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May 14, 2007
Programmer Writes World's Biggest Hello World
An ambitious German programmer decided to write the world's biggest "Hello, World!" result. Those of you who are programmers know that writing your first code in a programming language usually involves writing a program to print out the words "Hello, World!". It's been a tradition for several decades now. This guy decided to show the words in a crop field so it would be visible in aerial photos. Only, he decided to do it in the form of a Semacode (a visual code - or bar code - for containing information). Semacodes are being used to share URL's for example which are machine readable. He found a crop field and mowed the crop such that the semacode was visible from the air. Then he took a picture of the field from an airplane. A machine could read this giant code and get the words "Hello, World!". You can read his description of the project, or visit his web site. Here is the image overlay showing the Hello World in Google Earth 
from his aerial photo. The resulting semacode is about 160 meters square, and his image overlay blends very well with the base imagery. Also, I recommend checking out his Flickr photo journal showing the project in progress.
Here are some other examples of interesting things found in Google Earth's aerial/satellite photos:
Big News: New Imagery June 2 | GE 4.1 Beta Released! | Google StreetView
Posted by FrankTaylor at May 14, 2007 08:02 AM
Comments
Posted by: Daniel at May 14, 2007 09:28 AM
This one is 470 x 60 meters from 2005:
http://www.magnalox.net/mlxlogdownload.php?fmt=KML&lid=10233
The same on Google Maps:
http://www.magnalox.net/log/no.php?fmt=g&lid=10233
Have fun
Posted by: volker at May 18, 2007 10:59 AM
That's quite amazing, I was thinking the same thing as Daniel..I mean in today's world this sort of thing could be used for advertising since theirs an active group/community of users looking out for things written out in fields and such that would be displayed on Google Maps. Can you imagine a coke ad or mcdonalds ad being carved or trimmed into a farm field - it would get major views and attention.
Posted by: Television Free at June 10, 2007 11:07 AM
wow,
love.2.have.that.as.my.room.wallpaper.
:)
Posted by: cj at June 10, 2007 04:09 PM
Man, some people have too much time!
Posted by: Allan at June 10, 2007 04:49 PM
I agree that HelloWorld program is the first program example in a book when you learn new language. However it is not a tradition for decades. Before 1990's usually first program output programmer's name on console. For instance PRINT "Patrick". That is true that old programmers have forgotten and young programmers even don't know.
Posted by: patrick at June 10, 2007 09:33 PM
My first project with every language is, always, write a hexadecimal dumper, not a stupid hello world!. Can you see the advantages?
Posted by: Santa Klaus at June 12, 2007 02:07 AM
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I loved the first comment left for the first picture at Flicker. "How long do you think before it shows up on Google Earth?"
I'd also love to know if it scans on screen - if anyone's got a code-reader handy it'd be an interesting little experiment.