An Even Better Way to Find Places Nearby

With six updates in six months, Google Maps for Android has been getting plenty of new features, both big and small. A continued focus with each update has been on giving you better ways to find places nearby. In the most recent updates, Maps has gotten features like swiping between search results and info like photos, reviews, and more helpful content on the result pages. With today’s launch of Google Maps for mobile 4.4, we’re introducing an even easier way to find places around you: a dedicated Places icon that lets you quickly look up nearby places and pick a place to go using updated Place Pages, just like on your computer.

On Android-powered phones with Google Maps 4.4, you’ll find the new Places icon in the app launcher with the rest of your apps. Press and drag it right onto your home screen to use it when you’re looking for a restaurant, shoe store, movie theater or any other type of local business. You'll get a detailed list of all the nearest places and can choose one to learn more about it on its Place Page.

 

Search for several convenient types of places with the default categories or add your own for your most frequent searches. You can also use the search bar at the top to type or speak any query. I tend to use the “coffee” search a lot, but I’ve also looked for “gas stations” on the road, “ice cream shops” in my neighborhood, and even specific places like “Chelsea Market” on a recent trip to New York.

Of course, you’ll often want to learn more before deciding where to go. With updated Place Pages, you should be able to find all you need to know about a place, whether you’re wandering into a new restaurant or deciding from your couch. In addition to photos and reviews, Place Pages now have a bunch of new details, such as prices, parking and menu links to inform your quest for the perfect steak. You'll also notice that the search results list now highlights business opening hours in addition to compass direction and distance -- consider it your late night caffeine radar.

 

Google Maps for mobile 4.4 is available now for Android 1.6 and above. Just search for Google Maps in Market or tap here from your phone. The Place Page and search result updates are coming soon for BlackBerry users so keep an eye out for an update at m.google.com/maps (from your BlackBerry Browser) or on our Twitter and Facebook pages.

Visit our Help Center to learn more, ask questions in our Help Forum, or give us suggestions and vote on other people’s on the Mobile Product Ideas page.

Street View in 3D

This is probably old news to many of you but I just realised that Street View in 3D is still available on Google Maps.



On April 1st this year Google turned Street View into 3D. The Street Views however soon returned to normal and that, I thought, was that. However I discovered today that if you right click on Street View there is an option to turn '3D mode' on.

So if you have a pair of 3D glasses lying around you can now see the world in glorious 3D (it's almost as good as looking out the window).

Some Beautiful Norwegian Google Maps

Storm.no

Norwegian weather forecaster Storm.no have produced a route planner that can not only provide you with directions but can also show you the weather along your route.

The service uses the Google Maps API's driving directions service and overlays the weather forecast for locations along the route. When you enter you starting point and destination Storm.no also asks you to enter a date and time for your journey. In this way the forecast weather for the time of your journey can also be displayed on the map.

Norway Green Tours

Norway's Youth Hostelling Association has created this Google Maps guide to the west coast of Norway. The west coast of Norway is legendary for its fjords and beautiful scenery. With the Green Fjord Experience you can now plan your trip advance.

The Green Fjord Experience map shows the locations of Youth Hostels on the west coast, towns that you will want to visit and the locations of fjords and glaciers that you will want to see. Each mapped location contains brief details with a link to a fuller description elsewhere on the site.

The Norwegian Trekking Association

The Norwegian Trekking Association have produced a very useful Google Map to show trekking routes in Norway.

The map shows all the trekking routes with red or blue lines. The red lines indicate summer routes and the blue lines show winter routes. As well as the routes the map shows the locations of lodges, cabins and emergency shelters.

If you click on a route on the map you can get details of the trek (in Norwegian), including the trek's distance. If you click on a lodge or cabin's map marker you can get details about opening times and the number of bunks provided.

This Google Map is Not for Tourists

Not For Tourists

Not For Tourists is a growing series of guides to major cities around the world featuring Google Maps of local points of interest. The site includes maps for everything from restaurants, night spots, and shopping to parks, public transit, sports stadiums, museums and art galleries.

If you select a city from the drop down menu at the top of the page you are presented with the city guide and a Google Map of the selected location. Many of the larger cities are broken down into separate guides so the initial Google Map presents a number of selectable districts within your chosen city.

