Google Maps Mashups 9

Google Maps meet Maori Maps


This Google Map displays the locations of the tribal marae of Aotearoa New Zealand. A marae is a communal or sacred place, the centre of Maori identity and activity.

Maori Maps is a nationwide map of Aotearoa marae, with photos of each marae, contact and background information, and photographs. Currently the map displays marae in the Tai Tokerau (Northland) and Tamaki (Auckland) regions. Eventually the map will show all of Aotearoa’s more than 800 ancestral marae.

Maori Maps

Google Aquires Dealmap


Dealmap’s biggest deal of today was selling itself to Google.

Websites offering daily deals and coupons have been one of the biggest trends in the location sector for a couple of years now. Google has been pretty keen to get into this market, which has so far been dominated by Groupon.

However Google has, until now, been painfully slow in rolling out its own Google Offers site. Google Offers launched in April promising daily offers – but the deals were initially only available in Portland, Oregon. Since then Google have rolled out the service to other areas but it is still limited to New York, San Francisco, Oakland and Portland.

By acquiring Deal Map Google can now access Dealmap’s deal exchange distribution network and presumably hopes to tap into Dealmap’s over 2 million users.

Google is not the only big player to have had an eye on Dealmap. Back in March Dealmap signed a deal with Bing to display deals on the homepage of m.bing.com.

For now Dealmap says it will continue as a distinct service. However my guess is that at some point in the future Dealmap and Google Offers will morph into one product (probably called Google Offers).

Google Maps at the Fringe


The world’s largest art festival the Edinburgh Fringe is due to start on Friday.

With over 2,000 different comedy, musical and theatrical shows taking place in over 250 different events what is needed is a Google Maps guide to the Fringe.

Enter stage right – Gigglemaps.

Using Gigglemaps you can click on any Edinburgh Fringe Festival venue and view the next five performances. The map includes a menu that allows you to filter the venues by category, such as comedy, cabaret etc.

Gigglemaps

The Google Maps Guide to Hiking in Norway


UT.no is a complete guide to hiking in Norway. The site features hiking routes, cabins, a calendar of events and a hiking map built with the Google Maps API.

As well as the usual Google Map views the map features detailed topographical map tiles. Using the menu in the map sidebar you can select to view cabins, summer trails, winter trails, videos, articles and even current skiing conditions.

Kart – UT.no

Boston’s Buses Live on Google Maps


With TransitSpy you can follow Boston’s MBTA buses live on Google Maps.

Using the sidebar you can select any combination of MBTA bus routes and view in real-time the position of the buses on those routes. As well as the live buses all the stops on a route are displayed on the map. If you click on a bus-stop’s map marker you can see how long you will have to wait until the next bus arrives.

TransitSpy MBTA

Loads More Birds Eye View


Mezquita-Catedral

Google Maps today has a lot more aerial view imagery. The update includes new 45° imagery in the U.S., Canada, Germany, Argentina and Spain.


Parliament, Ottawa

Here’s a list of the updated cities:

Augsburg, Germany. Barstow, CA. Bartlett, TX. Big Bear, CA. Blackstone, VA. Catalina Foothills, AZ. Córdoba, Spain. Delano, CA. Desert Hot Springs, CA. Richmond, VA. Elgin, TX. Healdsburg, CA. Helendale, CA. Hemet, CA. Houston, TX. Mendoza, Argentina. Midlothian, VA. Napa Valley, CA. New Braunfels, TX. Ojai, CA. Ottawa, Canada. Pensacola, FL. Porterville, CA. Plant City, FL. Rancho Del Lago, AZ. Rosario, Argentina. Santa Clarita, CA. Sarasota, FL. Taylor, TX. Temecula, CA. Treasure Island, CA. Troy, IL. Twentynine Palms, CA. Wakefield, VA. Yucca Valley, CA.


Rathaus, Augsburg

googlemapsmania

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Google Apps

This week we have news from the Gmail and Google Docs teams, which both made interface changes to streamline how you use those applications. We also introduced some new keyboard shortcuts and made improvements to spreadsheet charts and functions.

