A New Frontier for Google Maps: Mapping the Indoors

The Google LatLong Blog today had this great post about the most current technology adoption for Google Maps:


“Where am I?” and “What’s around me?” are two questions that cartographers, and Google Maps, strive to answer. With Google Maps’ “My Location” feature, which shows your location as a blue dot, you can see where you are on the map to avoid walking the wrong direction on city streets, or to get your bearings if you’re hiking an unfamiliar trail. Google Maps also displays additional details, such as places, landmarks and geographical features, to give you context about what’s nearby. And now, Google Maps for Android enables you to figure out where you are and see where you might want to go when you’re indoors.


When you’re inside an airport, shopping mall or retail store, a common way to figure out where you are is to look for a freestanding map directory or ask an employee for help. Starting today, with the release of Google Maps 6.0 for Android, that directory is brought to the palm of your hands, helping you determine where you are, what floor you're on, and where to go indoors.


Detailed floor plans automatically appear when you’re viewing the map and zoomed in on a building where indoor map data is available. The familiar “blue dot” icon indicates your location within several meters, and when you move up or down a level in a building with multiple floors, the interface will automatically update to display which floor you’re on. All this is achieved by using an approach similar to that of ‘My Location’ for outdoor spaces, but fine tuned for indoors.

Mall of America in Minneapolis before and after, with a floor selector
San Francisco International Airport before and after, with 3D tilt
We’ve initially partnered with some of the largest retailers, airports and transit stations in the U.S. and Japan, including:

• Mall of America, IKEA, The Home Depot, select Macy’s and Bloomingdale’s, Daimaru, Takashimaya and Mitsukoshi locations and more. Watch an IKEA demo here.
• Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport (ATL), Chicago O’Hare (ORD), San Francisco International Airport (SFO) and Narita International (NRT), among others.
• JR and Tokyu Corporation

For a detailed list of participating locations, please visit our help center. And this is just the start--we’ll continually add new indoor maps to public buildings across the world. If you’re a business owner interested in getting your location’s floor plan included in Google Maps, visitmaps.google.com/floorplans.

We’re thrilled Google Maps continues to provide you with new and helpful perspectives—whether you’re rushing through the airport or finding your way around a mall. To visit our website and learn more about indoor Google Maps and other features, start here.

Posted by Brian McClendon, VP of Engineering, Google Earth and Maps

Update to the Route 66 Community Map

Made an update to the Route 66 Community Map located here:  Link.  This new map includes links to photos for the Illinois Route 66 Places.  I will be working on the Missouri Route 66 Places next.  Please send me your favorite places if you want to see them included on the Route 66 Community Map.

Color Management Fundamentals

Here's a great post by my friend Leo Geis on his Forensically Fit website regarding Color Management Fundamentals with Photoshop.  Leo does a wonderful job explaining very complex issues on his webpage:

Color Management Fundamentals

Devices reproduce color inconsistently. Inaccuracies in color are a forensic liability.

"Color Management" refers to the procedures and tools used to control color so that it displays as accurately as possible on each device or output artifact (print). It's important to note that consistency without accuracy is of little value in most forensic applications, and that it is necessary to quantify accuracy to prove it. It is also important to remember that the human visual process of images is uncertain/unstable on its own-Color Management does not directly attempt to compensate for variables in human visual acuity.

A common example of the problem that Color Management is meant to resolve is the inaccurate and inconsistent display of images on monitors. If you view the same image on two different monitors they will probably be noticeably different, much as in the following graphic:

The image on the left offers more contrast (the difference between the lights and darks) and a red bias (producing the purple sky) as compared to the image on the right, while the image on the right shows a drastic lack of saturation. These are very common distinctions in the output of monitors.

Prints can produce even more inaccuracy and variance: prints rely upon a particular media (paper), dyes or pigments, and the vehicle that those dyes or pigments are suspended in for their color.


Printers are also inherently inconsistent-even printers of the same manufacturer and model may differ significantly in their performance, particularly when temperature and humidity are fluctuating.

There's another critical element of viewing (aside from varied human visual acuities) images, and that is the nature of the ambient light. Different light sources produce distinct lighting characteristics, and while monitors produce their own light prints rely upon ambient light (reflecting some and absorbing some) for their function. If prints are viewed under different lighting sources they will most certainly appear dissimilar. Please refer to this previous post on Forensically Fit™ for a brief explanation of the Color Temperature of Light.

In order to produce accurate color during each step of the image production process it is necessary to account for the inaccuracies explained above, and to control the output of the various devices used in the process. In short, Color Management involves esoteric Color Science and Color Theory, strange devices with intriguing names such as "Colorimeter" and "Spectrophotometer," as well as an understanding of the context in which Color Management is employed: it is used in textiles, automotive finishes, textbook publishing, leather dyes, paint, photography and videography, flooring, corporate logos, medical imaging...virtually anywhere that color itself is important.

Because Color Management involves very complicated aspects of Color Science and equipment, it is important in the forensic context to acquire bona fide expertise to either establish or impeach visual artifacts in investigations, mediation/arbitration, or trial.

The fundamental tool in Color Management is called a (Device) Profile: that will be the topic of our next posting.

L