Tag Archives: Maps

Google Maps adds an ‘Immersive View’ of major cities | Engadget

Pan around popular tourist destinations directly from your phone.

By A. Tarantola, @terrortola, May 11th, 2022

Google

Google Maps is getting an “Immersive View” that will offer users digitally rendered looks at major US cityscapes, Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai told the audience at Google’s I/O 2022 keynote on Wednesday.

Google Maps is getting an “Immersive View” that will offer users digitally rendered looks at major US cityscapes, Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai told the audience at Google’s I/O 2022 keynote on Wednesday.

From keynote

The new feature uses computer vision and AI to blend Maps’ existing Street View function with aerial photography to create high-resolution models of the various buildings and urban features of a given location. “With our new immersive view, you’ll be able to experience what a neighborhood, landmark, restaurant or popular venue is like — and even feel like you’re right there before you ever set foot inside,” wrote Miriam Daniel, VP of Google Maps, in a blog post. What’s more, Maps’ other tools and features can be applied to the view as well, enabling users to see what the area looks like at different times of the day and varying weather conditions.

Source: Google Maps adds an ‘Immersive View’ of major cities | Engadget

Mapping fiction: the complicated relationship between authors and literary maps | Books | The Guardian

In a new exhibition, the long, difficult history of literary maps is explored, from James Joyce to Raymond Chandler

By Veronica Esposito, Wed 19 Jan 2022 07.20 EST

Map from the front endpapers of a 1935 edition of Homer’s Odyssey. Photograph: Reproduced with permission of the Licensor through PSLclear. The Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens.

From efforts to map Odysseus’s journey to Borges’s commentary on map-making in On Exactitude in Science (where the only sufficient map is in fact as large as the territory it depicts), fictions and maps have long maintained a complicated, entwined relationship.

While the right map can uniquely resonate with a literary text, this resonance exists amid an undeniable tension: a concern that the map might demystify or oversimplify a story, at worst imposing a single, reductive viewpoint on something that should be open and unbounded.

A Victorian Valentine. Hindu gods, Aztec rites, Blondie hits … why the heart is our eternal symbol Read more Exploring this tension, while also charting the ways that the relationship between maps and literature has changed through eras and genres, the Huntington’s new exhibit Mapping Fiction brings together literary maps from hundreds of years of literary history. Drawing from the Huntington’s archives of rare literary texts, the exhibition goes back to the early days of modern literature with texts like The Pilgrim’s Progress and Journey to the Center of the Earth (not Jules Verne’s version but rather a 1741 book written by Norwegian writer Ludvig Holberg), continuing up to the contemporary era with mappings of Octavia Butler’s life and works and artist David Lilburn’s 2006 mapping of James Joyce’s Ulysses.

Source: Mapping fiction: the complicated relationship between authors and literary maps | Books | The Guardian

Google is making some big upgrades to directions in Google Maps – The Verge

Indoor AR directions, a new directions interface, and more

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

By Jay Peters@jaypeters, Mar 30, 2021, 6:00am EDT

Google is announcing a bunch of new features planned for Google Maps, including a new tool to help with indoor navigation and suggestions for eco-friendly driving routes.

The features announced today aren’t rolling out all at once, though; many aren’t available just yet, and it’s unclear when some will be available in some parts of the world.

One of the biggest announcements is that Google is bringing its Live View augmented reality directions to airports, transit stations, and malls. Live View directions let you hold your phone up, point your camera at the world around you, and see arrows and icons pointing you where you need to go, and previously, they only worked outdoors.

Source: Google is making some big upgrades to directions in Google Maps – The Verge

The Most Festive Treasures of the New York Public Library’s Maps Division – Atlas Obscura

We wish you a mappy Christmas.

Source: The Most Festive Treasures of the New York Public Library’s Maps Division – Atlas Obscura