A great week for mapping services

The last week has been packed with good news to the internet mapping services community.

With Google adding the upgraded ocean floor views just a a few weeks ago, and with the information of a big Google Earth announcement, we had all anticipated the festive launch of Google Ocean on February 2nd. However, Google played the cards right once more and had taken many of us, Google Earth enthusiasts, by surprise, with the new Google Earth 5.

Among the new features presented in the latest version of Google Earth are:

• Google Ocean - new 3d textures of the ocean floors, ocean surface, and more. Basically an ocean-version of the terrain layer (read more in Google Earth Blog).
• Google Mars - a new planet to explore via the GE interface. This is not an overlay or an Easter egg, but actually a whole new "product", with high-res imagery, 3d terrain and some cool information layers (read more in Google Earth Blog).
• Historical Imagery - my favourite new feature, is this new time-line which scrolls through imagery of the same spot at different times, thus bringing back to life old imagery which was overridden with time (read more in Google Earth Blog).
• Touring - a cool ,easy to use feature, enabling to create fly-to based tours, including narration (read more in Google Earth Blog)!

And if that wasn't enough, to complete this crazy week Microsoft has released tons (37TB, to be exact) of new imagery to Virtual Earth.

12.07.08 Imagery update confirmed

The imagery update reported on July 12th has been already discussed quite thoroughly in the Google Earth Blog and GoogleSightSeeing, and was today officially announced in the Google Lat Long blog with the usual quiz regarding the updated places:

1) Founded in 1608, this former British possession has a decidedly French flair.

Qeubec City, Quebec, Canada.

2) Once the seat of great political power, this red fortress is now a major tourist attraction.

The Alhambra fortress, Granada, Spain.

3) Now a UNESCO World Heritage Site, this city was lost to the world for 1700 years.

Pompei, Italy.

4) Passing by a famous golf course and luxurious mansions, this stretch of road is a tourist attraction in its own right.

This one I still haven't figured out, but I think it could be one of the areas updated in California.

5) Legend has it that Hercules founded this major European city.

Barcelona, Spain.

6) This city within a city plays host to an Opera House, Planetarium, Science Museum, Oceanographic Park, and beautiful gardens.

City of Arts and Science, Valencia, Spain.

7) When we updated imagery of this city, we got complete coverage of another country with it.

Rome, Italy, along with the Vatican.

8) This city hosted General MacArthur's South West Pacific Headquarters during WWII.

Brisbane, Australia.

9) Some of my Googler co-workers can enjoy the views from this very tall building.

Taipei 101 tower, Taipei, Taiwan.


Edit July 15th 22:05 UTC: The official answers had been published today, fitting with the eight answers posted here.

Google Earth imagery update 12.07.08

It seems as though an imagery update just took place in the Google Earth database.

With no official notice of the update so far, I can only report of two areas I have found updated.

The Catalonia imagery seems to be completely updated once again, with photos dated September 2006. Major cities in the area had been updated with other images - Tarragona with imagery from January 2007, and Lleida and Barcelona with imagery from November 2007. Seems like almost half of Andorra also got it's update together with Catalonia, while the other half (including the better part of Andorra la Vella) hasn't been updated at all this time.




Other then Catalonia, it seems that vast areas of Portugal had also been updated, with the new imagery stripes clearly visible all over the country:




Feel free to report in the comment box of any other updated areas.