New preview pane in Gmail Labs

The Gmail team has heard requests from many of you for an inbox preview pane, and last Thursday we introduced this option as a Gmail Lab. Now you can quickly scroll through a list of messages and see their contents, marking mail as “read” as you go. Once you enable this feature from the Labs area in Settings, you can choose between a vertical or horizontal split in your Gmail window.

Sharper, smoother Gmail mobile interface

Last week we also brought a higher-resolution Gmail interface for people who access their inbox through a mobile browser on a high-resolution display, like the iPhone 4. We also simplified the process to check for new mail—just pull down on the Message List. Transitions between different pages in the interface are also smoothly animated now.

New look and keyboard shortcuts for the documents list

Google Docs also got some big interface improvements to the documents list last week as part of a Google-wide project to streamline and simplify many of our applications. You can switch to the new design by clicking “Try the new look” under the gear icon in the upper right. We’ve also added dozens of new keyboard shortcuts to navigate through the documents list, create new files, share items and more. Just type ? to see the keyboard shortcut cheat sheet.

Automatic spreadsheet function snippets

There are spreadsheet functions you probably know by heart, and others like GoogleTranslate where you might need a tip now and again, so on Tuesday we introduced spreadsheet function snippets. When you start typing a function into a cell, we’ll instantly show you a list of matching functions. Hovering over a function displays its proper syntax and the function’s purpose. We hope this feature saves you trips to the Google Docs Help Center.

New chart types, and chart improvements for documents and drawings

We also made spreadsheet charts more powerful and easier to work with. After you create a chart, it’s now simpler to copy an image of your chart and embed it into a document or drawing. There are more chart types to choose from now, too—from candlestick and combo charts to GeoMaps and TreeMaps.

Who’s gone Google?

At the end of July, we opened our doors in Japan to more than 1,500 business technology leaders from the region for a lively discussion about the future of business technology. At the event, we heard from Softbank Group, Casio, Nortiz and Toda Corporation, who have all decided to switch to Google Apps from their legacy solutions. More than 60,000 other businesses around the world also switched to Google Apps since our last update here too, including Cox Schepp, Journal Communications, Crown Partners and ITV.

In the government sector, we were pleased to see that the U.S. General Services Administration completed their transition of 17,000 employees and contractors to Google Apps, an impressive feat considering it’s been just six months since they decided to “go Google.”

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Global overlays with KMZmaps

We’ve seen global overlay files before on Google Earth, including items such as the popular blue marble overlay. The folks at KMZmaps.com have created a variety of very high-quality overlays for use in Google Earth. They’re not free, but they’re reasonably priced and quite impressive. Here are few of them:

Natural Globe: A more realistic view of Google Earth, very similar to the blue marble overlay but of considerably higher quality.

natural.jpgNight Lights: Very similar to the NASA “Earth City Lights” layer.

night.jpgColored Edges: There are a variety of Photoshop-edited overlays in here as well; various blurs and effects. Here is one called “colored edges” that is pretty neat.

colored-edges.jpgThey also have a collection of solid color overlays. These overlays are completely solid, effectively hiding the base imagery so that roads, borders and other items are more well-defined. Here is the dark red version of that, with the “Borders and Labels” and “Roads” layers turned on.

dark-red.jpgLike most maps of this variety, it fades away as you zoom in closer to reveal the base imagery. This allows you to run your favorite overlay all the time, as it will automatically hide itself when you zoom in close enough to look at the details of a specific location. The exception is a special version of the “solid black earth”, which is set to never turn off when you zoom in. They offer both versions, so the choice is up to you.

As I said at the beginning, the big drawback to these files is that they’re not free. They cost roughly $6/each (some vary a bit), with the full collection available for $24.95. However, they also offer a demo map so you can get a feel for how it works. It’s covered with “www.KMZmaps.com” text, but you can get a feel for the quality of the imagery and the way the “auto-hide on zoom” works. You can download the sample KMZ file here. To see more of what they have to offer, visit their site at www.kmzmaps.com.

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