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January 05, 2009

U-2 Spyplane Caught in Flight in Google Earth

Sometimes the satellite images Google acquires happen to capture some really unique sight. This one is really awesome for those of us who try to find planes captured in flight in Google Earth: A U-2 Spyplane flying over Kuwait! This one was found by plane aficionado 'Delta102' of the Google Earth Community. He's found many other planes in Google Earth, but this is one of the best. NOTE: the orange colored 'shadow' to the upper left is actually an artifact of the satellite cameras which is caused by the plane's motion. You see this in GE with planes and cars (the further away, the faster the object).

Other unique planes captured in flight:

• KC-135 Refueling C-5 Galaxy in Mid-Air
• Lancaster Bomber in Flight
• Two old planes close up
• Identifying planes in flight
• All planes in flight in Google Earth database

Posted by FrankTaylor at 08:31 AM | Comments (3)

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January 02, 2009

Links: UK Street View Spring?, Gaza Strip Map, Archeaology trip, iPhone GE tips

• UK Street View Spring? - According to this TechRadar post, Google will be releasing Street View in the UK this Spring. No official word on this. Thanks to a tip from GEB reader Jacob.

• Gaza Strip Map - Stefan at OgleEarth has taken a map produced by UNOSAT of the current Gaza Strip battle and overlayed it in Google Earth to add better context. You can view it in Google Earth here .

• Archaeology Trip - Stefan went on a special tour to archaeological sites not normally visited by foereigners in middle-Egypt. He used a GPS to track the entire trip and took lots of geotagged photos. He explains in detail the tools he used to create a Google Earth file sharing the entire trip.

• iPhone Google Earth Tips - Stefan continues comments on his archaeological trip by describing how he used the iPhone Google Earth application while examining the sites. One of the nice features of GE (including the iPhone version) is that it caches imagery. So, even though the sites had poor (or expensive) Inernet access, he simply loaded the imagery for each site the night before (while at hotels with free WIFI) and used iPhone GE while they visited the sites the next day. He also used the iPhone to take screenshots for certain views to speed up the ability to view (without having to load the app). Great tips!

Posted by FrankTaylor at 09:14 AM | Comments (6)

December 31, 2008

World Sunlight Map in Google Earth

Automatically updates every 30 minutes, real-time clouds, and disappears when you zoom in.

One of my goals in life has always been to see the Earth from space. That's why I've been fascinated with add-ons for Google Earth with let you overlay clouds or better-looking views of the Earth. I noticed Gerardo (who translates for the spanish version of Google Earth Blog) had found an automatically refreshing image which shows current day/night views of the Earth and adds in current real-time clouds of the Earth. The image comes from Die.Net. Gerardo created an image overlay for GE which showed that image and automatically refreshes (every 30 minutes).

I took this idea one step further and added some KML that makes the image automatically disappear as you zoom in closer. Load the resulting World Sunlight Map for Google Earth . This way, you can still see Google Earth's normal imagery, but keep the more realistic view available when you zoom out for a view from space! Save the file in your "My Places" folder and keep it turned on if you want this view always available.

The image shows both day/night sides of the Earth. The night side shows lights of cities as seen from space. Also, there is an overlay of current clouds (updated every three hours). The day shots are courtesy of NASA's Blue Marble Imagery. The night shots also come from NASA - the Earth's City Lights collection. The clouds come from xplanet and show the current clouds around the Earth updated every 3 hours.

The resulting combined image was composited together and is available at Die.Net.

Posted by FrankTaylor at 09:15 AM | Comments (3)

December 30, 2008

December Sailing Passage in Google Earth

Back in mid-December my wife and I sailed our new boat called Tahina down from Carolina Beach, North Carolina to St. Marys, Georgia. We're looking to get our boat south to warmer waters for the winter. My brother lives near St. Marys, so we decided to stop there first. By February, we will be down in Miami to attend the boat show and pick up some things for the boat.

