Google Maps for Journalists

Jesse Friedman
jessef@google.com

Presentation for Online News Association
September, 2011

How this presentation works

• Use right and left arrows to move between slides.
• Most slides are interactive, with the pages embedded within. Use the links at the top of each slide to go directly to the page.
• This presentation is built entirely in HTML5. The code is open-source, so check it out.
• This is the same content as the presentation I gave at ONA11, with the addition of some explanations to capture my speaker's notes.
• We'll start with some cool uses we've seen in the last year or so, and then shift to some tools and tricks you can easily use right now.

Part 1:
Inspiration

Historypin

• Historical photographs, video, and audio, contributed by individuals and collections.
• Share stories and memories around big events and everyday moments from throughout the decades and centuries.
• Built upon Google Maps API, with tight Street View integration for comparing past and present.
• Check out the mobile app too, great for learning history, and even recreating old photos, while wandering.

Census Map Maker

• Select any number of census blocks to see the demographic breakdown.
• A great way to analyze impacts of redistricting.
• Beautiful interactivity: really easy to select, save, and share your creations.
• Built on Google Maps API.

Mapping the Storm Clean-up

• Collected texts and audio reports from NYC residents on whether their block had been plowed after the huge snowstorm in late December 2010.
• Very quickly stood up with Mobile Commons to collect texts and Google Fusion Tables to plot points.
• Daily follow-ups to resident reports to track the same places over time.
• Winner of Online Journalism Award for Breaking News, Small Site. (Congrats!!)

Panoramas of Joplin

• Side-by-side, before-and-after comparison of several places in Joplin, MO before and after the tornado.
• Panorama on the left is the standard Street View image from Google Maps.
• On the left is the NYT panorama, using the Custom Street View feature within the Google Maps API.
• Drag to pan on one image, and the other moves in tandem.

2010 Election Ratings

• Updated daily to enable comparison between different ratings sources during the leadup to the 2010 midterms.
• Click each race type and each ratings source to see the colors on the map change; click a state or district to see comparisons in an infobubble.
• Uses Fusion Tables to store and serve data, and Google Maps API with Styled Maps to display it.

Hurricane Irene Path

• Uses Google Earth Studio to make camera moves and text overlays, and Google Earth Pro to render the video.
• NOAA made hurricane data available in KML, the "language" that Google Earth speaks.
• Google Earth offers 3D buildings and other objects both within the client and in the 3D Warehouse
• Use in broadcast requires a (free) license, we have more information on that.

Part 2:
(a small amount of) Perspiration

Embedding a map

• Look for the Link icon at top-left on any Google Maps page, and use the one line of code to embed the map.
• The embedded map will be just about the exact view you have on the screen: zoom level, layers, satellite imagery, etc. You can even embed a scene from Street View. All views will be interactive once embedded.
• No need to seek permission. The embedded map will be properly attributed and you are free to use.
• If you need a simple, non-interactive image of a map (say, your CMS doesn't support iframes), explore the Static Map Wizard.

My Maps

• Quickly place points, lines, and polygons on top of Google Maps. Edit the content of the infobubble with basic HTML including image and YouTube embeds.
• Offers dozens of icons, or point to the URL of any image. (You can get clever and use the Image Charts API too!)
• Collaborative: share edit rights with multiple Google accounts for continual updating.
• Embeddable, just like any other Google Maps view. And when you save edits to the map, no need to re-embed, it'll automatically show the newest version.

45° imagery

• Detailed imagery from north, south, east, and west, in dozens of metro areas around the world. See the Coverage Map.
• Get a view between the top-down aerial imagery and the eye-level Street View. Especially good for real estate.
• To get there, just keep zooming into the image until you see the view change. Use the dial around the compass to rotate the image.
• We are continuing to expand our coverage.

Google Earth:

• Several versions, including a free downloadable application, a professional version offering extras including higher resolution and movie exports, and a browser-based embeddable plugin with an API.
• Excellent for 3D views, including terrain of land of sea and 3D buildings in hundreds of cities.
• Explore other times with Historical Imagery, and beyond this world with Mars, Sky, and Moon.
• Thousands of KML layers available, including earthquakes, flight tracking, satellite locations, and far beyond.

Crisis Response

• Google responds to major disasters in several ways, including organizing geographic imagery and data.
• We have made imagery available to first responders, media, and the public around events such as the Japan earthquake and tsunami, the tornadoes in Alabama, and the flooding of the Mississippi River.
• Our embeddable crisis mapping platform allows us to quickly compile data layers from various sources around particular events, such as Hurricane Irene in New York City.
• We alert the media to this new imagery and data through a mailing list.

Fusion Tables

• An easy way for non-programmers to turn tables of data into maps and charts. Or a clever way for programmers to store, visualize, and query data.
• Use Fusion Tables to map out a bunch of points with built-in geocoding, or fill in outlines of countries, states, etc. with data-driven shading.
• It's a simple as uploading a spreadsheet. You can also get a bit fancier by merging tables together.
• Fusion Tables was the topic of its own session at ONA, check out the presentation for a how-to and much more.

Permissions

• All uses of Google's geographic content, in any medium, must be attributed to Google as well as any data provider(s). If you use our embedding tools, this is done automatically.
• If using Google Maps or Google Earth in broadcast, you must sign a content usage agreement. The agreement is free but requires purchase of Google Earth Pro.
• For online and print use, no explicit permission is required. Just follow the rules and we're happy to have you use our content.
• To get a sense of what is and isn't allowed, please refer to our Content Rules and Guidelines.

Stay in touch!

My Google+ page

@jessecfriedman

@googlemaps

This presentation: jessefriedman.com/onamaps