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June 29, 2007

June Layers Additions/Updates for Google Earth

Earlier this week Google added new layers and updated layers to Google Earth. I mentioned various parts of the updates in several posts during the last few days. But, I thought it would be more convenient to summarize the updates in one post. Not only that, but there was at least one update I missed entirely:

• New Global Awareness Layers - Google added three new layers which have been highlighted in the Global Awareness layer. The layers were timed for release with the new Google Earth Outreach program - a fantastic program to help non-profits leverage Google Earth to support their causes (see my notes on the announcement). The new layers are: Global Heritage Fund, Earthwatch Expeditions, and Fair Trade Certified. Read more about these new layers.

• New Road Layers - The following countries now have new detailed roads in the "Roads" layer: Sweden, Slovakia, Croatia, and Slovenia. At least Sweden also has driving directions and local business search. Sweden was just added to Google Maps earlier this month.

• Geographic Web - The Geographic Web layer was substantially changed. First, they took away the ability to turn on/off each of the three sub-layers individually (Panoramio, Wikipedia, and Best of GEC - see original announcement). In addition, from higher altitudes you now just see very small round icons for each layer (Panoramio is blue, Wikipedia are kind of purple, and the GEC layer is tan). When you zoom in closer, the icons are replaced by easier to distinguish icons. Some people like, and some don't the new changes. The Panoramio layer of photos now has 200,000 more photos than the last update making it a total of 1.2 million photos visible in Google Earth.

I've asked Google for a more accurate list of changes made in the layer update. I'll update this post if there were other significant additions/changes.

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June 28, 2007

Google Earth Outreach Announcement Video

You can now watch the video Google recorded of the announcement of the new Google Earth Outreach program which was done at the New York City Google Earth office on Tuesday:

I especially enjoyed the part where Jane Goodall was speaking to us via satellite and especially when she shared the chimpanzee greeting to us all. You can read my notes from the announcement here. Also, I recommend you read the official Google blog post about the new Outreach program by its new manager Rebecca Moore.

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June 27, 2007

Google Earth/Maps Is Changing the Way We See the World

An article by Wired Magazine had a slightly different title, but the title really should have included Google Earth: "Google Maps Is Changing the Way We See the World". This article is a good summary of how Google Maps and Google Earth have had a significant impact in many ways on individuals, organizations, governments, politics, the environment and many other perspectives. It covers topics such as censorship, KML standardization, StreetView privacy issues, mapping politics, and user-generated maps. The article is definitely worth a read, but I especially like the photo of John Hanke playing the part of Atlas with the world on his shoulders. I bet he really feels like that sometimes. :-)

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New Picasa Web Albums Integration with Google Earth/Maps

Google has announced new capabilities with Picasa Web Albums allowing even more capabilities to map your photos. A year ago, Google implemented a means for geotagging your photos from Picasa in Google Earth and then uploading them to Picasa Web Albums. You can also view the photos within Google Earth. Now, Google has added an ability to take photos already in your Photo Album and map them using Google Maps. You can then view the photos in Google Maps and even watch a slideshow of the photos within Google Maps or Google Earth. This adds some powerful ways to show photos you've taken somewhere on Earth.

Here is an example test gallery of photos from Las Vegas shown in Google Maps at Picasa Web Albums. You can view the same test gallery in Google Earth by simply clicking on the "View in Google Earth" link in the upper right. Google has also announced a Picasa Web Albums for mobile so you can view your photos on your phone. And, if you don't already know, you can also easily embed your photos from Picasa Web Albums by viewing an album and choosing "Embed Slideshow" from the choices on the left. Here's the test gallery as an embedded slideshow:

Here is another example of photos I took during the Wirefly X PRIZE Cup event last fall. It's better if you zoom in a bit and turn on "Satellite" view in the map to see these photos. The underlying aerial photos in Google Maps of the area are photos I took from my plane during the event and Google later put into their base imagery.

[UPDATE 1240 ET: GEB reader Rens from the Netherlands wrote me to say that the map view doesn't work on some different language versions of PicasaWeb. He says you need to go to "Settings" and under "language preference" select "English (US)" to make make the map feature work. Rens even shares a photo album which he has now mapped of a trip by motor bike.]

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Notes from the Google Earth Outreach Announcement in NYC

Yesterday I was invited to Google's New York City office to attend the Google Earth Outreach announcement. The details on the event I blogged about yesterday were based on the press release (and written before the event). Today I wanted to share my personal observations and thoughts because I think Google Earth Outreach is an important new initiative. The bulk of the attendees at this event were not the press, but in fact, Google mostly non-profit organizations who have been working, or will be working, with Google's new program.

Here is a slideshow of a few pictures from the event. You can also view the photos in Google Earth or Maps (note, this is a new capability I will write about later):

John Hanke, Director of Google Earth and Maps at Google, was one of the founders of Keyhole - the company which Google bought which produced the application which became Google Earth. John made the announcement about the new Outreach program. He said it wasn't long after Google Earth was released that non-profit organizations started developing powerful visualizations with the application. Google people helped a number of these organizations with their noble causes, mostly with their 20 percent time and this work has been inspirational for many members of the Google Earth team. Many of the non-profit organizations needed technical help in order to make the best presentation with Google Earth possible. The resulting layers like Crisis in Darfur, Mountaintop removal, and the UNEP environmental layer, have been significantly successful - not only interesting and important content, but actually resulting in drawing significant world-wide attention to these issues. This is why Google has decided to not just informally help non-profit organizations, but have now set up an official organization of dedicated people, technical resources, and more available to non-profit organizatins to leverage Google Earth for their causes. That is what Google Earth Outreach is about. He then described the many useful resources they have made available at the new web site including showcases of other efforts, case studies on the process of development, and video tutorials on how to create powerful KML presentations.

Rebecca Moore of Google, who has been running the team who manages the layers in Google Earth, has passionately devoted her 20 percent time to these non-profit efforts. Her efforts and the results are a substantial part of the reason Google decided to create the Google Earth Outreach program, and Rebecca is now the enthusiastic new team leader of Google Earth Outreach. Congratulations to Rebecca in her new role! Oh, and here is an official Google Blog post by Rebecca on Outreach.

After John made the announcement, several representatives of non-profit organizations who are part of the new program shared their views. First up was Jane Goodall who is world renowned for her study of the chimpanzee social and family life at the Gombe Stream National Park in Tanzania. Unfortunately, she was only able to attend the Outreach announcement by video conferencing. She is a very engaging personality which was almost immediately demonstrated at the start. John Hanke was rapidly reading Jane's lengthy bio of her many accomplishments, and on the screen behind him she started making funny faces demonstrating her boredom with the introduction. :-) More importantly, she enthusiastically described the positive experience she and her team has had working with Google to create the Gombe Chimpanzee Google Earth layer. She told the audience how she showed the content to the President of Tanzania and believes it substantially influenced him to implement new laws to help protect the water resources of the Gombe Stream National Park. Jane Goodall said: "The entire relationship with Google Earth has been exciting, stimulating, and we have been thrilled to be involved. I think the Google Earth Outreach program is really wonderful and will be helpful to many organizations."

Next, Kathy Buskin Calvin - Executive Vice President of the UN Foundation spoke. She said they were very happy with their partnership with Google, Google Earth, and Google.org. She went on to describe the UNEP environmental layer, and how it has helped raise awareness not only to the issues of the environment, but that Google Earth can be a powerful tool for the UN organization to utilize. Without making specific announcements she told the audience more layers from the UN are under development.

Next, Edward Wilson - President and CEO, Earthwatch Institute spoke. He not only showed the new Earthwatch layer (released under the Global Awareness layer yesterday), but described why using Google Earth can help non-profit organizations. He said it can help people see the problems, help share the information needed to do something about the problems, and provide access to the projects set up to take steps to solve them. He made the point that without something like these Google Earth layers, many people would not get the unique perspective of how fragile and small our planet is and how these problems can effect so many people and places.

In the discussions afterwards, Jane Goodall made an impassioned plea that if we all focused first on our local problems and helped spread the enthusiasm and results with others, it wouldn't take long for the entire world's problems to start getting attention. She sees the Outreach program as an effective way to help spread the enthusiasm and information.

After the presentation, we of course were treated to wonderful catering of food by Google. The table and chairs in the room were carefully selected by the Googlers to represent environmental awareness with bamboo chairs, and earth globe candy in the middle. We then all had a while to mingle and meet representatives from the many non-profit organizations in attendance and the many Googlers who have been working on Outreach.

