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News and notes by the Google Earth and Maps team.

A festive Fourth with Google MapsJuly 2

I'll be heading to the nation's capital to celebrate Independence Day this weekend, so I've been browsing the many maps that the Washington Post has put together to help people take in the festivities. If you'll be in DC too, you can find a map of the various events going on throughout the holiday weekend and a map of fireworks shows throughout the entire region. My friends and I plan to take in the fireworks over the National Mall, so we're consulting this map to determine the very best viewing location.

Of course, DC isn't the only place to celebrate the Fourth. Here's a list of maps of parades, fireworks shows, and events from other places around the country (thanks to the Google Maps Mania blog for finding some of these!):

Featured Modeler: John from Dursley, EnglandJuly 1

[Cross-posted from the Official Google SketchUp Blog]
John is a retired British architect whose passion for photography and knowledge of his town's architectural history helped shape his beautiful 3D models of Dursley, Gloucestershire in England.

"The alignment of the buildings on Castle Street is a bit on the skew," he said, "but that makes sense if you know there used to be an actual castle in that location. The castle had a moat that the streets were laid out around."


John started using Google Earth and Google SketchUp around the same time. His brother was introduced to SketchUp at a lecture on SketchUp by his SeniorNet group. John's local library had an Internet cafe and, on his brother's recommendation, he took a look at Google Earth. "I was absolutely staggered. And decided I had to put Dursley on the

More 3D Cities in EuropeJune 26

Warsaw, Prague and Oslo have joined the growing list of phototextured cities in the 3D Buildings layer of Google Earth. Like other major cities these 3D models are predominantly autogenerated, yet they also contain a number of Google SketchUp models generated by the user community. While the autogenerated models are good quality, user-generated models are often better because ground-based photos can produce a higher quality model than ones generated using aerial imagery.

Oslo

Warsaw

These new cities join other major European cities viewable in 3D, including Munich, Hamburg, Berlin and Zurich to name a few. If you've never visited these cities in-person, have some fun flying around and exploring them virtually.

Exploring Երևան and کراچی in Google EarthJune 25

Over the past several months, the Google Earth Vector Team has been updating the 'Populated Places' and 'Alternative Place Names' layers in Google Earth. The alternative names show a place name in the local language and script. You can view Greek cities written in the Greek alphabet, Armenian in the Armenian alphabet, and Bulgarian in Cyrillic. Try flying to Japan, South Korea, China, Thailand, India or Pakistan. You'll see cities written as they are on local maps. This greatly enriches the browsing experience in Google Earth by showing part of the unique regional culture. This feature becomes a valuable asset when planning travel or trying to find your way around abroad.

With the success of Google Map Maker in many countries of the world, users have created an enormous amount of accurate city, town, and village names (not to mention roads and points of interest), and this user generated data is being used by both Google Earth and Google Maps. We treat you as local experts, who provide names in many scripts and languages. The result is a detailed and enriched map that benefits everyone. Our place names for India, Pakistan, and Armenia have all come from Map Maker. With Google Earth's multilingual support, you copy and paste the place names in the blog po

Tips and Tricks: Set up shop in the Local Business CenterJune 25

When I'm hankering for a bite to eat in my neighborhood, business listings on Google Maps are one of the first places I look. Whether I'm checking the opening hours of my local coffee shop, or finding a phone number to make reservations at a new restaurant, I rely on Google Maps for accurate and up-to-date information about local businesses -- especially when it comes to picking a good place to grab dinner.

When a business owner has added and verified with the Local Business Center (you can tell, because the phrase 'Provided by the business owner' appears in the listing), I can find find plenty of additional details, photos and video that the business owner adds can help sway my choice of dining spot. And for business owners, there are obvious benefits: adding a verifying a business listing is the best way to help Google users find and connect with your business.

In addition to the Local Business Center User Guide, which is your one-stop shop for information about putting your business on Google Maps, the Local Business Center folks have recently put together a new list of tips and advice for tailoring your business listing to help even more users find you. It's a win-win situation: adding and verif