Tag: Google Maps

Travel Pictures on Google Maps

Take time this summer to publish travel pictures on Google Maps.  It will set up an initial class discussion for the Fall on Google Maps, Analytics, Photos, Design.  You may need a few tries to get one to be successful.  KEEP IT GOING!

I took a second and was demonstrating how much a picture makes a difference, and how easy it is to take a good picture that connects one with a business in the tone that a customer sees.  I improved the pictures of an absolutely great coffee place, Noble Coffee Roasting, in one of my Favorite cities: Ashland, OR.  In the end, the metrics demonstrate that it resonates with folks and shares what I feel about the location.

Put yours up and see if you can capture what it is you like about a spot and others will click on to see from a thumbnail.

Your photos reached a new record on Google

Your photos reached a new record on Google (1)

Why We Do The Thoughtful Footprints Project!

Partitions may divide countries, but friendships find a way. A touching story about the power of information in improving people’s lives. (Be sure to watch with English subtitles.)

A special thank you to all of you, who make this sort of thing possible every day through all of the incredible local knowledge you contribute to Google Maps through Map Maker. You are changing the world, one map edit at a time.

You Could Produce Imagery Using Kites

This is from Google, check it out, and go Fly A Kite!

Here at Google we publish a lot of imagery, most of which comes from the satellite and aerial imagery providers with whom we partner. Last week we published something a bit different: images collected from balloons and kites! The resolution is amazing, and it’s something that just about anyone can do themselves.

Public Laboratory image of Lake Merritt, Oakland, CA (July 2011) in Google Earth

Our friends at The Public Laboratory for Open Technology and Science have been working hard to make imagery collection easy, cheap and accessible. Their grassroots mapping work is based on the idea that citizens anywhere should be able to explore the environment in and around their communities, by collecting their own imagery and other data, and to do it in a way that is useful for scientific and social purposes.

The Public Laboratory has developed an open source balloon mapping toolkit that allows anyone with an inexpensive digital point and shoot camera, and about $100 of other parts (balloon, helium, line, soda bottle, etc.) to take photos of the ground around them. They also provide a web-based tool called MapKnitter for aligning the photos into a georeferenced image that can be used inGoogle Earth and other digital mapping tools.

Public Laboratory image of WhereCamp, Stanford University (April 2011) in Google Earth

We’ve imported many of the images from the Public Laboratory’s archives into Google Earth’shistorical imagery database. To help you find them, download this KML file, open it in Google Earth (make sure you’re using the latest version), and fly to the image locations in space and time. Have fun exploring this unique imagery!