See "Archives" for more. | Main | Next 10»

November 02, 2008

New York City Marathon 2008 in Google Earth

Since today is the ING New York City Marathon, some of you may want to follow along in Google Earth. First, we have a map of the route which comes from MapMyRun.com. If you turn on the 3D Buildings layer you will see many of the buildings of New York, and even the bigger bridges mapped in 3D.

In addition, someone has created a "3D driving simulator" which lets you find shortcuts for the New York Marathon. Better yet, it lets you drive a truck around the Marathon course using the Google Earth plugin. You use the Google Maps window to approximate the route of the marathon, and then drive the little truck in the plugin complete with the 3D buildings. (NOTE: The GE plugin is currently only available in Windows). This simulator is courtesy of the driving simulator demo from the Google Earth plugin gallery. via GoogleMapsMania

Posted by FrankTaylor at 09:34 AM | Comments (0)

November 01, 2008

The Ultimate Where's Wally on Google Earth

Borders Books UK teams up with Google Earth, media partner the Daily Telegraph, and Walker Books to take Wally to his biggest game ever. (NOTE: Wally is known as "Where's Waldo?" in North America.) Starting on Monday, November 3rd, the competition will be launched to find Wally in Google Earth.

The competition can be entered online only at borders.co.uk/whereswally. To win, fans will have to follow a series of daily clues to find Wally, hidden on Google Earth in seven different locations across the globe. The first daily clue will appear exclusively in the Daily Telegraph on Monday 3rd November and then a new clue will appear on borders.co.uk/whereswally each day for the following six days.

Anyone who finds Wally's location on any individual day will be entered into a prize draw to win loads of Wally's merchandise. Anyone who finds all seven secret locations on Google Earth will then need to enter all the longitude and latitude references on the Borders website to get to the final round. The winner, drawn at random, will win a fantastic holiday to Wally's secret final destination.

The competition will run from 3rd-9th November only, so get those bobble hats on, don those red and white stripes, and start searching for Wally now.

See the full press release for more details.

It will be interesting to see how the search will be implemented. In past contests, KML network links were used to bring up "hidden" locations and puzzles at select times. The problem is that KML knowledgeable people can generally find the locations pretty easy this way. However, it is possible - if Google cooperates - to hide images in the base imagery of Google Earth. This would make the hunting a bit more challenging. Another way would be to include Wally inside 3D buildings as was done by one modeler seen here.

Related:

• Mazda CX-7 contest - had clues and hidden locations. Well done.
• Fiat Sedici Contest for Torino Olympics - This one just had you pick a spot which was randomly selected as the winner.
• Vancouver Artist Puts Waldo on a Roof

Posted by FrankTaylor at 08:20 AM | Comments (3)

October 31, 2008

Location of Steve Fossett Remains Reportedly Found

[UPDATE 3-November: The bones found at the location shown below have been DNA tested and confirmed to be those of Steve Fossett. See CNN story.]

Following up on the story of the location of Steve Fossett's plane wreck, today Sheriff's in California have reported they believe they have found Steve Fossett's remains. The adventurer Steve Fossett was reported missing after leaving in a small plane on Labor Day in 2007, but no sign was found of him until over a year later. Today they reported they found his driver's license, another 100 dollar bill, shoes, and some bones. The shoes had signs of animal bites which leads them to suspect the body was dragged to the new location about 1/2 mile from the crash site. The sheriff showed the location on a topographical map which I saw at CNN here. I had already overlayed a similar topo map when first locating the crash site a month ago. Here is a view in Google Earth of all the reported finds including the new items and remains. You will see the location of the plane crash site, other items found a month ago, topo map overlays showing the terrain (which you can also see by tilting your view in Google Earth), and the location of the new items and remains found.

Posted by FrankTaylor at 08:58 AM | Comments (1)

Google Earth as Giant 3D Pumpkin

Happy Halloween! I still get a kick out of building the world's largest 3D pumpkin. To turn your Google Earth into a pumpkin download here . Make sure you turn off the "View->Atmosphere" menu toggle and zoom out for the full effect. Look at the bottom of the pumpkin for some credits. To get your Earth back, simply turn off the PumpkinEarth placemark.

