Google Maps Developers Live - Places api radar search and photos

CHRIS BROADFOOT: Are we on? Hi, welcome to another Google Maps API Developer Office Hours. Today we'll actually be talking about the Places API. And I'm joined by, to my right, Andrew Bennetts. ANDREW BENNETTS: Hi. CHRIS BROADFOOT: Software engineer. And Marcelo Camelo. MARCELO CAMELO: Hello. CHRIS BROADFOOT: Who is the tech lead for the Places API. So you may have seen, this morning we launched Place Photos and Radar Search. If you haven't seen that, go and check out the Google Developers blog. And I'll show you that in a moment. But first, we have some news on the Places API challenge. All the entries are in. Thank you for submitting your apps. We've had some great apps. I just had a quick look before I came down here. And we'll be displaying those for public voting on the 12th of December. So next week you'll be able to vote on all the apps that people have submitted. And I think early next year we announce the winners. So, without further ado, let's talk Radar Search and Photos. So-- MARCELO CAMELO: You want me to-- CHRIS BROADFOOT: Tell me a little bit about photos, maybe. MARCELO CAMELO: Let me answer with Radar Search. I'll let Andrew talk about Photos, because he worked directly on that. So the idea with Radar Search was to be able to return more than just the 60 results that we commonly return. A lot of developers ask for the ability to do stuff like a heat map, with being able to show which areas the greatest concentration of a certain type of business. Or simply doing a real estate website, and you're showing a specific property, and you want to be able to show every single grocery shop, or every single school around the specific location with a much broader viewport than just the one you usually are able to show with 20 results. CHRIS BROADFOOT: So we actually do have pagination as well, right? MARCELO CAMELO: Not on-- CHRIS BROADFOOT: On the regular search. MARCELO CAMELO: On the regular search, yes. So the pagination on regular search is more aimed towards you having a scrollable list, ideally an infinite scrollable list. But it only linked to 60 results in page of 20s. And the idea is that Radar Search is initially we offer 200 results. And, depending on how it goes, it can even offer more. CHRIS BROADFOOT: So if I want more detailed results, I use pagination for search. But if I want a huge amount-- and I think it's just the location and a place reference that comes-- MARCELO CAMELO: You get just a location, so they can show a point where the place is. And you get a reference, so you can-- maybe on the user click--- display more details about the place. CHRIS BROADFOOT: Cool, great. I can see some great walk score sorts of applications for that. So definitely some cool things. And so all the filters are available for the Radar Search? MARCELO CAMELO: Yes. You can search by keyword, which is really nice differentiator of the Place API. So you can do search like we did on the demos, just saying, nice views. It's not really a categorical search. But it will return you places that either advertise themselves as having nice views, or people have written reviews saying that it has nice views. You can also use type search. So you can search for bars or restaurants, or any of the types that we support. You can also-- what other features do we have? ANDREW BENNETTS: It's all the usual types and keywords and categories. CHRIS BROADFOOT: Yeah, I think one of the features that people don't use enough is the keyword search. I think that's a really awesome feature of the Places API. So if you haven't used it before, it searches over of all of the data that Google has about a place-- so reviews, the categories and the tags that are provided by place. MARCELO CAMELO: Even sometimes the actual content on the place's official web page. CHRIS BROADFOOT: Oh, wow. OK. So it searches over things that you can't even get back on the Places API. We wouldn't be able to do that. OK, so let's go over to a demo of Radar Search. So this is on our Google Geodevelopers blog. So this was posted up earlier today. So you can see here we're using the heat map feature of the JavaScript API to show the nicest views in Sydney. So if I zoom in-- I can't zoom in. So you can see they're are all situated around the harbor, lots around Darling Harbour. So this is quite an accurate look at the best views in Sydney, really. This is another one of my favorites. So essentially you can look for Chinese restaurants anywhere, in any city, and you can figure out where Chinatown is. So you can see this quite accurately locates Chinatown in San Francisco, which is great. ATMs in Manhattan. So I'm not sure exactly what this one is indicating. MARCELO CAMELO: This pretty much indicates that