Announcing the winners of the Street View trike contest

[Cross-posted from the Official Google Blog]

​The polls have closed, the votes have been tallied and the people have spoken: it’s time to announce the winners of our Street View trike suggestions contest. Last October, we gave Street View fans the opportunity to vote for the special attractions around the United States that they most want to see featured on Google Maps. In the first round, we received more than 25,000 suggestions, which we narrowed down to the 24 finalists that were put up to a public vote. All in all, nearly a quarter million votes were cast.

The most popular category among all voters was University Campuses, racking up nearly 70,000 votes. Topping the list was Rochester Institute of Technology (Rochester, New York). Reminiscing alumni, prospective students or empty-nest parents will be able to tour the university through Street View for a unique look at campus life.

Cyclists also came out in droves to cast their ballots for their favorite riding spots, and the Boulder Creek Path (Boulder, Colorado) rode away with victory in the Parks & Trails category. Our trike riders — and the avid bike riders in Google’s Boulder office — are looking forward to the chance to take a ride along this scenic 5½-mile greenway.

History buffs, potential tourists, and online window-shoppers will soon be able to take a virtual stroll through the grounds of Faneuil Hall Marketplace (Boston, Massachusetts), the most popular submission in the Pedestrian Malls category.

In the National Landmarks category, voters elected a location that actually encompasses many of the United States’ most famous landmarks, including the Smithsonian Insitution museums, the Washington Monument and the Capitol Building. That’s right: the National Mall in Washington, D.C. emerged victorious.

The manually-pedaled trike will soon be making its way to the Motor City to ride through the Detroit Zoo, the top vote-getter in the Theme Parks & Zoos category. With this imagery, families and animal lovers will be able visit the kangaroos and wallabies from the Australian Outback Adventure and the polar bears in the Arctic Ring of Life.


We’re now working directly with each of the winning organizations to arrange a visit from our trike in the coming months, so don’t be surprised if you see this quirky contraption at your favorite destination sometime soon:



​Because so many of you – 238,000, to be exact – expressed a desire to have the trike visit your favorite place, we'll also be working with many of the other finalists, so stay tuned for more exciting special collections from our trike. And if you happen to manage or work at another attraction that you think absolutely needs to be featured in Street View, please let us know!

Posted by Dan Ratner, Senior Mechanical Engineer

More Street View updates: See the sea, see the world

Today's update to Street View is a whale of a launch -- literally! We've added imagery gathered by our Trike for several special attractions we've partnered with in the United States, including the SeaWorld parks. Of course, that includes photos of SeaWorld's biggest star, Shamu:

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You can also catch their acrobatic dolphins mid-leap:

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Along with imagery of all three SeaWorld locations (Orlando, San Diego, and San Antonio), we've also photographed Aquatica and Discovery Cove, through our partnership with SeaWorld Parks & Entertainment. Another theme park addition is Hersheypark in Pennsylvania, where you can see their dozens of rides and, of course, lots of candy.

High school seniors around the country know that college application deadlines are fast approaching, so to help them narrow down their choices by getting a better feel for schools, we've worked with Boston University to add their campus to Street View:

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You can also browse all our new special attractions in the Street View Gallery. And if you work for a theme park, college, race track, or any fun destination that you want to be featured in Street View, be sure to visit our Street View Partner Program site to learn more.

To the north, we've expanded our coverage in Canada. Nine new cities can now be explored from the comfort (and warmth!) of your home: Victoria, Nanaimo, Edmonton, Saskatoon, Winnipeg, Sudbury, London, Sherbrooke, and St. John's. The historic Victoria Empress hotel looks like it would make a great trip:

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We're also continuing to provide imagery of entirely new countries. Today Singapore becomes the first country in Southeast Asia included in Street View. You can explore iconic locations like Orchard Road and Clarke Quay; cultural areas like Chinatown and Little India; or the heartland like Jurong and Woodlands.

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In the UK, earlier this year we let users nominate locations for our Trike to photograph, just as we recently did in the US. After more than 10,000 submissions and 35,000 votes, winners are now online: Millennium Stadium, Angel of the North, Eden Project, Warwick Castle, Bamburgh Castle, and Stonehenge:

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Stay tuned for the big announcement of the trike contest winners in the United States, and more exciting Street View news that's always on the horizon. Till then, I'll leave you with a challenge: see if you can find another area, photographed by our trike, where a friendly bunch of Googlers stopped by to say hello.

