Google Maps Platform: Germany

Maps Platform

Product updates, customer stories, and tips and tricks on Google Maps Platform

Map of the Week: Ubilabs

[Editors Note: Earlier this month we lauched morethanamap.com to showcase the unique features of the Google Maps API. As part of this project, each week we’ll be featuring one story from our global community of developers who are using the Google Maps API to start businesses, help improve their communities or save the environment.]UbilabsDeutsche TelekomBlitzer.deBMWCrowd-sourcing to Fix Real Estate Problems

Leerstandsmelder.de

Showcasing a Global Brand

Deutsche TelekomDeutsche Telekom

Martin KleppeMichael Pletziger

Ubilabsmorethanamap.comEpungoPosted by Carlos Cuesta, Google Maps API Product Marketing Manager

5 Großartige Karten aus Deutschland

Wednesday, August 24, 2011

The Google Maps API is truly an international product with coverage from Hanoi, Vietnam to Lahore, Pakistan and everywhere in between. Like the extensive coverage of Google Maps (thanks in part to user generated edits via Google Map Maker), our developer community is internationally extensive as well! Google developers exist in just about every country and our Google Technology User Groups (GTUGs) have over 253 chapters around the world! To celebrate the global nature of Google Geo APIs and its developers, this month we’ve decided to highlight five great Geo API implementations from developers aus Deutschland! (that’s ‘from Germany’ for non-German speakers :)

Street View Live from Lufthansa

Street View API. For example, by clicking on the Paris icon, users will be taken to Street View imagery of the Eiffel Tower to entice them to travel to the City of Lights.

Bikemap.net

Bikemap.net, built by Toursprung from Austria and Germany, allows cyclist to view and share bicycling routes from all over the world. Users can rate routes, mark their favorites, send the GPS coordinates to a mobile device, suggest changes to routes, and even share the routes on social media sites. Each route includes details about the distance, surfaces, and difficulty. To help cyclists better understand the terrain the site has an interactive elevation bar. A similar effect can be achieved using the Google Elevation API.

McDonalds Store Locator

The German online destination for McDonald’s features a very nice store locator built on the Google Maps API. Very similar to another store locator built by German company, Hugo Boss, this store locator uses the map as both its background and focal point. The store locator also features custom icons, category filtering (24hr, wifi, drive through, etc), and custom controls.

Mare Verlag - Interactive World Map

Maps become very powerful when they are used to add geo context to information. German magazine, Mare, is using the Google Maps API to geotagged their stories and display them on a map. You can use the map to focus in on a particular part of the world and the application will populate the map with the stories that occurred in that region.

Munich S-Bahn Live Tracking on Google Maps

What’s great about this map is that it shows Munich S-Bahn transit system in real time as the trains travel through the city. There are clickable custom icons for each train, representing their line and when clicked on display stop information in an infowindow. The Google Maps API is a great solution for real-time asset tracking for both transit and business applications. To find out more about using asset tracking for business applications, visit the Google Geo Enterprise website.

Posted by Carlos Cuesta, Geo APIs Product Marketing Manager