Hasta La Gadget!

Google has added a handful of new Street View imagery to Google Maps today. The update focuses on New York City, including Central Park, the new 9/11 Memorial, and neighborhoods affected by Hurricane Sandy. A lot has changed since Google last added a big update to New York, but these additions should bring most of the imagery back up to date.

Google added up-close imagery of the 9/11 Memorial, which consists of two pools in the shape of the North and South towers of the World Trade Center. You can now explore this area in high-resolution, to the point that you can clearly read the names of the victims on the side walls of the two pools, which is really impressive on Google’s part.

Google also partnered up with Historypin to provide photos that show the impact of Hurricane Sandy, which hit the northeastern part of the US late last year. Google and Historypin have created a collaborative photo album showing off various neighborhoods impacted by Hurricane Sandy, and details the efforts that are being done to bring the neighbors back to normal.

Google also added a slew of new imagery of Central Park in New York City, and the company partnered up with the Central Park Conservancy to make it happen. The new imagery will allow you to explore the park from the comfort of your own couch, or you can use it as a map of sorts while you may your way around the park for real.

All of the new imagery should be up and available for your viewing pleasure in Google Maps as we speak, and it’s available for both the desktop and mobile. Obviously, this won’t be the last that we hear from Google about updates to Street View imagery, as the company will continue to update and add new places to Google Maps.

SOURCE: Google Maps Blog

Google Street View pays tribute to 9/11, Hurricane Sandy is written by Craig Lloyd & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

Google has added bike directions to a number of European countries today, including Germany, France, Poland, Ireland, Luxembourg, and Liechtenstein. You’ll be able to get biking directions based on bike-safe roads and trails, and the map will also show you bike trails and roads with bike lanes the explore right on the map itself.

The directions work the same as how they always have. When you get directions from one location to another, Google will work its magic to come up with a route that avoids busy roads, as well as take advantage of bike paths and bike-safe streets. You can also get turn-by-turn navigation just like you would in a car.

This update comes as the cycling season is getting under way in Europe with the Giro d’Italia just wrapping up yesterday. The Tour de France begins June 29, so until then, you can map out your own Tour de France with the new Google Maps update to get yourself prepared for the big race, but those guys won’t need directions from Google Maps.

Google saya that avid cyclists who know a lot of bike trails and paths in their area can jump onto Google MapMaker to make changes and improve the system. While Google does a lot of the work, you’d probably be surprised how much of Google Maps is crowd-sourced, and the cycling community is a pretty tight-knit group of folks who are willing to stand up for their fellow cyclists, so we should be seeing a lot of improvements being made to bike paths in the future.

SOURCE: Google Europe Blog

IMAGE CREDIT: Tejvan Pettinger

Google Maps brings bike directions to more European countries is written by Craig Lloyd & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

This week the folks at the development studio known as Instrument have brought a virtual reality demonstration to Google I/O 2013, complete with a multi-display drop from the upper atmosphere down toward the earth in freefall. What this demonstration consisted of was seven 1080p displays, each of them run by their own Ubuntu PC working with a full-screen version of Chrome version 25. A motion tracker works to track the user, their arms, and the angle at which they’re standing – or leaning and falling, as it were.

This system was developed by Instrument to track user input and motion tracking with a custom C++ app built with openNI as well as an ASUS Xtion Pro 3D motion tracking sensor camera. As the motion tracker sees and understands the angle of the human playing the game’s torso and location of each arm, so too will their avatar on the display array move as they fall.

The 3D game content is rendered with WebGL using THREE.js, the WebGL layer being rendered with a totally transparent background. This setup allows the map layer underneath to show through, this map layer being generated by Google Maps.

What the user sees below – the earth they’re plummeting toward – is a completely live HTML Google Map instance. It’s accurate – meaning you could potentially be diving toward your house, a national landmark, or perhaps somewhere that’d be useful for real-world training.

In addition to this setup being live and ready to roll here at Google I/O 2013 as a playable demo, Instrument has created a Dive editor. With this Dive editor, an editor is able to build directly into the control node administrative console, each of these changes reflected instantly – live in the scene.

The editor user interface exists as a Google Map, the person editing it able to use draggable markers that act as game objects. With this interface, developers and savvy users will be able to utilize geocoding to center the map view on locations of their choice – anywhere Google Maps can see. Think of the possibilities!

Google Maps-driven Map Dive 3D-tracking hands-on is written by Chris Burns & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

We have heard how some people have used technology to help locate their missing gadgets, such as phones or tablets or laptops, but this is probably the first time we’ve heard how one kidnap victim actually used technology to help […]

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This week Google I/O 2013‘s single keynote session focused not just on Chrome and Android, but on Google Maps as well. In an update that Google simply calls “The new Google Maps” and won’t be available to all users until later this year. Developers attending Google I/O 2013 as well as those that get early invites to the system will be able to take part in the roll-out first: here Google begins to truly integrate their smart search results and their maps systems, here that Google’s promise that the map itself will become the user interface.

With this new version of Google Maps on the web, users will be able to tap on lit-up locations across the map. This system allows you to search for a restaurant in your area, find that place, and where the experience would end with that in the past, you’ll just have started. Users have cards to the left, similar to Google Now with cards that bring information on the location’s address, hours, webpage, phone number, and reviews through Zagat.

This system also gives the one-button click ability to access directions from the location you’re sitting in (or wherever you’d like to start from) as well as save the location as a favorite. This system also works with five-star ratings for locations be they a place of business, a public park, or anything in-between.

Below the map you’ll find a collection of images that come from users who have contributed photos and photo spheres from their cameras or android smartphones and tablets. These results appear courtesy of Google+ where users have recently also been given the ability to post photo spheres and embed them in webpages across the web.

Multiple modes of transport will be available to users as they’d be available in Navigation, public transport, flights, automobiles, and biking included. This system also learns with the user the same way Google Now does, changing and adjusting based on past searches and your Google Now preferences.

We’ll be working with this new Google Maps system through the immediate future and answering any and all questions you, the reader, have between now and the final roll-out for the public. This system is one you can access with an invite request starting today, and users will be seeing upgrades with invites in the near future.

NOTE: We’ll be continuing our journey with Google Earth integration soon. It’s here that Google will be pushing the boundaries between the 3D and the 2D visions they’ve had separate until now: Google Maps and Google Earth will soon become one!

The New Google Maps hands-on with personalized results is written by Chris Burns & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.