Huzzah! Google Street View has finally been released in Canada (and the Czech Republic). This Canadian blogger is pretty excited, since it has been a long time coming. There's something surreal about finding your own house in Google Maps, then actually looking at your front door.

For people who have never used Google Street View, the functionality isn't immediately obvious. To enable it, you have to drag the icon of a man that is above the zoom slider to a place on a street. The experience is pretty surreal the first time you do it.

Though this might just seem like a whiz-bang feature that looks cool but doesn't have a real-world application, imagine you're trying to get to an important appointment in an office building you've never been to before. Imagine how much easier it would be to find your way if you already know what the building looks like.

[via Google Blogoscoped]

For ages people have been wondering when Google was going to roll out the mythical "GDrive" that would allow users to upload files to a Google server and access them from a single place. Well, that still hasn't quite happened yet, because you can't exactly add Google as a shared network drive (without using third party software) and backup your files. But Google rolled out a new feature this week that does make it easy to access data uploaded to several of its most popular services all from one place: Google Sites.

Google Sites is the company's web page/wiki builder. You can create a single web page or a series of interlinked pages using a simple web page editor, and you can share your sites with a small group of collaborators or with the whole world.

Now Google has added a new "Insert" button that lets you add items stored in other Google services including Google Docs, Google Calendar, Google Maps, and Picasa Web Albums. You can also upload photos directly to Picasa from Google Sites.

In other words, you can access many of the files uploaded to various Google products all from one place. What's interesting is that Google still gives you separate bits of storage space for each service. Files uploaded to Picasa don't affect the amount of space available in your Google Docs account, for example. And you still can't access all of your uploaded files in all Google services. But it's starting to look like Google is working toward better integrating all of its products.

[via Google Operating System]

Have you ever wondered why smartphones like Blackberries and iPhones don't provide turn-by-turn directions in their Google Maps programs? The answer is probably not what you think. It turns out that the map imagery that is used in Google Maps has licensing restrictions against it, preventing it from being used for turn-by-turn directions. Although it's easy to find various mapping sites online that provide free access to geographical information, it's very hard to find actual maps that can be used in applications that aren't extremely expensive or who's use is heavily constrained by license restrictions.

Open Street Map is a project that was started to create a completely free set of maps that could be used by anyone in any creative way they can imagine. The site operates like a wiki, where users are encouraged to contribute information when they can. If you've never been involved in making maps before, that's okay; the site includes a beginner's guide and a very comprehensive map making reference.

While the site isn't as slick as Google Maps, there's something satisfying knowing that the maps are unencumbered by heavy license restrictions. If you like it, you can use it in your own application - how you want. A quick comparison between Open Street Map and Google Maps looking at my neighborhood showed some apparent differences of scale, though either would work well for driving directions. Interestingly, Open Street Map is more up-to-date in my area, including a road that was only completed a few weeks ago as part of a new shopping centre.

Android users can now search Google Maps using voice commands, and access Google Transit info from their mobile devices. To use the voice seach, just speak an address or a search term while you're using Google Maps for Android. Google says it currently understands American, Australian and British accents. They've also added store hours, prices, ratings and reviews to their results.

Google Maps for Android also now includes transit and walking directions for over 250 cities, just like Google Maps on the web does. Although it didn't make the headline of Google's blog post, the are also some improvements to Google Latitude, the new(ish) location-based service. You can now make Latitude update your location continuously as long as your phone is on, and use the new "Updates" feature to leave location-specific comments about the places you go.

Google Street View is an amazing tool, and it's fun to use it to take virtual walks around the world's cities, but it's not exactly known for its navigation interface. Fortunately, Google has introduced an entirely revised "pancake" navigation system that relies more on dragging and less on dozens of frustrating clicks just to walk down a street. Now, if you can see where you want to go, you can place the pancake there and jump straight away -- no arrow keys necessary!

Zooming behavior is improved, too. Any time you see magnifying glass inside the pancake, you can click to zoom in on that spot. This even works with individual buildings, allowing you to zoom in for more details than before. Google claims that the new navigation gives Street View's flat images a more 3D feel, and I'm inclined to agree.

Looking for a unique font for your next gift card or ransom letter? Graphic artist/creative director Rhett Dashwood used Google Maps to discover natural and man-made (OK, mostly man-made) structures and landscapes resembling the letters of the alphabet.

The project took about half a year, although it wasn't exactly a full time endeavor. All of the locations in Dashwood's alphabet were discovered within Victoria, Australia. So if you don't like the way some of these letters look, feel free to scan the rest of the globe until you find better representations.

[via Gizmodo]

Google has launched Street View in the UK. Street View lets Google Maps users see photographs of streetscapes photographed by Google vehicles. At launch, you can see imagery for 25 cities in the UK including London, Edinburgh, Cambridge, Glasgow, and Sheffield and Southampton.