It was a pleasure meeting up again with people I had met two weeks ago at the International Symposium on Digital Earth including: Dr. Tim Foresman (the man substantially behind ISDE), Mary Anne Hitt (of Appalacian Voices - Mountaintop removal), Michael Graham (of the Crisis in Darfur layer), and Keene Haywood (of National Geographic, who worked on the Ivory Wars layer).

I enjoyed meeting Michael Fay who was the journalist that took the National Geographic Megaflyover images (one of my favorite all-time layers in Google Earth), and who also wrote the Ivory Wars story earlier this year. Sitting next to me at lunch was Phil Verney and Jim Cristol (aka Jumble) who are both moderators of the Google Earth Community.

On the Google side, I met Mark Aubin - one of the other founders of Keyhole, and an active supporter of the Outreach project. There were many other members of the Google Earth team, who I had the pleasure of meeting, many of which flew from Mountain View just for this event. Although there were also team members from Google Maps at the NYC office. They had all worked long and hard to prepare for the announcement, and yet were bright eyed and enthusiastic for the event. It was also good to see again John Hanke, Rebecca Moore, and Megan Quinn (who handles Google Earth public affairs).

I just want to say I think the Google Earth Outreach program is significant, and I hope non-profit organizations who have important issues and a need for geospatial visualization, will take advantage of the program. Google also recently made an announcement about the completion of their Solar Energy project and their plug-in hybrid electric car project. These kinds of programs are pretty hard to say anything bad about. Great work Google!

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June 26, 2007

Google Earth Layer Changes - Geographic Web, Roads Layers

Just discovered that the Geographic Web layer has now been made into a single layer (instead of three sub-layers). The layer still contains the Wikipedia placemarks, the Panoramio photo layer, and the Best of Google Earth Community placemarks. But, they are now represented by smaller colored icons. Panoramio is blue, Wikipedia are kind of purple, and the GEC layer is tan. Also, when you zoom in closer, the Panoramio icons turn into little camera icons to let you know they are photos.

Also, new detailed roads are now available for Slovakia, Croatia, and Slovenia. And I believe Hungary was updated.

Related: Original announcement for Geographic Web layer - more details about the content.

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Introducing Google Earth Outreach - New Global Awareness Layers

Today Google has announced a new initiative called Google Earth Outreach designed to help nonprofit organizations around the world leverage the power of Google Earth to illustrate and advocate for the important work that they do. The announcement was made at the New York City Google office by Elliot Schrage, Google Vice President for Global Communications & Public Affairs, and John Hanke, Director of Google Earth & Maps. The initial Outreach partners include: Jane Goodall, Founder, the Jane Goodall Institute; Kathy Bushkin Calvin, Executive Vice President, United Nations Foundation; and Edward Wilson, President and CEO, Earthwatch.

Google Earth Outreach enables any organization to quickly and easily get the resources it needs to create compelling stories through Google Earth layers. The program includes comprehensive online guides, video tutorials, and case studies about using Google Earth specifically targeted to the needs of nonprofit organizations. In addition, there are online forums connecting new participants to Global Awareness partners and experienced programmers who can assist in developing Keyhole Markup Language (KML) layers for Google Earth. These forums, actively moderated by Google Earth Outreach staff, serve to foster discussion and cooperation among organizations and the broader Google Earth community. More information is available from the new Google Earth Outreach web page.

Jane Goodall has already leveraged Google Earth for the Jane Goodall Institute's pioneering geoblog called the Gombe Chimpanzee Blog. The blog documents the activities at the Gombe Stream Research Center in Tanzania, site of the longest-running field study of wild chimpanzee. Every post at the blog is geotagged and viewable through Google Earth - as well as other helpful information about the site. Google began highlighting the Chimpanzee layer as a "Featured Content" layer last fall. Being featured in this way draws a lot of attention because of the huge world-wide audience available with over 200 million people having installed Google Earth. This kind of exposure helps any organization get more attention for their efforts.

Other example non-profit layers along these lines have included the Crisis in Darfur layer, the UNEP environmental layer, the Mountaintop removal memorial, the World Wildlife Fund, and several others.

As part of today's Google Earth Outreach announcement, Google also published three new Global Awareness layers from their new Outreach partners (open the Global Awareness layer under the Layers pane on the lower left inside Google Earth). Here are the details about the new layers from today's press release:

• Global Heritage Fund (GHF) - The GHF Global Awareness layer explores cultural heritage sites around the world that GHF is working to preserve for future generations. From ancient Mayan Mirador pyramids buried in Guatemalan forests threatened by clear cutting to the crumbling Lijiang Ancient Town in China, GHF takes users to these endangered archaeological treasures of human civilization and details the efforts to save them in partnership with local governments and resources.

• Earthwatch Expeditions – The Earthwatch Global Awareness layer enables users to virtually visit more than 100 volunteer Earthwatch expeditions in Google Earth— from recording the activities of lemurs in Madagascar to determining the impact of climate change on grey whale populations in Mexico and Canada. Enthusiasts and would-be volunteers can explore scientific field research projects in progress around the world and learn how they can help collect field data in the areas of rainforest ecology, wildlife conservation, marine science, archaeology, and more.

• Fair Trade Certified - The TransFair USA layer introduces users to the over 70 Fair Trade Co-ops located throughout Latin America, Asia and Africa. Fair trade is an innovative market-based approach to sustainable development that helps family farmers in developing countries gain direct access to markets and develop the business capacity necessary to compete in the global marketplace.

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Google Earth Gallery Enhanced

Google has made some enhancements to the Google Earth Gallery. The gallery enables Google to share unique KML files which highlight the many capabilities of Google Earth. On the Google Earth Gallery page there is now a button called "Explore the archive" which lets you find several new KML files from a variety of organizations and individuals. These are all notable collections of data, many of which have been written about here at GEB. There are also some new stuff I haven't seen before, more on this a little later today.

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June 25, 2007

Google Adds Mapping to YouTube - What does it mean?

Google has added an important new feature when you upload a video to YouTube. You now have the ability to give coordinates for the associated video - you can give lat/long coordinates or you can point the location out on a Google Maps map. Thanks to OgleEarth for bringing this to my attention. Here's what it looks like:

The brief mention on the new feature in the YouTube blog doesn't tell us anything about what they've planned for this new capability. But, given the ability of Google Maps to show video clips inside placemark descriptions, it can't be that long before they have an ability to show YouTube videos based on location in Google Maps. In fact, I'm sure they are somehow creating KML files associated with the locations of the videos and will be able to show videos tied to a search for a location. There will be even more possibilities when they can have a KML network link to show video locations in either Google Earth or Google Maps. Having an ability to access YouTube videos which are geotagged with an API would be really nice. And, hopefully they will allow people to add location to existing YouTube videos.

However, Google Earth can't currently show videos inside placemark descriptions. And Google Maps doesn't yet officially support KML network links. I expect both of these problems to go away soon. Actually, I believe that Google will soon release a version of Google Earth which runs as a browser plug-in. It's the obvious thing to do so they can have even tighter integration between Google Maps and Earth and better support of KML. And, it would easily enable implementation of embedded videos in the placemark descriptions since Javascript support will be part of the browser (just like with Maps). Microsoft already supports a plug in with their Virtual Earth 3D version - it runs inside either IE or Firefox on Windows. I hope Google will offer a browser plug-in version as an option (and supports Mac OSX and Linux too) and still keeps the separate application as well though. I believe you can achieve better performance as a separate application.

Anyway, I think it is great Google is starting to support geo-tagging of YouTube videos. This is another step towards the "Geoweb" - adding geospatial context to all forms of content on the web.

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Google Earth Sky - Part II

[NOTE 22-August: this article is NOT about the new Google Earth 4.2 "Sky" feature which shows the view of the stars and galaxies of space. It is about a feature someone created for making clouds in the sky of Earth. Read this story about the new night sky feature of GE 4.2.]

Yesterday we explored the nifty simple 3D model James published at his Barnabu blog for adding a sky with clouds over any spot in Google Earth to enhance realism. James had published a 3D model, which he calls a "skydome", for use with the free Google SketchUp, which I then output to Google Earth. Now James has taken this to the next step, and made the skydome even more useful. He created a simple network link which will capture your current view and allow you to place the skydome model at that location. He also increased the scale so the dome is 50 miles in diameter so you can move around in the area and still have the sky around you. The screenshot shown here is of the Grand Canyon with clouds. (The new high-resolution terrain for the Grand Canyon is awesome).

