Google Maps and ads are a big chance for local business optimization

Google is so symbolic for browsing the web that it became its own action-word, but that’s not its real business. At the core of Search engines Google Search engines Google+, and other solutions, Search engines is mainly an promotion system. Now, it's integrating ads into Google Maps in a way that rewards small companies.

When user looking for certain place using Google Maps then the advertising will pop up.By this way user can tap it to get more details about the company direction, reviews and more information details which they search for.

Search Engine Google offers a great service for it's application maps. With the help of new Google map ads makes it possible for business managers to the clients, rather than promoting generally in internet with paid advertising  and also the ad costs, and companies can outbid each other to buy a higher ranking.

Google X

New York Times has an interesting article concerning Google X, a secret lab where Sergey Brin and other Google employees undertake important projects that aren't yet ready for primetime.

In a top-secret lab in an undisclosed Bay Area location where robots run free, the future is being imagined. It's a place where your refrigerator might be connected to the Internet, so it could order groceries when they ran low. Your dinner plate could post to a social network what you’re eating. Your robot might go to the office while you stay home in your pajamas. And you could, perhaps, take an elevator to outer space.

Google X is the place where Google works on the driver less car and New York Times reports that Google is allowing for manufacturing the cars in the US. Many projects are connected to Android @ Home, an initiative announced this year that tries to make everyday objects smarter. "We want to think of every application in your home as a potential I/O device," said Google's Joe Britt. Google tries to construct the "Web of things" by connecting home accessories, wearable objects to the Internet.

Most of the ideas tackled at Google X involve robots. "Fleets of robots could assist Google with collecting information, replacing the humans that photograph streets for Google Maps, say people with information of Google X. Robots born in the lab could be intended for homes and offices, where they could assist with mundane tasks or allow people to work remotely".

It's interesting to note that one of the Google X projects might be released by the end of the year, although it's not clear what it does. At the I/O conference, Google announced that it will introduce "a Web-connected light bulb that might communicate wire lessly with Android devices," so this might be the product that will be released.

Google has always tried to resolve big problems, even if many people think that it should focus on improving search results and ad quality. "Larry and Sergey founded Google because they required to help solve really big problems using technology," said Sebastian Thrun, a robotics expert who invented the first self-driving car and now works at Google.

Google X might be the next Xerox PARC or it could fail, but it's important to think big and take risks. "I just feel like people aren't working sufficient on impactful things. People are really afraid of failure on things, and so it's hard for them to do ambitious stuff. And also, they don't understand the power of technological solutions to things, especially computers," complained Larry Page in Steven Levy's "In the Plex".

Hopefully, MG Siegler is right when he says that "whatever is going on inside of Google X, I'm fairly certain it's filled to the brim with the type of stuff that made us all fall in love with Google in the first place".

"Google+ Is Google Itself"

If you thought that Google+ is just a divide service you can effortlessly disregard if you don't want to use it, you were wrong. In an interview with Steven Levy, Bradley Horowitz - Google's VP of products - says that Google+ is really Google itself.

Until now, every single Google property acted like a split company. Due to the way we grew, through various acquisitions and the fierce independence of each separation within Google, each product sort of veered off in its own direction. That was dizzying. But Google+ is Google itself. We're extending it across all that we do — search, ads, Chrome, Android, Maps, YouTube — so that each of those services contributes to our accepting of who you are.

Redesigning all Google services to match the Google+ interface is not just about constancy, it's also a way to show that they're part of the same super-service, an surrounding layer that makes them work together.

Google+ made Android's camera app put together with Picasa Web Albums, Google Talk put together with YouTube and Google Docs. It's probable that Google+ will make Google services more useful by combining their strengths. That's almost certainly the reason why you'll use Google+ even when you're not going it to Google+ and you'll end up joining Google+ even if you don't like communal networks.

Google Maps OneBox Outlines

Google's OneBox displayed when you look for for the name of a country, a city or a zip code got smarter. Google added an sketch around the location you want to find, so the map is even more useful. For example, try probing for [Bronx], [Detroit 48238], [Baku], [Paraguay map].

