Google has opened up Google MapMaker to all Google Account users to edit any spot in the United States. With the philosophy of “you know your neighborhood best,” Google wants everyone to jump online to tag their favorite bike paths, coffee shops, college buildings and more.
Google Mapmaker is a product where Google allows the general public to draw shapes to tag buildings, parks, paths, rivers and more inside a Google map product. Mapmaker has been around since 2008.
The awe of the devastation of the Japan earthquake and tsunami has been the subject of many searches over the past week. Many searchers are also looking for imagery of the areas of Japan affected.
Google has been working with their satellite imagery provider, GeoEye, to obtain new images of the areas most affected. Some of the images have been made available on the Google LatLong blog.
Yahoo also has also created their own compilation of before and after images of Japan.
The official Royal Wedding site launched this week and Google custom search was incorporated much to the glee of the Google Custom Search blog.
“The website is the official information hub for anyone interested in the Royal Wedding, and if you browse the website you might notice something familiar: instant, crisp, and relevant search results powered by Google.”
Google Earth has also gotten in to the wedding fever, creating a 3D route the wedding party will take to get to Buckingham Palace following the event at Westminster Abbey.
Google unrolled a new collection of street-view images this week, their largest yet. The images were captured by the google Street View trike. While the Trike is not new, the images it has recently gathered are.
The Trike was designed by Google Engineer Daniel Ratner to capture images from locations around the world otherwise unattainable by Google’s Street View car. When it launched in 2009, Google demonstrated its abilities with images from Arastradero Open Preserve, and LEGOLand. To further promote the Trike, the Street View team held a location contest asking the public to suggest where the Street View trike should go. While all the location winners have not yet been captured and released, Rochester Institute of Technology certainly was happy to see the Google Trike peruse the campus.
Twitter had played an enormous role in the recent protests in Africa. This was evident and a reason for why the Egyptian government shut down Internet services during the Egyption protests.
An activist and active Twitterer from Iran has created a Google map of the violence and protests and shared it publicly to chronicle the protest reports on the ground as they happen. Keeping some veil of anonymity, the Twitter account is known only as Arasmus.
Google Maps has angered officials and residents of Emden, Germany, by placing their port in the Netherlands. Emden’s City Council has been trying for more than a year to get back its harbor, most of which Google Maps places under Dutch sovereignty, newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung reported yesterday.
The exact location of the border between Germany and the Netherlands has been disputed since the 15th century. Bing Maps has the correct border (at least according to the German perspective), according to the report.
After week of experimenting with a new interface, Google Maps has officially announced its release into the wild. They are calling it the widget and it replaces the ugly white buttons that used to allow you to toggle between map and satellite views.
While the new view is certainly much more hip looking than its predecessor, the new widget allows you to view multiple layers, bringing the Web interface inline with what their mobile app already had.
In their blog post, the Maps team give a nifty example of how a typical user would use the new features to add layers. The example walks a typical user from home to a theater, using layers to help get there.
It appears that Google is experimenting with new controls for users to navigate through maps. The not-so-stylish, white buttons for selecting Map or Satellite view as well as the drop-list for toggling photos, buzz updates and other geo-taggable features seems to be going away. In their place, styled, graphical icons that expand and retract when you hover over them.
This change seems to have brought with it a great many more features in the “more” column. Each of these options correspond to changes and features Google has added to their Maps products.
If you live in the U.S. you’re undoubtedly aware that tomorrow, November 2nd is midterm elections day. In order to help you get out and vote, Google is providing an array of tools and services in hopes to make finding what you need easier.
Not sure where you’re supposed to vote or need some last minute informations? Google can help! Find your voting location by visiting http://maps.google.com/vote. Simply type in your home address in the search box on the left hand side and if Google knows of your voting location it will show you where it is and give you directions on how to get there along with a host of other information such as your states election website, voter registration and absentee ballot information, voter hotline numbers and more.
If your NCAA March Madness brackets are as messed up as mine, you’ll need a distraction this weekend.
So, catch up with these search stories from the week that just didn’t make it into their own post.
Google Analytics is now integrated into the Microsoft Silverlight framework. They also announced they are developing a global, browser-based opt-out plugin.
Google Commerce Search added advanced synonym options.
Google Android has added Gesture Search to versions 1.6 or higher.
Yahoo! is acquiring CitizenSports.com.
AOL is expanding their local efforts.
MapQuest adds “Search Along Your Route” functionality to its mobile version.