Here are some tips on how to use the skydome network link:

1. Go to a place you want the sky. It's best if you are looking straight down. Then download the skydome network link (230 Kbytes)
2. If you tilt your view, you should now see the sky with clouds. If you don't have a SpaceNavigator, you can use the built-in Google Earth G-Force mode (Ctrl-G) to allow you to look up in Google Earth (read this article for some tips on G-Force mode - this is not an easy mode if you're not used to flight simulators). Note: to get back to normal viewing mode hit "Ctrl-T".
3. Go to another location in Google Earth - again, make sure you are looking down.
4. Select the Skydome network link with the right mouse button and choose "Refresh". This refreshes the network link which grabs your current coordinates and moves the dome model over the new location.
5. You can move (or cut and paste) your skydome network link to your "My Places" folder to keep this handy for future use. Just turn it off when you're not using it.

I've already suggested to James the next logical extension for the skydome - a night sky. The trick will be to make the ground also look like night - possibly a dark transparent image overlay. And then you'd have to do custom 3D buildings with night colors as well. But, it should give James something else to innovate for Google Earth. Nice job on the skydome James!

Related:

• How to add sky to Google Earth - Part I
• Global Clouds with Altitude
• Real-time Global Clouds
• Blue Marble Add-on - with Global Clouds

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June 24, 2007

How to Add a Sky to Google Earth

James Stafford, better known at the Google Earth Community as "Barnabu", has written a cool post on creating a 3D sky for Google Earth at the Barnabu blog. He calls it a "skydome". He basically created a half-sphere (or hemisphere) using Google SketchUp, and then adds a properly projected sky full of clouds to the inside of the 3D model. He took one of his 3D models, the Turning Torso building, and created a video showing how it looks inside SketchUp. Watch it here:

I took this one step further. I loaded his Turning Torso building , and then loaded his example skydome in SketchUp. Then, I imported my current view from Google Earth (simply select "Tools->Google Earth->Get Current View"). Next I simply outputted the skydome back to Google Earth (by selecting "Tools->Google Earth->Place Model"). Note: there are also two icons in the tool bar of SketchUp which make this easy.

[UPDATE June 25: Check out the GE Sky Part II for an even better solution.]

You can see the results by loading this skydome model which will show the sky model and, if you already loaded it, the Turning Torso building inside Google Earth. Only now you have a sky around the building. You can edit the properties inside Google Earth of the skydome "Model" and drag and move your sky to a new location. You can even change the size as well. You can look up at the sky if you have a SpaceNavigator. The Barnabu's story explains how you can add different sky images to the dome using SketchUp. Thanks Barnabu!

Other cool things by 'barnabu':

• Bouncing Earth
• Turning Torso Building
• Jupiter Clouds in Motion
• Animating Building Growth in London
• Google Saturn
• Kings College Chapel in Cambridge
• MI6 Headquarters

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June 22, 2007

News Roundup: Google Earth Nonproifts Initiative, Giant Earth Screen, Pollmapr, Conferences,

• Google Earth Nonprofits Initiative - On Tuesday, June 26th, I'm going to Google's New York office. Google sent out invitations two days ago to the press for an announcement about a new program created especially for nonprofit organizations around the world. The Nonprofit Technology Network reported on the invitation they received. The only details released right now are the speakers: John Hanke, Director Google Earth; Jane Goodall, Jane Goodall Institute; Kathy Bushkin Calvin, United Nations Foundation; Edward Wilson, Earthwatch Institute; and Elliot Schrage, Google Public Affairs.

• 

  Giant Earth Screen - Apple displayed Google Earth on a giant video wall using eighteen 30-inch Apple high-resolution screens. Apparently one Mac Pro was used for each of two screens. I wish I could have seen this myself! It was demoed at the 2007 Apple World-wide Developer Conference. via OgleEarth.

• Pollmapr - Free Geography Tools reports on a new free site which lets you set up polls. What's interesting is that the service includes the ability record the result of the locations where pollsters came from using the IP address to look up city/country locations. Pollmapr then provides a KML file so you can view the results in Google Maps or Google Earth.

• Conferences - Upcoming virtual worlds/globes related conferences worth noting: Virtual Worlds Fall Conference and Expo will be held in San Jose, California October 10-11, 2007. Also, coming next month is Geoweb 2007 on July 23-27, 2007 in Vancouver, British Columbia. Google Earth CTO Michael Jones will be one of the Keynoters at this conference. This one probably has more interest to Google Earth people. I would be interested in going myself, but I'm going to be gone sailing that week in the Caribbean!

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June 21, 2007

Taipei 3D Models for Google Earth

While we are on the topic of 3D models, a GEB reader in Taipei, Taiwan named Steven Ho has sent me a collection of 3D models he has created for Google Earth. He has a blog (in Chinese) which shows off a number of interesting projects he has done. Of particular note is his collection of Taipei 3D Buildings (these are simple non-textured buildings, but they cover many buildings throughout Taipei).

Steven has also created a model of a new Taipei tourist attraction - a gondola system in the mountains near Taipei called the Maokong Gondola. He not only modeled the Maokong Gondola , but has also created a time animation showing it in use. However, this time animation is very memory intensive - you don't need to turn on the 4D option though, just watch his YouTube movie:

Here are some details about it:

The Maokong Gondola was planned and built by Taipei City Government. It travels a distance of 4,030m with four stations at which passengers can embark and disembark: Taipei Zoo Station, Zoo Precinct Station, Zhinan Temple Station and Maokong Station. There are also two ancillary stations where the gondola changes direction. They are used to control the movement of the gondola and are not for passenger use.

The gondola is made of aluminum alloy and can carry eight people. This system travels at a speed of 3-5m/s and can carry a maximum of 144 gondolas at one time, a total of 1,300-1,990 passengers per hour in one direction. The shortest journey on the gondola is 17 minutes.

Google should probably talk to Steven Ho about his 3D buildings and including them in the default 3D Buildings layers. Great work Steven!

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3D Buildings Update for Google Earth - June

Google has pushed out an update to the "3D Buildings->Best of 3D Warehouse" layer. This means models which have been selected to deserve the new "Blue Ribbon" status are now part of the default "Best of" layer (see tips on how to submit your 3D model).

I had noticed there were a bunch of buildings being added to the 3D Warehouse for Christchurch, New Zealand a while back. The models were built by architects ZNO Christchurch (see their recent blog post). The ZNO guys had previously been using real architectural software and converting them over for viewing in GE over a year ago (before GE 4 came out). But, they now seem to be using SketchUp pretty enthusiastically. They say in their blog they will be adding more buildings every month. Right now it looks like several blocks in downtown are available.

Another huge improperly scaled building can be seen at these coordinates: "39.48, 26.90" (western Turkey). Make sure the 3D Buildings layer is turned on. You may have to zoom out to about 20 miles to see it as the building is 11 miles wide. I imagine this will be removed from the layer pretty quickly. A GEB reader e-mailed me about it yesterday, so I told Google about it.

There are cities all over the world getting 3D Buildings created by people using SketchUp. Check out cities like Chicago, Karachi, Rome, Barcelona, Amsterdam, Moscow, and more.

[UPDATE 1420 ET: Got a list of cities from Google which had significant new buildings: Kabul, Afganistan; Montreal, Canada; Dusseldorf and Frankfurt, Germany; Madrid and Barcelona, Spain.]

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June 20, 2007

Tour de France 2007 in Google Earth

As in the previous two years, biking enthusiasts have put together the details on the routes for all stages of this year's Tour de France. Someone called "Timetxu" in the Netherlands has published this TdF 2007 KMZ file in this forum post (Dutch).

Viewing the Tour de France routes in Google Earth is one of my favorite examples of the power of Google Earth. With GE's 3D terrain, you can tilt your view and truly get a feeling of how challenging this race really is - even if you have never been to see it in person. An important difference this year for Google Earth viewers is that the imagery for the French Alps has been greatly improved now that Google Earth includes medium resolution 2.5 meter resolution imagery from Spot Image. Still fuzzy up close, but better than it was last year. Also see a thread of posts with some other KML files showing some of the different stages for this year's Tour de France.

The GE file for this year's TdF posted above is not as detailed as some previous versions of the Tour de France, but it gives a good overview of all the stages. Last year Google helped develop an official Google Earth file (in four languages) for the stages for the official TdF web site. And someone even developed a live tracking capability of the race for 2006 (see below). Maybe we'll see some other innovations before the race begins on July 7th.