Posted by Julie Sohn, Content Partnerships Team

Trike finalists announced!

Last month we asked you to submit nominations for places that you want our Street View Trike to visit. We were inundated with more than 25,000 suggestions across all categories, with university campuses making up 44% of all suggestions.

Starting today, you can cast your vote for your favorite place within each category to tell us which locations you'd most like to see on Google Maps. The finalists in each category are... drumroll please:

University Campuses

Arizona State University

Michigan State University

Princeton University

Rochester Intitute of Technology

Stanford University

Parks & Trails

Boulder Creek Bike Path, CO

Capital Crescent Trail, MD/DC

Centennial Trail, WA

Schuylkill River Trail, PA

Stevens Creek Trail, CA

Pedestrian Malls

Faneuil Hall Marketplace, Boston, MA

Navy Pier, Chicago, IL

Pier 39, San Francisco, CA

Landmarks

Alcatraz Island, San Francisco, CA

Central Park, NY

Millenium Park, Chicago, IL

Kennedy Space Center, FL

National Mall, DC

Theme Parks & Zoos

Bronx Zoo, NY

Busch Gardens, VA

Detroit Zoo, MI

Lincoln Park Zoo, Chicago, IL

San Diego Zoo, CA

Universal Studios, FL

Visit www.google.com/trike to vote! You can vote as many times as you like until the deadline at 11:59pm PST on Monday, November 30th. We'll then work on getting all the winners into Google Maps, and of course we'll work closely with the relevant organizations to collect images of any privately-owned locations. It takes a bit of time to ride a 250-pound bike around the country, but we're excited to see which locations get your votes.

If you're anxious to see some new places in Google Maps right now, you happen to be in luck! Today we've added imagery of my home state Hawaii, making it the 50th state featured in Street View. In honor of this launch, we've created an online gallery to showcase some of the amazing new imagery from Hawaii, as well each state capitol building from across the United States. You can read more about today's launch on the Official Google Blog. To get you started exploring this amazing new imagery, here's an image from Kailua Beach - I first learned to surf at the island offshore:

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You'll find much more waiting for you to explore in the Street View Gallery. You'll notice it also has a collection of locations photographed by the Trike -- you can help determine which places will be included in the future by submitting your vote!

Posted by Laura Melahn, Product Marketing Manager

Street View: We can trike wherever you like

[Cross-posted with the Official Google Blog]

With Street View on Google Maps, you can take a virtual drive over the Golden Gate Bridge or see the bustle of Times Square from the comfort of your own home. But some of the country's most interesting and fun places aren't accessible with our Street View car. What if you want to tour the campuses of prospective universities, scout a new running trial, or plan the most efficient route to your favorite roller coasters in a theme park?

I first started thinking about this question around two years ago. My day job is working as a mechanical engineer on the Street View team, but I do a lot of mountain biking in my spare time. One day, while exploring some roads less traveled, I realized that I could combine these two pursuits and build a bicycle-based camera system for Street View. The result? The Street View trike:

I've already had a chance to take the Street View trike out to photograph some hard to reach places for Google Maps, like the Arastradero Open Preserve and LEGOLAND California. When I'm out riding — and once people understand what exactly I'm up to — I'm often asked if we can come to their alma mater, local bike trail or favorite beach boardwalk. Now, we're giving everyone a chance to tell us exactly where in the U.S. they'd like the trike to go next.

At www.google.com/trike, you can suggest interesting and unique spots in six categories:

• Parks & Trails
• University Campuses
• Pedestrian Malls (e.g., outdoor shopping areas, boardwalks)
  
• Theme Parks & Zoos
• Landmarks
• Sports Venues (e.g., golf courses, racing tracks, stadium grounds)

Nominations will be open until October 28. We'll then comb through all of the suggestions and let all of you cast your final votes on a winner from each category for the Street View trike to visit. For any privately-owned or operated location, like a campus or theme park, we'll work directly with the relevant organization prior to collecting the imagery.

When we unveiled the Street View trike in the U.K., we received more than 10,000 nominations and 35,000 votes; Stonehenge and Warwick Castle were two of the top vote-getters. We can't wait to see what you'll come up with in the U.S. — head to www.google.com/trike to submit your most inspired ideas.

