map

Members of an industry group called the Open Geospatial Consortium have approved Google's KML technology as an open standard for describing some geographic data.

KML is used to manage the display of geospatial information in Google Earth, the company's software for flying over the surface of a virtual globe. With its 3D coordinate-based system, people can create models of city buildings, draw a line showing where they hiked, or overlay their own custom place names on a generic map.

Google already shared its KML format openly, and others had used it in software products, but Google now hopes … Read more

Ever wonder where Google's data centers are? Now you can use Google Maps to get a good overview.

Pingdom put together a Google map via Wayfaring based on data center location information from Data Center Knowledge. The map shows general areas, so don't expect to zoom in on a satellite photo.

The result is an artful scattering of 36 pushpins, one for each known data center. Yes, that's a lot of data centers, and Data Center Knowledge has some details on Google renting further capacity, too.

And there are likely more tucked away here and there. "… Read more

Microsoft's Live Maps team just dropped a huge new version of its service in addition to the traffic updates from earlier Thursday.

Live Maps now offers a wealth of new features, including exporting to GPS devices, improved 3D imagery, and one of my personal favorites, MapCruncher integration.

Microsoft is rolling out its new "version 2" 3D imagery in four cities (Las Vegas, Denver, Dallas, and Phoenix) for now, with more to come later. The rest of us will have to wait and look on in envy. 3D improvements include higher-resolution textures, rendered trees, and buildings reaching farther … Read more

Trulia, a residential real estate search engine, has incorporated Google Maps Street View into its Web pages, the company said Wednesday.

The combination presents Google's view of a particular property from the road and lets users virtually pivot around to see the surrounding area. It works in the 40 cities where Google has supplied imagery for its Street View service.

It's nothing that couldn't have been done manually before by typing an address into a separate window with the Google view, or likely even with an on-page mashup, but having the curbside vantage readily available is certainly … Read more

Which parts of the United States emit the most global-warming gases? The best view until now came via satellites, which could capture only snapshots at about the state level. Total carbon emissions were known, but their distribution remained a mystery.

That changed on Monday with the release of the most detailed map to date of U.S. carbon emissions from fossil fuels.

The map, by the Vulcan Project, took more than two years to complete and cost nearly a quarter of a million dollars, with backing from NASA and the Department of Energy. The result, named after the Roman god … Read more

In case you were interested in keeping track of where the 2008 Olympic torch is at any given moment, the Google Maps team has put together a mash-up that tracks its position as it makes its way around the world via a series of runners and transportation mediums.

Beside the map you can track not only where the torch has been, but where it's going. There's a small information panel that tells you about the route through each city including any relevant landmarks. Information about future dates hasn't been made available (for security reasons), but you can … Read more

Updated 3:20 p.m. PDT: Added Google saying the suit is without merit.

From the I-can't-believe-it-took-this-long file, a couple in Pittsburgh has sued Google claiming that the Street View on Google Maps is a reckless invasion of their privacy.

In the lawsuit filed Wednesday, Aaron and Christine Boring say they bought their home in late 2006 partly because of its secluded location on a street that is "clearly marked with a 'Private Road' sign."

Google Street View was expanded to Pittsburgh in October. The Borings found that their home was clearly visible on the map, causing … Read more

A source tells me that the Google Earth app will get the Street View feature, currently available only in the browser-based Google Maps service, within a few weeks. What's not clear is whether this refers to general release or internal testing.

Clearly, Google's goal is to offer users the capability to continuously zoom from space down to detailed views of houses and buildings.

Google launched Street View in May 2007 and continues to collect street-level imagery in new locations (including at least one nonurban location, Yosemite). Google has also been collecting middle-distance overhead imagery from airplanes, thanks in … Read more

A Cambridge, Mass.-based company is launching a free Web site that maps news articles to their location on a map.

MetaCarta indexes more than 1,400 sources, including stories from the Associated Press, Reuters, and other news sites and blogs.

You can search for a place name or zoom into the map to a specific location, and articles related to that spot will be displayed. Repositioning the map refines the search. You can also browse by category, such as health, politics, sports, and world news.

The AP and Reuters stories are displayed in a window on the site, while … Read more