The entire trip was recorded on my Garmin GPS, and we even remembered to take some photos.  I've now processed the GPS track and geotagged some of the photos.  I used GPSVisualizer to convert the GPS track into KML and to colorize the track according to our speed. If you look closely at our track in Google Earth, you can see how the boat would surge with the gusts of wind and the following seas (which were in the 6-8 foot range). You can also see we had a broad range of speeds, but mostly averaged above 8 knots. At the end of the trip, we motored into St. Marys Inlet with an outgoing tide - which reduced our speed by 2-3 knots. The route took us a little over 300 nautical miles which we completed in just over 1.5 days.

Below is a slideshow of photos showing parts of the trip down, and pictures from St. Marys, Georgia after we arrived. I used Google Picasa to add labels to the photos, and to geotag the photos using Google Earth. I then uploaded the photos to Picasa Web Albums which allowed me to get an embed code for the slidshow, and a link to share the photos by KML. In the photos, you can see St. Marys is on a river (called St. Marys) which is the border between Georgia and Florida. There's a large marsh just to the south of the town and the marina. St. Marys is a small southern town with nice little shops, a pretty park, old trees with spanish moss hanging from their branches, and very friendly people. Also at the end of the photo collection is a photo of our new dinghy (small boat - 12 ft - for getting around).

You can view the photos in Google Earth as well.

Related: Our plans for a circumnavigation, and getting Google to be our partner.

Posted by FrankTaylor at 08:04 AM | Comments (0)

December 29, 2008

New 3D Cities Roundup for Google Earth - December 2008

Earlier this month, I was so excited when I discovered that Google had released the huge update to show New York City in 3D - that I never reported on some other significant new additions to the 3D cities in Google Earth. There were some other notable additions made on or around December 17th to the Google Earth 3D Buildings layer. Some of the biggest additions were non-textured "gray" buildings. You can view the locations of the new 3D cities in this EarthSwoop collection, but you'll need to follow the "View in Google Earth" links for those cities with "gray" buildings because that layer is only visible inside Google Earth.

• New York City - nearly complete rendition of photo-realistic buildings. Thousands of buildings.

• Portland, Oregon - One of the first cities with "gray" non-textured buildings in GE. Now with photo-realistic textured buildings.

• Paris, France - Added by CyberCity 3D, gray non-textured buildings for Paris. These are detailed architectural models even if they don't have textures. Hopefully photo textures will be coming soon.

• LA Area Updates - CyberCity 3D also submitted "gray" buildings for a number of new beach cities in the Los Angeles area. Included are El Segundo and Long Beach.

• Sacremento, California - New detailed non-textured "gray" buildings fill in some gaps where there already many detailed photo-textured buildings. Again by Cyber City 3D

• Honolulu, Hawaii - Cyber City 3D added many "gray" non-textured buildings for Honolulu.

• Santa Monica, Ca - Mixture of new photo-realistic and non-textured buildings.

Here's the current list of other cities with substantial 3D buildings in Google Earth: The current list I have for other cities where Google has a substantial portion of the city modeled in photo-realistic 3D buildings: US: Los Angeles, San Diego, Chicago, Nashville, Philadelphia, San Diego, Minneapolis, Kansas City, St. Petersburg, Jacksonville, Clearwater, Miami, and Miami Beach, San Francisco, Baltimore, Raleigh, Atlanta, Charlotte, Boston, Orlando, Austin, St. Louis, Oakland, Dallas, Tampa, Memphis, Seattle, Pittsburgh, Sacremento, and Phoenix. Also, Zurich, Munich and Hamburg in Europe

Posted by FrankTaylor at 12:40 PM | Comments (5)

December 26, 2008

Links: Santa Tracker Popular, Volvo Ocean Race, Lost World Discovered, Cold War KML

• Santa Tracker Popular - The Google/NORAD Santa Tracker was yet again a huge hit. On Christmas Eve, GEB had about 50 thousand visitors searching for Santa and overall about 4X the normal amount of traffic. We had the tracker running for a few hours where I was visiting 4 of my younger nephews. I had a great time showing different types of GE content to them. But, the boys enjoyed playing with the Google Earth flight simulator the most.

• Volvo Ocean Race - The official site of the Volvo Ocean Race (a round-the-world sailboat race with multi-person crews in 70 mono-hulls capable of 30 knot speeds), has released a Google Earth file that lets you track the boats as they complete their journey. The GE Volvo Race tracker includes placemarks with links to pictures, stories, and videos.