Posted by Dan Ratner, Senior Mechanical Engineer

A bonus batch of Street View imagery

Yesterday we announced that Street View imagery is now available for more than 11 cities across Canada, as well as in the Czech Republic. It is always exciting to bring Street View to a new country and hear from all the folks who have been eagerly awaiting it -- the news proved so popular that global traffic to Street View doubled yesterday and there were 28 million views of Canadian images yesterday (nearly as many views as Canadians!). You can see what all our partners had to say and see pictures from the launch event on the @GoogleCanada Twitter account.

But another priority is to refresh and extend our coverage in places we've already been. Now that you've hopefully had the chance to explore some of the stunning new images, we also wanted to point out some updates to the United States and Japan that got a little lost in yesterday's new country excitement. We added new high-resolution imagery in several areas across the US, and have launched several special destinations in Japan through the Street View Partner Program.

We've updated our coverage in New York City, bringing you newer and more high-quality imagery. You can see the newly restored Guggenheim Museum, or take a look at the unique architecture of the Flatiron Building. I'm a big baseball fan, so I'm especially excited that we have the brand-new Yankee Stadium featured in Street View, just in time for the playoffs (go Yankees!):

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We've also expanded our coverage around the Washington, DC metropolitan region, which is where I grew up. Now I can take a trip down memory lane by checking out the park where my dad taught me to play catch or wandering the streets of Old Town Alexandria. DC also has a new baseball stadium for the Nationals, which you can now see in Street View:

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You'll also find updates here in San Francisco:

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There are areas of new imagery across California, Colorado, Texas, Pennsylvania, DC, Florida, and New York. Not all areas in these places have been updated, but we're still hard at work.

In Japan, with our Street View Partner Program, we've been able to add images of 10 popular tourist destinations and special attractions, such as the Sapporo Maruyama Zoo:

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For a really global experience, tour around Huis Ten Bosch, a theme park in Japan modeled as a Dutch village:

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Posted by Elaine Filadelfo, Lat Long Blog Team

Make History with the National September 11th Memorial & Museum

[cross-posted from the Official Google Blog]

The anniversary of September 11th evokes difficult memories here in New York and all over the world. The events of the day left an indelible mark on many New Yorkers, including me. The offices of my startup were at 30 West Broadway, right next door to 7 World Trade Center, so I was downtown that morning. I saw the planes hit and then watched, shocked, from the West Side Highway as the towers fell. It was a terrible day for all who were there, an impossible day for those who lost friends and loved ones and a shared experience of loss and grief for New York and the world.

Today I'm proud that Google is part of the launch of Make History, a website created by the National September 11th Memorial & Museum in partnership with design firm Local Projects. Make History is a participatory archive that invites people to share their experiences of 9/11 and its aftermath in an effort to preserve the memories of that time. The Museum has created a collaborative storytelling tool that makes innovative use of Street View through the Google Maps API. The Make History site allows people to place and then share their photos and videos in geographical context, collectively piecing together the history that was witnessed, one photo and video at a time.

To participate, simply go to the site and click "Add Your Story." You'll be asked to write about your experience of 9/11 and share your photos and videos, and then to place them at the spot where they were captured.



To power the Make History website, the Museum is using App Engine and leveraging the power of cloud computing. By taking advantage of the scalability of Google's infrastructure, the Museum can focus on building great applications and telling important stories — not on how many servers they will need.

The developer community that uses our tools and APIs is a source of inspiration for all of us at Google who work on platforms, partnerships and developer outreach — and Make History is a powerful example of why we all do what we do. This September 11th, as we sit with our memories of the day, we're honored to have been able to help enable the creation of such a significant and deeply moving archive.

Posted by Jill Szuchmacher, New Business Development

Street View gets down to business

Finding a business with Street View just became easier. For example, if you search for "thai restaurants near mountain view" on Google Maps, and click on a search result, a bubble pops up with various links, including a link to "Street View".

You can click on the "Street View" link to see the restaurant marked directly in Street View with a 3D marker just like the one you'd find on the map. Clicking the marker displays more details about the restaurant without leaving Street View.

If you move along the street, you will continue to see the marker in front of the restaurant, letting you see a business in the context of what else is around it. Double-clicking the marker will jump you back to the closest view.

While you are in Street View, you can also click on another search result in the left panel to jump to the closest view for that result. Take a look at this video for a quick overview:

We use the position of the business on the map to approximately display it as a 3D marker in Street View. We are continuously working on improving the quality of the underlying map, and this will result in more and more businesses being positioned with high accuracy in Street View over time.