Here are a few tips on how to do this kind of thing yourself. Start by creating an image with a 2 to 1 ratio (2048 x 1024 in this case) and paint the pumpkin using a paint program (Gimp is what I used). Then select "Add->Image Overlay" in GE and give it the location of the image. Select the "Location" tab and set North, South, East, West to 90, -90, 180, -180 respectively (this overlays the image so it covers the Earth). The finishing touch in this case was to create a 3D model of the stem - the free Google SketchUp is the quickest way to do that.

Happy Halloween!

Posted by FrankTaylor at 07:32 AM | Comments (4)

October 30, 2008

Google Street View Italy Released - October 29th

I've been traveling this evening, or I would have reported sooner: Quick on the heels of France and Spain, now Italy gets some Street View coverage as well. Included locations are: Milan, Florence, Rome and Lake Como. That's essentially three new countries to get notable Street View coverage in two weeks. Reports came in from Google Maps Mania, Digital Earth Blog and Google Blogoscoped, and I got an E-mail from GEB reader 'Munden' as well.

Here's a shot of the Colliseum to start you on your tour of Italy:

View Larger Map

Don't forget, you can see full 3D panoramas of each Street View image inside Google Earth. Here are some tips on using Street View in Google Earth.

So, which country do you think will be next? Already we have: US, Japan, Australia, France, Italy, and Spain. The UK is a highly anticipated one, but other countries have reported seeing the Google cars which take the pictures...

Posted by FrankTaylor at 12:42 AM | Comments (10)

October 29, 2008

WikiSailing - Flying/Sailing Sightseeing Tours in Google Earth

Google Maps Mania pointed me to WikiSailing - the english/french wiki has lots of interesting sailing information. They have information about anchorages, dive sites, windsurfing locations, parks, and more. They also have a section to be devoted to showing sailing trips. But, what is really interesting is that they have started developing a Google Earth Plugin application to give tours of sailing destinations. These tours simulate an airplane or sailboat moving along a track around the destination you select. There are a few sightseeing examples with the simulated tours on their main page. Check out the Sydney Tour for example. You start out with an airplane, select the "Run/Pause" button in the lower left and you will immediately start flying around Sydney (assuming you have the GE plugin installed). You can adjust the speed, zoom level (how close to the plane your view is), and which direction relative to the plane you view.

The application still has some rough edges. The sailboat mode is a little jerky even if you speed up the simulation speed. And, the sailboat follows the same path as the plane - including going over the ground - oops. Also, you can view from behind, left, or right. But, the view from the front doesn't seem to work. But, I think this is an excellent idea which makes viewing locations more dynamic without requiring someone to take control of the flight/tour themselves. Although, it would be nice if you could also fly yourself! A GEB reader pointed out to me you can select "Manual" instead of "Teleport" and then you can fly it yourself using the cursor keys!

Posted by FrankTaylor at 08:10 AM | Comments (3)

October 28, 2008

Google Earth-based Virtual Alabama Wins GCN Award

The Virtual Alabama project is a statewide tool designed to provide data and search capability to state officials on a massive scale. They chose Google Earth as the primary visualization tool allowing them to deliver, on an internally maintained server, imagery, emergency responder information, GIS data, and more all on one platform. The Government Computer News publication has awarded 10 government agencies, including Virtual Alabama, with their annual award for the best of 2008 teams. Read the excellent summary of the Virtual Alabama project at the Google Earth case study file.

Related: Governor of Alabama Unveils Google Earth Application

Posted by FrankTaylor at 06:55 AM | Comments (0)

October 27, 2008

Street View for Spain now live in Google Earth/Maps

As expected, after the rumors started last week, Google has pushed out Street View imagery in Spain. The available cities are: Madrid, Barcelona, Valencia and Sevilla. Thanks to GEB reader Laurent for being the first to send me the tip that it was live.

Just to whet your appetite, here is a Street View of the Palacio de Comunicaciones in Madrid:

View Larger Map

You can view Street View in either Google Maps, or in Google Earth. Here are some tips on seeing the full 3D Street View imagery in Google Earth. You can now view Street View in the US, Australia, Japan, France, and Spain.

