Friday, February 12, 2010

New: Google Maps Labs

When Google wants to test new features, they call them Lab experiments, and make them opt-in. Now, following many other services, Google Maps received a Lab icon. Click the green flask at the top of Google Maps and you get a chance to enable features like the following:

• Drag ’n’ Zoom: Click the Drag-and-Zoom button, then draw a box on the map to immediately zoom into that place.
• Aerial Imagery: Available for certain areas, aerial imagery “gives you rotatable, high-resolution overhead imagery presented in a new perspective.”
• Back to Beta: This will simply add a “Beta” icon to the Maps logo.
• Where in the World Game: Guess the name of the country from satellite imagery.
• Rotatable Maps: This puts north facing downwards, for instance.
• What’s Around Here?: This will trigger a search for anything (“*”), showing the top places for a given location.
• LatLng Tooltip: Shows the latitude/ longitude of where your cursor is positioned.

I kind of like the rotatable maps feature. You can rotate by using the top left compass. Here’s Europe:

[Thanks Hebbet!]

New: Google Maps Labs by Philipp Lenssen | Comments (1+13)

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