maps

BERKELEY, Calif.-- Michael Jones, chief technology officer of Google's geography software, on Tuesday counted Google Earth as fifth among the most populous nations, by a measure of how many people have installed the mapping application that lets people see their house from space.

More than 200 million people have downloaded Google Earth, according to Jones, who spoke here at the Fifth International Symposium on Digital Earth. That's just under the population of Indonesia at roughly 233 million and the United States at just more than 301 million. Brazil's population falls short of Google Earth users with … Read more

Google Maps is just so hot right now, we couldn't resist giving it yet another nod this morning. On Tuesday, the low-cost U.S. airline JetBlue Airways announced that real-time flight tracking on Google Maps will be available on its in-seat TVs soon.

Plenty of airlines offer screens with in-flight tracking, but it appears that this is the first time that one has used Google Maps to do so. If you're flying on a JetBlue plane, you'll be able to watch your flight via Google Maps (along with speed and altitude) on channel 13 of the carrier'… Read more

Google Maps' new Street View feature might be getting all the buzz these days (Hello, kitty) but that's not the only thing that's new with the popular online map application. On Monday, Google announced that Google Maps now has improved information about public transportation in many cities worldwide.

Subway stops, in addition to building outlines and car traffic data, first appeared on Google Maps in February. Now, the subway and train stops provide additional information: which lines are serviced by a particular station, a link to the Web site for the corresponding transportation company, as well as upcoming … Read more

One of the biggest concerns for current and potential GPS device owners is the currency of maps. Do I have the latest information? When should I update my maps, and how? While most portable nav manufacturers have their own scheduled releases, TomTom is going one step further to ensure that you have the most up-to-date information possible. Today, the company introduced its latest portable navigation system, the TomTom GO 720, with a new feature called TomTom Map Share that allows you to make adjustments to your maps (such as noting blocked roads, updating points of interest, adding new streets, and … Read more

So, to further demonstrate that the world cannot get enough of Google's Street View feature--or at least to demonstrate that I can't move on--I'd like to invite our readers to participate one more time in a gallery, this time by sending in any Street View images that can demonstrate, without question, when the image was taken.

Last week, I asked for your favorite Street View images, and dozens of you responded.

The result? Here.

So, while there could be many ways to prove when an image was taken, some might be a newspaper front page that's … Read more

What do you get when you mash up the latest, greatest Google feature with an unconference full of hackers?

I'm tempted to say pure magic, but instead I'll say you get Hacking Google Street View, the report from WhereCamp that I found on my favorite blog, Waxy.org, Monday.

So what is it? It's hackers playing with the Street View APIs, figuring out ways to do things like mash up Grand Theft Auto with the hot new mapping phenomenon.

"Greg Sadetsky cracked Street View a couple hours after the announcement at Where 2.0," the … Read more

One of the four terror suspects in an alleged plot to blow up fuel tanks and a gas pipeline at New York City's John F. Kennedy International Airport recommended Google Earth as a way to obtain detailed aerial photographs, according to a court complaint obtained by The Smoking Gun.

The "JFK plot" made headlines on Saturday when U.S. officials announced that they had charged four men, one of whom remains at large, in a nascent plot to target fuel tanks and a gas pipeline at the high-traffic airport. The court document in question describes a May … Read more

Loki, the location aware browser plug-in updated its service for use on Macs and mobile phones earlier this week. Previously, Loki users were relegated to Windows. The new Mac version of the Loki is in fact not a toolbar like its Windows counterpart. Instead, users get contextual menu support, and pop up notifications of third party sites that have been Loki-enabled using the developer API. Loki's creators insist that people who use these services enjoy having them available all the time, just not taking up their browsers real estate--which I agree with.

The mobile version works with any handset … Read more

If you've been playing with Google's new Street View feature--that $25 billion time suck--you may well have wondered how the heck they took those 360-degree images while driving down the street.

Well, wonder no more. Thanks to our good friend Xeni Jardin at Boing Boing, we now know that many of the images, at least those shot outside the San Francisco Bay Area--were shot using this fairly disco-ball-esque device by the outside contractor, Immersive Media.

What's not clear just yet is if Google used the same kind of camera in the Bay Area, where the company … Read more