[UPDATE: here is a Google Maps mashup for live tracking of the 2007 Tour de France].

Related:

• Tour de France 2006
• Live Tracking of Tour de France 2006
• Link to Tour de France 2005

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News Roundup: GE 4.1 Stuff, Plotting a Trail, Business Reviews, More Second Earth

• GE 4.1 Stuff - The Google Earth 4.1 beta has been out for more than a month. There are a couple little features I haven't mentioned. First, they fixed a bug which prevented you from looking straight up in Google Earth. And, when using the SpaceNavigator you can look up at a 3D Building and when you let go the view stays looking up (pre-4.1 would pop the view back to the horizon). In addition, during time animation, the background star field animates according to the passage of time (see a post about this at Barnabu's site). There is an annoying bug in 4.1 which prevents the compass in the upper right from automatically disappearing like it is supposed to. There are also a number of subtle rendering bugs which are annoying. I hope a new beta will come out soon.

• Plotting a Trail - Googler John Gardiner posts about his hobby of helping plan trails. He uses topo map overlays, a GPS track and placemarks to help communicate a planned trail. See an example trail near South Yuba River in Northern California.

• Business Reviews - Google has added a new feature to Google Maps which lets you review and rate a business you find in a map search. Maps already showed ratings and reviews from other web sites, but it also now allows you to give your own reviews and ratings. Simply search for a business and choose "More Info". Then choose "Write a review". You have to be logged in to a Google account. Very simple and straight-forward. A couple of suggestions I have: Allow folks to just give it a rating without writing a review, and allow people to use anonymous as a reviewer name (but, limit them to one review per establishment).

• More Second Earth - Avi Bar-Ze’ev, former Keyhole developer of the application which became Google Earth, shares his thoughts about the recent article by MIT Technology Review called Second Earth. Avi goes into depth about the possibilities / impossibilities of Google Earth and Second Life being combined as a mashup. Definitely a worthy read if you liked the Second Earth article. Wade Roush (author of the Second Earth article) even commented he really liked Avi's article.

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June 19, 2007

Google Earth Helping Amazon Indians

A post at Google Lat-Long blog by Googler Rebecca Moore tells of a recent visit she had from the Chief of the Surui Indian tribe from the Brazilian Amazon jungles. The Amazon rain forests are rapidly disappearing due to logging and mining. The Surui people are doing everything they can to protect their lands. For the last year an organization called the Amazon Conservation Team has been helping train the Indians to use Google Earth and GPS units to map Surui villages, hunting grounds, sacred sites, and cultural sites as well as areas where they've found illegal mining and logging incursions onto their land (see GEB post from last year). This effort has helped their lands become properly registered with the Brazilian government which enables the government to do a better job to protect the lands from encroachment. I recently attended a presentation by Mark Plotkin of the Amazon Conservation Team at the ISDE5 conference where he describe the project in detail. It sounds like a wonderful project and the efforts appear to have had good results. Stopping rain forest destruction is an important step in preserving the future of our planet in my opinion.

UPDATE: Just saw this article from the International Herald Tribune on this subject.

The Google Earth team has supported a number of different projects to help raise awareness of environmental problems and human issues. See an excellent article summarizing several Google Earth awareness projects at Imaging Notes which was written by Rebecca Moore as well.

Related:

• Google Earth Critical Tool in Fight Against Logging
• Crisis in Darfur
• New Global Awareness Layer
• UNEP Environmental Layer

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Pict'Earth - UAV Aerial Photography Solutions

Back at the beginning of the year, I wrote about a video someone posted showing a guy flying a remote controlled plane (Unmanned Aerial Vehicle or UAV) and used a digital camera to take aerial photos and show them in Google Earth. The guy who created it is David Riallant, and his company Pict'Earth is located in France. He has now expanded his operation and has a new office in the USA, which is being run by Jeffery Johnson and Stewart Long. They have a new web site called PictEarthUSA.com. The new company has a system available which uses a basic remote controlled plane, Pict'Earth software, and a Nokia N95 as both the camera system and wireless broadband communicator. They offer both live and professional aerial image processing services. Not ony that, but they have recruited the efforts of the well-known Google Earth innovator Valery Hrosunov in Perm, Russia to develop the software for the image processing and display in GE. Check out their gallery of example photos.

Related:

• Remote controlled plane video
• High resolution photos from a UAV in Google Earth
• Driving a Car with a SpaceNavigator

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Best of 3D Warehouse - Blue Ribbon

Google's 3D Warehouse is a repository for all kinds of 3D models created for use with Google SketchUp (the popular 3D modeling tool). The 3D Warehouse is also home to models which can be placed in Google Earth. Many of you know that Google has a layer under the 3D Buildings layer called the Best of 3D Warehouse. Google has just added a new "Blue Ribbon" marker to entries in the 3D Warehouse which are part of the "Best of 3D Warehouse" layer. Here's an example of the famous Big Ben clock tower in London. Enter "Westminster, London" in the GE "Fly To" search, and turn on the "3D Buildings->Best of 3D Warehouse" layer. And here are tips for qualifying for the layer.

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Second Earth

MIT's Technology Review has published an interesting article called "Second Earth" by Wade Roush. This is a lengthy article, but is a worthy read if you are interested in the developing trends on virtual globes - like Google Earth, World Wind, and Virtual Earth - and social virtual worlds like Second Life, There, and World of Warcraft. Not surprisingly, most people in the industry believe the Internet is evolving towards increasing 3D interfaces and that real virtual globes like Google Earth with soon be linked up with fantasy virtual worlds like Second Life. The article is full of examples of the many different ways Second Life and Google Earth are being used to represent different aspects of real life including links to KML files, videos, and Second Life URLs to the examples. Wade Roush last fall wrote about how KML has been developing towards a defacto standard and he has a good grasp of what is going on with these virtual world/globe technologies.

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June 18, 2007

Gallery Update

Apparently Google plans to be updating their new Google Earth Gallery each week. This week we have another six entries. Three have previously been featured here at GEB, but three have not. Here's the list this week, with some extra information:

• World Oil Consumption - a globe-wide 3D bar chart showing countries with the most oil consumption. Gallery link. More details from GEB. KML Link

• Biography of Phillis Wheatley - Phillis Wheatley was the first black individual, the first slave and the third woman to publish a book of poetry. Gallery Link. Original GEC post. KML Link

• Real-time Earthquakes - From the US Geological Survey. Gallery Link. More detail from GEB. KML link

• Jeneau Ice Field Research - Photos, overlays and descriptions of Jeneau's ice fields. Gallery Link. More details by Nichols College. KML Link

• Night Lights of the World - Global light pollution. Gallery Link. More details at GE Library by Matt Fox. KML Link

• King Tut - Tutankhamun's Tomb in 3D in Google Earth. Gallery Link. More details from GEB. Original GEC post. KML Link

Check out the GE Gallery Gadget you can add to your iGoogle page.

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June 15, 2007

Photo Finding in Google Earth - Just for Fun

I do a bit of mountain biking now and then, and happened to notice an article on the New York Times today. The article is called "Where Mountain Bikers Carved Their Dream Terrain" and is about a remote place in western Colorado near a town called Fruita, Colorado. I decided I would like to find this place in Google Earth. There were some nice photos in the article, so I thought I would try finding an exact spot. I noticed the name of a trail in one photo was "Zippety Trail". My first thought was to try Garmin's MotionBased.com site which lets people upload GPS tracks of their favorite outdoor activities. A simple search for "Zippety" and I got four results (like this one) - all listed as being near Fuita. I loaded up this trail in Google Earth (Motionbased supports GE for all tracks). It didn't take me long to find the place on the trail where the photo was taken in the satellite photos. This placemark tries to duplicate the same viewing angle as in the camera (as seen in the screenshot).

One thing that really helped me find the location is that Google just recently updated the terrain resolution for the western US (see coverage area) and this area now has 10 meter resolution data. Another way I found the location was by simply searching in Google Earth for "Zippety Trail". This returned a "Web result" for "Zippety Trailhead" that also showed me the location.

For a really cool example of photos matched to places in Google Earth, check out this article about a book called "Earth From Above" and the cool collection of placemarks people created trying to duplicate each view for 500 of the beautiful photos from the book in GE. The photos were so beautiful in this book, I just had to buy it. It's my favorite coffee table book.

On a related note: check out Googler John Gardner's post about a Google mountain biking team's plan for a race.

