China targets illegal maps

Yes, it is not a mistake. Maps can be “illegal”. That is, only in countries that have in place a licensing regime – such as China. The aim is to remove from the web maps that have “political mistakes” (I presume it refers mainly to representation of borders and “territories”) and those that disclose State secrets (I remember this rule from the old communist country of my origin, where city maps had big holes where the industrial zones were located). Well, that’s one way to achieve consistency in mapping data across the whole country, just hope no one will have similar ideas in Australia!

What’s really interesting, are statistics quoted by the Chinese State Bureau of Surveying and Mapping: it “…uncovered 1,058 cases of illegal mapping services, including more than 30 relating to foreign organisations and military”, “…3,686 websites out of 41,670 web mapping service websites were found to contain political mistakes, and more than 200 websites were closed”. Mapping must be quite popular there, but that’s China. I wonder what would be the numbers for Australia (total websites of course, not closures!).

On a related topic, Chinese government is not the only one censoring online content. Google created this interesting map that shows world wide statistics about “Government requests directed to Google and YouTube” to remove content from services, or provide information about users of services and products.

The 3DHawaii expands with private label product

Nearly a year ago, we showed you the excellent 3DHawaii site and their great use of 3D models with the Google Earth Plug-in.

They’re now in the process of launching a private label platform for anyone that could benefit from having a custom 3D solution on their site, such as hotels, travel agents, etc. The first site they’re launching via this program is the Hilton Hawaiian Village, and it’s very impressive. The 3D models, created through a partnership with CyberCity 3D, are stunningly good. All of the imagery is available inside of Google Earth, but it’s presented very nicely on the HHV site.

 

hawaii.jpg 

As a promotion to celebrate the launch of their 3D site, they’ve created a simple contest. If users go on the Hilton 3D site and find the five penguins located throughout the resort, they are entered to win a five-night stay at the Hilton Hawaiian Village. In case you are wondering “Why Penguins?”, Hilton has live penguins at their resort and its one of the things they are known for. The Penguins are very easy to find (it walks you though it), but it’s a great way to show off some of the amenities of the resort.

You can learn more about the new private label product on their blog

Beefing up goo.gl with new features

(Cross-posted with the Official Google Blog)

Since we launched our URL shortener goo.gl last September, we’ve been lucky enough to build a thriving and growing community of passionate users who aren’t shy about letting us know when something could be better. We appreciate the feedback, and today we’ve completed a series of feature rollouts aimed at addressing your most common requests.

Copy to clipboard

Now you can easily copy new short URLs to your clipboard, a frequently requested feature on our forums. When a new short URL is created, the text on the page will automatically be highlighted, and you can simply press Control+C (or Command+C on a Mac) to copy it.

Remove from dashboard

You can also now remove items from your dashboard, so that you can see a quick summary of only your most important links and hide the ones you no longer need. Please note that when you hide a short URL, you’re only removing it from your own dashboard. The URL will still exist and work. You can’t add short URLs back into your dashboard once you’ve hidden them, so be sure you won’t need to find that short URL from your dashboard later. Remember that you can always view analytics for any of your short URLs by appending a “+” to the end of them (e.g., http://goo.gl/rQ6HT+). This feature will be rolling out over the next several days, and may not work immediately on mobile devices.

Spam reporting

Many of you told us that you’d like a way to tell us about goo.gl URLs that lead to spam sites. We recently set up goo.gl/spam-report for just that purpose. So far it’s helped us a lot in identifying and blocking short URLs that lead to spam, so keep those reports coming.

Ongoing speed and stability improvements

Even as we add features, we continue to focus on making goo.gl one of the fastest and most reliable URL shorteners on the web. We’ll continue working hard to ensure that we add minimal latency to the user experience and extend our track record of rock-solid reliability—we’ve had no service outages since we launched last September.