Click and Drag Driving Directions in Earth View
This week we launched a new feature in Earth view on Google Maps. After getting driving directions, you can now click and drag points along your path to take a different route. Simply click on the Earth button in the top right corner, then click on the blue route line, and drag it to an alternate route.

New Chilean Cities in Building Maker
Two Chilean cities, Santiago and Valparaiso, are the first South American cities to become available to model in Google Building Maker, an online 3D modeling tool for Google Earth. The coverage in Building Maker has now increased to 6 continents and 94 cities total. Start modeling in one of these cities (or pick from the city dropdown) and get on the 3D map!

Rain and Snow Now in Google Earth
Now you can track weather patterns ranging from light drizzle and snow to hurricanes and blizzards in Google Earth 5.2. First, enable the clouds layer, then zoom into a particular location where it may be raining or snowing. Currently, our precipitation data cover some areas in North America and Europe. You can see if it’s available in a particular place by enabling the radar layer.

Improving the Quality of Borders
This month we announced significant improvements to the borders of over 60 countries and regions. With these improvements, many borders will now more closely follow natural boundaries such as mountains and rivers. The picture above shows a portion of the border between Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan. The new data follows the mountain ridgeline quite closely, even when zoomed in, which is a great improvement in positional accuracy.

New and Updated Imagery
New and updated imagery was added to Google Earth in July, including high-resolution aerial updates for the USA and New Zealand. Many countries also received high-resolution satellite updates, including China, Egypt, Mexico, Cuba, Australia, Jamaica, India and more. Take a look at these changes and many more (marked in red) in our update posts here and here, or view this file directly in Google Earth. Don't forget you can use the View -> Historical Imagery option to see imagery choices through the time slider.