Posted by Abhijit Ogale and Andrea Frome, Street View engineers

Bringing Street View to an attraction near you

Along with the new countries added to Street View, I'm particularly excited to be launching some imagery from our Street View Partner Program. It's been a blast to work with a wide range of exciting partners so it's great to now showcase some of their locations in Street View. You'll now find imagery of Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca,Thunderhill Raceway Park, San Diego State University and LEGOLAND California featured in Street View.

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Everything that you've seen on Street View so far has been from public places. But with our new Partner Program, we've been working directly with various partners and are able to collect imagery of private destinations like race tracks, universities and amusement parks.

For some of these spots, like a race track, our Street View cars are a perfect fit. But to be able to explore more pedestrian-focused areas, such as a campus, we're using a new platform called the trike, a bicycle-based version of a Street View system. With the trike, it gets us almost anywhere the car doesn't fit. You can see that the trikes resemble an ice cream cart a bit:

It uses the same camera system we have on our cars, but we've transplanted it onto the trike. It's built onto a 3-wheeled bicycle base and we've added a few of our own tweaks. We've gone through a few versions to get to where we are now; the first one came in at 500lbs, and the newest version has slimmed down to 300lbs. Believe me, our riders are very happy about that.

I think one of the most memorable experiences from working with this first batch was getting to go around the track at Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca with the GT and Le Mans prototypes from the Monterey Sports Car Championships last year.

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Grab the pegman and check out all these cool spots. If you happen to work at a location that you think would be a great fit for the Partner Program, be sure to visit the Content Central Blog to find out more about how you too can be featured in Street View.

Posted by Wendy Wang, Operations Program Manager

Bringing Street View to an attraction near you

Along with the new countries added to Street View, I'm particularly excited to be launching some imagery from our Street View Partner Program. It's been a blast to work with a wide range of exciting partners so it's great to now showcase some of their locations in Street View. You'll now find imagery of Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca,Thunderhill Raceway Park, San Diego State University and LEGOLAND California featured in Street View.

View Larger Map

Everything that you've seen on Street View so far has been from public places. But with our new Partner Program, we've been working directly with various partners and are able to collect imagery of private destinations like race tracks, universities and amusement parks.

For some of these spots, like a race track, our Street View cars are a perfect fit. But to be able to explore more pedestrian-focused areas, such as a campus, we're using a new platform called the trike, a bicycle-based version of a Street View system. With the trike, it gets us almost anywhere the car doesn't fit. You can see that the trikes resemble an ice cream cart a bit:

It uses the same camera system we have on our cars, but we've transplanted it onto the trike. It's built onto a 3-wheeled bicycle base and we've added a few of our own tweaks. We've gone through a few versions to get to where we are now; the first one came in at 500lbs, and the newest version has slimmed down to 300lbs. Believe me, our riders are very happy about that.

I think one of the most memorable experiences from working with this first batch was getting to go around the track at Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca with the GT and Le Mans prototypes from the Monterey Sports Car Championships last year.

View Larger Map

Grab the pegman and check out all these cool spots. If you happen to work at a location that you think would be a great fit for the Partner Program, be sure to visit the Content Central Blog to find out more about how you too can be featured in Street View.

Posted by Wendy Wang, Operations Program Manager

Picasa photos in Street View

Earlier this year, we launched a new Google Maps feature embedding user-contributed photos into Street View. The new way of browsing photos has recently been enhanced with photo-to-photo zooming, which lets you explore some of the world's most interesting landmarks and landscapes in an intuitive and entertaining way.

Our first release of user photos in Street View only included photos from Panoramio. Today, we are adding Picasa Web Albums as another source of user-uploaded, geo-tagged images.

Millions of people already rely on Picasa Web Albums to share their photographs with friends and the internet community. Now, their public geo-tagged photos will help Google Maps users to get a better impression of a geographic place, especially for areas where we may not have any Panoramio photos.

We've selected these photos by looking for geo-tagged public images in Picasa Web Albums. We apply face detection to screen out images with identifiable individuals and image matching so that we're including the most relevant photographs.

The feature is available at major landmarks around the world, in places as different as Paris, Tokyo, and New Zealand. When you try it out, you'll discover how easy it is to seamlessly navigate between images from Street View, Panoramio, and now Picasa -- particularly with our new photo-zoom feature. Have fun exploring the world!

Posted by Daniel Cotting, Software Engineer, Google Zurich