Symbols and Heatmaps in the Google Maps API

The Google Maps API provides a robust platform in which you can add geographical context to your data in a variety of ways. Data visualization is therefore one of the elements at the heart of the Maps API, and today we’re introducing two new techniques for visualizing your data in flexible and dynamic ways.

Symbols

At SXSW Interactive in 2011, I attended a session on geotemporal data visualization that made me keen to make it easier for Maps API developers to build visualizations similar to those discussed. For this reason I’m particularly excited to introduce a simple, yet powerful, new concept to the Maps API v3 that we call Symbols.

Unlike the image icons currently used for marking locations on a map, a Symbol is defined as a vector shape. The size, stroke width, color, and opacity of the shape, are all set by the Maps API application and can be dynamically modified. A small number of shapes, such as a circle, are provided by the Maps API, and custom shapes can be expressed as an SVG path.

Symbols open up a wide range of compelling new possibilities for data visualization and visual effects. For example, the below map illustrates the expansion of the Walmart chain of stores between 1962 and 2006:

In addition to using symbols to represent point features you can also decorate polylines with Symbols. One or more symbols, such as an arrowhead, can be placed at fixed positions on the polyline or repeated along the polyline. Because the polyline that has been decorated does not need to be visible, this feature can also be used to created dotted or dashed polylines, and just as the style of the symbols can be dynamically modified, so too can their location on the polyline:

Heatmaps

Developers often ask how they can represent large amounts of data on a map. Improvements in web browser technology have increased the number of markers that can be rendered by a Maps API application, but above a certain threshold the density of markers can overwhelm the user.

An alternative approach is to use a heatmap, and to enable this approach we’re launching support for browser rendering of heatmaps by the Maps API using the new Heatmap Layer. Your Maps API application can define the colour spectrum, intensity range, and behaviour of the heatmap when the map is zoomed. Here’s the Walmart example from above, but this time visualized as a heatmap:

If you have any technical questions about these new features, we recommend engaging with our developer community online, or joining our regular Google Maps API Office Hours. If you’re at I/O come see us in person at Office Hours in the Google Maps developer sandbox.

 

Тhe Grey pinned results are now live

Google has upgraded their local search results and the Grey pinned results are now live. Note in the screen shot that the branded One Box search now shows either 4 images or a streetview and 2 images. The grey “Feedback” link at the lower right takes the user directly to the Report a Problem input screen.

Android 4.0.3 Platform and SDK tools

 

Google are announcing Android 4.0.3, an incremental release of the Android 4.0 (Ice Cream Sandwich) platform. The new release includes a variety of optimizations and bug fixes for phones and tablets, as well as a small number of new APIs for developers. The new API level is 15.

Some of the new APIs in Android 4.0.3 include:

Social stream API in Contacts provider: Applications that use social stream data such as status updates and check-ins can now sync that data with each of the user’s contacts, providing items in a stream along with photos for each. This new API lets apps show users what the people they know are doing or saying, in addition to their photos and contact information.

Calendar provider enhancements. Apps can now add color to events, for easier tracking, and new attendee types and states are now available.

New camera capabilities. Apps can now check and manage video stabilization and use QVGA resolution profiles where needed.

Accessibility refinements. Improved content access for screen readers and new status and error reporting for text-to-speech engines.

Incremental improvements in graphics, database, spell-checking, Bluetooth, and more.

 

For a complete overview of what’s new in the platform, see the Android 4.0.3 API Overview.

Going forward, we’ll be focusing our partners on Android 4.0.3 as the base version of Ice Cream Sandwich. The new platform will be rolling out to production phones and tablets in the weeks ahead, so we strongly encourage you to test your applications on Android 4.0.3 as soon as possible.

We would also like to remind developers that we recently released new version of the SDK Tools (r16) and of the Eclipse plug-in (ADT 16.0.1). We have also updated the NDK to r7.

Visit the Android Developers site for more information about Android 4.0.3 and other platform versions. To get started developing or testing on the new platform, you can download it into your SDK using the Android SDK Manager.