Big News: New Imagery 28-Jan | Resources for Haiti | New Imagery 12-Jan
February 8, 2010
Where 2.0 2010 coming in March; Discount for GEB Readers
For the past few years (2009, 2008, 2007, 2006), Frank has attended the Where 2.0 conference. I had the pleasure of attending with him in 2007 and we had a great time. Now that he's busy sailing around beautiful places like Bonaire, I'll be taking his place this year.
Where 2.0 happening March 30-April 1, 2010 at the San Jose Marriott in San Jose, California. Where 2.0 brings together the people, projects, and issues building the new technological foundations and creating value in the location industry. Developers, technologists, CTOs, researchers, geographers, academics, business developers, and entrepreneurs come together to debate what's viable now, and what's lurking just below the radar. Register before February 9 and save $300. Take an additional 25% off when using discount code: whr10ge
I recently had a chance to speak with Brady Forrest, Program Chair for Where 2.0, to talk about some of what we can expect at this years event.
You can find the full list of speakers on this page, but here are a few that he felt were worth pointing out:
• Dennis Crowley from FourSquare, Josh Williams from Gowalla and Jeremy Stoppelman from Yelp will all be there. Many people expect location-based services to explode in 2010, and these three companies are leading the way. Increasingly interesting game mechanics are expected to be developed this year, as turning these services into a more game-like experience will help to draw in more casual users.
• Speaking of Twitter, Elad Gil, Raffi Krikorian and Othman Laraki will be there. Of note is Ryan Sarver, formerly of Skyhook Wireless, who will be speaking on the "Increasing Usefulness of Location Data Geostreams".
• John Henke of Google will be there. In the past, Google has been known to release some major developments at Where 2.0, such as the release of StreetView in 2007. No word on any big announcements, but it's always a possibility.
• Blaise Agüera y Arcas, the "Architect of Bing Maps" and the creator of Photosynth will be there to discuss user-generated and crowdsourced maps.
• Sean Askay, who created the very impressive "Map the Fallen" KML will be discussing his work on that project.
There are literally dozens of other speakers and events, and it should be a great week. If you plan on attending, leave a comment or send me an email and we can try to meet up. Hope to see you there!
Posted by mickmel at 7:21 AM | Comments (0)
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February 5, 2010
Google Earth in Microsoft Flight Simulator
Google I/O 2010 is coming in May, but we're already starting to hear about some of the neat projects that will be unveiled there.
The first one is called GEVision, from the guys at PlanetInAction, which is trying to evolve into a 3D scenery engine. Their initial goal is to use Google Earth as the scenery in Microsoft Flight Simulator: "In the past various attempts had been made to use Google Earth scenery instead of the one included in Microsoft Flight Simulator FSX. Yet due to limitations in the interface technology this has never been fully achieved. GEVision is a new project that will enable the use of Google Earth as a full blown 3D scenery engine."
There have been some integrations of MS Flight Sim and Google Earth in the past, but nothing to this extent. Previous integrations include a version that used Google Earth as an overhead map and an idea to take Flight Sim Scenery and use it in Google Earth.
Over the past few years Google Earth imagery, combined with improved terrain quality and more 3D buildings, has blown past the quality found in Microsoft Flight Sim. The only real downside would be less realistic airports (MS Flight Sim does a great job with those), but that is improving with each new imagery update as well. On the flip side, Google Earth has a built-in flight simulator, but it's not nearly as full-featured as the one made by Microsoft. Combining the best of both could create something pretty neat.
The video below shows the vast quality difference between Google Earth and MS Flight Simulator X:
If you'd like more information about how to use the Google Earth Plug-in in a desktop application, this page should help. GEVision is expected to unveil some type of public release at Google I/O, so we're looking forward to seeing what comes out of it.
If you know of other neat projects coming at I/O, send me an email and let me know about it.
Posted by mickmel at 8:59 AM | Comments (5)
February 4, 2010
Some parts of the ocean are now high-resolution
We mentioned it briefly a few days ago, and Google has now released some of that new data for the ocean in Google Earth.
As Google explains in their blog, most of the underwater terrain is generated use satellite extrapolations of water surface height. This technique has allowed them to create the undersea terrain for most of the planet, but it's rather low-resolution.
However, a handful of organizations are able to collect high-resolution data using other techniques, and some of that data is now available in Google Earth. This data is collected using echosounding sonar from ships, and it much more detailed than the standard ocean terrain in Google Earth.
This new data has come from a variety of sources, including:
- The Center for Coastal and Ocean Mapping - Joint Hydrographic Center
- The Living Oceans Society
- The California State University at Monterey Bay
- Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute (MBARI)
Google has produced a short undersea tour to show off some of the new terrain. Download it
and check it out. They'll continue to add more data as time goes on, so the data and imagery will keep improving over time.