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June 14, 2007

Global Lightning Animation for Google Earth

Received a tip from a GEB reader about some new weather data for Google Earth. The data comes from a web site called GuiWeather.com which predominantly is focused on providing global lightning data, but also has other GE weather tools. GuiWeather hopes to help people avoid lightning strike dangers by alerting them to nearby lightning using cell phone alerts. More importantly from a GE perspective, they are sharing their global lightning data in the form of lightning time animations. The data is near real-time (less than 2 minutes old when I last checked) and the animation shows the last 30 minutes of lightning strikes world wide. Check out the global lightning time animation . I like the way they show you how to configure and play the timeslider with little "pointer hand" graphic icons overlayed on the screen. GuiWeather's site says they have a world-wide network of sferic sensors collecting the lightning data.

In addition to the lightning data, the GuiWeather site has a number of other KML files with weather data. Current temperatures for many cities in the US are color coded as well as giving temperature values. This same temperature data is also available as a Google Mapplet. I also like GuiWeather's buoy and ship weather collection.

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Google Preparing Map Visualizations for Books

Google's Michael Jones (Chief Technologist of Google Earth) gave a sneak preview presentation late last week, at the New York State Geospatial Summit, where he demonstrated some upcoming map visualizations based on books related to Google's Book Search project. Michael has many times mentioned his fascination with maps created from books (like the collection showing places quoted in Shakespeare, or the maps showing the travels of Odysseus). According to a summary by Adena Shutzberg of Directions Magazine, Michael gave a sneak preview of technology where Google has taken public books (out of copyright) and scanned the text for location information, then created a collection of placemarks for the locations mentioned in the book. You can click on a placemark and go to the page where it was mentioned. He also demonstrated a time animation map related to books. I'm looking forward to seeing the results of this project, it sounds really interesting!

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June 13, 2007

Road Maps and Local Search for Sweden in Google Earth and Maps

Google has released new map data for the country of Sweden. You can now turn on the "Roads" layer for Sweden, and you can now search for business listings (search for "pizza" for example). You can also get directions for road travel in Sweden. Google also announced on their Lat Long blog that they have Google Maps for Sweden at maps.google.se. The layers of point of interest (dining, lodging, etc.) have not been added yet for GE. Google already has roads for many countries around the world, and the list is growing every couple of months. Great job Google!

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June 12, 2007

News RoundUp: Football Game, VesselTracker, Antarctic Bases, Egyptian Digs, 3D Cities Help, Chimps, Gallery

• Football Game - Google Earth Hacks has developed an American-style football game you can play within Google Earth. The game is played within a football stadium inside GE, and you interact through radio buttons in the Places pane. You either choose Offensive or Defensive plays depending on who has the ball. You see the position of the ball at the end of each play, and get feedback on statistics for each play including scores. Pretty fun to play, and an interesting application of GE technology.

• VesselTracker - The VesselTracker.com site is dedicated to providing ship vessel tracking data (right now for north of Europe) using maps and Google Earth using the Automated Identification System (AIS). Interestingly, VesselTracker are using Virtual Earth for the 2D maps, but Google Earth for the 3D maps. Thanks to a tip from GmapsMania. Try a free version in GE (24 hour delay).

• Antarctic Bases - Google's recent imagery update includes some high resolution photos of portion of Antarctica. Stefan Geens found a KML collection of placemarks for all antarctic bases (via this site). Many, but not all, appear in the new high res photos.

• Egyptian Digs - OgleEarth reports about a LiveScience article on how satellite photos are helping Egyptian archaeologists to find new dig sites. OgleEarth notes that satellite photos are helping make many kinds of scientific discoveries.

• 3D Cities Help - The Google Lat Long blog has posted about a new 3D Warehouse "Help Model a City" feature. The intent is to help foster a community based approach to creating 3D models of buildings in cities around the world.

• Chimps - Jane Goodall's Gombe Chimpanzee blog has released a new site design. It's appropriate that the first blog which used Google Earth initially as the only way to view blog entries is now supporting GeoRSS (geotagged RSS). They are also now supporting Google Maps for viewing entries, and are using a new blogging tool called EarthWatchr. via OgleEarth.

• Gallery - The new Google Earth Gallery has been updated with new entries. You can also install a Gallery Gadget for your iGoogle page. My favorite new entry is the collection of placemarks showing the life of Neil Armstrong (first man to walk on the moon).

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June 11, 2007

London Eye Animation with Shadows for Google Earth

Barnabu is at it again adding more realism to an animated ferris wheel. Previously Barnabu was shown with a 4D animation of the London Eye where he used a modified ground image to remove the projected image of the ferris wheel from the ground (from the satellite photo). Now he has also added the shadow from the ferris wheel as it animates by using a feature in Google SketchUp (a 3D modeling tool) for projecting shadows. You can view the London Eye with shadows animation (860 KBytes) directly in Google Earth.

Follow these instructions (from Barnabu):

• After the file loads look for the time slider control at the top of the screen
• Access the time control options via the white clock face to the left of this
• Set the repeat mode to ‘wrap’
• Ensure that ‘clamp beginning of time window’ is off
• Click OK
• Hit the play button (the triangular right arrow).
• If need be, the speed can be varied via the time control options
• GE takes a little while to load in all the separate parts of the animation, resulting in flickering for a few cycles

An animating 3D model like this is best viewed with the view tilted so you can see both the moving ferris wheel and the shadow. It's even better if you move around while it is animating with something like the SpaceNavigator. See the link below for a video showing what this looks like.

Related:

• 4D London Eye Animation (with video)
• Barnabu's post about his first London Eye
• First Ferris Wheel Animation (Vienna)

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June 10, 2007

Huge Imagery Update Now Available in Google Maps

The huge imagery update which came out for Google Earth on June 2nd is now available in Google Maps. There are DigitalGlobe satellite photos for random places all over the world, most of England is now at high resolution (50 cm/pixel), and many other places as well. Google mentioned during a conference last week that there was more data added in this update than existed in all of Google Earth before a year ago. Read below for the details on the imagery from Google.

New high resolution:

Canada: Whistler, BC; Waterloo & Toronto, Ontario; Nanaimo, BC; and Fort Saskatchewan, AB England: Base 50cm coverage of nearly entire country, and Avon Germany: Cities/Regions of Greifswald, Trier, Köln, Stuttgart, Bonn, Oldenburg, Rostock, Saarbrücken, Hamburg, Hannover, and Ritterhude Austria: Villach region France: Cities of Caen, Dijon, Metz, St Etienne, Toulouse and Rouen Spain: Valencia Andorra US: Imperial County (CA); Yellowstone National Park (WY); Galveston/Houston (TX); Peterborough (NH); Cheyenne (WY); Burke, Wake, and Cabarrus Counties (NC); Racine and Kenosha Counties (WI); Washington, DC; St Paul (MN); and the State of Alabama Japan: City/Regions of Kochi, Asahikawa, Koriyama, Miyazaki, Nagano, Utsunomiya, Akita, and Toyama

Large DigitalGlobe (60cm) update includes areas in Sudan, expanded Africa, Australia, Mexico coverage and smaller areas of coverage in Asia, Polynesia, South America, Canada, Europe, Middle East plus some interesting islands in Antarctica and Greenland.

Updated Imagery:

Americas: Bogotá, Columbia; Mission Viejo (CA, US); Hillsborough County (FL, US) EU: Dublin, Ireland Middle East/Africa: Beirut, Lebanon and Tripoli, Libya Asia: Hong Kong and Manila, Philippine

Updated 3D Terrain (Google Earth only):

Western US 10m, Canary Islands 10m

Related:

• Google Announces Google Maps Street View

• Coverage Area for New 3D Terrain

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June 9, 2007

Coverage Area for US 10m Terrain in Google Earth

Earlier this week I asked someone at Google whether we could get details on the areas covered by the new 10 meter 3D terrain (or digital elevation model) data released last weekend for Google Earth. I had noticed some areas in the western US did not seem to have the high res areas. Before I jump on a plane to head home from California, I wanted to share this KML file (1.2 Mbytes) Google sent me in an E-mail last night. NOTE: the file has many tiles - so it may slow performance while turned on. The file shows that most of the western US got the update, but there are a few gaps here and there. So, now you know which areas have the new terrain. Google also confirmed the data came from a version of the USGS 10 meter terrain dataset.

