Geo Highlights from Day 2 of Google I/O

Wow, Day 1 at I/O was such a big day Geo, it would be hard to top it. But there were some amazing gems. Check out these highlights:

1. Styled Maps! Probably the biggest news of day 2. Maps API V3 now gives you the option to style your maps. Don't like golden highways and green forests? Change it! Check out our announcement for more details and links.
2. Matt Lowrie gave a great talk on the SketchUp API and using SketchUp.
3. Josh Livni and I previewed a whole bunch of additions to the Earth API and a new KML extension. In particular, Earth API now has control over the time slider, and better balloon handling. Now, you can preserve your JS and Flash in the balloons. In KML, we previewed the Track extension, which will allow you to assign multiple way points to a model or point and move it around, rather than recreating them with multiple Timestamps.
4. Finally, and this was actually announced on Wednesday, you can now add a FusionTable layer to a Maps API V3 app, right from the API.

It's really exciting to see all this. We're closing the loop on a lot of developer requested features, and we're really happy. Thanks for those of you who came or watch it on video.

Geo Highlights from Day 1 at Google I/O

Boy, are my feet sore!

Wow, what an amazing day! Geo rocked Day 1 at Google I/O.

First, Daniels Lee announced that the Google Maps API V3 has graduated from labs and now is the recommended version of the Maps API to use. It also means that V3 is part of Google Maps API Premier, which is something people have been asking me about.

That also means that V2 is deprecated. We'll continue to support it, and fix bugs, for at least the next 3 years. Check out the deprecation policy in the terms of service. We're also deprecating Mapplets.

We also announced Street View in the V3 API, Flash-less so you can use it on mobile browsers. See my talk for more details. Videos and slides should post soon.

We announced a Directions web service as well, allowing us to close by far the single most requested feature in the issue tracker.

And finally, we previewed a Places widget, allowing you to show Places nearby your current location. It's built on the Places web service, now in Developer Preview.

There was also a fireside chat with Geo engineers and Product Managers, a Developer Sandbox with lots of great stuff on display, and a talk on Maps Data API by Tom Manshrek.

Plus, there were tons of Geo developers all over the conference. I think I talked to half of them. If you're in the other half, come and talk to me tomorrow!

Googe I/O Excitement

At this point, I could just list every single Geo session at I/O and tell you I was excited to see them. Particularly the two that I'm presenting in. And that would be true. I could also rave about all the sandbox partners, and tell you how they were going to be fabulous. And of course they are. But the truth is, what I'm most interested in for Google I/O is all the great people who I'll meet. Honestly, developers are some of the most interesting people in the world, and I'm really happy that I'm going to be spending 2.5 days meeting those of you who are coming. So, come say hi, introduce yourself, I'd love to spend some time learning about what you're doing.