Jaunted

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Google Wants to Rebuild the World's Largest Airship Hangar. There's Only One Catch.

We never have enough time or space to get to all the Google Travel news that we'd like. A few weeks ago we talked about their new airport maps, and a little before that we did an introduction to their burgeoning flight search service. Unfortunately Google Flight Search got dragged down by how the airline industry does business, and it has remained unimpressive.

On the other side of the success spectrum, though, developers and programmers expanded Google Earth to include games—a move that involved airlines and has implications for social media—and an MIT student playing around with Google Maps made a de facto travel itinerary checker.

But this post isn't about any of those stories. This post is about deep, abiding, biting, bitter jealousy.

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Google Maps / Google / Technology / Travel Tech / Airport News / Airports / → All Tags

Google Maps Ventures into the Final Frontier: Airports

Having more or less mapped the world's roadways—up to and including getting the security hyper-conscious Israelis to let their guards down—the Google Maps kids have taken to sending their cars and tricycles to increasingly esoteric destinations.

They've mapped bike routes and jungle trails, which are natural extensions of roadway mapping, but they've also extended their maps into our beloved San Diego Zoo and the insides of Japanese businesses—neither of which are particularly intuitive additions.

One area into which Google had yet to expand was the inside of airports. The oversight was particularly notable because, in sharp contrast, Microsoft's Bing search engine had added airport maps a few months ago. Bing's maps launched with support for 42 national airports, and included locations for restaurants, ATMs, ticket counters, restrooms, and so on. The implementation was not only pretty slick, but it was something that Google Maps just didn't have. So guess what Google just announced as the newest feature for Google Maps.

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Google's Newest Street View Project Isn't About Streets At All

Often the news stories about Google Maps Street View—the Mountain View technology that allows you to virtually walk up and down roads, alleyways, and even zoos—have controversial political upshots. There are perennial privacy issues, including ones that have brought Google into conflicts with European governments. In an age of terrorism there are also genuine security risks, and it took until this week for Israel to greenlight Street View despite the Israelis' numerous safety concerns (although we did kind of tell you they'd end up deciding that way). In any case, mapping the world has turned out to be a more problematic goal than Google might have imagined.

The newest Street View project shouldn't turn out that way. Instead, Google seems to have found a project that just about anyone can get behind.

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Google Maps / Google / Google Earth / Japan Travel / Technology / Maps / Tokyo Restaurants / → All Tags

Google Now Mapping the Inside of Japanese Businesses, Everything Else

Google continues to make progress on their project of enabling you to see the world without ever leaving your house (sadly, not totally a joke). The company is adding more and more information to Google Maps, this time encouraging Japanese businesses to upload panoramic images of their stores to Google's Business Photos database, which is hooked into Google Places, which of course is embedded in Google Maps. The Japanese focus is part of a broader roll out, with Business Photos accepting images from US, Japan, Australia, and New Zealand.

The upshot is that, metaphorically but not really, you'll soon be able to navigate your way "inside" restaurants and shops digitally on Google Maps. Just like with other photos in the application, users will be able to pan, tilt, and zoom the 3D panoramic images of business. CNN's hyperlocal Asia travel site CNNGo, showing an admirable awareness of cultural sensibilities, mused that the feature will especially appeal to their "more shy" Japanese readers. We imagine that users elsewhere will find plenty of other uses, above and beyond the wow factor.

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Where Exactly is Chicago's New Street, 'Oprah Winfrey Way?'

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If you've ever walked down some Chicago streets and looked up to find yourself at the intersection of "Hugh Hefner Way" and "King Sargon Drive," you'll know about the Second City's obsession with commemorative street names. Over 1,000 brown street signs are scattered throughout the city, oftentimes placed directly above the official green signs that give the streets the names you see printed on maps. Nonetheless, the honorary street names can be a big deal for celebrities and yesterday, Oprah Winfrey finally got hers.

So where exactly is "Oprah Winfrey Way?" It's not a big street—in fact, it's only the one block of North Carpenter Street in front of Harpo Productions on the near west side. We're pretty sure the city gave Hef a larger chunk of pavement than that.

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Google Maps / Terrorism / Political Travel / Pakistan Travel / Death / Osama Bin Laden / Military Travel / → All Tags

Osama Bin Laden's Compound in Abbottabad Has Tourist Destination Potential

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Last night, when President Barack Obama announced the killing of terrorist al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, history was made at the same time as a town in Pakistan lost its innocence. Abbottabad was named by Barack as the place in which bin Laden had made his mansion hideout home. He wasn't in caves, he wasn't in Afghanistan, and he wasn't going to escape this time. A recently built home, surrounded by walls and within an affluent community, was where the last stand between Osama and the USA took place, with the US' Navy SEALS emerging victorious in under 40 minutes of covert operations.

As such, Abbottabad is today the center of much curiosity; it's even been trending on Twitter all night thanks to Abbottabad-based Twitter user Sohaib Athar—@ReallyVirtual—who lives in the town and who unknowingly live-tweeted the mission several days ago, hearing as he did helicopters overhead and bursts. Sohaib moved to the relative calm of Abbottabad to work on his IT business and escape the fighting in Lehore, Pakistan. This isn't all that extraordinary, since Abbottabad is a huge tourist destination; in fact it is considered one of the most beautiful cities in Pakistan.

