The 'street view' is an awesome feature (portland for example) however i found myself using the 'Hybrid' view most commonly, it is a shame they removed it

skilled1

Hmm. The terrain overlay is kinda neat, but without a bunch more markup and features it's not really all that useful. No grid, no terrain feature markings, nothing.

Grungydan

Lifehacker admins, your rss feeds seem to have died. I'm not getting any updates in my news reader....

fmerenda

It's a nice addition to their system. The vertical dimension looks like it's at least a 10:1 exaggeration. Small knolls appear to tower over the landscape. Some enhancement is needed, of course, most terrain would appear quite flat and undramatic without it.

The road network is simplified, too.

I do appreciate how Google is bringing a better understanding of maps and map analysis to the masses.

aeronaut

@skilled1: Hybrid is now the Satalite view. Hold the mouse over the satellite view button and see a popup with SHow Labels selected. THat is hybrid.

cde

@Grungydan: Yes. It's not very accurate. It provides a general lay of the land but little detail. I'd like to see Google Maps add a topographic layer. There are some mashups that add USGS data, but it would be more convenient if Google Maps provided this.

John David

Google Maps is also now letting you correct a marker pointer (within 200 yards or so) for a given address. Click edit in the text box associated with the green arrow, then click move marker, then point at the marker, click and move it to the correct location. Pretty slick!

rsailer

My God Google is amazing... It's incredible the power they have now! It's good that a corporation with this much power is actually a user-friendly (as in friendly to the user) company, instead of something like microsquish. Do no evil indeed!

-emory-

That's pretty fancy looking all right.

It's going to keep on expanding and getting better. Who knows what we'll be presented with in a few years time.

Alex Leonard

An actual topo feature would be awesome. Unfortunately, I've been using Yahoo Maps because the satellite resolution is so much better for the areas I need to view. Google is great for major cities, but for anything else the imagery sucks.

theDevilsDue

@fmerenda: It's you, not LH. I've been getting the feed just fine.

dkong1026

@dkong1026:
nah it's not just him. I had the lifehacker RSS zero out yesterday on a post, its like it was brand new with only 1 post. Something wonky could be up.

Weazul

Re RSS - me too, although I filter with Yahoo pipes, so if they've changed the formatting, it might not be fitting through the pipes for me.

Mr Handsome B Wonderful

What's with the misused French expression? :P

Greet

It's also strange how the terrain seems to suggest there are topographical changes in the runways at most major airports.

axlekb

I think they've also added parking. If you zoom in really far in cities, you'll see little P's all over the place. At least, this is new to me.

axlekb

this will be a terrific add-on for land surveyors who want to scope out where they are heading or areas which they are working on. Go Google!

palmettoequipment

As a recent Mac convert, Google Maps surpasses Streets & Trips by tons! And props to LH, what a great site. I always learn something.

antwad

Nice, now we need lat/long/contour lines ;)

haraldf

Wow. Google is finally catching up with [maps.live.com] that has had this feature for ages.

foomanchoo

@Greet: According the Oxford English Dictionary, Adam used "a la" correctly, in the informal sense. To quote: "informal: in the style of". In that use, it's actually an English statement that derived from a French one in the past.

fadecomic

I recognize this as Colorado! Oh, the memories of being born and raised there!

yolospat

As far as I can tell, Google maps have simply taken the USGS topo data from [libremap.org] (or another map source) and applied a 3d topo filter to it. When looking at the boundries of the actual maps, you can see the lines where the edges of each map meet. Quite fancy. I am assuming this is the case since macgps (a mac gps app...if that was unclear...) will trim the edges and butt maps against each other and you get a very similar effect. (The strange lines, not the 3d.)

If any of you are looking for topo maps, the libre folks have an incredible amount of data.

monkeyhumper

@cde:
Labels show but roads don't so its no where near the same. Very disapointing that that feature is gone, it was the one I most used.

enine