If you haven't looked at the new terrain, I highly recommend it. Change the setting in your "Options" (or Preferences on the Mac) for "3D View->Terrain Quality" to a higher setting (set to the highest if your graphics card is reasonably fast and you have broadband). Then visit a mountainous (or varied terrain) area you know well. You'll be impressed by how realistic it looks now (especially if you saw the way it looked before). The data is now three to nine times higher resolution.

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June 8, 2007

GE Bloggers Have the Earth Covered

For nearly two years, Stefan Geens of OgleEarth and I have been covering news, content and technologies about Google Earth and related applications. We each have a slightly different slant, and try not to duplicate each other's content too often. Although we have spoken via VOIP and E-mailed since the summer of 2005, we met fo the first time just a couple of days ago. As you can see from this picture, we pretty much feel like we have the Earth covered. That's me, Frank Taylor on the left - and Stefan Geens on the right. This photo was taken this afternoon (Thursday June 7th) while attending the ISDE5 conference in Berkeley, California. Thanks to Matt Nolan for taking the photo. And no, I haven't geotagged the photo or even added GeoRSS to my posts! But, I will be doing that more in the future.

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ISDE Day 3 Summary

Read my overview of ISDE5 here, or visit their web site ISDE5.org for more details. Also, read my summary from ISDE5 Day 1, and my summary from ISDE 5 Day 2. So, after nearly two weeks of attending conferences, I'm getting a bit tired. But, I'm valiantly attempting to still summarize highlights. I will follow up later (maybe next week?) with more details for some of the things I liked most. Here are some of my notes from Day 3 - my apologies, but I missed several of the talks during the morning session due to other obligations, and the ones I did see had little to do with Google Earth.

• International Polar Year - Technical session. Matt Nolan presented the IPY Google Earth network link. He appealed to other IPY scientists to start developing more KML content to be included in the network link. They are also working to get the network link included as a Google Earth layer. Although it is a bit unique in form, I think Google should make an effort to highlight the IPY content. Several suggestions were made to help improve the process (writing a manual to help scientists understand how best to submit the KML content, doing some user testing to improve the design, and using more features of GE - like 3D - to grab the attention of the general public). Download the IPY network link . Stefan Geens also demonstrated that he was implementing GeoRSS tags for IPY news and will be publishing a network link allowing people to visualize IPY news in Google Maps or Earth.

• Sensor Webs in Digital Earth - Matt Heavner talked about the importance of sensor webs to gather and collect data from different types of sensors to scientific research. He then discussed why KML is an important vehicle for sharing and visualizing the data from sensor webs. KML enables scientists to not only collect data in real-time, but also show different forms of data (placemarks, tables, photos, graphs, 3D shapes, and web cam photos) all tied to location. By using KML you also can use either Google Earth or the browser-based Google Maps. Although Stefan Geens (who was attending) pointed out Maps doesn't handle areas around the poles very well.

• Volcanic Ash Dispersion Modeling in Google Earth - Peter Webley of the Alaska Volcano Observatory presented his research visualizations which use a very innovative application of Google Earth technology to show ash plumes which are thrown into the atmosphere by volcanoes. I first saw this at the AGU conference last fall. But, I never wrote about it because there was no available KML file. It turns out their model outputs 2000 placemarks with graphical icons to model the plume as particles. The icons are designed to look like gray ash from a distance and it works quite well. They also use time animation to show how the plumes drift. They also have the ability to predict how the ash plumes will drift based on atmospheric models. The airlines use this to avoid flight plans which might take them into these dangerous clouds of ash. You can read more about this at their web site - which includes several GIF animations. I can't resist, so here is one example showing ash coming from Mt. St. Helens' eruption in 1980 in Google Earth:

  

• NASA Earth Observatory (NEO) - David Herring presented the efforts of NASA to provide a valuable educational tool designed to not only educate the public, but also to attract young people into the field of science. Not only that, but the data is very valuable for illustrating climatic change, how humans are effecting the environment, and for analyzing our planet. The NEO web site has recently been re-designed to be even more effective. What I like is their support for showing the data in Google Earth. If you click on "Ocean->Sea Surface Temperature" you not only see a flat 2D map showing the data, but also a link for a Google Earth version like this . Although, I was disappointed to note the data came from 1985. But, I liked David's approach to designing better ways to view data.

  
  

• Spot Image Announced Planet Action - The president of Spot Image US announced a new initiative called Planet Action. My hat is off to any company which takes on the noble goal of trying to organize a call to action to help take care of our planet. And, a satellite imagery company certainly has a good perspective to understand what is happening on Earth. So far they have enlisted the aid of partners: ESRI, Unesco, and Infoterra. They should definitely talk to Google if they want to get maximum exposure.

  
  

• After these sessions, there was a Gala Dinner and Awards Ceremony. During the cocktails I managed to grab Stefan Geens for a photo. Look for a separate post on that. One of the winners of the visualization challenge was UNEP for their Google Earth layer which shows 120 locations around the Earth where noticeable problems demonstrating natural climatic change and human destruction of the environment have occurred. See my earlier post on the UNEP layer which is now under the new "Global Awareness" layer in GE.

  
  

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June 7, 2007

Monthly Cloud Animations for Google Earth

Those of you who have been reading this blog for a while know I like the ability to show satellite views of clouds over the Earth. To me it quickly illustrates how Google Earth can pull in information from places on the Internet, overlay them over the Earth, and produce a visualization which is both informative and beautiful to behold. Earlier this year, Google Earth Community member 'barnabu' (who has produced many cool time animations and 3D models for GE - see below) wrote a script to capture each image overlay of global clouds which are produced every three hours. He used this to produce a cloud animation for the past 10 days (about 5 Mbytes each). He now has enough data (for the first five months of the year) that he has compiled month-long cloud animations (about 16 Mbytes each). You could load more than one of these, but they will likely slow down your machine because they are so large. But, it is definitely cool watching an animation of an entire month of weather progression. For example, check out the cloud animation for January (16 Mbytes). Once it loads in Google Earth, hit the "play" button (the right-arrow to the right of the time slider) to start the time animation.

A special note of thanks to Hari Nair at Xplanet who wrote the program that produces the composite satellite photos global clouds.

Other cool things by 'barnabu':

• Bouncing Earth
• Turning Torso Building
• Jupiter Clouds in Motion
• Animating Building Growth in London
• Google Saturn
• Kings College Chapel in Cambridge
• MI6 Headquarters

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ISDE5 Day 2 Summary

There was a lot of interesting things presented at the Internation Symposium for Digital Earth on Day 2. Read my overview of ISDE5 here, or visit their web site ISDE5.org for more details. Also, read my summary from ISDE5 Day 1. Below the fold is an overview of just a few of the many highlights from Day 2 from my perspective (Note: there were other presentations and important things said, but the focus for this blog post is largely Google Earth related. Also, I couldn't go to all the parallel sessions. My apologies for not mentioning everything worth mentioning.)

• Pete Worden - Director, NASA Ames Research Center - gave an interesting presentation on his objectives to try and help get more data from NASA into the hands of the public especially as it relates to Earth Observations. His goals are to engage the private sector, and increase focus on global change. He mentioned he is proud to be working with Google to have more data be available through Google Earth (perhaps there will be some NASA layers soon?). He also talked about the Global Connection Project and the efforts they made to help with disaster relief efforts for Katrina. He also pointed out several times that NASA's own Worldwind product has many useful applications. For instance, he pointed out a company called Intelesense which is using Worldwind as a platform to provide data visualization for their wireless sensor devices. His appeal: NASA invites industry to join with our current partners to provide value-added solutions. He said they have lots more data than they have money, but they are willing to share data.

• In the Q&A session after Pete Worden's talk, someone piped up to say NASA should be encouraging other platforms than Google Earth because it is a proprietary format not an open standard, and that other platforms aren't supporting it. I jumped up a bit later to point out this was wrong and that KML has been submitted to the OGC as an open standard and, in fact, Worldwind and other platforms do support KML. The guy who made the original comment replied, "But, they haven't released the imagery as an open standard." To which I was a bit stunned (and almost laughed), because a) the enormous amount of imagery Google has comes from commercial sources who have intentions to sell the imagery for those who need it; and b) it's the user generated content that uses KML that is particularly important - not the imagery.

• The International Polar Year presented a basic overview of what IPY is all about. Rhian Salmon shared how 63 countries, 250 different projects with thousands of scientists and other people involved in helping better understand both the Arctic and Antarctic. Next, Matt Nolan made some amusing observations how maps, until recently, did a poor job of showing northern latitudes. He then briefly showed how new virtual globes like Google Earth are making a big difference in helping people understand more about the poles. More will be coming out about this later in the week.

