Google Finance smartens up for your smartphone

Here on the Google Finance team, we’re always looking for new ways to help you access the finance data, charts, and reports that you need in the blink of an eye. But all the data in the world won’t help if you can’t access it when you need it most. Since many of us are on the run throughout the day and don’t always have our computers in front of us, it came as no surprise that one of users’ most frequently requested features was a fast, easy-to-use mobile website for Google Finance.

We heard your feedback and are please to announce we’ve launched the new Android/iPhone edition of Google Finance for mobile! The markets don’t stop when you leave your desk, so we’re bringing the markets to you. Our new design gives you a unified experience across desktop and Android or iPhone phones, offering nearly all the same features and functionality on both. You can easily access the new site when you do a Google search for stock tickers or company names on your mobile device, or when you tap the "Finance" tab on the Google mobile homepage.

Now no matter where you are, you can keep up with your portfolio, the latest market news, and the sectors you care about, with real time quotes and data -- all at a glance.

Prefer it in app form? Android users can also get the Google Finance app in Android Market.

As always, if you have feedback on this or other topics, please share it on our Google Finance survey or visit our Product Ideas site where you can share and vote on ideas.

Real-Time Conversations on Google Maps

Qilroy

Qilroy (pronounced as in 'Kilroy was here') allows you to start and join social networking conversations anywhere in the world.

To start using Qilroy simply type in a location (or let Qilroy discover it for you). You will then be presented with a stream of Twitter and Facebook messages from your location. You can join in any of the conversations by signing in with your Twitter account, your facebook account or a Qilroy account.

As well as the real-time stream of the latest messages you can view nearby messages on a Google Map. Using the map you can zoom into a location and view the latest messages posted from people at that location.

Create a Travel Guide with Google Maps

Stay.com

Stay.com is a great way to create your very own printable travel guide.

Using Stay.com you can review hotels and points of interest at most of the world's top cities and tourist destination from the comfort of your desktop. You can view the hotels, restaurants, museums and bars listed on Stay.com on a Google Map to easily plan your travel itinerary. Each of the points of interest has a comprehensive review and attractive photographs.

When you like a review of a point of interest you can simply add it to your own travel guide. When you have finished planning your visit and adding places to stay and visit you can then print out an attractive personal guide. The guide includes a Google Map with all the places added to your itinerary clearly marked.

As well as the map your points of interest are presented in list form, with attractive photographs and full details, such as address and telephone numbers.

Nile Guide

Nile Guide is a great trip planner and personal travel guide. The site lets you explore areas you might like to visit for hotels, restaurants and other points of interest and create your own personalised travel itinerary.

To start planning your trip with Nile Guide you just need to enter your destination. Nile Guide will then give you an overview of your destination and allow you to view Hotels, Things to Do, Restaurants, Nightlife and Events. The points of interest are even displayed on a Google Map.

To add a place you want to visit you just need to click on the 'Add to List' link and it will be added to your 'My Guide'. Once you have added a number of destinations to your travel itinerary you can then organise your guide. You can drag and drop your different picks on to different days of your trip and you can view the locations of your choices on a Google Map.

When you have completed your personal travel guide if you press 'Print my guide to go' Nile Guide will create a printable version of your very own travel itinerary.

When Giant Animals Attack!

The world paid no attention to me when I warned that street view had conclusive proof that we were being invaded by UFO's. I think it will be a lot harder to dismiss my carefully researched evidence that we are now being attacked by monsters that have escaped from B-Movie horror film lots.


Attack of the Killer Bees


Empire of the Ants


Lobster Man from Mars


Invasion of the Grasshoppers


Planet of the Dinosaurs


Psycho Sheep of Butte


The Alligator People


Grizzly Attack!


The Swarm of the Ladybugs


Wild, Wild Horses

This evidence would not have proved possible without the ever vigilant sightings from Google Sightseeing and Street View Funny.

Your Aural Travel Guide on Google Maps

Sound Tourism

Sound Tourism bills itself as 'A Travel Guide to Sonic Wonders'. The site claims that normal travel guides are dominated by the visual experience, describing beautiful vistas, eye-catching art and iconic architecture whilst ignoring the aural experience of places.

Sound Tourism has set out to address that gap by creating a map of locations around the world where you can hear great sounds. Sounds are shown on the map with categorised map markers. The colour of the marker reflects whether the location is 'worth a journey', 'worth a detour' or 'interesting'.

As well as the map view you can navigate to sounds by tag or load all the sounds from a particular location by selecting it from a drop down menu.

