Fridaygram: more in maps, Voyager goes on, forecast humor

By Scott Knaster, Google Developers Blog Editor

While many of us have been on vacation recently, our maps team has been keeping the world informed with new features and data for travelers and locals. Just in the past couple of weeks, there’s a bunch of new stuff, including:

• Voice-guided, turn-by-turn directions and live traffic info added for thousands of towns in India as part of Google Maps Navigation (Beta).
• Biking directions in New Zealand. Plus, bicycle people can use Map Maker to add or edit bike lane and trail information.
• New street view images for more than 150 university campuses, adding to more than 100 that were already available.

Maybe the Maps folks are taking holidays after all. It’s just that they’re mapping the places they visit.

Speaking of traveling and mapping, no human-made object has traveled farther from Earth than Voyager 1. Now 35 years and two days into its journey, Voyager is nearing the edge of the solar system. We Fridaygrammed about that once before, and we told you that Voyager was leaving our system soon, but now it looks like Voyager is taking its sweet time in departing, and it might be two to three more years before it exits into interstellar space. We’ll keep on top of this story for you.

Voyager is going where no one has gone before, and the man who introduced us to that phrase received his own quiet tribute earlier this week from the U.S. National Hurricane Center. Nicely done, Forecaster Cangialosi. (And we’ve done our own tribute in today’s Google Doodle.)


Code: the final frontier. These are the posts of the Google Developers Blog. Our mission: to seek out Google developer news, except on Fridays, when random nerd fun takes over. Your mission: have a great weekend!