I've been traveling today - and am currently in Key Largo, Florida for a technology demonstration I'll be writing about sometime soon. It's not directly Google Earth related, so don't expect too much in that direction. But, it is related to my sailing trip.

Posted by FrankTaylor at 06:52 PM | Comments (4)

October 26, 2008

Google Earth for the iPhone Released!

At long last, Google is releasing Google Earth for the iPhone (and iTouch) tonight (Sunday)! I've been expecting this to happen for months. Especially after I saw another Google Earth-like application on the iPhone back in May. Apparently some folks in Australia were first to downloaded Google Earth for the iPhone. CNET has an initial review - and it looks fantastic. I quickly managed to download it - see my updated review below (this app is awesome!). You can click here to download GE for the iPhone from the iTunes app store - it's free of course. Or you can search the app store from your iPhone. Here is Google's announcement video which shows the app in action:

And, here is a screenshot (form CNET):

I've had a while now to play with GE for the iPhone. Here is my initial review (quick summary: I'm really impressed!):

1. Looks just like Google Earth when it first comes up. Zooming in with the usual touch motion on the iPhone works just like expected. And, at least on my home WIFI, the speed loading imagery is quite good. Much closer to the normal GE than I expected. In fact, I estimate on my non-3G iPhone I'm getting about 5-7 frames per second update rates zoomed out, and over 10 fps zoomed in closer. Quite good! You definitely feel like you're using Google Earth.

2. If you enable "Autotilt" by selecting the preference window (the "i" icon in the lower right) when you lift up your phone vertically the horizon will tilt into view. If you go to somewhere with mountains or other terrain you'll see it in 3D just like in the normal GE.

3. Google includes the Panoramio and Wikipedia layers under the "Geographic Web" by default. Click on a blue photo icon when you see one, and it will load the Panoramio photo for that location. hit the "Earth" button at the top of the photo to return back to GE. If you don't want the icons, or want to get a little speed increase, then turn these off in the preference window.

4. You also have layers for borders and labels (city names, country names, etc.) which you can also turn off if you don't need them.

5. AMAZING - they even support off-line mode just like the desktop GE! If you have no connection, GE will prompt you and let you "continue without network" and will work off your cache. So, if you've previously viewed places, you can go back there and still see them with no Internet connection! To test this, you can just put your iPhone in "Airplane" mode (to turn off wireless connections) and then re-start the iPhone GE application.

6. Tilt your iPhone horizontally for a wider view.

7. The upper left "magnifying glass" let's you do a search. This works just like with the normal GE and let's you search for places, airport codes, or you can enter lat/long coordinates. I'm very pleased with how it zooms just like the normal GE to each location.

8. The lower left icon is the "locate me" button which will fly you to your current location (using the iPhone location feature).

9. With this release, there are just the 4 layers mentioned above. You also can not load up other KML files or save your own placemarks at this point. But, I'm sure other features will come in future releases.

10. The "Help" window is found in the preferences window (or here on the web) and gives tips on the interface. If you use two fingers you can do things like twist your view, tilt the horizon (by dragging two fingers up/down), if you double-tap two fingers you zoom out, double-tap one finger zooms in. The finger interfaces are very intuitive.

Overall I'm very impressed with Google Earth for the iPhone. I'm thrilled I'll be able to take it with me wherever I go. However, I'm sure performance will be a much slower when I'm on the Edge network instead of with a WIFI connection. All you GE fans with an iPhone - go out there and download it now!

[UPDATE: Here is Google's announcement of GE for the iPhone.]

Posted by FrankTaylor at 11:13 PM | Comments (15)

October 25, 2008

Street View for Spain Arriving by Tuesday

A message sent out last week by E-mail to the press has stirred the anticipation of Street View imagery coming to Spain. The E-mail was posted on a Spanish blog called Blog Urbanismo and says there will be a press announcement on Tuesday, October 28th, about the release of Street View imagery for Spain. I'll be keeping a close eye on both Google Earth and Maps for the impending release (which usually happens several hours before Google makes a press announcement).

While you're waiting, you might want to check out the new Street View imagery in France released on the 14th of October.

Posted by FrankTaylor at 04:41 PM | Comments (6)

See "Archives" for more. | Main | Next 10»