you have ATMs all over the place. There isn't a ATM suburb in Manhattan. CHRIS BROADFOOT: And clothing stores in Paris, this one's great. So you can see here, also, that the search is limited by the bounds. So it's actually the bounds of the initial search. You can see you don't get back any results outside the bounds. So you can quite nicely limit the results to just the area that you're interested about. MARCELO CAMELO: On this specific demo, we've chosen to display the results as a heat map, but you're not actually limited to it. You can use whatever you want. The other option just to show results of points or even markers. CHRIS BROADFOOT: Another thing-- are the results returned in any sort of order? MARCELO CAMELO: Just from the 20. CHRIS BROADFOOT: OK. So we're joined by Justin, down in the Hangout. So Justin is joining us from Mountain View. He's the product manager for Places. Hi, Justin. JUSTIN CHU: Hello, how are you guys doing? CHRIS BROADFOOT: We can't hear you. Are you? JUSTIN CHU: I'm not muted. CHRIS BROADFOOT: We have the local sound turned off. OK, so how excited are you about these launches? JUSTIN CHU: So excited. No, we've been working really *** these things. MARCELO CAMELO: Stop jumping up and down, man. JUSTIN CHU: We've been working really *** these things for a while now. And we're super pumped to get these apps to developers, so they can make their applications even prettier and better. So yeah, props to you guys. Obviously Andrew and Marcelo sitting there, have been working so *** these things. CHRIS BROADFOOT: I believe these are two of the most requested features at the moment. ANDREW BENNETTS: More results and photos, yeah. JUSTIN CHU: Absolutely, yeah. CHRIS BROADFOOT: So on that note, if you're interested in having a new feature in the API, we definitely listen to that feedback. So go and file your feature request on the issue tracker. There's links from the documentation. The most popular ones definitely catch our interest, and we try to work on those as much as possible. So let's talk about Photos. ANDREW BENNETTS: Let's. So we now return photos as part of our results in the Places API. So on searches you just get a single photo. And when you look up the details for a place, you get 10 photos. They give them back as [INAUDIBLE] like place references. And you can fire off a request to actually get the pixels of the photo. So it gives you photos of the place taken by Google users [INAUDIBLE] pictures that you would find on Google+ Local, and that [INAUDIBLE] Places API. CHRIS BROADFOOT: Great. ANDREW BENNETTS: Make it much more visually appealing summary of the place in your application, because you can show a picture of it. CHRIS BROADFOOT: So who would use this kind of feature? Is it the searching kind of app so that they can display some photos? Or as a business owner, would I use this to display photos of my store? ANDREW BENNETTS: I would think it's more the former. If you're a business owner, you probably already have photos of your own. You don't need to ask us for them. Although, you might want to see the user generated photos that have been provided to Google. So a bit of that. But mainly I think it's-- we'll see what people do with it. But I would expect that it'll be people wanting to show it in their search results, and show a little teaser photo. And then you can click through and find out more about the place. CHRIS BROADFOOT: So it's probably worth noting that both of these features are available through the web service and the JavaScript API. So obviously, the demos in the blog post are using the JavaScript API. But you can do all of that with the web service. So it's great for mobile application. For example, you can still show the photos quite easily. So if we switch over to the demo, let's have a look at some photos. So here we're using the Places autocomplete. This is actually the search box, which lets you do unstructured queries like, pizza. Or if I said P-I-Z-Z, it's going to suggest to me, pizza. So I can say pizza-- any-- It's going to suggest me something. So I can look for pizza near Sydney, for example. So we're actually just getting the photos and putting them straight onto the map as markers, which is quite cool. So you can get a quick view at all of these results. ANDREW BENNETTS: Yes. At this point, the demo has just done a search. And so it's just got the one photo. CHRIS BROADFOOT: So what's another good one? Maybe-- ANDREW BENNETTS: I like meat pie. CHRIS BROADFOOT: Meat pie, OK. So meat pies. Let's have a look up here. This is my favorite pie shop, up here. ANDREW BENNETTS: Does your favorite pie shop not have any photos? You should upload some. CHRIS BROADFOOT: That's quite sad. Pie in the Sky in Berowra, by the way, awesome pies. ANDREW BENNETTS: There's always good old Harry's Cafe de Wheels in Potts Point. CHRIS BROADFOOT: Great. So we've got this little light box that's popped up. It's just pulling down the photos. Really straightforward to implement. So you can add some great variety into your apps using this feature. So any other details on this? ANDREW BENNETTS: So you can request the photo in any size, up to the size of the photo we provide. You can say, actually I only want that maximum 400 width or height. CHRIS BROADFOOT: So I think we're actually doing that [INAUDIBLE]. ANDREW BENNETTS: We're getting the photo and saying that we just want the little thumbnail. And then we want it to fit within the fixed size of the light box there. MARCELO CAMELO: I think they were talking about either max height or max width. So it's really easy to make it fit into a pre-defined grid or a pre-defined box. CHRIS BROADFOOT: And I believe there's some attributions that need to be shown as well? That's the only limitation on this setup? ANDREW BENNETTS: Just like on Place responses in general has an HTML attributions field, this also has HTML attributions as a field on the web service. And so you just have to show a little bit of HTML, so it credits back. Basically, which user uploaded the photo, or which source it came from. CHRIS BROADFOOT: So if you'd like to find more about these two features, definitely go and checkout our Places API documentation. You can get to that through the blog post that's on googlegeodevelop ers.blogspot.com. So check that out. Or you can look at the Google+ post that was posted earlier this morning. So that's an overview of Place Photos and Radar Search, two of my favorite features. JUSTIN CHU: Mine too. MARCELO CAMELO: I bet you say that to everyone. CHRIS BROADFOOT: I do. I say that about all the APIs. ANDREW BENNETTS: You just love APIs so much. CHRIS BROADFOOT: I do love APIs. So anything else happening in Places land, other than the Places challenge? MARCELO CAMELO: Heaps of stuff. CHRIS BROADFOOT: Any cool apps that you've seen recently? MARCELO CAMELO: Cool apps. CHRIS BROADFOOT: Justin, do you have any input? JUSTIN CHU: There was a recent blog post on, I think, Geodevelopers blog about QS, a quick street view, which essentially uses both the Street View API as well as the Place API autocomplete. And essentially it was a super awesome demo of how-- virtually moving through the world at a fast pace. As you can see in this demo, it's just so much fun. Knowing that I can go to any place in the world at any moment in time, with the Places API service the Street View service is super powerful. And I definitely wasted way too much time on this, maybe even at work, too. But don't tell Andrew or Marcelo that. CHRIS BROADFOOT: Let's have a look at that. So this is, indeed, on the Geodeveloper blog. So this is qsview.com. Start typing an address. Where do you live? ANDREW BENNETTS: Funny. Funny. MARCELO CAMELO: Try Newport. CHRIS BROADFOOT: Newport. MARCELO CAMELO: Somewhere else. CHRIS BROADFOOT: How about NSW, because-- JUSTIN CHU: Type slower so that people can see that it's actually doing Street View queries as you're typing, as well. CHRIS BROADFOOT: Sorry, my internet is slow, for some reason. So if I just type N. JUSTIN CHU: That's not going work. So keep going. CHRIS BROADFOOT: N-E-W-T-- oh, that looked like an indoor inside the New Orleans airport. How do I get into that? P. OK, so this is some guy's house. Newport Road in [INAUDIBLE]. That's an awesome name for a town, by the way. So Newport Beach. Is that getting into Street View? What am I doing? That's picturesque. JUSTIN CHU: It's very nice. Yeah. ANDREW BENNETTS: That's pretty cool. CHRIS BROADFOOT: So now we're finally at Newport, New South Wales. Yeah, that's indeed Newport. But we want the beach, don't we? ANDREW BENNETTS: Always. CHRIS BROADFOOT: That's not the beach, is it? MARCELO CAMELO: Well, that would be as good-- that's just down the street. CHRIS BROADFOOT: What else would be cool? Let's see if there's Mrs. Macquarie's Chair. Look at that. ANDREW BENNETTS: Such a nice spot, there. Awesome. Anything else? MARCELO CAMELO: Not that I'm allowed to disclose at this moment. ANDREW BENNETTS: I'd expect eventually when the Grand Canyon will be in there somewhere. CHRIS BROADFOOT: So yes, next mashup, QS view with Places Radar Search, so you get all the markers inside the thing. That would be awesome. JUSTIN CHU: Wow. Yeah, I agree. CHRIS BROADFOOT: A challenge to you. ANDREW BENNETTS: Challenge [INAUDIBLE]. CHRIS BROADFOOT: OK. Well, that's it for this week. Stay tuned. Go to developers.google.com/live/maps for upcoming GDL events. And we'll see you next time. ANDREW BENNETTS: Thank you, Chris. JUSTIN CHU: Thanks, Chris. Thanks, guys. ANDREW BENNETTS: See you, Justin.