While writing some stories about Japan, I noticed how much Google’s maps for Japan have improved since the last time I looked. While the Satellite data is still not complete at a high resolution for most of Asia, the maps for Japan are now amazing in their detail.

See for instance this story about Okadya in Tokyo by digitaldiva - zoom in all the way and look around a bit to see how dense the details in this map are!

We’ve implemented some changes to the Stories page:

- Faster load times. Hit the Stories link in the header to see what I mean. The filters and sort links in the stories list will still take some time, but the initial load times have been improved dramatically, while removing some of the database load on our server.

- Better SEO. All new stories will now be indexed by all the major search engines within a few days.

- Site visitors without a login can now view all stories completely. A login is still required to rate or comment on stories and to create new places and stories.

This was mostly a housekeeping update, but we have several great new features lined up for the site in the coming weeks - so stay tuned!

We have a great new feature for you to explore: You can now receive email reminders whenever a favorite story has received a new comment and when your favorite authors post new stories.

To enable these reminders, check out the tool box at the bottom of the full story display:

Simply click “Track Comments for this Story” or “Track Author” to receive the notification emails.

And should you want to cancel a reminder, you can at any time go to your Passport page and review all your scheduled reminders.