The Google Maps for the selected districts present local points of interest. The locations are displayed with categorised map markers so you can tell at a glance which are restaurants, bars, shops etc. If you mouse-over a map marker the name of the point of interest is also displayed.

If you click on a map marker you will be taken to the locations' dedicated page on Not for Tourists. The dedicated page includes details and reviews of the chosen location.

One of the youngest craters on Earth

A recent story by National Geographic highlights how researchers used Google Earth to discover one of the newer craters on Earth; only a few thousand years old.

As Stefan at Ogle Earth notes, the findings of some researchers were recently published in the journal Science, they require a subscription. Fortunately, he was able to grab the coordinates of the crater so you can see it for yourself. Simply fly to 22º 01' 06" N 26º 05' 15" E or use this KML file to take you there.

Of course, there are hundreds of known craters all across the planet. One of Frank's oldest posts showcase them, and you can download this KML file to view them all in Google Earth.

What is the most interesting crater that you've found in Google Earth?

Map of the World's Intelligence Agencies

World Intelligence Headquarters

Last week the Washington Post released a Top Secret America Google Map showing the location of America's secret privatised national security network. Yesterday The Guardian released Afghanistan: The War Logs Map, a Google Map showing the location of incidents mentioned in US military files in Afghanistan.

Now someone has created a Google Map to show the locations of the headquarters of intelligence agencies, intelligence facilities, SIGINT stations and training centres around the world. I guess it hasn't been a good week for the secret police.

All the World's Airports on Google Maps

Whereables

Whereables is a Google Map of the world's airports. Using the map it is possible to find out which airline flies where and how people rate them. Users of the map can comment and rate individual airports, airlines, the food, the facilities, the queues, the crew...the security or the other passengers.

If you click on one of the mapped airports you can view where you can fly to from that location. All the possible destinations are shown by connecting the airports, as seen in the screenshot above.

Hidden away in the blog (click on the 'b' in the side panel) on Wherables is a link to a fun little airport map game. The game involves clicking on the location of a given airport on a Google Map. This is definitely a game for frequent fliers. 

WikiLeaks War Logs on Google Maps

Afghanistan: The War Logs Map

On Sunday WikiLeaks released 92,201 records of individual events or intelligence reports from US military files pertaining to the war in Afghanistan. The New York Times, The Guardian and Der Spiegel were all given access to the material several weeks ago. All three publications have now released a series of articles about the leaks. The Guardian has also produced an interactive Google Map.

The Guardian's 'The War Logs Map' geotags a selection of 300 of the key intelligence reports. The paper claims that they "have ensured none includes information identifying intelligence sources or putting Nato troops at risk".

The map is really just a navigation guide to the war logs. The logs are mapped by category; 'accident', 'Afghan friendly fire', 'coalition friendly fire', 'civilian casualties', 'demonstration / unrest' and 'other'. Each map marker contains a link to read the war log in full.

The Guardian have also provided a link to the data behind the map. So if you think you can do better in mapping the data you are free to give it a go.

Isochrone Google Maps Tutorial

Create an Isochrone Map
Isochrone maps show travel times from a given location. Most isochrone Google Maps allow the user to select a location and then see how far they can travel in a set time from that destination.

One of the best isochrone maps built with the Google Maps API is the
London at Night map.



The London at Night map shows how long it takes to get to anywhere in London by night bus.

If you would like to create your own isochrone map then a good place to start is the Flying Memes tutorial. The Flying Memes isochrone map uses the directions service to search for points that surpass a given time limit from the given location.

• Intro
• Demo
• Github source code
• Another good demo of an isochrone map

London's Cycle Scheme on Google Maps

London Cycle Stations Map

On the 30th July London is launching a Cycle Hire scheme. Under the scheme people will be able to hire bikes from 400 docking stations situated throughout the capital.

Transport for London are preparing a Google Map showing the location of the 400 docking stations. TfL say the map will go live on the 30th July (at the moment the map is empty). If you can't wait until then check out the map I created for this Fusion Tables tutorial.

The only other map I'm aware of is the planned Cycle Hire App for the iPhone. The app will use OpenStreetMaps when it launches.