The company has partnered with transit agencies to integrate the live data in six cities so far: Boston, Portland, San Diego, San Francisco, Madrid, and Turin.

“Often when I’m taking public transit, I arrive at my stop on time only to anxiously check my watch and look down the street for my bus, which is running late once again,” says Google software engineer Sasha Gontmakher, explaining the reasoning for the feature. “Those extra minutes I’m forced to wait seem like an eternity, and the only information I can access on my phone is when the bus was supposed to arrive.”

Users can simply click on a transit station or plan a transit route in Google Maps and see delays and alerts related to a trip with live departure times that are indicated with special icons.

Google says it is working with public transit partners to expand this into more cities. Google does note that for mobile, it’s available in the latest version of Google maps for Mobile for Android versions 1.6 and higher, but makes not mention of iOS, which is noteworthy, considering Google and Apple reportedly just renewed their partnership on search and maps.

Different traffic laws, non-English road signs, unfamiliar parking places – who needs ‘em?  It’s much easier to ferried about by an established company or a country’s own government.  So, although coverage isn’t universal, Google’s off to a nice start, with “information for the following places and transport companies”: Travel South East (in the UK), SBB and VBZ (in Switzerland), and Turin and Florence (in Italy).

On the Google LatLong Blog, Christopher Oehler assures readers that Google will lengthen this list.  He also writes, “Try it yourself: type your start and end address in the ‘get directions’ boxes.  The default results are driving directions, but in the areas that we have transit routing coverage, you can simply click on the ‘Take Public Transit’ link.”

The Google Transit trip planner should save tourists a few bucks (compared to rental cars or cabs) and will allow them to find that all-important “local flavor,” as well.  Based on their constant proximity to the transit systems, Europe’s resident could reap even greater benefits.

Google Transit is, by the way, also useful in Vancouver, Japan, and about 20 parts of the U.S.

Google Transit Graduates, Gets Wrapped Into Maps

Oh, well.  You can’t ask for everything, and in this case, that includes widespread coverage – Google Transit is aware of routes in only ten American states.  Christoph Oehler, a product manager, promises, “We’re still working hard to make Google Transit useful for as many people as possible, and we’ll keep you posted as we add new regions.”

And if you can get past those minor problems, this truly is a positive development.  Google Transit’s departure from Google Labs involves an integration with Google Maps – now, some people will get a clickable option to “Take Public Transit” as they plan routes.  As always, distances and elapsed times are measured, and in some cases, there’s even a driving-versus-transit cost comparison.

So, yes – Google Transit is good, and it’s nice to see it leave Google Labs.  The move may have (slightly) bigger implications, though.

In the past month, we’ve seen both Google Reader and GOOG-411 graduate from Google Labs.  With Google Transit following close behind, it’s hard not to detect a trend.  This may just be a matter of re-labeling – no dramatic changes or upgrades accompanied any of the moves – but it still looks like evidence of Google growing up.

It’s almost enough to make you wonder if the “beta” label will get dropped off Gmail at some point.

Dallas, Las Vegas, California’s Humboldt County and Thousand Oaks, and the San Francisco Bay Area have been included in the update.  They’re all quite some distance from Lexington, Kentucky (the home of WebProNews), but, well, whatever.  People in those locations should be pleased, anyway.

Chris Harrelson, a Google Transit software engineer, is also happy.  “As you may know, Google Transit began its life as a 20 percent project,” he wrote on the Google LatLong Blog.  “Now, the fine folks at BART [Bay Area Rapid Transit] have furthered their collaboration with us in BART 1 percent time which is like 20 percent time, only, as our friends at BART explain, ‘it’s one person and 19 percent less time.’”

And if you’re interested in seeing the results of this effort, Harrelson continued, “This data is available for anyone who wants to access it in the Google Transit Feed Specification, a creative commons-licensed data format we’ve developed to help facilitate sharing of data within the transit community.”

That technology (and the fact that the project doesn’t depend on a fleet of camera cars) should help Google Transit continue to spread.

“Depending on the data available for a given public transit system, Google Maps now shows the next departure times, what lines serve a specific station, and/or a link to the transit agency to get more detail,” writes Christoph Oehler on Google’s Lat Long Blog.  “Try clicking on one of the little bus or tram icons on this map of Zurich, Switzerland, to see what we mean.  You can also search for stations (for example ‘59th St – Columbus Circle Station, new york’).”

