Back in December we introduced new high-resolution aerial imagery to the Google Maps API for 2 US cities - San Jose and San Diego, CA. When we went public we promised you more locations so today we're excited to announce the addition of 3 more US cities: Portland, OR, Sacramento and Oakland, CA are now available!
When we first launched we were thrilled with how our Maps API partners implemented this imagery. Orbitz made travel booking even easier by showing many views of a hotel, while Redfin and Trulia added a new dimension to the online house hunting experience.
Orbitz is now displaying this imagery for their Sacramento hotels. To see the aerial view, click on the map link within any hotel and zoom in from 'satellite' view:
Redfin is showing an "Angled" view of their properties in Oakland. Select North, South, East, West links from the map view:
Trulia is presenting a "Perspective" view for properties in Sacramento. Toggle to the "Perspective" view from the map for each listing.
Portland is featured in this demo which auto-rotates to one of its cardinal directions (North, South, East, West) every 3 seconds.
The existing G_SATELLITE_MAP and G_HYBRID_MAP map types support aerial imagery at high zoom levels (where available) provided that you explicitly enable this functionality. If you zoom into a location for which such imagery exists, these map types will automatically alter their views. To learn how to enable aerial perspective imagery be sure to take a look at the concepts, reference and examples of the JS Google Maps API documentation.
G_SATELLITE_MAP
G_HYBRID_MAP
For some more fun, the Google Maps Mania Blog showcases some mashups that utilize imagery from San Diego and San Jose:
As our total number of cities with this aerial imagery has now reached 5, we invite you to keep a close eye on our coverage doc. It will be continually updated to reflect new cities as we add them in the coming months.
We were thrilled by the overall positive feedback we received after last year's I/O, but one thing we heard over and over again (in surveys and by word of mouth during the conference): developers wanted more Google Maps and Earth content. That's why I'm excited to share that our Geo tools will have a greater presence at this year's Google I/O, with its own session track and pod within the Developer Sandbox.
Here's just a partial list of Geo sessions that are already listed on the I/O website:
Over the next couple of months, we'll be adding additional Geo sessions and many more Geo Developer Sandbox participants to the I/O website. For updates on when new content is added, follow @googleio on Twitter.
Registration for Google I/O (at the early bird rate of $400) is open as of today. We hope to see the Geo Developer community in May!
Google I/O May 19-20, 2010 Moscone West, San Francisco
Register at: http://code.google.com/io Early bird rate: $400
Posted by Joyce Sohn, Google Developer Team
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