Remember that feature Google rolled out back in November of last year that let users edit location markers? This morning the company's released a new Maps visualization to let you watch a portion of those user edits in real time. Like some of the Flickr and Twitter mashups that have done the same thing with photos and messages, you can glean a certain level of entertainment off watching people's changes, and as long as you're sitting far enough back from your computer monitor you can avoid the Cloverfield-like nausea when the map quick pans to the next location (seriously).
From my time watching the page this morning, nearly all of the changes remained within the United States with just a few trips to southern England. This could mean that either Google's localizing the data feed, or trying to keep the transcontinental panning to a minimum.
Google Maps continues to be one of Google's fastest changing services within the last year. Just yesterday it finally got list reordering as part of My Maps (previously user-created maps would remain in the order of the spot or landmark at the time it was created), and earlier this month it added live Doppler radar and satellite weather reports as a mapplet.
See it in action an animated GIF after the jump.
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Google Maps now has terrain maps. You can see mountains, valleys, and buildings.
(Credit: CNET Networks)Google Maps has added a new view layer to its repertoire today. It's called terrain view, and as the name suggests, it lets you get a detailed look at natural geographical features, as well as man made ones, like buildings and landmarks. Unlike Google Earth, you can't zoom around and change eye level to see how high something is, but Google has provided some degree of rendering on the surface of the earth to give it a 3D look and feel.
While it lacks the flash and instant usefulness of Street View (Google's latest maps addition), terrain view is a great way to look at topographical features with a little more understanding than one can garner from the plain map view. After giving the service a spin around most of the West Coast, my one quibble is that you can't zoom in as close as you might be used to. While satellite and map view can get you down to 20 feet, with terrain view you're limited to 1000 feet.
In addition to terrain view, Google has also updated its My Maps service to allow several people collaborate on a single map. The company launched the service a few months ago, although notably missing--compared to some of their document sharing applications--was a way to use the service with others. You can now open up any saved map by toggling it right from the map itself. You can also invite specific individuals to participate, like you would a closed document.
The maps team has been busy lately. Besides the latest terrain and MyMaps updates, the service launched user-generated markers last week, a partnership with Gilbarco Veeder-Root to put Google Maps in gas pumps, and added public transportation pricing to directions.
Greer Park in upscale Palo Alto, Calif., isn't what you would call dirty.
Nor is it sprayed with graffiti, broken down, rusty or disheveled. In fact, nothing on the surface would indicate the need for a concentrated effort by Google employees and friends participating in Google's first International Cleanup Weekend, an endeavor born in part to publicize the MyMaps application and KML, the XML-based markup language used to make Google's interactive Web maps.
Yet here were eight of us, stooping to harvest bottle caps, gum wrappers and cigarette butts from the tanbark and grass at 9:30 a.m. on a glorious Saturday morning in this wealthy San Francisco suburb.
A chance discovery turned us from the ground cover to the bushes, where the real pay dirt lay. Yi Wei, a 21-year-old Google user experience designer, dragged an abandoned couch cushion from the hedges lining the park.
"There's trash everywhere," he said. "You just have to look for it."
The search proved more fruitful after that, with the foliage yielding beer bottles, metal grates, plastic bags, food wrappers, a dirty diaper, lost sports balls and two long metal poles that looked like supports for a soccer goal. Plastic bags began to fill.
If you hadn't heard much about Google International Cleanup Weekend on October 13 and 14, here's why. The loosely organized event sprang from summer intern So Jieun Oh's tutorial of a beach cleanup that was created to teach users how the KML markup language can make interactive, multimedia map mashups.
The Google Earth Outreach team, which helps sell non-profits and businesses on using Google products, glommed onto the idea of using MyMaps to let small groups of employees coordinate local cleanups and then share photos and video posted to their maps.
"The logical extension of that is, why not do it for everyone in the world," said Vaughn Tan, 27, an Associate Product Marketing Manager on the Google Earth Outreach team.
Google encouraged small groups to make a local difference.
(Credit: CNET Networks)"It's cool thinking that...after this weekend the world will be a little cleaner," added Cathy Tang, 22, the product marketing manager in charge of the International Cleanup Weekend Web site.
Google counted more than 300 maps spanning six continents on the event's site. Publicity through organizations like Americorps, Idealist.org and The Scout Association in the U.K. helped populate the master map.
There's no good way to know how many events actually took place without meticulous counting--autumn storms may have postponed some events, like Tan's October 14 cleanup in San Francisco's Dolores Park.
To see MyMaps at work, visit my team's cleanup map; also view my photo gallery above.
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