• Lost World Discovered - In 2005, some scientists looked at aerial photography in Google Earth of a region of Mozambique in Africa which appeared to have undocumented forests. The scientists conducted some expeditions and discovered some pristine primeval forests with previously undiscovered wildlife and vegetation. Read more at the Guardian.

• Cold War KML - Stefan Geens discovers some really interesting cold war perspective Google Earth content. First there's a detailed analysis of current Russian air defense installations, and then there's a file which highlights the current condition of the former Berlin wall locations.

Posted by FrankTaylor at 09:55 AM | Comments (1)

December 24, 2008

Watch Santa Claus Make his Deliveries

It's Christmas Eve! Thanks to NORAD and Google you can watch Santa make his deliveries around the world. The best place to watch Santa is with Google Earth. If you haven't already, download Google Earth, then simply download the official santa tracker .

You can get more information about the santa tracker from the Norad Santa site, and there you will also find a Google Maps version of the tracker, or a version for your phone. Also, that site provides information in several different languages. Last night Google provided some information on the history of the Google Earth santa tracker in this post.

Read about other Santa Google Earth content here. And, have a Merry Christmas!

Don't forget that Google Earth Blog is the best place to learn about the amazing things you can do with Google Earth. Save Google Earth Blog in your bookmarks, or better yet, use the RSS feed.

Posted by FrankTaylor at 07:54 AM | Comments (12)

December 23, 2008

Happy Holidays from Google Earth Blog

It has been another great year for Google Earth, and Christmas is almost upon us. Make sure you check out the Google Earth Santa Tracker on December 24th. There is also some other Santa content for Google Earth. And, there's a cool iPhone Santa tracker available for free from Earthscape which is a Google Earth-like globe.

Best of wishes to all GEB readers for some happy holidays! Thanks to all of you for reading my blog and best wishes for a happy new year! Last year I developed a KML Happy Holidays greeting with some help from an artist named Stefan Lorimer. This year, you can view the same "greeting card" in your browser. Happy Holidays!

Posted by FrankTaylor at 09:05 AM | Comments (2)

December 22, 2008

Alps Ski Information Layer in Google Earth

Over the weekend (I think) Google released a new layer under the Gallery->Travel & Tourism layer folder called "Ski Resorts in the Alps". The new layer was done by BergFex which provides ski information and reservation services. The new layer contains maps, current ski/snow conditions, and links to further descriptions, prices, lodging, and weather. The new layer is best used when you also turn on the Skiing layer found under the Points of Interest layer folder. As mentioned last year, Google added detailed lift and gondola maps for the Alps in the Skiing layer. I wish the US skiing destinations had detailed skiing information in the layers like this. BergFex has just shown how you can effectively provide information and also justify the cost by turning the layer into a revenue stream through reservations and other online ski business.

Below is a screenshot example showing both layers in action. The new layer is just placemarks of each destination (the icons indicate the status of each resort), but the placemark descriptions contain the details.

Posted by FrankTaylor at 09:05 AM | Comments (1)

December 21, 2008

The Year 2008 in Google Earth

Google Earth had a great year in 2008 thanks to its continued growth in popularity, new features, and an enormous growth in new content both from Google and the people who use Google Earth. According to Google there have been over 400 Million unique installations of Google Earth since it was released in 2005. There were 8 major updates to Google Earth imagery in 2008. The Panoramio photo layer grew by millions of photos thanks to people all over the world. From a broader perspective, Google also put a great deal of effort into expanding and blending technology for both Google Earth and Google Maps. There's a Google Maps version of Sky, Street View works in Google Earth, Google Earth can now be viewed in a browser along side Google Maps, Google Earth is available on the iPhone, Google Maps gets several layers from Earth, and the list goes on. Also, Google's 3D Warehouse grew in size (with millions of new models added), and many new features (Street View, more social networking features, plugin support, and more). And let's not forget the Google Earth file format - KML became a standard.

Read below the fold for a summary of highlighted news and content for Google Earth from 2008 (see also a similar summary from Google Maps Mania):

Continue reading "The Year 2008 in Google Earth"

Posted by FrankTaylor at 11:33 AM | Comments (2)

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