednesday, December 20, 2006 at 8:16 AM
Categories: Online Maps
Google Buys Endoxon
Google has acquired Swiss mapping company Endoxon — or at least its Internet, mapping and data processing units; the cartography, analysis and geodata units have been spun off as Mappuls AG. The acquisition is apparently meant to bolster the technology… »
Posted on Monday, December 18, 2006 at 9:30 AM
Categories: Online Maps
Virtual Earth Upgrades
Improvements to Virtual Earth announced this week include a new navigation control for bird’s-eye imagery and a new distance-measurement tool; James likes…. »
Posted on Thursday, December 14, 2006 at 11:10 AM
Categories: Online Maps, Satellite & Aerial
Microsoft Put Technology Before Experience: Berkowitz
A profile in the International Herald Tribune of Microsoft’s new online services chief Steve Berkowitz sheds some light on how the software giant develops its web services (including its maps, of course). Berkowitz isn’t shy about criticizing Microsoft’s past practices:… »
Posted on Sunday, December 10, 2006 at 11:19 AM
Categories: Online Maps
Were the Kims Led Astray by Online Maps?
On the other hand, sometimes stories about being led astray by navigation systems aren’t so amusing. The tech community has been concerned about the disappearance of CNet senior editor James Kim and his family while on vacation: his family was… »
Posted on Tuesday, December 5, 2006 at 10:00 PM
Categories: Driving Directions, Mapping Errors, Online Maps
Mobile Maps Compared
Gizmodo compares Windows Live Search for Mobile and Google Maps Mobile on a phone running Windows Mobile, and finds the Google option wanting, but then the Microsoft app was native and the Google app was coded in Java: “Google Maps… »
Posted on Monday, December 4, 2006 at 8:52 AM
Categories: Mobile Devices, Online Maps
Google Transit Feed Specification
If you want your city to be included in Google Transit, point them to the Google Transit Feed Specification, which sets out the format in which the transit data must be encoded. Via Google Blog. Previously: Google Transit Adds Five… »
Posted on Wednesday, November 22, 2006 at 8:56 PM
Categories: Mass Transit, Online Maps
Microsoft Mapping Roundup
Chandu Thota is leaving the Virtual Earth/MapPoint group to join another group within Microsoft. He’s been there four years, during which time we heard about a good deal of his work. For example, some previous entries: Thota on Virtual Earth… »
Posted on Monday, November 20, 2006 at 10:14 AM
Categories: Georeferencing, Online Maps
Google Maps Click-to-Call
Even as Google was announcing a new calling feature on Google Maps, which allows people to enter their phone number on a map-based business search result and have Google connect them to that business for free (even if it’s long… »
Posted on Friday, November 17, 2006 at 8:02 AM
Categories: Online Maps
Yahoo! Maps Out of Beta; Europe Update
Our recent discussions of Yahoo! Maps’s features have focused, it must be said, on their new, beta version rather than their older, default version: you have had to choose the new version deliberately. Until today: Yahoo! announces that the beta… »
Posted on Thursday, November 16, 2006 at 2:53 PM
Categories: Online Maps
Another Virtual Earth 3D Roundup
Links regarding the Virtual Earth 3D launch last week have been piling up in my files; time once more to clear out the queue and share them with you. Brian Flood takes a good look at some of Virtual Earth… »
Posted on Tuesday, November 14, 2006 at 8:07 PM
Categories: Online Maps, Satellite & Aerial
Google Maps Africa Update
Google Maps has added highway and street data for some African localities, Google Karten and Google Maps Mania report. They report Johannesburg and Cairo with street-level maps; I checked Algiers and it’s got them too. Other localities have major routes… »
Posted on Friday, November 10, 2006 at 12:05 PM
Categories: Online Maps
Yahoo! Maps Road Data Upgrade
Europe, at least, “now has roads, and rivers and normal map stuff like that” in Yahoo! Maps, Rev Dan Catt reports…. »
Posted on Friday, November 10, 2006 at 7:15 AM
Categories: Online Maps
Virtual Earth for Japan
In other Virtual Earth news, a localized version for Japan was also launched yesterday, replete with geocoding, yellow pages, road maps and satellite imagery…. »
Posted on Tuesday, November 7, 2006 at 11:10 AM
Categories: Online Maps, Satellite & Aerial
Virtual Earth 3D Roundup
Reactions to, and follow-up stories about, yesterday’s announcement of Microsoft’s Virtual Earth 3D thingy (previously): The AP story focuses on the Microsoft vs. Google implications of this release (via MapHist). In that vein, Frank Taylor at Google Earth Blog says,… »
Posted on Tuesday, November 7, 2006 at 10:53 AM
Categories: Online Maps, Satellite & Aerial
Virtual Earth 3D
CNet reports the launch of Virtual Earth 3D, a component of Live Search that integrates three-dimensional models of 15 U.S. cities (so far) into search results — a flyover/Flight Simulator view, I suppose. Comes with virtual billboards for advertising. Microsoft’s… »
Posted on Monday, November 6, 2006 at 5:54 PM
Categories: Online Maps, Satellite & Aerial
MapQuest 21st in Alexa Rankings
