My Google Map Blog

Along with a variety of other updates on Google Maps, there are now 150 additional university campuses that now are covered by Google Street View.

Just a week ago I came across an article from the University of Michigan where they discussed the "strange-looking tricycle" riding around the campus (the tricycle, of course, is the famous Street View Trike). The imagery for Michigan hasn't been made available yet, so it seems that more schools will be coming in future updates.

The list of universities where Google has Street View imagery available is quite impressive in size, and is continuing to get larger. This is an excellent use of Street View technology, and I expect Google will continue to roll it out to more schools around the world.

In addition, as pointed out by +Dave Spracklen, Google has made indoor locations very easily accessible. Previously you had to go onto special webpages to get inside. These include all of the businesses that have gone through the Google pictures program.

For now, though, you can go inside two ways. You can drag the pegman into large blue dots. These act differently from the photo blue dots. These only appear when you're zoomed in for starters. Here is a good location to see the dots. Just drag the pegman into the scene for the dots to appear.

Secondly, they have added special arrows to allow you to go indoors if you happen to 'walk' by the outside of a location. These appear as double arrows. See this example in Japan. You can walk into the restaurant, as noted by the double arrows pointing into it.

All of the imagery is available in Google Maps, but you can also find it in Google Earth. Here is a quick video showing you how to use it:

In addition, Google has created a new video showing some of the cool things you can do with their geo products:

(via Google Lat Long Blog)

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In a few weeks, the third annual Social Good Summit will be held in New York City. As they have for the past few years, there is quite an impressive list of speakers including Pete Cashmore of Mashable and Christina Bellatoni from the PBS NewsHour.

Also speaking at this event will be Rebecca Moore, Engineering Manager for Google Earth Outreach. Google Earth Outreach was formed more than five years ago to help nonprofits and other organizations to take advantage of Google's mapping tools to solve big problems. Among other things, we've shown you how they helped map out the Gulf oil spill, give away valuable grants, and share amazing images of some of the work they've done.

Rebecca will be discussing how Google Earth is being used to make a positive impact in the world. If you'll be in New York from September 22-24, it'd be a great conference to attend. If not, they're hosting Meetups in more than 350 cities around the world in an effort to help as many people join the conversation as possible.

You can learn more at mashable.com/sgs/, twitter.com/socialgood or facebook.com/socialgood.

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A few years ago, we showed you a hidden field of marijuana that was only visible from above. Today's story from California is similar, but with an interesting twist.

The state's Department of Fish and Game has been searching for marijuana fields using helicopters and Google Earth, but not for the reasons you think. Because of medical marijuana laws in California (and 18 other states), growing it isn't necessarily illegal. However, unpermitted fields are popping up all over state, and they're causing some serious issues with local river levels.

Some appeared to be no different than a small farm, but far too many showed evidence of illegal and unpermitted clearcutting, grading, road building and water diversions. Regardless of their size and other differences, they all use precious water from these impoverished creeks and rivers, some of which now run dry in places. I should add the caveat, of course, that from the air it's not possible to know for sure what is being grown inside any of these greenouses. Then again, the product being grown is not the issue; nor does it matter whether marijuana is being grown for medical purposes. What's inside doesn't change the impacts that are apparent.

We've seen similar stories in the past, such as the tax assessor using Google Earth to look for new structures that lack the proper permits, or the city uses it to find unlicensed pools. As the speed of updates and the quality of imagery in Google Earth continue to increase, I suspect we'll see more and more of these kinds of stories in the future.

(via The Arcata Eye)

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One of the more popular layers in Google Earth, and one of the few that I rarely turn off, is the [Roads] layer. This layer simply overlays road lines and names on top of the imagery in Google Earth, and can be quite valuable to use.

This is similar to the "satellite" view in Google Maps, though Google Earth makes it much easier to add additional layers of information to your view, as well as dive into 3D as needed.

However, Google Maps also has the simple "map" mode, with no imagery showing, which Google Earth doesn't offer -- there is simply no way to turn off the base imagery. However, if you put a full-color overlay on the earth (such as some of these), it has the visual effect of disabling the imagery and giving it a clean road map feel.

To turn the roads layer on or off, simply click the checkbox next to [Roads] in the main "Layers" section of Google Earth on the left side of the screen.

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