Switch from Google Maps to Google Earth

Oftentimes I find something interesting in Google Maps and want to see it more detailed in Google Earth. You could try to repeat the search in Google Earth, but that's not the best idea.

To move to the same location click on "Link to this page", go to the address bar and copy the value of the ll parameter from a Google Maps address. Then type the value in Google Earth's search box. Here's an example:

http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&q=Paris,+France&layer=&om=1&
z=14&ll=52.046737,-0.198269&spn=0.024229,0.080338

If you want to save some clicks, after clicking "Link to this page", add "&output=kml" at the end of the URL and hit Enter. A dialog will ask you to open or save a KML file. Choose to open the file in Google Earth.

There's even a bookmarklet that automates the process. Bookmark this link or drag it to your bookmarks toolbar. Next time you want to switch to Google Earth, just click on the bookmarklet.

View in Google Earth

3D Buildings in Google's Street Maps

Google Maps adds a new dimension to buildings in the street maps of more than 30 important cities from the US (like New York or Boston) and Japan. Frank Taylor from the unofficial Google Earth Blog argues that they're not yet 3D. "You can't rotate or tilt your view, so it's 2D. But, the buildings have shaded 3D-like projections from an angle so you get an idea of height and shape of the buildings."


This is, in fact, Google Earth's building layer. To see it, go to the layers sidebar and enable "3D buildings".


Google Earth's layers contain a lot of useful information that enhance the satellite imagery: road names, airports, parks, populated places, pictures and more. The cool thing is that they reside on Google's servers, so you don't need to update Google Earth to see new information. Google Maps could become much more useful if it included these overlays.

Create Personalized Google Maps

Google launched My Maps, a new feature in Google Maps that lets you mark some places on the map and annotate them. Essentially, it's an easy way to create a KML file from Google Maps (until now, the feature was available in Google Earth). To create a map:

* Select one or more places from the map.
* Draw lines and polygons to highlight paths and areas.
* Add descriptions by typing HTML code or using a rich text editor.
* More in this user guide.

Each map will have its own permalink (like this map of Googleplex) and can be exported as KML to see it in Google Earth. Google wants to create a big directory of maps, so if you decide to make your map public, anyone can find it in the search results. The alternative is to make it unlisted, which means the address won't be included in search results, but it will be accessible to anyone who knows it (much like in Picasa Web).


You can find maps created by other people if you search for a local business and click on "see user-created content" at the bottom of the search results. This acts as a search engine for KML files available on the web, so you'll find a lot of KML files from bbs.keyhole.com (Google Earth Community), where you could host your KMLs and get some feedback.

This new feature (available for a long time in Windows Live Maps or in some Google Maps mashups) is also a good way to share more than one place with a single link. You can add placemarks manually or from the search results.

Map a List of Locations from a Google Spreadsheet

Google Spreadsheets has an interesting advantage over Microsoft Excel and other desktop applications: you can publish a spreadsheet and always have the latest version on the web without manually republishing it. Because Google Spreadsheets has an API, you can use the spreadsheet as an easy-to-update structured file always available on the web, as an input for web applications.

Pamela Fox wrote a post on Google Maps Blog that details how to create a map from a Google Spreadsheet that contains geographical information.

First you need to build a spreadsheet that has a header and a list of locations described by title, latitude, longitude. There's a nice batch geocoder that uses Google Maps API and can help you build your spreadsheet: copy the generated text in a text file and import it in Google Spreadsheets.

Once you have the spreadsheet, you need to create the connection with Google Maps. There are three ways to do that:

1. The simple way. This page requires to modify the URL and add the key parameter from the spreadsheet. That's all: no customization, the spreadsheet must have fixed column names, no embedding option.


2. Almost as simple. This wizard lets you customize the map and embed it in your site.


3. The hard way. Use Google Maps API and Google Spreadsheets API to build your own application.

Google Maps Shows Funny Directions

It's not the first time when Google Maps shows strange directions. This time, if you want to go from Stanford to Stockholm, Google recommends to "swim across the Atlantic Ocean" (only 3,462 miles).


Last month, Google Maps transformed a short walk into a journey of 18 minutes. "For most people, the journey from the Shelbourne Hotel at 200 Sussex Street to Google's Sydney headquarters across the road at 201 Sussex Street would be a 30-step, 30-second trip. But according to Google's new mapping service, the recommended route would see you take a 10.4-kilometre scenic detour that involves crossing the Harbour Bridge twice," reported Sydney Morning Herald in February.



In January, Digg uncovered that you had to make a lot of U-turns to get from Bensalem to North Brunswick. It turned out that Google's driving direction engine had a bug that created an infinite loop.



So next time take Google Maps' drive directions with a grain of salt.

{ via Blogoscoped }