Via: Spatial Analysis

Other Sound Maps

• UK SoundMap - survey of UK sounds from the British Library
• Open Sound New Orleans - New Orleans sound map
• Tactical Sound Garden - Tactical Sound Garden has created 'sound gardens' in Belo Horizonte, Brazil, San Diego, CA and Zurich, Switzerland.
• Radio Aporee - Sounds recorded around the world and presented on a Google Map.
• Montreal Sound Map - Sounds from Montreal

ArcGIS Explorer (Build 1500) Released

View OpenStreetMap in 3D (2d is default) via basemaps

Import your .shp, .kml, .gpx, .txt, .csv or even File Geodatabases!

"KML improved; KML handling has been improved in both 2D and 3D mode, and regionated KML is now supported in 2D mode. KML interoperability has also been enhanced; notes can be shared (exported) as KML and KML can be shared (exported) as layer packages or converted to notes. The KML file association can be set to ArcGIS Explorer.

Symbols (more); ArcGIS Explorer symbols have been updated to improve appearance in 2D and 3D modes. Symbol management tools have been enhanced with improved support for custom (user) symbols."

Buffering a point by 100km is possible via Analysis

Create driving directions, add slide (like screen grabs) to presentation - playback is full screen and glides to various screen grabs.

ArcGIS Explorer features new capabilities that enhance interoperability with the ArcGIS system and KML. These features include:

ArcGIS Online integration

Support for ArcGIS Explorer Online maps, including presentations and notes

Share (export) to layer package or KML

Create notes from features

Create notes from KML

Add data directly from Excel spreadsheets

ArcGIS Explorer SDK

Download here [98.4mb]:

http://resources.arcgis.com/content/arcgis-explorer/1500/download

Useful Links

http://www.arcgis.com/home/group.html?owner=arcgis_explorer&title=ArcGIS%20Explorer%20Labs

Source:

http://blogs.esri.com/Info/blogs/arcgisexplorerblog/archive/2010/08/24/what-s-new-in-arcgis-explorer-build-1500.aspx

Street View Added to Building Maker

Google Builder Maker

Builder Maker is a Google Maps / Google Earth / Google Aerial Imagery interface to help you build 3D models for Google Earth. Now Google have also added Street View images to Google Builder Maker.

Google have added some very clever magic to Builder Maker that allows you to grab a Street View image, align it with your building and then use the image as the texture for the building. Check out the video below to see it in action:



Six new cities have also been added to Building Maker:

Edinburgh, United Kingdom
Florence, Italy
Vienna, Austria
Pittsburgh, PA, United States
Santa Cruz, CA, United States
Riverside, CA, United States

The cities in Builder Maker all have Google's oblique aerial imagery. It is therefore a pretty good guide to which cities will have aerial views soon added to Google Maps and the Google Maps API.

Here's a little something I put together to compare Bing Maps Birds Eye view with aerial view in Google Maps:

Bird's Eye View

The application places Bing Maps' Bird's Eye View side by side with Google Maps' aerial view.

Via: Google LatLong

LBS for Close Friends and Family Only

Neer



With so many popular location based services already established and with last week's launch of Facebook Places it is going to be increasingly hard for any new entrants to grab a slice of the location pie. To do so a start-up will have to offer something new and unique. Neer does!

I suspect that there are many potential users of location based services who have been put off signing up to the established players because of privacy concerns. There are lots of people who just don't want to share their location with the whole population. Neer is targeting those users by allowing them to set up their own private location sharing networks.

Neer lets users share their location with small, select groups of friends and family. It also allows users to select the places where friends can see their location. Neer uses Google Maps to help users define these shareable locations. 

The application is available now for Android phones and an iPhone app is on the way. 

New Google Earth Imagery - August 24

Google Earth has just rolled out some fresh imagery for us! Thanks to GEB reader 'ChrisK' for being the first to let us know about it.

As is almost always the case, you can use Google Maps to determine for sure whether or not a specific area is fresh. This new imagery isn't in Google Maps yet, so you can compare Earth vs. Maps to see what's new; the fresh imagery is already in Google Earth, but the old imagery is still in Google Maps. If you compare the two side-by-side and they're not identical, that means that you've found a freshly updated area in Google Earth!

Bing Maps in Hotmail

Get Bing Maps for your locations in hotmail.


Hotmail users can embedd Bing Maps into emails for showing locations and linking to directions in the main Bing Maps Website.

When users create a new email message the option 'From Bing' is displayed and contains

• Images
• Clip Art
• Videos
• Maps & Places
• Webpages
  

Using the Maps & Places creates a side bar (see image above)
You can add new locations (and save them for later)
Then just use the insert to add the embedded map to your email.
Internet connection is required for displaying the map.

source
http://johanneskebeck.spaces.live.com/Blog/cns!42E1F70205EC8A96!12589.entry

How Open Source is Your Country?

