Google Maps Adds Comprehensive NYC Transit Directions

Riding the subway, hopping the ferry, and catching the train just got easier in the New York City metropolitan area. Google Maps has added comprehensive transit directions for the region, which includes data from:

• Metropolitan Transit Agency (MTA)
• The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey
• New Jersey Transit
• City of New York

To check out the new NYC info, click here.

Writing on the Official Google blog, Chris Harrelson, Tech Lead & Creator of Google Transit said, "Transit is a vital part of the infrastructure that makes cities run efficiently, and can help mitigate congestion, environmental concerns, and increasing energy costs. But until recently, access to that information has been more difficult than it needs to be. Even very prominent train and subway stations were often omitted entirely from maps in many cases. And as for bus lines, well, forget about it! This lead us to the fundamental goal of the Google Transit project: make public transit information as easy to find as any other geographic information."

Google Ramps Up Mobile Search With My Location

Google on Thursday announced that it has used its Gears Geolocation API to make searching for businesses and locales in your area easier on Windows Mobile devices.

According to the company, Search with My Location approximates your location based on Cell ID technology already employed by Google Maps and returns businesses in that area. If you’re looking to find the best Italian restaurants in your area, you can input “Italian restaurants” into the Search field, and it will return a list of Italian restaurants around your location. But it goes beyond businesses and restaurants. Google said that if you want to know the forecast where you are, simply type in “weather” and it will return the weather for your area.

Google Maps Gets Political

The Google Maps team has set up a showcase for some of its favorite mashups from the 2008 US presidential election.

Four of the mashups - Primary Results, Twitter, Search Queries, and Campaign Trail - were made by Google itself. The Primary Result mashup shows how states and districts across the country voted in the primaries. The Twitter mashup highlights political tweets as they pop up around the globe. Search Queries shows how geographical regions differ in how often they search for candidates’ names. And the Campaign Trail map follows the candidates around as they shake hands and kiss babies.

MIBAZAAR has contributed two of its own maps: one for tracking Obama’s life path (embedded above) and one for tracking McCain’s. Another mashup has been added from The Huffington Post that sheds light on campaign donations: who’s giving them, to whom, how much, and where.

It’s no secret that we’re all for tracking the candidates and where they stand on tech issues. Who will be the first to create a maps mashup furthering this cause?

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