Walk Score now with Commute Score

Walk Score

Walk Score the site that helps you find a walkable place to live has today introduced two new features: Commute Reports and Transit Score.

After you’ve looked up an address on Walk Score, you can now get a summary of commuting options. Your Commute Report can include the time it takes to get to work, school or any other location by car, bike and foot and to see nearby public transit stops and routes. Walk Score shows your commute route on a Google Map and a visual representation of the hills between your home and destination.

As well as your Walk Score you can now also get a Transit Score. Your Transit Score provides a 0-100 rating indicating how well your home is served by public transportation. Transit Score is currently available in over 40 US cities where public transit information is available. These cities include Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles, New York, San Francisco, Seattle and Washington D.C.

Making our new building home

This past June, our Geo team finally outgrew our space, so it was time to move to a larger building on campus. To make sure our new building really felt like a home away from home, some of us got involved in the design planning and made it our mission to surprise everyone with a unique, inviting and very Googley new place to work.

We gave the new building a quintessentially Geo feel by putting map-themed artwork in the lobby and halls. We also decided to make quirky, fun places like the “Moon room,” complete with the Earth rising on the wall, moon rocks to nap on, crater-laden carpet and twinkling stars above.


Then we added a Liquid Galaxy for Googlers and visitors to explore Google Earth on eight stunning LCD panels. Given that it’s right next to the café, we recommend that you use the Liquid Galaxy before eating, because swooping and zooming around in Google Earth in an immersive panorama can get a little intense.


Despite all of these geographic references, we heard that the new building’s layout had everyone confused! After plastering the walls with building floor plans and “You are here” stickers, we decided on two more creative solutions. First, we designed two “hiking trail” style sign posts for each floor so that folks could quickly find meeting rooms, which we named after famous explorers!


Second, we devised a contest for teams to design “road signs” to hang above their cubes, notifying visitors and lost team members where to find them. Teams had a couple weeks to craft and submit their design for a little friendly competition. While all the signs were being printed and hung, we encouraged everyone in the building to vote for their favorite signs. My personal favorite is the double-sided one created by the Google Earth team.

Photos courtesy of Brian Kiley.

Now, after seeing all the fun signs hanging throughout the building, teams that didn’t participate in the contest are rallying for a second round of sign design. All in all, the dust has settled, and everyone seems quite happy with our new digs.

Fighting Obesity with Google Maps

End of Fatness - VLCC

This Google Map animates Tweets related to obesity. VLCC is a slimming, beauty and fitness brand with over 225 centres. The map is part of VLCC's 'drive against obesity.' VLCC have also taken it upon themselves to name November 26th Anti-Obesity Day.

The map is a well produced animated map in the now familiar Twittervisionstyle. The map also allows users to connect with VLCC's campaign via Facebook and Twitter. Far be it from me to suggest that this campaign is as much about promoting VLCC's 'weight loss and weight management solutions' as it is about fighting worldwide obesity.

A Networking Google Map for Cavers

GrottoCenter

GrottoCenter is wiki-like website for cavers. The site allows cavers to share their knowledge and favourite caving locations with other cavers. GrottoCenter includes a Google Map that shows the locations of the submitted caves and the site's members. 

Currently the map shows the location 0f over 12,000 caves and 361 grottoes. As well as displaying the location of caves the map includes geological overlays for America, Australasia, Europe and the Poles. 

If you click on any of the plotted caves on the map you can get further details and links to any relevant websites about the selected cave. 

Read Ayn Rand

Here is a pretty funny story -- Nick Newcomen apparently had some free time on his hands, so he drove 12,238 across 30 states with a GPS logger to "write" a message for all to see:

You can read the full story over on Gizmodo, but it appears that Nick was a pretty big Ayn Rand fan.

To see it for yourself, you can view it on his site
or download the KML file to view it in Google Earth.

3D buildings in Yokohama, Japan

Google has pushed out their latest 3D buildings update (via @3DWH), and this one includes one new major 3D city: Yokohama, Japan

If you want to fly there and see Yokohama for yourself, you can simply use this KML file.

In addition, it appears they've loaded the rest of the buildings from Bowling Green State University that we told you about a few weeks ago.

The buildings in both locations look excellent, and there are certainly many other new buildings scattered around the globe. Did any of your 3D models get added with this update? Leave a comment and let us know!

Street View Time Lapse Videos

Continuing with the theme of Street View animations Austin Leirvik has been creating a series of time-lapse videos of drives in the USA and Canada. The videos consist of stitched together Street View images to virtually recreate the drive from Mexico to Canada on Interstate 5 and the western portion of the Trans-Canada Highway.


Google Street View: TCH - Part 3 - Alberta from Austin Leirvik on Vimeo.

Austin has created 5 videos of Interstate 5 - Mexico to Canada (http://vimeo.com/channels/126904) and 5 videos of the Trans-Canada Highway (http://vimeo.com/channels/126905).

The Trans-Canada Highway will be completed sometime next week. Austin will then move onto cover the M1 motorway in the UK. Any videos he makes in the future will show up on his Vimeo account.

Wasting Your Vacation with Google Maps

British newspaper The Sun has a silly season story today about a man who plans to walk the entire length of Britain in Google Maps Street View.

I vaguely remember a similar story from last year of a couple of guys who walked from the east to west coasts of the USA in Street View. If I remember right they plotted their route with Google Maps and had conversations with people on their journey using Twitter.

However even that is too much effort for Matthew Partridge, who has taken a week off work to walk from Land's End to John O'Groats in Street View. Matthew says he "can cover 400 yards in about ten seconds."

I love Google Maps and Street View but can I say, Matthew, if you are reading, please don't waste you vacation go and walk just a tiny part of that journey for real.