Thursday, May 18, 2006

Big News: Google Maps street maps for ALL of Australia and New Zealand!

Good morning to Australia and New Zealand! If you live in either of these two countries, you might want to check out the new mapping layer that Google has given you overnight on Google Maps! Australia and New Zealand have both been granted street maps!





To date, here are the known Google Maps mashups previous to today:
These mashups were based only on the satellite imagery which was first available for both countries, so it should be very interesting to see the new Google Maps API integrations that will emerge with street maps. Please drop me a line if you have any new mashups to share so I can post about them!

[Thanks to Zorgloob for the tip!]

19 comments:

Anonymous said...

These maps look good, but how are you supposed to look for an address? The search only seems to accept cities, not streets. The same is true for a lot of European countries.

Anonymous said...

Huzzah! As a Kiwi, I'm very glad to finally have NZ street maps on Google Maps! Woo-hoo!

mibazaar said...

Check this out. This is a interesting find with Yahoo Geocoding API. Let's take Canberra for eg: Type the following url: http://api.local.yahoo.com/MapsService/V1/geocode?appid=YahooDemo&city=canberra&state=australia
You get geocoding info for Canberra.

Similary try for Wellington, New Zealand:
http://api.local.yahoo.com/MapsService/V1/geocode?appid=YahooDemo&city=wellington&state=new+zealand

I could not find any doc on this at Yahoo Geocoding site..., but it works...

Fraser said...

This is great to see New Zealand has made it onto the map!

Great detail, it even has property boundaries, something I haven't noticed on other areas of the world.

shor said...

The X-Men 3 movie website has the Australia hybrid view integrated into their http://xplanet.net site already. Fast movers :)

Anonymous said...

Maps/Satellite/Hybrid yes, searching NO!

Fil's Blog said...

I'd like to add my voice to the question "when do we get addresses"?

I am hoping this is just about to be switched on, as it is kind of limited to 10% of its potential without it.

Anonymous said...

That has to be coming soon.. besides, they really haven't officially announced it yet. Google usually rolls out in stages..

Tim Haines said...

www.Zoomin.co.nz is keeping me happy with NZ Streetmaps at the moment.

Amos Shapira said...

Now also mentioned in the Sydney Morning Herald

Anonymous said...

So where is there a free geocoding service for Australia?

Anonymous said...

I think they look great, good to have NZ on the map!! looking forward to them releaseing their geocoding and driving directions. Well done though Google, if nothing else they have made online mapping very very popular, getting people to 'think spatially' can only be good

Grease said...

Yeah, search and driving directions don't work at the moment. I think the data is quite good, aside from the lot boundaries which are accurate (around my house at least), the M7 in western Sydney (which is less than a year old) is there.

Now as for searching, the overall quality for the whole world isn't that good anyway. When Australia fills the map focus, a search for Perth still goes to the Perth in Scotland. Aus. state names aren't even recognized.

grease said...

Hmm, there is a road called "Seven Hills Road" near my house but it is incorrectly written as "7 Hills Road". I wonder if this problem appears elsewhere, maybe it has something to do with the fact that the US has lots of roads which use numbers?

Bevan Clark said...

Does anyone know if there are load restrictions on google maps - would they object if my site requested 10s of thousands of maps a day?

Anonymous said...

Bevan,

Check here:
http://www.google.com/apis/maps/signup.html

Terms of use are listed here..

Ant Burnett said...

So excited by Google Map for Australia and NZ that I moved my speed camera site over to it - see http://www.roadwatch.com.au for more!

Anonymous said...

you can search street names at the following site:
Mayo!

Anonymous said...

How do you complain if something is shown wrong?
In Hervey Bay Qld the Hospital is shown in the woring area and should be on Nissen Rd. This is quite serious.