Yet the PR-savvy among you might realize that the “depending on the data available” phrase could act as quite a disclaimer.  Oehler, a product manager for Google, assures readers, “Our transit information is acquired through a variety of means, including transit agencies, geo data companies, websites, and maps.”  And as always, “We are continuously working to expand our coverage.”

Here’s the neat part about this development, though: you can probably ensure that your transit system of choice is included.  “If you are interested in having this data available for your city, point your local transit agency to this website where they can learn more about how to upload their transit data,” suggests Oehler.

For still more information, you might want to check out Jeremy Faludi’s entry on WorldChanging.com.  There are screenshots and explanations galore – far more than Google provides, actually - and Faludi’s own take on the revised Google Maps/Earth/Transit system.  All in all, things are looking pretty good.

Hello, I saw you, I know you, I knew you
I think I can remember your name...name
Hello I'm sorry, I lost myself
I think I thought you were someone else
-- REM's 'Pop Song 89', because 'Happy Birthday' is kind of pass I think

Should we talk about the weather? Why not? Google updated its Calendar with a new feature that Michael Bolin, Google Calendar Engineer, referred to as ‘web content events’:

Should we talk about the government? How about transit instead, as in Google Transit? That’s the service Google launched with Portland, Oregon as its test base.

Chris Harrelson, Software engineer & Transit team tech lead, drove the news to the Google blog about the latest updates to Transit. It’s up to a whopping six cities now!

More cities will be arriving on Transit in the coming weeks and months, Harrelson wrote.

It’s another year gone by for Google, and they have a new image designed by webmaster and chief doodler Dennis Hwang that millions of Google users have probably seen today. “I hope you enjoy reading the candles,” Hwang said in his post about the noteworthy day.

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David Utter is a staff writer for WebProNews covering technology and business.

While Google owns a huge number of domain names, these are only the ones that are active, with pages, data or live redirects. The list is long and interesting, and if you take your time, you’ll probably find some stuff you’ve never heard of before in there.

Some good ones:

http://3dchallenge.sketchup.com/
http://services.google.com/
http://wml.froogle.com/
http://www.google.com/librariancenter/
http://www.google.com/macwidgets/
http://www.google.com/permissions
http://www.google.com/plex
http://www.google.com/wireless
http://www.google.com/transit
http://googlebloglist.blogspot.com/
http://google-code-featured.blogspot.com/

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Nathan Weinberg writes the popular InsideGoogle blog, offering the latest news and insights about Google and search engines.

Visit the InsideGoogle blog.

As first reported by the GoodRoi Internet Marketing blog, some searches under keyword phrase, ” homes for sale ” have produced results similar to those shown in this screenshot shown below.

The image shows two extra search boxes asking the user to refine their search parameters. This feature, which is not currently available in Canada , took NY based Search Engine Watch editor, Barry Schwartz to this landing page . According to his report in SEW, the location box automatically noted and filled in his hometown.

Google is going a long way towards the personalization of search results and adding Google base items to the results pages displayed for different people based on geography is one of the ways.

Another is a second project being considered in Canada between the Toronto Transit Commission and Google. According to a report that appeared in the Toronto Star on Monday, ” Google has asked the TTC for station, stop, schedule and route data to create a trip planner so commuters could input origin and destination points to get the shortest or fastest routes.”

Google is currently running a similar pilot project with the Portland Oregon Transit system.

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Jim Hedger is the SEO Manager of StepForth Search Engine Placement Inc. Based in Victoria, BC, Canada, StepForth is the result of the consolidation of BraveArt Website Management, Promotion Experts, and Phoenix Creative Works, and has provided professional search engine placement and management services since 1997. http://www.stepforth.com/ Tel – 250-385-1190 Toll Free – 877-385-5526 Fax – 250-385-1198

Its a GreaseMonkey extension, recompiled so you don’t need GreaseMonkey to use it. Adrian’s work has already inspired work on a Boston project, so hopefully someone will decide to handle the largest transit system in the world, New York.

More so, I hope someone finds a way to do something more like the Google Maps / Craigslist housing mashup, so it isn’t dependant on a specific browser or specific installed extensions.

Link: Chicago Transit Authority map on Google Maps

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Nathan Weinberg writes the popular InsideGoogle blog, offering the latest news and insights about Google and search engines.

Visit the InsideGoogle blog.