Posted by mickmel at 8:15 AM | Comments (1)
February 3, 2010
New updates to the historical imagery
A sharp-eyed reader ('Sladys') has pointed out that more historical imagery has been added to Google Earth. In particular, it seems that a lot of imagery from 1943 has been added to Germany, France and Italy.
Some of the specific cites found with updates so far include:
Germany: Hamburg, Augsburg, Nuremberg, Freiburg, Koblenz Dortmund, Lübeck, Kiel, Stuttgart, Wiesbaden, Mainz, Frankfurt/Main, Bonn, Cologne, Düsseldorf, Bamberg, Regensburg, Göttingen, Kehl, Magdeburg, Dessau, Leipzig, Dresden and more of Berlin.
France: Strasbourg, Bordeaux and Lyon.
Italy: Torino, Florence, Naples, Bologna, Rome.
Fresh historical can be difficult to find, as there's no good technique for searching out the new additions. You simply need to be familiar with the available imagery for a particular reason and recognize when new imagery becomes available.
Assuming this imagery is indeed fresh (which it seems to be, but we can't prove), Google will likely put out a blog post about it like they did for the new Berlin imagery back in November of last year. [UPDATE 4-Feb: Google has now posted about this imagery in two new blog entries: WWII historical imagery and Spotlight on Warsaw.]
To view any of the historical imagery in Google Earth, you can view this short guide that Frank created when the feature first arrived.
If you come across any other historical imagery that you think was recently added to Google Earth, leave a comment and let us know.
Posted by mickmel at 8:48 AM | Comments (17)
February 2, 2010
A Climate Change Tour of Cold Places
Over the past few years, The National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) has built some impressive Google Earth files, such as the Wilkins Ice Shelf Collapse.
They've now released a project titled "A Climate Change Tour of Cold Places", which was created as a collaboration with the University of Colorado at Boulder School of Education. The 12 minute tour is narrated, and features a variety of photos and videos along the way. They call it a "tour of the snowy and icy regions of the world covering sea ice, glaciers, ice shelves, and permafrost".
You can download the KML of the tour here. For details about the data behind the tour, they have a comprehensive data sheet available. For more information, simply visit their site.
Posted by mickmel at 9:18 AM | Comments (0)
February 1, 2010
Links: Offline Installer for Google Earth, Better Ocean Visualizations, Updates to 3D Warehouse and Building Maker
Offline installer for Google Earth: When you normally install Google Earth, it downloads a small file to your computer and then downloads the main package as part of the setup process. That's not a bad thing, but can be frustrating if you would like to save the installer for other use, such as installations on a few computers at once. This simple guide shows you how to do it.
Better Ocean Visualizations: [UPDATE: 3-Feb: Google now has an official post about this new data] Google and NOAA (the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) have teams up to help push more ocean data into Google Earth. According to Wired, The partnership will include porting more ocean depth, climate and other scientific data into Google Earth as well as providing online access to zoning and regulatory information near the coasts.
More information about this can be found on the NOAA News site.
Updates to the 3D Warehouse and Building Maker: Google has just pushed out a few nice updates to the 3D Warehouse and Building Maker that make them easier to use. In particular, rejected submissions to the 3D Warehouse get more informative messages (not just the generic "Processing Failed") and Building Maker submissions are automatically checked for "Incomplete Texturing" when you submit them, so you can correct the error immediately instead of having to wait for a message from the team.
Posted by mickmel at 6:27 AM | Comments (2)
January 29, 2010
Madrid is now in 3D
Madrid, Spain is now in 3D, it's quite impressive. According to Google, Madrid has the largest concentration of 3D models anywhere on the planet! If you see if for yourself, you'll see that it's true.
Through a combination of SketchUp and Building Maker submissions, Madrid has an amazing depth of coverage. Fly there yourself, or check out the video below for a quick tour.
No word on whether they've added additional cities or buildings, but I assume that various other user-submitted content was added to other areas of the world. If you see any of yours that just landed in Google Earth, leave a comment and let us know.
Posted by mickmel at 9:00 AM | Comments (1)
January 28, 2010
New Google Earth Imagery - January 28
Thanks to some sharp-eyed readers ('Alok' in particular), we find ourselves with fresh imagery in Google Earth!
[UPDATE 1-FEB -- The "updated areas" KML file is now available. Download it here.]
We know for sure that parts of India have been updated (Bhopal, in particular), but there's certainly many other areas as well. If you find any other updated regions, please leave a comment and let us know.
