An Easier Way to Analyze, Plan and Explore

  Hey there, Garmin runners, cyclists, triathletes and fitness fanatics. This is a quick note to tell you about some new changes to the navigation within Garmin Connect. Once logged into your account, you'll notice that we have simplified the navigation tabs with four categories:

• Dashboard

Here you will see your five most recent activities including a brief summary of each and a view on the map.

• Analyze

In this area you will have access to your activities page (a list of all your past activities including metrics of each), reports

Follow an email’s journey with Story of Send

If you’re anything like me, you send and receive a lot of emails every day. But have you ever wondered where your message goes after you hit “send?” How does an email travel from your computer to your friend’s smartphone across the country or around the world? We’re answering those questions with Story of Send, a new site that gives you a behind-the-scenes look into how all that virtual information makes its journey through the real world—from your Internet service provider to our data centers and beyond. Along the way, you’ll discover everything from where we filter for spam and scan for viruses to how we’re minimizing our impact on the environment through energy efficiency and renewable power. We’ve included videos and photos throughout the journey so you can explore certain areas more deeply. For example, if you’re curious what data center servers look like, we’ve included some photos. Or you can watch a video to learn about how we purchase clean energy from wind farms near our data centers. And because technology doesn’t always have to be serious, you might find a vampire or two lurking around or uncover other surprises on the journey. In the past, Gmail fans have shown us how emails connect people across the world. Now we’re providing a glimpse into how those emails go from one place to another. So hit send and start the journey today.

Possible Data Sources in Apple's iOS Map

  So what do you do on a Friday morning when an editor tells you to get some “exclusive” Apple news on the front page. Clearly this:

According to trusted sources, Apple has an incredible headline feature in development for iOS 6: a completely in-house maps application. Apple will drop the Google Maps program running on iOS since 2007 in favor for a new Maps app with an Apple backend.

So the iOS map app is really old and busted and this is not exactly news. I’m guessing Lead Dog and Urban Mapping will be along for the ride as well as OpenStreetMap. Apple will probably blend many data sources like their iOS iPhone maps, rather than buy wholesale from Navteq or TomTom.  

Google+ for Android: polish and performance

We continue to work toward a simpler, more beautiful Google, and today we're accelerating these efforts with a new Google+ app for Android phones. The update includes lots of highly-requested features—like the ability to start a hangout on the go, and to edit posts inline—as well as a stream that celebrates the rich content shared across Google+. In all cases we're building for a mobile future, and we're excited about what's ahead. Start a hangout from anywhere, and ring the folks that matter most With Hangouts we want to help people connect face-to-face-to-face—at any time, from anywhere. Of course, there's really only one device that's always by your side—your phone—so we've invested in mobile hangouts since early on. Today we're adding another important feature to the mix: the ability to start a hangout directly from your mobile device. To get started, tap “Hangout” in the (new) navigation ribbon, add some friends and tap “Start.” We'll ring their phones (if you want), and if someone misses the hangout, they can ring you back with a single tap. Share your favorites, and feel awesome afterward When you share with your circles, we owe you an experience that's both intimate and immersive. Your time and your relationships are precious, after all, so your posts should make you feel proud. Today's new Android app takes this to heart, with full-screen media in the stream, conversations that fade into view and instantly-touchable actions like +1. Do more, in less time We think you’ll find today’s app nicer to look at, but we’re also making it easier to use. Improvements include:

• A navigation ribbon that slides in and out, providing quick access to just about everything
• The ability to download photos directly from Google+, and turn them into wallpaper
• The chance to edit posts inline, in case you make any mistakes while on the go

 

The best SketchUp projects in the new SketchUp Showcase

  I've long said that 3D models are one of my favorite aspects of Google Earth. From cities to universities to cathedrals to even my own house, I love exploring the 3D world of Google Earth. The tool behind these great models, of course, is Google SketchUp. SketchUp is an amazing (free!) software tool to allow you create 3D models, and you can view thousands of those models in the Google 3D Warehouse. Now they have a new tool to make it even easier to find excellent 3D models -- the new SketchUp Showcase.     The Showcase highlights excellent Sketchup projects from around the world, and included in this site is a brand new online 3D model viewer. It allows you to orbit, zoom and pan 3D models, so you can view them from any angle without leaving your browser. Look for the little red flag icon, or click here to see the models that have this feature. It's quite slick.     If you have a project that you feel is worthy of inclusion in the SketchUp Showcase, you can submit it for consideration here.