• Rebecca Moore, Tech Lead at Google for the GE Layers was the session chair on a very interesting series of talks. She spoke passionately about her belief that Google Earth has already made a difference in helping raise awareness about global issues. There were many questions and enthusiastic positive comments made after this session.

  • First, Rebecca Moore talked about her efforts to help save Redwood forests near her home in California from a proposed lumber project using Google Earth.

  • Next we heard from Mark Plotkin of the Amazon Conservation Team about his efforts to help protect Amazon rain forests by enlisting the aid of indigenous indians to map their lands using GPS and Google Earth. Many amazing tales of training primitive people to take ownership and document their own land legacy from people who have no written history. And the efforts have been very successful as well.

  • Mary Anne Hitt, Executive Director of Appalacian Voices - spoke eloquently about the terrible travesty of mountain top removal coal mining and the awful effects to the environment and people's lives. And more importantly, the great success they have had by using Google Earth to help raise awareness to just how serious the situation is. Read my stories about this layer and how it was later incorporated as a built-in GE layer.

  • Michael Graham and Matthew Levinger, US Holocaust Memorial Museum gave an excellent overview of their efforts to create the Crisis in Darfur layer for Google Earth (with the help of many volunteers). They explained why it was important, and how having the layer in GE has already helped get more attention to this terrible human abuse.

• There were several parallel sessions in the afternoon. Here are a few things I took note of:

  • SkyTruth.org explained why environmental organizations should become more aware of how virtual globes and other digital earth technologies can help their cause by helping the general public become better educated and aware of the issues. John Amos illustrated an example of how they used Google Earth and other technologies to illustrate an environmental problem in the Upper Green River Valley region of Wyoming caused by the US government allowing gas well mining on public lands without public consideration of the impacts.

  • John Bailey - of the Arctic Regions Supercomputing Center and the Alaska Volcano Observatory - explained and gave examples of the many ways Google Earth can be used to visualize scientific and environmental data. He said in particular it can be useful for telling stories. He mentioned Declan Butler's Avian Flu, Jane Goodall's Gombe Chimpanzee layer, the Volcano layer by the Smithsonian Institute, the USGS Earthquake monitoring tool, the James Reserve sensor net - just to name a few. His point is that there is a diverse range of capabilities for those interested in telling a story with GE that could be important for scientific, environmental, or just human interest. He developed a video illustrating a story of the eruption of the Augustine volcano in Alaska in 100 seconds - see it at YouTube here.

  • Gigapan is a project from the Global Connection project (which has grown from Carnegon Mellon University and NASA to include people from Google and many other organizations). Gigapan is a robotic camera system that enables a digital camera to take dozens of photos in a "grid" to make a panorama photo with enormous (Gigapixel) resolutions. They have also developed custom viewers for viewing these photos (since they are too large for things like QuicktimeVR to handle).

  • Pedro Yarza Álvarez who works for AEPO (a consulting company in Madrid, Spain). He presented an innovative application of integrating video technology inside Google Earth. Video logs created for a department of transportation to study the quality of roads can be shown in GE by placing frames of the video on 3D surfaces and "flying" you down the road in GE as if you were driving the vehicle. See a summary of his paper and YouTube videos demonstrating the techniques (this is the better video).

  • Lisa Ballagh, of the National Snow and Ice Data Center gave a talk largely about the importance of GeoRSS for disseminating location information with RSS feeds. You can find GeoRSS feeds from the NSIDC and their project with NOAA here. You can also see some Google Earth content from NSIDC (including some new stuff I'll have to write about later).

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June 6, 2007

Google Earth More Realistic with Better Terrain

There was a lot of news last week from Google. Much of the news had to do with Google Maps, APIs, KML search, and KML support on other platforms. However, this past weekend Google released an enormous amount of new imagery all over the world. But, even more significant in my opinion, was the release of new high resolution 3D terrain, or digital elevation model (DEM) data. The new data is 10-meter resolution. Google Earth's terrain data mostly comes from NASA's Shuttle Radar Topography Mission which is at best 30 meter and sometimes 90 meter in resolution. This means Google Earth's data for the western US and the Canaries is now three to nine times higher than before.

What does this mean? This means when you tilt your view in Google Earth while looking at the new data (using your middle mouse button, the slider in the top right, or your SpaceNavigator), you are seeing terrain features which more closely resemble reality. Also, since the terrain is more accurate, the satellite/aerial photos taken from above stretches over the terrain more accurately. This means the scenery looks much better. Those of you who are familiar with the western mountains should try it out. Two better-known examples: the Grand Canyon of Arizona and the Grand Tetons in Wyoming are good places to start.

Google had previously released high resolution terrain for the Swiss Alps (see a fly-through video). I'm expecting they will be adding more parts of the world with this 10 meter data as well. I've asked Google if they can share a map showing what regions the new data covers. Does anyone know where they are getting this data?

There are people interested in seeing higher resolution terrain for their countries in GE. See this execellent illustration of why high resolution terrain is important by Christian Sam who posted it at GEC. It uses a time animation to "extrude" high resolution terrain in a small area of Austria.

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June 5, 2007

ISDE5 Day 1 Summary - Met Stefan Geens, Michael Jones Talks

Today was the first day of ISDE5. There were talks by representatives of several countries discussing the importance of the Digital Earth concept for disseminating information about our planet. The recurring theme, not surprisingly, is the dramatic climatic changes which are occurring and humankind's responsibility to take action to either try and limit the damage we are causing, or try and prepare ourselves to adapt to whatever changes may happen. The ISDE attendees seem to be an interesting mix of scientists, politicians, technologists, environmentalists, students, and even spiritualists. The common theme seems to be concerns about our planet, but the approaches and philosophies seem diverse. In addition to the talks, there is an exhibit hall set up with booths showing mostly technologies related to digital earth applications. For example: Microsoft Virtual Earth, Google Earth, 3DConnexion (SpaceNavigator), Spot Image, NOAA (showing their Second Life experience), GeoFusion, ESRI, NASA, etc. I will cover more about the exhibitors later in the week.

We got to hear Edgar Mitchell, former NASA astronaut, and the 6th man to walk on the moon during Apollo 14 with Alan Shepherd. He shared a nicely prepared Powerpoint slideshow of the experience of his trip to the moon. He also shared how it altered his perception of our small planet (something I've heard from nearly every astronaut I've heard talk or spoken to). We also heard a very interesting talk by Doug Engelbart - the inventor of the mouse, the graphical user interface, and many other important concepts we all use every day with our computers.

A very important highlight for me personally. I finally met my fellow GE blogger - Stefan Geens of OgleEarth in person! He and I have been e-mailing and VOIPing for nearly two years, but it is great to meet in person at last. He is working with the International Polar Year people who are presenting at ISDE. I will make sure to get a photo of the two of this week and post it here soon.

Michael Jones made a presentation which he re-titled: "State of Digital Earth". His presentation was quite similar to what was given at the Where 2.0 conference (re-using many of the slides). Read my running account of Michael's Where presentation, and a video of a shortened version of his speech at GDD. A few differences particularly addressed to this audience. He highlighted several examples of uses of GE he feels illustrate how it is helping people: the International Polar Year (which will be presenting this week), the Ohio State Highway Patrol, the French election results, and how people used GE to help with Hurricane Katrina disaster recovery operations. He once again highlighted Angelina Jolie's geo-tattoo. More importantly, he made some points about how people have started altering their behavior since the advent of the Internet and, more recently, Google Earth have become a part of our lives. His key point is that the Digital Earth - in the form of virtual globes - is already making a significant impact on raising awareness about the importance of our planet. And I wholeheartedly agree with his sentiment. Many people who are regular readers of GEB have told me their perceptions of the importance of our planet has been changing since they began regularly using GE.

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Posted by FrankTaylor at 11:35 PM | Comments (1)

International Symposium on Digital Earth - Day 1, Part 1

Today I'm attending the Fifth International Symposium on Digital Earth (ISDE5.org) at the University of California at Berkeley. The ISDE is an opportunity to discuss how digital information about the Earth can be gathered, provided, and disseminated to help us all better understand the planet. This year's event is significant in the face of increasing concerns about global climatic change. It's particularly interesting that Vice President Al Gore is partially responsible for the efforts surrounding the concepts of the Digital Earth based on a speech he gave in 1998.

