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Google Adds More Intelligence To Its Indian Mapping

By Andrew Redfern @ 18th December 2009 11:31 am Google Maps

Elaine over at the Google LatLong blog today outline new functionality that have been integrated into Google Maps in India. Landmarks and greater directional text are the main upgrades to the system

In an article entitled “Finding your way in India with landmarks” Elaine comments

“In the past few months, you may have noticed that Google Maps directions have been using some new phrases such as “Take the 2nd right” rather than just “Turn right”.

We’re using phrases like this because they’re natural concepts that relate to the way we think about navigation in real life. They’re the way a friend might give you directions. This week we’re taking this concept further for users in India, using landmarks to help drivers get their bearings.

During a trip to the Google engineering office in Bangalore, our driving directions engineers got a chance to learn firsthand how drivers navigate in India.

We discovered that street signs or names tend to be less important than landmarks such as civic buildings and gas stations. A friend giving you directions might tell you to “Turn left at the school” or “Go past the convenience store”.

In India, we have a lot of great landmark data available through user-entered “Points of Interest” in Google Map Maker.

Our new algorithm determines which of these landmarks are most useful for navigation, based on visibility, importance, and closeness to the turns that you’re making.

We now combine landmark data, counted turns (“the 2nd right”), intersection names, and road names, and try to use whatever information is most relevant and useful. We’re using landmarks in two ways: to identify where users need to turn, and to provide confirmation that they’re on the right track. You can read more about the research that went into this feature on the Official Google Blog.

Landmarks now appear in both desktop and mobile directions. As a result, we hope that our users in India will have an easier time getting to their destinations using directions in Google Maps — and you can improve our directions by adding more POIs in Google Map Maker!

More intelligent and actionable directions are always the “killer app” when it comes to mapping solutions so expect to see a big up-take in India in 2010.

Google Street View rolled out in the UK, Qantas get some free advertising

By Andrew Redfern @ 19th March 2009 11:51 am Google Maps

You can now visit HitSearch at Google maps Street View. The long awaited expansion into the European countries has gathered pace with major cities in the UK & The Netherlands getting street view imagery (plus a rather pleasant section of rural Norfolk).

This expansion will doubtlessly be followed by countries such as Germany meaning the a foothold in Europe has firmly been established. This will allow Google to gain ground on Live Maps who’s Birdseye view aerial mapping was seen as a useful substitute for the Street Level images.

The actual imagery was gathered last sumer with Street View cars being spotting around Liverpool by HitSearch staff. The roll out allows you to explore this virtual Liverpool as it was for the Capital of Culture celebrations.

One interesting point arose whilst looking at the images of Liverpool’s famous Hope Street with it’s Cathedrals at either end. It would seem that QANTAS had a helicopter trailing an advert around that day in a possibly deliberate attempt to get onto the Google Street View imagery or possibly just a happy coincidence for the airline (QANTAS don’t fly from Liverpool John Lennon Airport).

The double edged sword of today’s internet

By Andrew Redfern @ 9th December 2008 11:57 am Google Maps

Two news stories appeared prominently on our news feeds today that exposed the pros and cons of today’s internet.

Google Earth labeled an aid to terrorists : “An Indian Court has been called to ban Google Earth amid suggestions the online satellite imaging was used to help plan the terror attacks that killed more than 170 people in Mumbai last month.” and Vandal who trashed pub caught by Facebook : “A teenage vandal was forced to hand himself in to police after pictures of him trashing a pub were posted on Facebook by the landlord.”

The former might seem alarmist but the Indian authorites are certainly not the first to express concern over such useful information. Earlier this year the US authorities asked Google to remove Street View mapping of areas around government facilities. It is without doubt a legitimate concern but rolling back access to things like Google Maps would be the thin end of a wedge that would lead to everything from GPS sat-nav to oridinary street maps being banned. The latter story comes hot on the heels of another Facebook detective based news item and shows how people have such far reaching broadcast medium at broadcast their disposal can give people a voice they didn’t have previously. How they use these powerful tools, however, is something that cannot be legislated for.

These stories, whilst poles apart in terms of gravitas, show how openly available information and publicly available information broadcast media can open up a myriad of opportunites and pitfalls. CCTV and Satelite imagery are nothing new but the fact that they are now available to anyone, anytime virtually anywhere and can be distributed at will means that the old maxim “Informaiton is king” is never truer and as access and availibility increase more and more people are empowered by. Controlling that power, is by the very nature of the internet, impossible.

