3D Visualizations that Wow Customers

Posted by Clay Maffett, The Google Earth Pro Team

Google’s users have always found creative and inspiring ways to get the most out of our products. The Google Earth Pro team is reminded of this daily as we speak with companies across industries around the world that use Google Earth Pro for a wide range of purposes, from planning transportation routes to mapping forest fire risk areas.

One such use case is that of Coherent Navigation, a nine-person startup that develops GPS receivers for the US Military.

"Our software is very complex and has capabilities far beyond any other solutions in the market today," said Bryan Galusha, Senior Development Engineer at Coherent Navigation. "But at the end of the day, it provides a single position, much like a glorified ‘You are Here’ sign in a mall.” In order to convey the value of such complicated software as quickly and concisely as possible, Coherent turned to Google Earth Pro’s visualization capabilities. “Google Earth enabled us to quickly create a visualization of our receivers’ performance that effectively communicated the performance and capabilities of the receivers to both technical and non-technical customers,” Bryan said. An example of such a visualization can be found below, with the green distorted sphere representing Coherent’s calculated position of the white van.


Beyond the ability to create still images like the one above, Coherent also utilized the Movie Maker tool to “create videos of our receivers’ performance to be shown after major technical demonstrations” to potential customers. Lastly, Google Earth Pro helped them demonstrate visually the satellite infrastructure their software uses to pinpoint location, shown in the screenshot below:

Ultimately, Bryan said, “Google Earth Pro allowed us to quickly and inexpensively create 3D visualizations with accurate satellite imagery that ‘wowed’ our customers.” We’re glad Coherent Navigation was able to use Google Earth Pro so successfully, and we hope their story inspires other creative uses of Google Earth Pro.

If you are interested in learning more about Google Earth Pro, you are welcome to sign up for a free 7-day trial to test drive the product.

Adding expert local knowledge to the map with Google Map Maker

Today we announced Google Map Maker for the United States, enabling users to add their expert local knowledge to the map directly through this free online tool. Users often have the best and most up-to-date knowledge of the places that matter to them, and with Google Map Maker–now available for 187 countries and regions around the world–we’re working to make this information available to you and your customers.

Each edit will be reviewed to confirm accuracy, and once approved, user contributions will appear in Google Maps, and then in Google Maps API Premier and Google Earth Pro. The collective knowledge of these citizen cartographers will contribute to more detailed information for you, helping you make better location-based business decisions.

If you’d like to add your local knowledge directly, you can learn more or start mapping now at mapmaker.google.com.

Posted by Natasha Wyatt, Product Marketing Manager, Google Earth and Maps Enterprise

Google Earth Pro Data Layers: Refresh Everything

Since we launched data layers in Google Earth Pro, we’ve seen strong and steady growth in use. To make the data even more valuable to our users, we're providing an update that greatly expands coverage for all layers. We hope you enjoy the data refresh!

If you’re new to Google Earth Pro, watch a video about the layers or download a free trial and explore the layers first-hand.

Here’s what’s new:
U.S. Parcel Data from DataQuick:

• Greater geospatial coverage: 6% increase in the number of parcels attributes available country-wide
• 8 new parcel attributes, including lot size, roof type, and tax information.
• Ability to purchase additional data from DataQuick from within Google Earth Pro

U.S. Daily Traffic Counts from Market Planning Solutions Inc.:

• New: Traffic counts now available for 2010
• Update: 14x more traffic counts available for 2009
• Update: 2x more traffic counts for 2008

U.S. Demographic Data from The Nielsen Company:

• Current year demographics data updated to 2010
• Five-year demographics data updated to 2015

Happy travels!

Pete Giencke, GIS Data Engineer, The Google Earth Team

Update to Google Maps in Europe, Africa, Australia and New Zealand

Today we announced changes to the data that powers Google Maps features like the map tiles, geocoding, and driving directions. These changes can be seen in many countries in Europe, Africa and the Pacific:

Australia
Austria
Belgium
Denmark
Liechtenstein
Netherlands
New Zealand
Norway
South Africa
Switzerland

The new base maps will have greater features such as expanded geocoding coverage, more detailed water bodies, university campuses, zipcode and postal code coverage – all leading to better, more accurate maps for your employees and customers. Along with this update we've launched the popular "Report a Problem" feature in these countries (as we've had in the U.S. and Canada), enabling you to tell us about errors and changes directly for faster Maps updates. It's highly recommended that you re-geocode all of your data to take advantage of the new updated data.

Learn more about the Google Maps API Premier at google.com/enterprise/maps.

Posted by Natasha Wyatt, Product Marketing Manager, Google Enterprise Maps/Earth team

Earth Pro 5.2 launched: the data you need, at your fingertips

Around the world, thousands of customers count on Google Earth Pro to help them get their work done. From visualizing complicated layers generated by GIS software to leveraging movie-making tools for site selection, engineering project visualization, and much more, Google Earth Pro enables businesses, government agencies, and educators to bring their geographic data to life.

Yet customers want more, with easy access to relevant data layers being a common request. In the past, users had to invest considerable time and resources to find data such as demographic, traffic counts, and land parcel information. Other customers struggled with processing large, complicated layers.

We’re happy to announce the launch of Google Earth Pro 5.2, which makes it much easier to find and access the data you need to make smart business decisions.

Google Earth Pro 5.2 includes:

• a set of exclusive layers designed to make everything easier from site selection to business intelligence analysis
• enhanced capabilities to process and visualize large geospatial data files

Point. Click. Start analyzing.

Earth Pro now includes three new productivity-enhancing layers:

• U.S. Demographics: includes demographic data on 2010 and projected 2015 income, age, education, etc. at the state, county, tract, and block group level. For income and age, you can view beautifully color-coded layers enabling you to quickly zero in on target markets and cross-reference with your own layers. The data is presented in both tabular and pie chart format and is licensed from Claritas.

• U.S. Parcel data: provides critical parcel and building information for both commercial and residential parcels. This includes APN (assessor’s parcel number), use codes, and zoning data to help you make the right business decisions. Even more exciting, you can get more details, such as sales history, by purchasing the corresponding DataQuick detailed report (sample), linked from each parcel info window.
• U.S. Daily Traffic Counts: reports the historical average number of cars that have passed through an intersection in the US. Make sure your new development, store, or advertisement will get the right amount of visibility with data from MPSI.

In addition to the included layers, Earth Pro 5.2 also makes processing your own complex layers easier. With new built-in “regionation” functionality, Earth Pro can now ingest and display large KMLs with speed and ease. Vector “regionation” automatically optimizes your data by intelligently loading points as you zoom in to the globe. Super image overlays enable your layers to include larger images by optimizing the resolution of images as you zoom in.

To purchase Google Earth Pro, visit our online store or sign up for a 7-day free trial. We hope you enjoy these new features.

Posted by Daniel Chu, Product Manager, Enterprise Maps/Earth