Voice Search in Russian, Polish, Czech and Turkish

Over the past few weeks we have launched Voice Search in four new languages: Russian, Polish, Czech and Turkish. Now, users in the Russian Federation, Poland, the Czech Republic and Turkey can simply say, in their own language, what it is that they are looking for. Try speaking queries like “концерты Юлии Савичевой” (tour dates for Yulia Svicheva), “przepis na pierogi” (recipes for pierogi), “obrázky Hradčan” (pictures of the Prague castle), or “istanbul hava durumu” (weather in Istanbul). Note that you will need to change your language setting on your phone and can’t speak all these languages into the app without changing your language setting first.

Voice Search is often preloaded on new Android devices. In that case, all that the user has to do is press and hold the search button and then start speaking. Some Android (2.0 or higher) phone users can download the Voice Search application from Android Market. On iPhone and other smartphones, Voice Search is a feature of Google Mobile App and is downloadable via m.google.com

French Demonstrations on Google Maps

360 Cities

A member of 360 Cities has posted a number of interactive panoramas of the demonstrations against the pension reforms in France.

You may have seen on the news this week that France has been hit by a number of strikes and demonstrations by workers angry at the government's attempt to raise the pension age from 60 to 62. These panoramas capture the demonstrations in Quimper in north-west France.

No one does demonstrations quite as well as the French. So if you want to experience a bit of virtual Gallic rebellion then check out these panoramas:

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New KMLs for Panoramio photos in Google Earth

Panoramio has just updated their network link KMLs that are used in Google Earth to make them faster and more useful. Not only is the link faster, but "The algorithm that is responsible for distribution and taking care of thumbnail overlaps has been improved as well and that is the reason you will now have a feeling of density that did not exist before, together with a better discoverability of the photos in the layer."

As you can see in the photo below, the new versions of the KML files show a lot more photos than before:

As they mention in their blog entry about this update, here is how you can download the various KML files:

1. Popular photos in Google Earth: http://www.panoramio.com/map/
(click on the link in the lower-left corner of the Site)
2. Popular photos in Google Earth (Including photos not selected for the Panoramio layer in Google Earth): http://www.panoramio.com/map/
(you need to select the box before downloading the file from the lower-left corner of the Site)
3. Recent Panoramio uploaded photos: http://www.panoramio.com/map/
(select the recent tab and then click on the link in the lower-left corner of the Site)
4. Photos from a specific tag: http://www.panoramio.com/tags
5. Your Photos: Go to your page http://www.panoramio.com/user/user_ID and click on the link that says "in Google Earth"

We've talked about Panoramio quite a lot over the past few years, and they get better with each update.

Have you uploaded many photos to them? Will you be adding more now that this feature has become even more useful?

Banned Books on Google Maps

Banned Books Map

This has to be one of the saddest maps I've seen in a while.

This week is Banned Books Week. Sponsored by the American Library Association, the American Society of Journalists and Authors and several other groups, Banned Books Week has been documenting the more than 1,000 books that have been banned at U.S. schools and libraries since it was first launched in 1982.

The map shows the locations of where books have been banned in the United States. Reading the books that have been banned, the ridiculous reasons for their banning and some of the disciplinary action faced by teachers and librarians for simply doing their jobs you can't help but weep for the small minded mentalities of some Americans and the lack of backbone shown by some of those in charge of our libraries and schools.

Sorry - rant over. The map itself is a very simple Google My Map but it works fairly well in showing the geographical distribution of books being banned.

Helping Schools with Google Maps

Fuel Your School

In California Chevron recently ran a Fuel Your School promotion. For every 8-gallon or more fill-up at a local Chevron station Chevron donated $1 to help support public education. The promotion was designed to help provide local public schools with supplies that teachers need for their classroom projects.

Chevron have now created a Google Map to highlight how and where Chevron donations are helping to fund classroom projects.

Using the map you can select to view the results for any city from a drop-down menu. Markers are then placed on the map to highlight the schools in the city that have been helped. If you click on a map marker you can read about how the school has benefited from Chevron's programme.

Flickr Boundaries on Google Maps

Boundaries

This Google Map of Flickr's crowdsourced boundaries is great fun as it allows you to check your notion of area boundaries with Flickr's crowdsourced definition.

Photo sharing website Flickr suggests a selection of place names when users geotag their pictures. These place names are used by Flickr to compute the shape of geographical areas. These area boundaries are then feedback into Flickr to help suggest those place names to users when they geo-tag their photographs.

Tom Taylor has created a Google Map that users can search to view Flickr's area boundaries anywhere in the world. Tom says that "whilst the shapes of places and neighbour results can be inaccurate, in areas of dense Flickr activity such as urban city centres, the results are often excellent."