Would you like to know more about the subjects covered in this story or would you like to join in the debate? If so leave a comment or contact Hit Search, SEO and Google adWords qualified PPC specialists, on 0845 643 9289. Remember, its a big world out there, make sure you become visible.

Google Maps rolls out Google Street View in New Zealand

By Andrew Redfern @ 2nd December 2008 10:30 am Google Maps

Hot off the presses this morning is further expansion of Google’s Street View coverage. This time it’s New Zealand.

Remarkable views

There seems to be a fairly wide range of locations with everything from Auckland right through to little Matamata (aka Hobbiton) shown below :

Google Maps explorers will have lots to keep them busy with such a massive array of scenic locations to explore. From reading blogs such as GoogleSightSeeing there is a massive amount of data from numerous countries in a pipeline as Google crusade to Street View the entire world gathers pace.

Would you like to know more about Google Maps? If so, contact Hit Search, SEO and Google adWords qualified PPC specialists, on 0845 643 9289. Remember, its a big world out there, make sure you become visible.

Google give Google Maps an update

By Andrew Redfern @ 26th November 2008 6:08 pm Google Maps

Google Maps has received a significant makeover today aimed at making the navigation easier to use and make the interface with Google Street View work more seemlessly.

Key to the change is the new full screen/half screen Google Street interface which allows a larger screen area to be devoted to the panorama than was previously available with the pop-up style.

Old interface

New interface

Also making his debut with this new control system is “Pegman”, the new icon you can use to zoom between locations :

Pegman has been referred to as Google Maps’ “plucky mascot” and already there is a selection of easter eggs available including what appears to be a St Patricks pegman, a Yankee doodle Pegman and a Halloween Pegman.

The system still has the old road arrows to allow the same road ‘journeys’ however bigger jumps will be easier with the new system and the the bigger panorama area should give users a better view of the various locations.

Would you like to know more about Google Maps and online mapping in general? If so, contact Hit Search, SEO and Google adWords qualified PPC specialists, on 0845 643 9289. Remember, its a big world out there, make sure you become visible.

Internet gears up for the biggest Election party in history

By Andrew Redfern @ 4th November 2008 6:25 pm Google Maps

It’s fair to say that this presidential election has broke new ground in terms of it’s online content. Today, as Americans got to the polls, people will be glued to their monitors like never before.

Way back when the compaigns for the party nominations began all aspects of the internet from YouTube & Twitter right through to large scale Google adWords campaigns have all been used to embrace the new online generation. Independant companies such as Facebook have seen this election as the perfect way for new media to get through to a difficult to reach sector of the electorate and wage war against voter apathy.

Google have weighed in with a pretty impressive Google Map that is crruently counting down towards results time. It features a retrospective of the campaign trail, historical results as well as a full results suite for the Presidency, The Senate and The House of Representatives. Google Maps 2008 Elections Gallery.

Yahoo is offering a similarly impressive political dashboard featuring interactive moment by moment coverage. MSN has a similar offering including a live Election Q&A service.

Whether Barrack Obama or John McCain wins one thing is for certain…every single move will be watched in minute details via the web.

Earthgamz present their Olympic champions interactive Google Earth map

By Andrew Redfern @ 22nd August 2008 6:01 am Google Maps

Noticed this site reviewed on the Google Maps Mania blog. It’s an interactive Olympic Champion map by a company called EarthGamz.

According to their website “EarthgamZ connects people to their passion of sports through the power of place. By combining a 3D virtual globe with sports and a social network, EarthgamZ has created an immersive online experience of being as close as possible to being there live. The EarthgamZ technology displays and organizes public, personal, and live content, social networking, location-aware devices, and self posting of teams and players as well as relevant e-commerce for major sports activities on the Earth.”

They say that are trying to create “the ultimate online sports community”. A ambitious endevour and with their new Olympic Champions map they are allowing users to get more indepth information on their heroes and find out if you region is pulling it’s weight in terms of Olympians. They offer other online sports maps giving everything from ticket data to golf club locations all based around Google Earth.

Would you like to know more about using online mapst? If so, contact Hit Search, SEO and Google adWords qualified PPC specialists, on 0845 643 9289. Remember, its a big world out there, make sure you become visible.

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