Very Spatial notes that MapQuest is 21st in Alexa’s rankings of popular web sites, which sounds impressive for a standalone map site. But, a couple of caveats. One, Alexa’s methodology is kind of like the Nielsen ratings — it gathers… »
Posted on Monday, October 30, 2006 at 9:10 PM
Categories: Online Maps
Ogle Earth on Google Integration Opportunities
Stefan speculates on some of the potential ways that Google’s mapping products could be integrated into its other services and products, as per a recent company directive to make their stuff work together better…. »
Posted on Monday, October 30, 2006 at 8:38 PM
Categories: Google Earth, Online Maps
Firefox 2.0 and Online Maps
Now that Firefox 2.0 is out, we can look at how it handles the complex code behind online map services. Fantom Planet finds that it handles Google and Yahoo! Maps well, but runs into a few quirks with Live Local…. »
Posted on Wednesday, October 25, 2006 at 8:13 AM
Categories: Online Maps, Software
New Popular Edition Maps Online
The New Popular Mapping site is a rough and ready interface to out-of-copyright (i.e., more than 50 years old) Ordnance Survey maps of England, most of which are from the postwar New Popular Edition series. It’s basically an alpha… »
Posted on Monday, October 23, 2006 at 9:21 PM
Categories: Antique Maps, Online Maps
Imagery Comes to MapQuest
What? MapQuest now has satellite/aerial imagery? When did that happen? See previous entries: More About MapQuest’s Future; MapQuest at 10; AP: MapQuest and the Competition…. »
Posted on Friday, October 13, 2006 at 8:29 AM
Categories: Online Maps, Satellite & Aerial
Google Maps on a Palm TX
Google’s announcement yesterday of a new Treo version of Google Maps for Mobile made me wonder whether it would also work on WiFi-equipped Palm handhelds, despite their absence from the list of compatible devices. Now, I don’t have a Palm… »
Posted on Friday, October 13, 2006 at 6:51 AM
Categories: Mobile Devices, Online Maps
How Current Are Online Maps?
David Naffziger wonders which online mapping service has the most current maps and finds that for Chandler, Arizona (where rapid growth allows the maps to be dated relatively precisely), Yahoo! seems to be a step or two ahead of the… »
Posted on Monday, October 9, 2006 at 9:45 PM
Categories: Online Maps
Google Maps Netherlands
Initially I didn’t get the significance of yesterday’s launch of Google Maps Netherlands (see Google Maps Mania, Google Karten and Ogle Earth), especially since parts of Europe got Google Maps coverage last April. But, as Webmapper points out, the Netherlands… »
Posted on Wednesday, October 4, 2006 at 8:27 PM
Categories: Online Maps
MapQuest Upgraded
Cartography reports that MapQuest’s interface and graphics have been upgraded; you can now, for example, pan around the map by dragging, like you can with all the other major online map services…. »
Posted on Wednesday, October 4, 2006 at 7:43 AM
Categories: Online Maps
Another Google Imagery Update
Another update to Google’s satellite imagery today, Maps and Earth at the same time. Here’s an announcement. Via Google Earth Blog; I expect Frank Taylor will be adding to the list as more updates are discovered. See previous entry: Google… »
Posted on Tuesday, October 3, 2006 at 3:49 PM
Categories: Google Earth, Online Maps, Satellite & Aerial
A9 Removes Maps
Amazon’s A9 search engine has discontinued its street-level imagery and maps. Via All Points Blog. See previous entry: A9 Adds Maps…. »
Posted on Monday, October 2, 2006 at 8:27 AM
Categories: Online Maps
Google Transit Adds Five Cities
Google Transit, the trip planner that includes public transportation data, started last December (see previous entry) with Portland, Oregon as its single city, presumably as a proof of concept. Today they’ve added five more cities: Honolulu, Pittsburgh, Seattle, Tampa, and… »
Posted on Wednesday, September 27, 2006 at 10:13 PM
Categories: Cities, Mass Transit, Online Maps, Pittsburgh, Seattle
Google Maps Updates for Brazil and Japan
Google Maps has added road data for Brazil — no address search yet, though — and updated the map tiles for Japan, allowing (apparently) hybrid mode. See also Google Maps Mania, Google Karten…. »
Posted on Tuesday, September 26, 2006 at 7:41 AM
Categories: Online Maps
Live Local/Virtual Earth Update
More features have been added to Windows Live Local, the eponymous blog reports, including people search, the ability to send address details to your mobile phone, and enhanced drawing tools that include the ability to draw shapes — i.e., enclosed… »
Posted on Tuesday, September 12, 2006 at 7:37 AM
Categories: Online Maps
Google Imagery Update
There are reports here and there that Google has updated its satellite imagery. The images are certainly loading differently for me: lower-resolution photos are being used at wider zoom levels, and they seem to be cached differently. More as more… »
Posted on Friday, September 8, 2006 at 1:38 PM
Categories: Online Maps, Satellite & Aerial
Australia, New Zealand Geocoding in Google Maps
Geocoding has arrived for two more countries in Google Maps: Google Maps Mania reports that it’s now possible to search for addresses in Australia and New Zealand. See previous entry: Google Maps Adds Streets for Australia and New Zealand. Update:… &raq