Chris, a reader of this blog, says that he used CityData before noticing the new Google feature. While CityData is only helpful for the US, the Google Maps OneBox is displayed for almost any city in the world.

Browsing through time and space with GigaPan and Chrome

From the presidential induction to the World Series to gorgeous cityscapes, for the past few years the GigaPan team at Carnegie Mellon University has been making it probable to explore breathtaking panoramic photos from around the world. GigaPan pioneered the hardware plan that captures these photos and used innovative rendering techniques—similar to those of Google Maps—to create seamless transitions among photos, so people can pan and zoom through the image for an interactive and incredibly thorough photo experience.

Yesterday, the GigaPan team took their original and technical skills to the next level with the GigaPan Time Machine, which brings this same kind of visual interactivity to video using the power of HTML5 and modern browser technology. Time Machine works chiefly well on Google Chrome, thanks to its support for the latest HTML5 features and its stability architecture, which ensures it can easily run complex web applications without crashing. Time Machine is featured on the gallery of Chrome Experiments, a showcase of creative web applications submitted by developers just about the world, and built using the latest web technologies.

The complicated cameras the GigaPan team uses for their photographs detain hundreds or even thousands of digital pictures and stitch them jointly to form an interactive panorama. With Time Machine, the cameras confine these image mosaics at regular intervals to create a video with hundreds of millions or even billions of pixels in each frame. The result is a video that spectators have the ability to zoom in on while it’s playing and see incredible detail.

With Time Machine, watching paint dry or grass grow is in fact pretty cool. Take a look at a table full of potted plants grow and bloom into flowers. Zoom in to examine a exact plant or even a single leaf, or watch a caterpillar bite off a leafy green for lunch.

One of the critical elements of making Time Machine work was developing algorithms that allow the site to shift flawlessly from one portion of a video to another, to give people the experience of zooming and panning across a video of about limitless resolution. This is particularly challenging because a seamless transition between videos requires opening a new video before the old one is finished, and then queueing it to align perfectly in time before the swap. The GigaPan researchers were able to achieve this successfully using HTML5’s video tag feature, as well as by taking advantage of Chrome’s speed and stability to leave the content smoothly as videos start and stop dynamically.

While you can’t fast-forward to the weekend (yet), head over to GigaPan’s Time Machine to zoom around in space and time with some of the samples, or create your own Time Warp by structure your own animated tour through any of the sample videos.

Google Places for iPhone

Why build a local explore app for iPhone when the Maps app already lets you find businesses and local attractions? Apple's Maps app doesn't use all the in sequence that's available about businesses, doesn't show photos, reviews and other details. That's one of the reasons why Google determined to build an iPhone app called Google Places.

"We apprehend the importance of finding places you'll love while you're out and about, no matter what mobile device you use. And Places with Hotpot not only helps you find places near where you are, it gives you the best places to go for you by personalizing your search results," explains Google.

The application integrates with Google Hotpot and uses your ratings and your friends' ratings to suggest other places. Google Places encourages users to rate businesses and to post reviews in order to get better search results and that's an interesting proposal. What's missing from the app is a list of business you've formerly rated and the Hotpot feed that's now available on Google Maps.

Geo services are one of the key Google assets and it's very likely that Google will use them to create a furtiveness social network. Google Maps is probably the best mapping service and one of the the majority popular local search engines, so the social layer will have an important user base. Unlike Google Buzz, Hotpot doesn't have privacy issues yet and it doesn't feel like a different app because it's properly integrated with Google Maps.

Google Places for iOS can be installed from the Apple App Store and it's only obtainable in English.

Google Latitude App for iPhone

Google has lastly released a resident iPhone app for Google Latitude. The web app is nice, but you can't use it to update your place in the background. Google Latitude for iPhone uses one of the new features in iOS 4 that allows applications to track your location even if they aren't in the foreground. That's the main cause why it requires an iPhone 3GS, iPhone 4 or iPad 3G running iOS 4. (Update: According to Google, "the Google Latitude app will run on the iPhone 3GS; iPhone 4, iPad, and iPod touch (3rd/4th age band). Though, background location updating is only supported on the iPhone 3GS, iPhone 4, and iPad 3G.")