Overall, Google Maps has pictures of more than 22,000 miles of streets in the UK.

When the service launched in the US, it raised some privacy concerns. The UK is already light years ahead of the US when it comes to government surveillance cameras. But the BBC reports that Google did take some steps to ensure privacy in the UK version, including blurring faces and automobile license plates.

iPhone and iPod Touch users can upgrade their software to version 2.2 today. The update, which weighs in at around 250 megs, adds some highly-anticipated features. The two biggest for me are Street View in the Maps app and the ability to download podcasts from the iTunes Store. There are some smaller tweaks that you might appreciate, as well: that bug that sometimes kept messages from downloading in Mail is fixed, and you can click the home button when you're on any page of the home screen to go back to the first page.

Street View on the iPhone is every bit as cool as it sounds. It looks good in landscape and is really smooth to control. I suspect it won't be long before we start seeing photos of people holding up iPhone street view pictures of the place they're standing. Less flashy, but just as useful, walking and transit directions are available in maps now, as well. If you're an iPod Touch user, you're unfortunately out of luck on Street View for now, so far it's iPhone only.

Downloading podcasts was at the top of my wishlist for the iPhone (although I know a lot of you have lists of your own). It's always frustrating to finish an episode of a good podcast while you're out walking or on a train, and then wait until you get home to hear the next one. Not a problem anymore, thanks to the latest iPhone update. All in all, 2.2 offers some excellent new features. The only thing I have to complain about is the new Safari layout, which feels cramped with the address bar and the search bar smooshed in next to one another.

I have to confess that, until today, I was still converting latitude and longitude by Googling "convert GPS coordinates" and putting it into whatever came up first. That just changed when I found Tiny Geo-coder. It converts coordinate pairs to addresses, and vice versa. Not only that, but it has an API, so you can use it in other web projects that require coordinates.

One of the first real-world uses of Tiny Geo-coder can be seen on travel.perfectspace.com, where the authors are passing their check-ins on Brightkite through Tiny Geo-coder to generate a map of their location for display on the site. Another possibility that comes immediately to mind is converting the coordinates that the iPhone version Twitterrific generates into the name of the location for your Twitter profile. I'm sure clever people will come up with some even better ideas for this little app.

More than a year after announcing plans to roll out transit directions for New York City, Google has finally made good on its promise. Now Google Maps is at least as useful as HopStop when you're trying to get from place to place in New York, a city where taking a train or bus is often faster and easier than hopping in a car.

To find public transit directions in New York, just search for directions from one location to another and choose "by public transit" from the drop down menu. Google will pull up suggested routes and even offer estimated departure times.

At this point, I think HopStop still has the edge. While Google Transit technically covers more cities, HopStop covers more major cities. And it makes it easier to choose alternate routes if you'd rather take a bus, or if you'd rather avoid the G train. But Google is certainly catching up. And it's nice to be able to find walking, driving, and mass transit directions all in one place. Even if it's only for New York City and a handful of other locations at the moment.

[via Official Google Blog]

Just a few days after Microsoft rolled out a new traffic prediction feature for Windows Live Maps, Google has followed suit with traffic predictions for Google Maps. Both services use historical traffic data to predict likely congestion points and travel time in the future. But there are two major differences:

1. Windows Live Maps will suggest the best driving directions for avoiding traffic, Google Maps will not
2. Google Maps lets you choose the day of the week and time of day to see projected traffic patterns, Windows Live Maps will not.

While both services are pretty useful, what we really want is a service that will combine both of these features. Mapquest, we're looking at you.

[via Google Operating System]

MapQuest has finally gotten around to adding a feature that Google Maps has had for over a year: real-time traffic info. When you search for a location or driving directions on MapQuest, all you have to do is click the traffic button in the upper left corner of the screen and all of the major roads will be highlighted with color codes showing the traffic conditions.

One thing that MapQuest has added that Google Maps lacks is construction and incident alerts. If you hover your mouse over the exclamation points or construction icons you can find about traffic accidents and other conditions that could affect your travel time. Clicking on the icons brings up more detailed information.

About a half a year after adding stars, constellations, and all sorts of astronomical data to Google Earth, Google has launched a web based version of Google Sky. The interface is similar to Google Maps. You can drag and drop the sky to see different items, and you can search for locations by typing in terms like "Mars," or "constellation."

There are also a series of galleries highlighting some of the coolest views gathered from Hubble and other telescopes. You can toggle between naked eye, infrared, microwave, ultraviolet, and x-ray views. Google has also integrated an Earth & Sky podcast directly into the site.

[via Google Lat Long Blog]