Digital Earth Blog

As reported by the Google Operating System blog, Google Maps now includes traffic predictions.

Simply pick a day of the week and a time, and Google will color the map to show typical traffic conditions on that day/time.  There are a few oddities I found in it, but it’s a neat idea.  For example, here it Atlanta at 5am on Sunday:

What’s up with the heavy traffic on 400?  While there might always be an accident somewhere in town, the predicted traffic for that time of day should be all green.

All in all, it’s a neat idea.  Here are a few pictures that walk through a Monday morning rush hour (5am-8am):

It shows conditions slowly getting worse, which is exactly how things go at that time of day.

My main concern lately with Google Maps traffic is the sporadic coverage.  One day they’ll have almost everything covered, and the next day there will be gray sections everywhere.  I’m not sure where they get their data from (and it may not be their fault), but the lack of consistency makes the service far less useful.

That being said, after e-mail and web browsing, Google Maps traffic is the killer app on my cellphone.  I use it a lot.  This new feature isn’t on the mobile version yet, but I don’t care if it makes it there or not.  When I’m checking from my phone, all I need are live conditions.  If I want to look at predicted traffic for another day, I can do that from my PC.

I’ve been quick to give MapQuest credit for effort, as they’re really trying to catch up the big boys now that their lead is quickly shrinking.

Yesterday they introduced live traffic. It looks very similar to the traffic info on Google Maps, but with more detailed information. The screenshots look pretty nice:

Here’s the problem — it didn’t work right away. I refreshed and reloaded and zoomed around for a while before I could make the “Traffic” checkbox appear. I later found another page on their site that gives more information about this feature. I thought I might find the answer there, but instead I found this:

Fortunately, they mark the traffic-enabled cities with a traffic light, in a virtually identical manner as Google. A quick glance seems to show that they have more cities than Google, but not by a wide margin.

The real test, of course, is who gives better data? Here is a side-by-side shot of Atlanta using Google Maps and MapQuest:

Assuming their data is accurate, the clear winner appears to be MapQuest. Google has much of the highway in gray (”no data”), while MapQuest is showing data for everything. In addition, MapQuest has the clickable icons so you know exactly what the problem is.

For me, however, 95% of my Google Maps traffic usage is from my cell phone while I’m on the road — Google Maps Mobile is very useful. As far as I know, MapQuest has nothing to compare to that. With that in mind, Google Maps will still be the winner by default for when I’m on the road, but I might give MapQuest a try next time I check traffic info from the house.

Edit 10:08pm, 3/18/08 - MapQuest does have a mobile product to compare to Google Maps Mobile, and it’s called MapQuest Navigator.  It appears to be a little better than GMM, but it costs $50/year and works on a rather small selection of phones.

With so many people traveling over the next 10 days, I thought it would be worth reminding you about the excellent Google Maps Mobile.

The searching and directions are neat, but the live traffic is the real killer feature in this product. It saved us a good deal of time yesterday (don’t go down 75 — take 285 around) , and will likely be a big help again tomorrow.

Their latest update also included “My Location”, which is a simulated GPS using cell tower information. My phone has GPS (N95 FTW), but this is a useful feature on my wife’s BlackJack.

Bottom line: If you have a compatible phone, GMM is a must have during the holidays.

Microsoft has just released a new version of Live Search Maps (named Gemini), as well as revealed a few more places that were updated in the past few days.

The new version has a lot of cool stuff:

• 1-Click Directions - Also known as “party maps”, this is a single permalink that you can send out, and each person can get directions to it from their house with a single click.
• Route Around Traffic - It’s a check box option to have it automatically route around traffic jams, based on the live traffic data.
• Data Import - Import GeoRSS, GPX and even some KML.
• Birds Eye View in 3D - A way to view Birds Eye imagery while in 3D mode.  It’s kinda weird, but very cool.
• 3D Tours and Videos of Collections - You can build a “tour” (fly around, look at stuff, etc), then share it with others by sending them a simple URL.  They can control the tour using DVD-style controls.
• 3D Modelling - Using Dassault, you can create 3D buildings in VE.
• Collection Search and Explore - A search engine for more content.
• Enhanced Detail Pages - More info about each business listed in VE

You really need to read their full post to get details about all of those enhancements.

Also, there was more to their latest imagery update than we posted a few days ago.  In addition to all of that Birds Eye data, the following was also added:

Birds Eye Imagery

• Madrid, Spain
• Stockholm, Sweden
• Dopenhagen, Denmark

Ortho Imagery

• Imperial County, CA
• Fresno, CA
• Cincinnati, OH
• North Kentucky
• Kern County, CA
• Louisville, KY
• Merced, CA
• Blythe, CA
• Lexington, KY
• Willow Springs, AZ
• Wilmington, NC
• Placer County, CA
• St. George, UT
• Ft. Pierce/Stuart, FL
• Northeast Ohio
• Pensacola, FL
• Catalina Island, CA
• Ft. Myers, FL
• Panama/Tallahassee, FL
• Florida Keys, FL
• Gainesville/Ocala, FL
• US 19, WV

Satellite Imagery

• Banff, Canada
• Everglades, FL, United States
• Freeport, Bahamas
• Grand Teton/Yellowstone, CA, United States
• Pusan, South Korea
• Malta
• Marsh Harbor, Bahamas
• North Bimini, Bahamas
• Whistler, Canada
• Helsinki, Finland

All in all, it amounts to an astounding amount of new stuff for VE.  Very impressive!

As reported on the Google Latlong blog, Google Earth now has a new “traffic” layer which uses the same real-time traffic data that is used in Google Maps.

It’s not especially fancy, but that’s probably a good thing.  Sometimes simple is better.  The traffic is shown as a series of dots along the highway.  Green=fast, yellow=ok, red=slow.  The dots are clickable and provide you with the current speed read from that radar.

If I still had a highway commute, I could see myself checking this as I stepped out the door each morning.  Nice work, Google!

This is pretty slick — Google Maps will now give you multiple estimated times for trips that you plan (in “a limited set of metropolitan areas”).

Their example has someone traveling from Berkeley to Half Moon Bay, which is “about 59 minutes”.  However, the directions also say that it could take “up to 1 hour 50 minutes in traffic”.   This allows you to look at multiple routes to determine which would be best if you had to travel during rush hour.

Obviously, this can’t account for accidents that might slow things down further, but it’s a neat addition.   Combine this with the new click-and-drag directions, and you can quickly find the best route during heavy traffic times.

The Google LatLong blog has a full write-up with some nice screenshots.