The native app is better because it shows more in sequence about the locations of your friends and it sends you to the map view when you click on a friend, but the web app is just a layer in Google Maps and this makes a lot of sense. Google Latitude be supposed to not be a standalone app, it should incorporate with Google Maps and Google Contacts, so you can quickly find your friends.

Marissa Mayer, Google's VP of geographic and local services, has recently said that Google Latitude will add explicit check-ins, stimulated by Foursquare. "Latitude is useful for a lesser group of people. Only a handful of people you'll want to be familiar with where you are at all times. There will be new layers upcoming on top of it. It's more useful while more people are on it. And implicit and explicit — yes, the check-in. Maybe that's in freedom or maybe it's in Maps."

view this : last chapter in epic journey

Google Maps Will No Longer Support Mapplets

Three years ago, Google introduced mapplets, a special flavor of gadgets that added new features to Google Maps. "Mapplets are Google Gadgets that are made especially so that they can be loaded by a user on maps.google.com, and have access to the main shared map. Users can load multiple Mapplets simultaneously for a quick and easy way to mashup content from multiple sources."

In May, Google announced the deprecation of mapplets, but only developers cared about that. Users could still go to the "My Maps" section from Google Maps and add a mapplet from the directory. Unfortunately, Google Geo Developers Blog informs us that the directory will be closed and all the links to mapplets will be removed.

As part of the deprecation plan for Mapplets we will shortly be switching from rendering Mapplets within Google Maps, to rendering them on a dedicated Mapplets page. (...) Bookmarks for existing Mapplets will continue to work. They will be automatically redirected to the new Mapplets page for the relevant Mapplet. (...) However because the Mapplets page is not part of the Google Maps application, Mapplets will no longer have access to Google Maps user profiles. (...) The above changes will be made on or shortly after Wednesday December 8th 2010.

Google Maps Directory includes 1550 mapplets that show crime information, weather data, information about population density, earthquakes, airports, hotels, golf courses and much more.

If you've added one or more mapplets to the "My Maps" section from Google Maps and you want to use them even after the links are removed, find them in the Google Maps Directory, convert their URLs and bookmark them. For example, replace:

Germany's Blurry Street View

Google has finally added street level imagery for some of the biggest cities from Germany: Berlin, Hamburg, Frankfurt, Munich and 16 other cities. Unfortunately, many of the images are blurred because of privacy concerns. According to Spiegel, the launch has been delayed for several years.

In contrast to other countries, the launch of Street View was met with considerable resistance from politicians and privacy protection advocates in Germany, including the country's consumer protection minister, Isle Aigner of the conservative Christian Social Union, who criticized the service as an incursion on people's privacy. (... )

As was widely expected, one doesn't have to look very far in Street View to find homes that have been blurred out. Prior to the introduction of the service, more than 244,000 households in the first 20 cities to be placed online submitted requests to have their homes blurred out. Google claims the figure represents only 3 percent of households. (...)

Nevertheless, there are considerable obstructed images in the German version of Street View. In any instance where an apartment renter asked to have their flat pixilated, Google blurred out the entire building they live in. Data protection authorities believe that up to a million households across the country have been blurred out by the company.

Google Maps Tests New Navigation UI

Dave P., a reader of this blog, spotted a new UI for the views and layers offered by Google Maps. The new interface enlarges the buttons that let you switch to the satellite view and to the embedded Google Earth, removes the button that lets you switch to the traditional view and adds a layer panel that's only displayed when you mouse over the satellite button.

Another change is that the list of recent searches and Google Maps views is displayed in the layer panel, so you can quickly switch between custom maps, driving directions, local search results and Google Maps layers.

Quiksee Acquired by Google

The Israeli startup Quiksee confirmed that it has been acquired by the Google and its employees will join the Google Geo team. "Quiksee is an Internet start-up company that focuses on creating the location based on interactive videos. Our vision is to fill the world maps with the Quiksee tours that will let people virtually travel across the planet as if they were there," explains the Quicksee's site.

Haaretz says that "the firm's technology is regarded as the missing link in the Google's Street View service (used by both Google Maps and Google Earth), which allows users to view the photos along numerous streets around the world". Quiksee's software allowed you to create interactive panoramic tours from your videos, without having to use a Street View camera. TechCrunch speculates that Google could "accept geo-tagged, 3D panoramas uploaded by consumers" to improve Google Maps.