Google Earth Imagery Update May 14

The Google Earth and Maps Imagery team recently published another batch of aerial and satellite imagery. In this post, we’ll focus on U.S. cities and locales, as the largest amount of new high resolution aerial imagery covers regions in the United States. High on the list of things associated with the United States are over-sized automobile tail fins. Our first aerial image shown below is of Cadillac Ranch, located near Amarillo, Texas. The series of partly buried and tilted Cadillacs is a public art homage to the iconic American auto.

Cadillac Ranch, Texas Our next example is of Downtown New Haven, Connecticut. The image shows the center park square of New Haven Green, which is surrounded by eight squares of the same size that comprise a nine-square downtown area that was first drawn out in 1638, and represents the first planned city in the United States.

Downtown New Haven, Connecticut Few U.S. rivers are more well-known than the mighty Mississippi. The aerial image below, snapped last month, shows a portion of the river’s northern extent where it forms Saint Anthony Falls in Minneapolis, Minnesota. The Metrodome Stadium, home of the NFL franchise Minnesota Vikings, can be seen in the lower left corner. The team has played its last game there and is about to sign a 30-year deal to build a new downtown stadium.

Section of Downtown Minneapolis, Minnesota The final example shown below is a section of the “Magic Dragon,” more commonly known as the Lake of the Ozarks. This sinuous man-made reservoir was formed by the damming of the Osage River in South-Central Missouri. More than 70,000 residences line the shoreline and the Bagnell Dam can be seen in the upper-right corner of the image.

Section of Lake of the Ozarks, Missouri If you’d like to receive an email notification when the Google Earth and Maps Imagery team updates your favorite areas(s), we’ve got just the tool: The Follow Your World application! These are only a few examples of the sites that can be seen and discovered in our latest batch of published imagery. Happy exploring! High resolution aerial updates: U.S. cities: Big Lake, TX; Bowie, TX; Bridgeport, CT; Cleveland, OH; Danville, VA; Dickinson, ND; Farmington, MO; Grand Forks, ND; Hartford, CT; Minneapolis, MN; Providence, RI; Quincy, IL; Richlands, VA; Traverse City, MI; Youngstown, OH Countries/regions receiving high resolution satellite updates: Albania, Algeria, Angola, Antarctica, Argentina, Armenia, Australia, Austria, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Belize, Bolivia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Botswana, Brazil, Bulgaria, Burkina Faso, Cambodia, Cameroon, Canada, Chad, Chile, China, Colombia, Costa Rica, Cuba, Cyprus, Côte d'Ivoire, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Denmark, Dominican Republic, Egypt, El Salvador, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Estonia, Ethiopia, Fiji, France, French Polynesia, Gabon, Georgia, Germany, Ghana, Greece, Guatemala, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Haiti, Honduras, Iceland, India, Indonesia, Iran, Ireland, Italy, Jamaica, Japan, Kazakhstan, Kenya, Kuwait, Latvia, Lebanon, Lesotho, Libya, Madagascar, Malawi, Malaysia, Maldives, Mali, Mauritania, Mexico, Mongolia, Morocco, Mozambique, Myanmar, Namibia, Nepal, New Caledonia, New Zealand, Niger, Nigeria, North Korea, Norway, Oman, Pakistan, Panama, Papua New Guinea, Paraguay, Peru, Philippines, Poland, Portugal, Qatar, Romania, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Senegal, Serbia, Solomon Islands, Somalia, South Africa, South Korea, Spain, Sri Lanka, Sudan, Svalbard, Swaziland, Sweden, Switzerland, Syria, Tanzania, Thailand, Turkey, Uganda, Ukraine, United Arab Emirates, United States, Uruguay, Uzbekistan, Vanuatu, Venezuela, Vietnam, Western Sahara, Yemen, Zambia, Zimbabwe These updates are now available in both Google Maps and Google Earth. For a complete picture of where we updated imagery, download this KML for viewing in Google Earth.

