I Love Google

Google Maps has a photo layer that shows high-quality images from Panoramio. Finding photos from almost any place in the world makes Google Maps more useful, but sometimes there are too many photos to choose from.

Now you can filter the photos displayed by Google Maps using the tag cloud generated by Google or using your own query. Restrict the photos to panoramas, landscapes, nature or buildings to create a custom photo layer.

Jonah Jones says that this is not the only improvement: "the photos now appear in piles when there are lots of views of the same scene". That means Google groups related images, so that they don't clutter the map.

Alex Chitu Google Maps, Notizie dalla rete News dalla rete

Vista la portata del >lancio del nuovo servizio Buzz di Google, che essendo integrato automaticamente dentro GMail ha raggiunto in poche ore l’attenzione di milioni di navigatori, e considerati i numerosi dubbi sorti sull’originalità e la reale utilità di questo nuovo servizio, sembra essere passata in secondo piano la notizia della nuova versione per cellulari ...
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Autore: Daniele Cerra
Tags: buzz, gmail, google maps

Daniele Cerra Google Gmail, Google Maps, Notizie dalla rete Buzz, News dalla rete, Servizi e applicazioni, Web 2.0 e Marketing

When a product doesn't have many users, it's easy to add new features, even if they're still experimental. But how can you test new features in popular services like Gmail, Google Docs or Blogger? One solution is to launch a labs section with experimental features that can be enabled by early adopters.

Google Maps is the latest Google service that adds a labs section with cool features that aren't ready for prime time. As Google says, the features "may change, break or disappear at any time".

The most interesting feature available in Gmail Maps Labs is aerial imagery, which shows a "rotatable, high-resolution overhead imagery presented in a new perspective". Unfortunately, the aerial view is only available in a few locations from the US, including Googleplex.


"This new perspective gives users the ability to tilt their view of the world. In addition to seeing hotel rooftops like in our current "satellite" view, users can now see both the rooftop and sides of the hotel at an angle. In fact, users can rotate around all the sides of a hotel to get 4 different views from back to front," explained Google in a post from December.

Another great feature is drag&zoom, which lets you select a part of the map before zooming. This way, the results are more precise and if you don't have to constantly click on the map to find a location.


Did you know that you can search for * and Google Maps shows the top results from the current view? If you don't want to remember this trick, enable the "What's around here" option and Google Maps will add a new button that searches for *.

If you want to find the latitude and longitude of a point using Google Maps, enable "LatLng Marker", right click on a location and select "Drop LatLng Marker". If you use this feature a lot, you should enable a more advanced option that shows the latitude and longitude in a tooltip.


{ Thanks, Pascal. }

Alex Chitu Google Maps, Notizie dalla rete News dalla rete

The Google Maps API Premier team looks to customer input as we build tools that enrich websites, applications, and devices with location information. Customers frequently tell us that the higher than standard limits on web services such as geocoding and static maps are among the most valuable aspects of Maps API Premier.

However, any web service can be vulnerable to anonymous automated access. To further protect our Premier customers from unauthorized use of their client IDs, we’re adding an additional layer of security to Google Maps API Premier.

Starting today, we will be issuing a private cryptographic key, unique to each account, to all Maps API Premier customers. From now on, requests made to certain web services from Maps API Premier accounts will need to be “signed” with this key. This security enhancement will ensure that requests are authorized by the owner of the Maps API Premier client ID specified in the request.

Existing Maps API Premier customers should expect to receive an email from Google within the next 10 days containing their private cryptographic key. For documentation explaining how to use this cryptographic key to sign requests, please refer to the Maps API Premier Developer Guide. The Static Maps V2 API is the first API to support URL signing.

As of March 2, 2010, requests made to the Static Maps V2 API will need to be signed to be accepted. However, for added security, we encourage you to begin signing requests you make to this service now.

By enhancing the security of our services we better protect the interests of our customers and of our data content partners. I’m excited to continue to develop the secure infrastructure that support ongoing innovation from Google – and for our customers.

Posted by Daniel Chu, Product Manager, Google Enterprise Maps & Earth team

Ellen Petry Leanse Google Maps, Notizie dalla rete admin, earth and maps, new features, News dalla rete

If you often use both a computer and a mobile phone in your daily routine, it can seem like a hassle when they don't stay in sync. You might spend time on your computer looking for a great used bookstore, only to forget the name of the place when you are ready to get directions from your phone. Sure, you could print directions in advance, but we believe smartphones are "smart" because they save you time. That's why today we're making your phone a bit smarter with the introduction of personalized suggestions and synchronized starring in Google Maps for mobile on Android.

Heaven Google Maps, Notizie dalla rete Android, google maps for mobile, google maps navigation, News dalla rete

Questo post avrei anche potuto intitolarlo “e questo come lo tracciamo?”, ma ho preferito accordarmi alla serie “everything Analytics”. Dopo aver parlato di Game Analytics, Ebook Analytics eccetera, adesso forse arriveranno anche gli annunci pubblicitari sui cartelloni di Google Maps Street View

la foto è di Ninja Marketing

Evidentemente dove c’è pubblicità c’è investimento, e dove c’è investimento c’è bisogno di calcolo del ritorno (ROI), e il calcolo del ROI online quasi sempre coincide con web analytics. Prima di fasciarsi troppo la testa sarà necessario vedere in azione questo brevetto, e capire se ad esempio i cartelloni saranno cliccabili (quasi sicuramente si), e se il rapporto sarà un cartellone <-> un inserzionista oppure uno a molti. Nel secondo caso bisognerà capire se gli url di destinazione avranno formati particolari, o se ci saranno dei parametri o dei redirect da tracciare, in modo da separare e analizzare anche questa forma di ingresso dei visitatori al nostro sito internet.

Considerando anche che la visuale in Google Street View è in prima persona soggettiva – esattamente come in uno sparatutto 3D – quando parlavo di analisi del comportamento dei giocatori nei metaversi non ci andavo poi così distante, no?

Post collegati:

1. Buon compleanno, Google Analytics!

Marco Cilia Google Maps, Notizie dalla rete game analytics, generale, News dalla rete, Street View

Lo strepitoso successo che Google Maps ha raccolto negli ultimi hanni ha fatto praticamente dimenticare l’esistenza di qualsiasi altro servizio di mappe online. Anche se senza troppo clamore, il servizio Ovi Map offerto gratuitamente da Nokia sembra avere tutte le carte in regola se non per impensierire il servizio di Google, quanto meno per guadagnarsi ...
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Autore: Daniele Cerra
Tags: google maps, mappe, nokia, ovi mappe

Daniele Cerra Google Maps, Notizie dalla rete mappe, News dalla rete, Nokia, Novità e tendenze, ovi mappe, Servizi e applicazioni

Google's mobile homepage for iPhone and Android phones added a cool feature that shows a list of points of interest near you. The page can already find your location, so you only need to click on a category or to select "Explore right here".

"First, we wanted to make it fast and easy to find out more about a place in your immediate vicinity, whether you're standing right in front of a business or if it's just a short walk away. (...) Second, we wanted to make searching for popular categories of nearby places really simple," explains Google.


This is a good example of "queryless" search. Google can provide a list of relevant results just by knowing your location.

Apparently, this feature is available in the US for iPhone OS 3.0+ and Android 2.0.1+, but I managed to enable it outside of US by setting the region format to "United States" and by updating the location.

Alex Chitu Google Maps, Google Mobile, Notizie dalla rete News dalla rete