Here's a video that shows how Quiksee could integrate with the Google Street View:

Google might even use Quiksee to add interactive Street View videos to Google Maps, like the ones demoed by Microsoft's Blaise Agüera y Arcas at a TED conference.

Quiksee Acquired by Google

The Israeli startup Quiksee confirmed that it has been acquired by the Google and its employees will join the Google Geo team. "Quiksee is an Internet start-up company that focuses on creating the location based interactive videos. Our vision is to fill the world maps with Quiksee tours that will let people virtually travel across the planet as if they were there," explains Quicksee's site.

Haaretz says that "the firm's technology is regarded as the missing link in the Google's Street View service (used by both Google Maps and Google Earth), which allows users to view the photos along numerous streets around the world". Quiksee's software allowed you to create interactive panoramic tours from your videos, without having to use a Street View camera. TechCrunch speculates that Google could "accept geo-tagged, 3D panoramas uploaded by the consumers" to improve Google Maps.

Here's a video that shows how Quiksee could integrate with the Google Street View:

Google might even use Quiksee to add interactive Street View videos to Google Maps, like the ones demoed by Microsoft's Blaise Agüera y Arcas at a TED conference.

Shorter Google Maps URLs

Google Maps URLs are very long because they include a lot of parameters. They're way too long to be added to a Twitter message, a news article or a banner.

To solve this problem, Google Maps Labs added a feature called "short URLs" that shows short permalinks when you click on "Link". The nice thing about this feature is that it uses Google's URL shortening service, which is very fast, and URLs are more descriptive because they include "goo.gl" and "maps".

To get the full permalink, you need to right-click on "Link" and copy the location. Unfortunately, Google removes the embedding feature if you enable "short URLs". Maybe it would make more sense to show the short URL as an additional option.

Google Maps Navigation for Canada and 10 European Countries

Google Maps Navigation for Android is now available for Canada, Austria, Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, and Switzerland, in addition to the 3 countries that were already supported: US, UK and Ireland. It's interesting to notice that Google still uses data from Tele Atlas for all the countries supported by Google Maps Navigation, except for the US and Canada.

"Google Maps Navigation is an Internet-connected GPS navigation or 'satnav' system that provides turn-by-turn voice guidance as a free feature of Google Maps. Google Maps Navigation (beta) with Search by voice is available in version 4.2 of Google Maps, on Android devices 1.6 and higher," explains Google.

Free turn-by-turn navigation could be an important reason why people choose a mobile phone, so Google and Nokia try to make the most of Google Maps Navigation for Android and Ovi Maps for Symbian. Most likely, in the near future, all smartphones will include a free application for navigation.

In other related news, Google Search by Voice is now available for German, Italian, Spanish and French. Search by voice is an important feature of the Quick Search Box app for Android, Google Mobile App for iPhone and Blackberry. The nice thing is that you don't have to download an update for none of the applications, as the new languages are automatically recognized.

Google Maps Previews in Gmail

Gmail added a new Labs feature that parses your messages and lets you preview some content using web services. This time you can preview the addresses from a message using Google Maps. The addresses extracted by Gmail are displayed after a message and you can load a map preview without opening a new page.

Gmail already displays addresses from messages in the right sidebar but you need to click on a link to open the map in a new page. The new Gmail Labs feature has another advantage: it also previews links to Google Maps.

Gmail's blog says that a map preview feature is now available for Google Buzz, but it only works when you paste a Google Maps link in a Buzz message. Unfortunately, Google's thumbnails is really small and clicking on the thumbnail opens a static map.

To find the Labs feature, open Gmail Labs and use your browser's find-on-page feature (Ctrl+F / Cmd-F) to search for "Google Maps previews". Gmail Labs offers other similar contextual gadgets for previewing links to Flickr, Picasa Web, Yelp, Google Voice messages, Google Docs and the YouTube preview feature is enabled by default. Developers can create custom contextual gadgets for Gmail in Google Apps and hopefully the APIs will be extended to the regular Gmail app