Would you Buy a Used Car From These Guys

This is a cautionary tale to 29Prime’s remaining 8000 clients. If this company abuses their own Google Places listing imagine what they might be doing in your name. Let me be upfront with my bias.. 29Prime is not one of my favorite companies. And I have in the past commented on their abuse of Google Place’s reviews to hide the reality of who they really are. But reader Dave Middleton pointed out that in addition to abusing Google Places’s review policy they are also abusing the Google Places Guidelines as well by adding a tagline to their business name in their Places listing: Their claim of having served 20,000 clients, while an abuse of Google’s guideline against tag lines in the business name, is an interesting one. Linda Buquet pointed out one of their recent PR releases where they claim to have a current client base of more than 8,000 small business owners. The article notes that they were founded in 2010 (although their website notes a start date of 2007 and the domain was claimed in 2008). If we take their most recent word at face value (Tough I know but..) and assume (for the sake of simple calculation) a May 2010 founding we can get a sense of their churn. They have lost 6000 customers a year. It would appear that they have lost 1.5 clients for each one still claimed to  be under contract. Still curious I wanted to see who actually owned the building that they show on their website as their presumed location so I typed their address into Google Maps to look at the Streetview of their location. OOOPS. Turns out they violated another Places guideline and claimed their listing at the local UPS Store. The address, 2233 West Balboa Blvd # 115, Newport Beach, is the same one used in their Whois record and their website. This was no accident. Still not convinced about 29Prime’s ethical behaviors? The image of their HQ on their website appeared to have been photoshopped so I dropped it into Google image search to see what I found. Surprise! They seemed to be “occupying” the Unisys offices at 9701 Jeronimo RD Irvine, Ca. They may in fact be at that location occupying some space but the building most definitely isn’t labeled as 29Prime and they are but a renter. Hmm, stranger and stranger. To any client of 29Prime: If these folks can’t get their own marketing story straight, how can you expect that they will get yours straight? They are obviously violating Google Places guidelines, run the risk of being suspended, are gathering fake reviews and are photoshopping images on their website that have one intention, to imply that they are more successful than they really are. Their churn rate is at best disturbing. They are willing to “cut corners” (to say the least) on their own marketing, can you really trust them with yours? Or will your listing end up suspended like theirs is likely to be? Just for the record here is the image from the website and an unretouched image of the same location reflecting the actual occupant. It appears that they didn’t even take the time to take an original photograph and just used the one from the Wikipedia article on Unisys. They did appear to have adjusted the colors. How many corners can one company cut?

Made in NY Digital Map

Map of the Week: Made in NY Digital Map Why we like it: A beautiful visualization of tech companies in New York City, which uses Styled Maps and our Marker Clusterer library. Also, this is the first map to come to us directly from New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg (perhaps as a result of his pledge to learn code in 2012:)! This week’s ‘Map of the Week’ comes to us directly from New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg! On Tuesday at Internet Week New York, Mayor Bloomberg released Made in New York as a resource for job seekers. The map is a visualization of the city’s tech startups that connects jobs seekers with job listings. To help users better visualize all the data on the map, Marker Clusterer is used to group together a collection of points that are in close proximity to each other. The resulting clusters are color coded by the number of listings that they contain, and a Styled Map is used to make the data stand out better.

At launch Made in New York contains more than 500 companies. Of those companies, about 325 are currently hiring. You can sort the map by digital companies, investors, and co-working/incubator spaces

Mayor Bloomberg has high hopes for this Google Map. At the conference Bloomberg stated “We expect this map to be another tool that helps propel our tech industry forward.” With a map as beautifully designed as Made in New York, good things are sure to follow.  