Open Source World Map

Redhat have created an Open Source Index, or OSI, based on research by the Georgia Institute of Technology. The index is a measure of the open source activity and environment in 75 countries.

The Open Source Activity Map shows how 75 countries rank in the OSI. Each country has been given a score based on its policies and practices in the fields of Government, Industry, and Community.

The 75 countries are coloured on the map according to how well they score. France, (coloured a rather fetching shade of burgundy) is the top ranked country overall for Open Source activity. Moldova (in a mustard shade) comes in 75th.

Rather appropriately the map itself uses the Google Maps API with OpenLayers(I'm sorry there is no prize for the first person to leave a comment suggesting that Open Street Map should have been used for the map).

Hattip: Mapperz

Hunch - A Local Recommendation Engine

Hunch - Local Search

Hunch is a personal recommendations website. Answer 10 questions and Hunch believes it can offer you great recommendations on thousands of topics. Hunch's recommendations are based on the collective answers of the entire Hunch community. The site claims that every time Hunch is used the hunches get better.

Hunch has now launched Hunch - Local, a Google Maps based suggestion tool to help you find restaurants, stores, museums, hotels and nightlife. After you share your location with Hunch Local you will be shown local recommendations in your vicinity. You can choose which category of recommendations you want to view from a drop down menu.

It is also possible to refine the places shown on the map with a 'popular' slider control. This allows you to view the most popular venues or the most unique (the least popular?). Each suggestion comes with a link to read more about the venue on Yelp, foursquare or on Hunch itself.

Tracking Your Package with Google Maps

TrackingNumber.org

I've just tracked a package sent to me in London from California. The package took five days to wing it's way from Sunnyvale to my house in London. Having ordered something exciting over the Internet it is easy to get a little impatient waiting for the package to arrive but there is something reassuring about being able to check your package's location on Google Maps.

Trackingnumber.org is a tracking service for all the major courier services. Using the service you can track the location of a sent package on Google Maps. The service currently works for packages sent by FedEx, UPS, TNT and DHL. 

To track a package you just have to enter the package's tracking number. You are then presented with a Google Map that shows the current location of your package. Beside the map the tracking record for your package is also displayed, showing all the stages in your package's journey.

Google Earth 1.1 Released for Android

Roughly seven months after it was first introduced, Google Earth for Android has just received a major update to version 1.1.

The big update in this version is underwater bathymetry!This feature was first introduced on the desktop in Google Earth 5, but this is the first time that the bathymetry feature has become available on a mobile phone. It also includes a new "Explore the Ocean" layer that features photos and videos which share stories from the sea.

If your phone is running Android 2.2 (Froyo), there are even more goodies in this release:

• "Move to SD" is enabled, to free up some space in your internal memory.
• Some of the "Explore the Ocean" items have Flash videos in them, which can be viewed directly in the app thanks to Flash 10.1 being available on your device.
• Two-finger "look around" mode, similar to the iPhone. This has been my biggest issue with the Android version of Google Earth, as the iPhone version was much easier to use. It was apparently a firmware issue, since this only works on Froyo, but I'm glad to see it was finally added. This makes it much easier to browse around the globe. As suggested on Ogle Earth a while ago, simply turn the phone sideways and use both thumbs on the screen. It works great!

For more information about this release, please visit the Google Lat Long Blog.

If your phone is on Android 2.1 or higher, go download/update Google Earth right now. This is a superb update, and it's well worth your time to get it. While you're there, grab a copy of the free Google Earth Blog app so you can keep up with the latest GEB news on the go!

California Parks, Fishing & Boating Map

CaliforniaView.org

California View is a Google Map that displays California State Parks, fishing spots, and boating facilities. The points of interest for the map are taken from Data.ca.gov.

What I really like about this Google Map is the simple but effective user interface. On first visiting California View you are presented with a search box to enter your location. Once you have selected a location you are presented with a full screen map and a menu to select whether you want to view state parks, fishing spots and boating facilities on the map.

I suspect that the design was chosen so that the site works well on mobile applications but the simplicity of the user interface is something that a lot of map mashups could learn from.

Find Mall & Airport Maps via Google Maps

Point Inside
Screenshot shows Inside Maps website not the app itself

Have you ever been frustrated that Google Maps doesn't have indoor maps for shopping malls and airports? If so then you need to download (for free) Inside Maps for your iPhone or Android phone.

When you open Inside Maps on your mobile phone you are presented with a Google Map with markers showing the Inside Maps available for malls and airports near your current location. If you select one of the markers you can then download the Inside Map for the chosen mall or airport.

All the maps are produced by Inside Maps themselves and are interactive and searchable.