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Google Maps / Tourism / Bar Refaeli / Israel Travel / Religious Travel / Google / Tourism Boards / → All Tags

Israel is About to Get Google Mapped So Hard

Israel is finally set to allow Google to map out the country's roads using Google Maps Street View, which is something of a bold move since terrorists routinely brag about using Google Earth to target their missiles and rockets at Israelis. Since we're talking about the Middle East, the decision has naturally engendered a robust debate about costs and benefits. On the costs side: the terrorism and people dying thing. Supposedly on the benefits side: tourism.

We're not really going to belabor the security issue, partly because it's convoluted but mostly because it's way, way too depressing for a Monday morning. You can go here for a will-it or won't-it backgrounder. The tourism debate, on the other hand, seems a little bit more straightforward and a little closer to our wheelhouse.

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Google Maps / Quirky Travel / Water Sports / Hawaii Travel / Videos / → All Tags

OMG. The World's Biggest Slip-and-Slide.

Please forgive us for sending you into daydream mode so early in the morning already, but we simply have to share Entertainment Weekly's find of the World's Largest Slip-and-Slide. Now, it's not been confirmed as the largest by an official from Guinness World Records or anything, but one glance at this video and it's quite difficult to imagine anything beating it.

The Slip-and-Slide is really a man-made reservoir—a totally off-limits, no trespassing-allowed one—but authorities should've considered making it of another material if they really wanted people to keep out with their bodyboards. And of course, like much of the best stuff in Hawaii, this reservoir is located nearby some truly breathtakingly lush scenery.

So here's where it is:

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Christmas Travel / Santa Claus / Google Maps / Google Earth / Holiday Travel / Around the World Travel / → All Tags

Follow Santa's Around-the-World Holiday Journey with NORAD's Santa Tracker

Well, everyone; today is the day. It's the day we can begin "tracking" Santa Claus on his gift-giving journey around the world via NORAD's annual Santa Tracker. There once were days when NORAD, or the North American Aerospace Defense Command, would just send little Santa travel status update videos to the networks, for them to broadcast during newscasts, but these days things are tad more hi-tech than all that. Santa is being tracked by Google Maps.

Over at the official Santa Tracking website—which is a cute site to let your kids check every so often during Christmas Eve—you can watch grass grow watch as Santa slowly (or pretty quickly, really) makes his way around the world, spending no more than 4 minutes in one place. He's already finished with the Pacific Islands (he got to visit Palau a moment ago), New Zealand, Australia and—from what it looks like—North Korea. As we type this, his butt is getting stuck in some minimalist chimneys around Japan, as he's still got quite a while before he hits North America airspace.

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Google Maps / Google / Airplanes / United / Chicago Travel / → All Tags

So a United Plane Flew Through a Google Maps Satellite Photo...

Don't get us started on our love of Google Maps and Google Earth. Sometimes we sit for a moment and just think about how all the scientists and explorers of centuries ago would simply crap themselves if they had only a glimpse of the site. That's why we have to share this, even though it's already been all over the web: a plane caught flying over Hyde Park on Chicago's south side, mid-air and captured by Google satellites.

As GeekoSystem notes, a commenter at The Atlantic has attempted to explain the rainbow effect, saying: "The satellite that took the image must have taken several colored exposures over a few seconds and then combined them." We just think it's gorgeous, and we're pretty sure it's a United plane, not just because it's in the vicinity of Chicago.

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Google Street View Takes Antarctica, Its Final Continent

Rejoice! For this is the day that Google Maps hath made. Everyone can now virtually set foot on all seven continents thanks to Google's Street View function, now that a peekaboo look of Antarctica has become available. Raise your hand if you remember the days when it was big news to have more San Francisco streets mapped with Street View!

Street View has only been around for three years, and in that time, it's become a priceless tool for travelers trying to locate their hostels or trying to remember the name of the bar they got drunk at with locals the other night.

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Google Maps / Google / Europe Travel / Europe / Germany Travel / Germany / Technology / Travel News / → All Tags

Google Street View Comes to Germany, but Much Will Be Blurry

You can use Google Maps Street View to find the world's most picturesque street. Or to virtually wander around the San Diego Zoo. Or to plan a bike ride through Boulder. What you can't do is use it to view any part of Germany, since privacy watchdogs have been holding up Mountain Views's expansion into the country. There are currently 23 countries with Street View-enabled cities, and exactly none of them are German. All of that is going to change in the coming months, now that the search giant has met the German government's demands for privacy protections. Twenty German cities are slated for addition by the end of the year.

Under the deal, Google will blur out faces and license plates automatically. Homes will of course be included by default, but Google has agreed to blur them out too if owners submit a simple request. Even a fax will work. Reports say that 10,000 Germans have already submitted their requests, which is a huge number of people who don't want pictures of their front yard on the internet.

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