The Google Places API search refinements

The Google Places API allows web and mobile app developers to search Google’s index of business listings and POI data. Since launching the Places API last year we’ve received a lot of great feedback from developers, in response to which we’ve implemented a number of additional features. Today we are taking a closer look at two of them: keyword search and rank by distance. Keyword search

When searching for business it’s often the case that you have very fine grained requirements. You don’t just want a restaurant, you want a Mexican restaurant. You don’t just want a clothes shop, you want a vintage clothes shop. You don’t just a want a bar, you want a bar that offers live music. The Google Places API offers filtering over 100 different types, including restaurant, clothing_store, and bar. As rich as this type scheme is, it can not cover the infinite range of fine grained requirements that you or your users might have. For these situations the Places API now offers keyword search, which searches places based on an arbitrary text string. Results are matched against all the information that Google has about a business, including country specific categories, cuisine, and Google review content. Keyword searches can also be combined with type filters. For example, you could add a type filter of ‘bar’ to a keyword search for ‘wine’ to ensure your search results include only drinking establishments, and not wine merchants.

Rank by distance

By default, the Google Places API orders the search results it returns using the same ranking algorithm as Google Maps, which prioritises places that are popular or prominent. This is great for local discovery and check-in apps, as these are the places likely to be the most interesting or relevant. However for certain types of search, such as gas stations or atms, the closest result is usually preferable. To help with these use case the Places API can now rank results strictly by distance. In order to rank results by distance you must use some form of query or filter on the search. This can be a name filter, a type filter, or a keyword search. When results are ranked by distance it is not necessary to provide a search radius as the Places API will try to return the 20 closest results within reasonable distance.

Keyword search and rank by distance are available in both the Places API web service and in the places library of the JavaScript Maps API v3. You can try these new features using the map below. Enter any keywords into the text field, and optionally filter over business types using the drop down menu on the right. You can also switch to ranking by distance, in which case the places closest to the center of the map (indicated by the red map pin) will be returned: These new features are a direct result of feedback from Places API developers. If you would like to help us improve the Places API further, please submit ideas for new features using the Maps API Issue Tracker. For assistance using these features, or any other aspect of the Places API, you can find us on Stack Overflow.  

Shop and travel with Google Maps 6.7 for Android - now with Google Offers and indoor walking directions

Wherever you are, Google Maps for Android helps you get around and discover new places. Today with the 6.7 release we will help you find offers from nearby businesses in the U.S. -- everything from restaurants, to salons, to city tours. Also, we’ve added indoor walking directions in the U.S. and Japan, plus 360-degree interior photos of businesses, to help you intrepidly make your way indoors and out. Discover great offers near you Today, in the U.S. only, we’re launching a way to discover nearby Google Offers in Google Maps for Android. To see great deals near you, tap on “Maps” to open the dropdown menu and then tap on “Offers.” If you see something you like you can click on it to learn more. Some Google Offers can be purchased and saved for later while others are immediately available for free. With free Google Offers, press “Use now” to redeem instantly or “Save for later” for future use. You can also opt-in to receive notifications in the app when there are offers near you.

Explore the great indoors with walking directions and Business Photos. Since we launched indoor maps in the U.S. and Japan in Google Maps for Android last November, business owners have been adding their floor plans to our maps with Google Maps Floor Plans. Today, we are launching indoor walking directions for participating venues in these countries. This will help you get directions not only to a building’s front door, but also through those doors to the places where you want to go inside.

Get Indoor walking directions in indoor maps (photo: Macy’s San Francisco)

With Google Business Photos you can explore panoramic photos of the inside of a business from the palm of your hand. Now you can get a feel for a restaurant or store inside as well as outside using Street View technologies. To access these 360-degree panoramic views, look for the “See Inside” section on the Place page of select businesses.

See the interior of participating businesses with Business Photos (photo: Toyjoy)

Download Google Maps 6.7 for Android from Google Play, and use it as your trusted guide to help you find and discover places to eat, shop and play! You can also learn more about other great features on the Google Maps YouTube channel. (Cross-posted on the Official Google Mobile Blog)