As always, you can use Google Maps to determine for sure whether or not a specific area is fresh. This new imagery isn't in Google Maps yet, so you can compare Earth vs. Maps to see what's new; the fresh imagery is already in Google Earth, but the old imagery is still in Google Maps. If you compare the two side-by-side and they're not identical, that means that you've found a freshly updated area in Google Earth! [UPDATE -- It seems that the new imagery is now in Maps too, so we'll have to wait for them to update the official KML to see what else is new]
We'll keep this post updated with the list of new areas, so let us know what you can find!
[UPDATED -- 28-Jan, 9:34pm EST]
- India: Bhopal (thanks 'Alok')
- New Zealand: Much of central-north Canterbury including Lyttelton, Rolleston, Rangiora, Amberly, Woodend, Darfield, Burnham - but excluding Christchurch (thanks 'railfan990')
- Mauritius: About 75% of the island was updated (thanks 'Thierry')
- Romania: Targu Mures (thanks 'Cristian')
- Russia: Part of Moscow (thanks 'RiderLT')
- United Kingdom: Large part of West Yorkshire, and some of North Yorkshire. Leeds/Bradford/Keighley/Skipton (thanks 'Jimmy_Lemon')
- United States: Cape Canaveral, FL (thanks 'Munden'), parts of California and Arizona (thanks 'Steven')
- Venezuela: Barcelona (thanks 'Snakeye')
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- This blog and its author are not an official source of information from Google that produces and owns Google Earth
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Posted by mickmel at 4:16 PM | Comments (43)
Google Earth on the iPad
By now, most of you have heard all about Apple's new iPad, their tablet computer. If you haven't yet, check out Apple's iPad page for some information, photos and videos. For us, the big question has been how well it'll handle Google Maps and Google Earth. Before we can answer that, though, we need to look at the hardware.
Unlike the latest iPhones, not all of the iPads have GPS built-in. They all include the digital compass and accelerometer, but only the 3G versions come with a GPS. It's assumed that Apple figured a GPS would be less useful if you didn't have a 3G connection, which I suppose is fair. However, I could use my Cradlepoint with it when I'm out and about, and others could use devices like the Verizon MiFi. Ultimately though, keeping the price at $499 for the basic model was a great decision, and removing GPS from the low end models certainly helped with that.
Speed-wise, everyone that has tested one says that it's noticeably faster than the iPhone 3GS. Because it runs "almost all" of the iPhone apps, we can assume that the Google Earth app will run on here, and run well. Google Earth 2.0 for the iPhone is excellent, and it should translate well to iPad.
The next question is whether or not Google will update Google Earth specifically for the iPad. While most iPhone apps will run without a problem, they need to be scaled up to fill the screen, resulting in a chunkier image. If they were to rewrite the app specifically for the iPad, they could make it look much sharper. A year ago, I would have been quite sure they'd do it. Now, with Google's push toward Android, it's hard to say. Will Google put in the effort to update Google Earth for the iPad, or will more of their focus shift to Android? If we find out anything one way or another, we'll be sure to let you know.
There had been speculation that Apple will be replacing Google Maps on the iPhone (and thus on the iPad) with their own system after the purchase of Placebase, but that's not the case -- at least not yet. Google Maps and StreetView look excellent on the iPad, but ultimately seem to be almost identical to the iPhone versions. Check out the video below for a quick look at it:
Without a doubt, Google Maps on the iPad looks to be a great experience. Here's another short video of Google Maps on there, with Apple's Phil Schiller demoing it. The speed and smoothness of the application is quite remarkable:
If you're lucky enough to get your hands on one in the near future, fire up Google Earth and let us know what you think of it. We'll update this post if we learn any information about Google's future plans for the iPad.
Posted by mickmel at 9:24 AM | Comments (5)
January 27, 2010
See the latest GeoEye imagery before it's added to Google Earth
Since the launch of the GeoEye-1 back in late 2008, the satellite has sent a ton of high resolution imagery to Google Earth. Some of their noteworthy imagery includes President Obama's Inauguration and the recent imagery of Haiti.
However, it's difficult for them to quickly post large amounts of new imagery. Frank wrote an extensive post about the process last year, and why it takes some time for new imagery to arrive in Google Earth.
Google receives hundreds of thousands of square kilometers of new imagery every day, and now they're pushing some of the more interesting sights to a special new layer titled "GeoEye Featured Imagery". You can either select the layer from the "More" folder in your layers, or simply download this KML to check it out.
This layer includes a lot of neat imagery including some big cities (Las Vegas, San Francicso), some neat features (Burning Man, Mt. Kilimanjaro) and lots more. What's your favorite find in this new imagery?
Posted by mickmel at 8:27 AM | Comments (0)
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