As Tom points out on his site geographic identifiers are often very fluid. People often have different ideas about the boundary of areas than that held by local and national government, postal agencies and other parties. Using Boundaries you can compare your ideas of an area to those held by 'the cloud'.

Comet Hartley 2 will approach Earth over the next few days; view it in Google Earth

Starting today, the Comet Hartley 2 will be making its closest approach to Earth -- if you consider 19 million kilometers to be "close". Up here in the Northern Hemisphere, it will be visible to the naked eye if you're in a dark location in a moonless sky. Otherwise, binoculars and/or a telescope will be needed.

Of course, another way to view it is with Google Earth! Google has teamed up with the folks at Slooh.com to deliver live images directly into the "Sky" mode of Google Earth.

Go access the images, switch to "Sky" mode in Google earth, and then dig into the "Current Sky Events" layer and choose "Slooh Space Camera", as seen here:

The result with give you something like this:

We discussed Comet Holmes on here a few years ago, but this new layer is certainly the most in-depth we've ever seen for a comet.

Have you had a chance to see the comet yet? Do you plan to in the next few days? Tell us about it in the comments.

Mapping Mood with Twitter & Google Maps

Twittermood

Twittermood is an attempt to show the mood of the USA based on Twitter messages.

Twittermood estimates the mood of all tweets for which the author has provided a location. The mood of each individual tweet is based on the Affective Norms for English Words a set of 1034 words, identified as bearing emotional weight.

The size of each circle on the map is proportional to the number of tweets recorded at that location. The colour of each circle reflects the mood, with yellow showing moods above average and blue below average.

Lastminute.com Mood of the Nation Map

Has 2010 put you in a #goodmood or #badmood? This Twitter and Google Maps mashup from Lastminute.com uses Tweets to give an overview of a frankly rather grumpy UK.

The Mood of the Nation Map bares many similarities to the #UKSnow Map, which isn't very surprising as it is from the same developer, Ben Marsh. You should also check out Ben's #ukhols map, that uses Twitter and Google Maps to show where people in the UK are going on their holidays.

Tweet Sentiments

TweetSentiments.com provides a snapshot view of the world's mood via a heat map from an analysis of Tweets. The site uses Natural Language Processing and Machine Learning technologies to analyse Tweets from around the world and then presents the results on a Google Map.

As well as a heat map overlay the map also geo-tags individual Tweets.

Old Weather on Google Maps

Old Weather

This website has been developed to help scientists recover worldwide weather observations made by Royal Navy ships around the time of World War I. These transcriptions will contribute to climate model projections and improve a database of weather extremes.

The transcriptions also help to track the movements of these ships and the stories of the people on board. Old Weather uses Google Maps to show the voyage routes of each vessel in its database.

Old Weather takes the weather observations from the ships' log books and reconstruct fields of pressure, wind speed, weather, cloudiness, precipitation. This data is then used to help make better weather projections and predictions.

ProtectedPlanet.net

ProtectedPlanet.net is a Google Map showing all the worlds national parks, wilderness areas and world heritage sites. On ProtectedPlanet.net you can search in any language to find information about individual protected areas in any part of the world. The application is the new website of the World Database on Protected Areas (WDPA), a joint initiative between IUCN and UNEP-WCMC.

The world's protected areas are shaded blue on the map. If you click on any of the thumbnail map markers you can then view photographs from Panoramio and Flickr and text descriptions from Wikipedia for your chosen area.

The Google Maps interfaces to ProtectedPlanet.net and Old Weather have been developed with the help of Vizzuality, the team behind the World Database on Marine Protected Areas and the Global Biodiversity Information FacilityGoogle Maps.

Bird Spotting with Google Maps

GeoBirds

Geobirds provides a 'Range Maps' service to show sightings of different bird species in the USA. The site uses data collected by the United States Geological Service.

GeoBirds Range Maps allows you to search for bird sightings in summer and winter at any location. To search the map you first need to choose a location and then choose a bird species from the map sidebar.

Geobirds then displays the results of your search on a Google Map. The blue markers on the map represent bird sightings in winter and the yellow markings display summer sightings. Year round sightings are shown by purple map markers.

Beaky Birdsearch

Beaky Birdsearch is a geographical search engine of UK bird species. The application uses Google Maps to allow users to search for the distribution of birds throughout the UK.

The data for the application is from the 2009 RSPB Big Birdwatch survey which asked members of the public to record the birds that they spotted in their own gardens. To search the map you can enter a bird species or you can select one from the drop-down menu.

Other Birdwatching Maps

• Birdpost
• Birdtrack India
• Birds of Central Park
• White Tailed Eagles - site tracking two eagles on the Isle of Mull in Scotland
  
• Aviatlas