mapping

Google Earth and Maps could cover a lot more territory with a lot more detail soon, if some photos from Italy are anything to judge by.

First, evidenced by Google-branded cars traversing Milan, is the possibility that Google is acquiring European imagery for its Street View feature.

Second is the observation, based on scrutiny of those pictures, that Google could be gathering 3D data along with the photos.

"With an automated solution, they could go for blanket 3D coverage," rather than the more limited approach today involving user contributions of basic 3D models, robotics engineering student Mark Cummins … Read more

Google Maps and Google Earth may be two separate services, but the gap between the software and Webware apps is narrowing. Last night Google rolled out a new view in Maps, enabling users to view geocoded YouTube videos, something Google Earth users have been doing since October of last year.

The videos show up as small red dots, and can be played right on the map. To enable the feature users simply need to add the layer from Google's map add-ons directory, which has quickly grown to include more than 50 add-ons--many of which come from third parties.

One … Read more

Part of the fun of Google Earth is flying over the virtual planet like Superman. But let's face it: we're ground-dwelling creatures, and the street-level view is useful, too. Even Superman has to land sometimes.

Enter Google Earth 4.3, due for release at about 8 p.m. Tuesday. It the Street View feature from Google Maps for a ground-level view of some areas, and a new navigation method makes the software more like a first-person video game, Google said in a statement.

The new version also lets users watch time-lapse views of sunsets and sunrises, either locally … Read more

Members of an industry group called the Open Geospatial Consortium have approved Google's KML technology as an open standard for describing some geographic data.

KML is used to manage the display of geospatial information in Google Earth, the company's software for flying over the surface of a virtual globe. With its 3D coordinate-based system, people can create models of city buildings, draw a line showing where they hiked, or overlay their own custom place names on a generic map.

Google already shared its KML format openly, and others had used it in software products, but Google now hopes … Read more

Ever wonder where Google's data centers are? Now you can use Google Maps to get a good overview.

Pingdom put together a Google map via Wayfaring based on data center location information from Data Center Knowledge. The map shows general areas, so don't expect to zoom in on a satellite photo.

The result is an artful scattering of 36 pushpins, one for each known data center. Yes, that's a lot of data centers, and Data Center Knowledge has some details on Google renting further capacity, too.

And there are likely more tucked away here and there. "… Read more

Microsoft's Live Maps team just dropped a huge new version of its service in addition to the traffic updates from earlier Thursday.

Live Maps now offers a wealth of new features, including exporting to GPS devices, improved 3D imagery, and one of my personal favorites, MapCruncher integration.

Microsoft is rolling out its new "version 2" 3D imagery in four cities (Las Vegas, Denver, Dallas, and Phoenix) for now, with more to come later. The rest of us will have to wait and look on in envy. 3D improvements include higher-resolution textures, rendered trees, and buildings reaching farther … Read more

Trulia, a residential real estate search engine, has incorporated Google Maps Street View into its Web pages, the company said Wednesday.

The combination presents Google's view of a particular property from the road and lets users virtually pivot around to see the surrounding area. It works in the 40 cities where Google has supplied imagery for its Street View service.

It's nothing that couldn't have been done manually before by typing an address into a separate window with the Google view, or likely even with an on-page mashup, but having the curbside vantage readily available is certainly … Read more

Which parts of the United States emit the most global-warming gases? The best view until now came via satellites, which could capture only snapshots at about the state level. Total carbon emissions were known, but their distribution remained a mystery.

That changed on Monday with the release of the most detailed map to date of U.S. carbon emissions from fossil fuels.

The map, by the Vulcan Project, took more than two years to complete and cost nearly a quarter of a million dollars, with backing from NASA and the Department of Energy. The result, named after the Roman god … Read more

In case you were interested in keeping track of where the 2008 Olympic torch is at any given moment, the Google Maps team has put together a mash-up that tracks its position as it makes its way around the world via a series of runners and transportation mediums.

Beside the map you can track not only where the torch has been, but where it's going. There's a small information panel that tells you about the route through each city including any relevant landmarks. Information about future dates hasn't been made available (for security reasons), but you can … Read more