What you say is what you search

Many of you have searched the web by speaking since the launch of voice search in 2008. In fact, one in every four searches from an Android phone in the US is by voice. In certain situations, voice search just works much better than typing. It’s a lot faster than typing on a small phone screen. You can search things even when you don’t know the correct spelling. It’s more fun as you can share what you’re doing with your friends. And it’s safer when you’re walking around. Once you start using voice search, you start discovering all sorts of new ways to use it.

We’ve thought of a few interesting uses for voice search and made some short videos out of them. Check them out on our new YouTube channel. But we know you can do better. What are some of your most frequent or unusual voice search queries? Leave us a comment below or on our YouTube channel.

Do You Know the One-Legged Bomber?

The One-Legged Copenhagen Bomber

The Danish police are trying to identify a man who was arrested following a blast in a Copenhagen Hotel. The man was arrested fleeing the hotel after the blast. Explosives and a loaded gun were also found in his room.

The man is 25-35 years old and has only one leg. However the police have been unable to establish his identity. Danish newspaper Ekstra Bladet are using Twitter and Facebook to see if social media can help establish his identity.

Soren of microformats.dk has decided to help the newspaper by producing two Google Maps with the map tiles replaced with a profile and portrait photograph of the arrested suspect. 

Warning: these two maps aren't pretty. 

Pittsburgh Homicides on Google Maps

What's Killing Pittsburghers?

If this Google Maps from the Pittsburgh Tribune Review is anything to go by the answer to the question 'what is killing Pittsburghers?' is 'guns and drug overdoses'.

The map shows deaths handled by the Allegheny County Medical Examiners Office during the last four years. It is possible to filter the results by 'homicide' or 'drug overdose'. It is also possible to filter the results by year.

In the map sidebar there are options to centre the map on specific neighborhoods and to refine the results further by race, age, gender or cause of death. The 'What is killing Pittsburghers?' map also uses the Google Maps Styled Map feature to present a suitably appropriate black and white base map.

Also see

Fresh imagery from San Bruno

As they do after many major events, Google has released some incredible imagery of the recent fires in San Bruno, California.

Google's imagery is used by a variety of organizations to assist in disaster recovery, so they strive to get it posted as quickly as possible. In the recent past, Google has responded with imagery for events such as the flooding in Pakistan, the Haiti earthquake, the Gulf oil spill and the earthquake in Chile.

The San Bruno imagery isn't yet available in Google's base layer, but you can view it by usingthis KML file. For more information, you can read more on the Google Lat Long Blog.

Google Map of Banned Websites

HerdictWeb

Harvard's Berkman Center has created a website where web users can report where and how web sites are being blocked around the world. HerdictWeb allows users anywhere in the world to post a report of a web site that is inaccessible. 

The home page of HerdictWeb features a live real-time map showing the latest reports of inaccessible websites. The map animates through the latest reports submitted to HerdictWeb. Each mapped report includes a link to click through to the HerdictWeb site report for the submitted website. 

The site report details how many times the website has been reported inaccessible and in which countries. The site report page also includes a heat map to visualise which countries have reported the site inaccessible the most. 

Piracy Watch

Piracy Watch uses Bing Maps to help visualise piracy incidents around the globe from 1978 to present, displaying the data in both a map and timeline. The visualization also includes a heat map to give an immediate understanding of what parts of the world have been most impacted.

It is possible to click on any of the map markers to get further details of an incident. You can also click on the incidents displayed in the timeline to load the details and to see it highlighted on the map.

Piracy Watch

Facebook Events on Google Maps

FabMap

FabMap is a Czech language Google Map that helps users find interesting events. You can log into the map with your Facebook account and view your events and your friends' events geo-tagged on the map. 

It is possible to filter the results on the map to show just today and tomorrow's events, events this week or events this month. If you select one of the filter options the events are shown on the map and also listed in the map sidebar. 

You Kill It, We'll Map It!

California Roadkill Observation System

Researchers at the University of California have developed a website to provide a way for people to report roadkill. The aim of the site is to better understand and try to influence the factors that contribute to roadkill.

If you create an account with the site you can begin to start adding your own observed roadkills to the system's Google Map. The animal roadkills displayed on the map are color-coded to reflect the species of animal unlucky enough to be struck or run over by a vehicle.

Judging by the map Highway 280 into San Francisco is definitely the place to avoid if you are a medium sized mammal. The site even includes a suitably gruesome gallery of roadkill photographs.

Via: The New York Times

New imagery of the San Bruno fire

One of the most common requests we get from users--literally thousands of times each month--is that we update or improve the imagery of a certain location in Google Earth and Maps. In order to provide the freshest, highest quality data possible, we partner with different organizations such as GeoEye, Spot Image, Infoterra, DigitalGlobe, the USDA, as well as national, city and county governments. At times we also collect our own imagery using planes equipped with aerial mapping cameras.

We collect imagery to improve overall quality--especially when we want to refresh data very quickly, for example after disasters, to complement data provided by our partners. To date we’ve collected imagery in the U.S. and in Haiti following the earthquake. This past Saturday we collected imagery over the parts of San Bruno devastated by last week’s terrible gas explosion. Google's data and tools are used by many government and non-governmental organizations to assist in post-disaster recovery, as well of course by our millions of users. This San Bruno imagery is now live in Google Earth through a KML overlay link and will be part of the base layer soon.

We are committed to providing the most accurate and up-to-date data in our maps at all times and especially in post-disaster situations.