There will be a number of presentations during the next few days of the symposium which will talk about Google Earth, both in terms of its role in the Digital Earth - and in terms of environmental and scientific data and projects involving Google Earth. I'm expecting to hear this week about how virtual globes like Google Earth, Virtual Earth, and World Wind will help (and are helping) everyone learn more about our planet and gain access to Digital Earth information. This afternoon we'll hear from Michael Jones, CTO of Google Earth (look for a post about this later).

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Posted by FrankTaylor at 2:53 PM | Comments (5)

Google Transit in Google Earth

Google Transit is a Google Labs project whose objective is to provide information on public transportation schedules and routes in order to encourage better use of this mode of transportation. Currently available in over a dozen cities, and including most of Japan's regional and national air and rail system and ferries, this is already an ambitious project. I just discovered that some of this information has apparently been available in Google Earth for some time. If you open the Layers folder for "Transportation" there is a "Transit" sublayer. If you turn the Transit layer on and visit one of the cities listed on the Google Transit site (e.g. San Diego, Seattle, Austin, Pittsburgh, Portland, Honolulu, ...), you will see the routes for public transportation. If you zoom in closer you even see the bus stops, and links in the description will take you to the web site of the public transportation web site for that city.

What would be really cool is to fully link the ability to get real-time information. Check out the Google LatLong blog (the official Google blog for the Geo products Maps and Earth), which says that in some of the supported cities in Google Maps (not in Google Earth yet) they will tell you the next departure times for a specific bus stop! Try this in this map of Zurich for example (click on the little bus icons, then "View upcoming departures"). You can also search for specific bus stops like this "59th St - Columbus Circle Station, new york" (this works in GE too).

Apparently details about this support came from Googler Thomas Fly during a presentation some time ago. I'm surprised I hadn't noticed it. via GoogleOperatingSystem blog. More information at WorldChanging.

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Posted by FrankTaylor at 10:47 AM | Comments (1)

New Google Earth Gallery Gadget

Google has released a new web page to highlight GE content called the Google Earth Gallery. The intent is to highlight popular content for Google Earth which highlights its features. So far, there are just six files available. But, they obviously intend there to be more as there are categories of different types of content already started. In addition, they have released an iGoogle gadget which will let you view random GE content on your iGoogle page. You'll see a screenshot, description, and a button for viewing the content in Google Earth (see screenshot to the right). This could be a useful way to reach more people with your Google Earth KML content - similar to getting included in the Google Earth layers. Hopefully we'll see more content added here soon.

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Posted by FrankTaylor at 12:10 AM | Comments (2)

June 4, 2007

News Roundup - France Censors, Flickr, Seabeds, Live tracking

• France Censors - Stefan Geens of OgleEarth is back to writing his blog after a successful launch of the Second House of Sweden (a virtual embassy for Sweden inside Second Life). Stefan notes that France has managed to insert censored imagery in the new Google Earth satellite and aerial imagery which went out on Saturday. Stefan says they are using a similar technique to the censoring in the Netherlands. Here's an example with an image overlay from Google Maps showing what an airpor looked like before it was censored (turn off the overlay - or use the transparency slider - to compare). Also, the Chinese version of Google Earth has censored imagery as well.

• Flickr - Rev Dan Catt was the first to implement an interface for Google Earth for Flickr. Something which later had something to do with his getting a job at Yahoo. Now Dan has finally re-created KML links for Google Earth. Read about it at his blog Geobloggers which includes a history of his Flickr/GE project. Here's a sample KML file showing how you can show photos for a specific tag - e.g lightning . Look at the URL for how to change the tag to whatever you want.

• Seabeds - The UK's Maritime Coast Guard Agency has released Google Earth files showing the coastal seabed surveys using colorized relief maps. Here's a sample showing the Holm channel .

• Live Tracking - Magnalox has recently been adding the ability to show live tracking using PDAs, and now Simbian cell phones, to interface your GPS location. He has now enabled the ability to show your position with Magnalox (which supports many mapping interfaces including Google Maps and Google Earth). You can even insert a live-tracking Google Map into your own web page if you have a need. If you're looking for a wide range of capabilities for a mapping application, Magnalox has some of the nicest features I've seen.

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Posted by FrankTaylor at 10:39 AM | Comments (3)

June 3, 2007

New Maps Mapplets Enable Google Earth Layers

Last Tuesday Google announced Google Mapplets at Where 2.0. Google is calling it the Mashup of Mashups. If you watch the Google Developer Day videos, you can tell Mapplets have significance judging from the amount of attention given during the Keynote and sessions. There is a capability which is not readily apparent in Google Mapplets (the site you have to visit to try Mapplets: maps.google.com/preview ). If you search or enter a KML file, while using the preview version of Maps, you not only display the KML content in the map (assuming it is a KML supported by Maps), but you also get a new link which says: "Save to Mapplets Tab". This enables you to take any KML file supported by Maps and make it into a "Layer" in Mapplets. I say "layer" in the context of being able to turn on and off that "collection" of placemarks or other KML content.

In my mind, the new Mapplets feature in many ways acts like Layers, or really the Places pane, in Google Earth. You can have layers of KML files you can turn on and off as needed. In the case of Mapplets, you can also add Maps APIs which have been converted into Mapplets. So, this means you can collect Maps Mashups or KML layers. At Google's Developer Day they emphasized Mapplets lets you mashup mashups. But, it also lets you mashup KML layers too. It's really a powerful way to combine geospatial information from a variety of supported sources. In my mind this is an evolution of the ability to support content developed from both platforms (Maps and Earth) and view the content together.

Google Earth already allowed you to have layers of KML files turned on or off. And, most Maps mashups offered an ability to output their data to KML. Now Maps has this ability to aggregate collections of content as well. Maps has some limitations when viewing KML content, but I expect Google will start enabling more KML capability in Maps. They have already said Maps will soon support larger collections of KML content. However, things like 3D models in KML files probably won't be supported in Maps in its current form.

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Posted by FrankTaylor at 11:02 AM | Comments (0)

June 2, 2007

Google Releases High Resolution Terrain - Western US and Canaries

This is major news. Google has today just posted new high resolution (10 meter) terrain for the western United States. This is very significant as it will make the area look even more realistic when viewed by Google Earth's 3D capabilities. For example, the satellite and aerial photography better matches the terrain, so the imagery and 3D both look much better! Trust me, I've started visiting mountains I've been to before and they look great! Make sure you turn the "Options->Terrain Quality" to higher quality to see the terrain. You may want to turn it back to lower quality if it slows down your performance.

A few brief details on the new terrain and all the new imagery were posted by Google here.

Have started checking out the new terrain. Check out the Grand Canyon - it was already beautiful, but is even better with the higher quality terrain.

Also, check out the Grand Tetons in Wyoming - (just enter "JAC" for Jackson Hole airport, and look to the northwest). They look awesome with the terrain at high resolution.

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Posted by FrankTaylor at 12:54 PM | Comments (4)

New Imagery for Google Earth - June 2nd!

[UPDATED several times]

Google has just released new imagery for Google Earth (exit GE and re-load it if you had it turned on over night). Most of the UK is now in high resolution. It appears there are many new strips of DigitalGlobe satellite photography in many parts of the world. I expect the full list wil contain many more countries. I'm working on gathering details and will summarize them here. So, re-load this post today to get the growing list. Also, check the comments below for other details from other GEB readers.

See below for the official update.

• Germany now looks much better thanks to special color mapping techniques which were used for Switzerland previously!
• UK updated - Most of England is now in high resolution.
• Parts of Greenland
• Antarctica - some strips of high resolution down here
• Parts of Canada with new high resolution, big area around Toronto
• Catalonia part of Spain
• State of Alabama
• St. Paul, Minnesota
• Puerto Rico has more high resolution
• Iran has lots of new DigitalGlobe satellite strips
• New Zealand has some new coverage
• Parts of Russia

[UPDATE] Google has just posted more details - read them below

From Google's post

New high resolution:

Canada: Whistler, BC; Waterloo & Toronto, Ontario; Nanaimo, BC; and Fort Saskatchewan, AB England: Base 50cm coverage of nearly entire country, and Avon Germany: Cities/Regions of Greifswald, Trier, Köln, Stuttgart, Bonn, Oldenburg, Rostock, Saarbrücken, Hamburg, Hannover, and Ritterhude Austria: Villach region France: Cities of Caen, Dijon, Metz, St Etienne, Toulouse and Rouen Spain: Valencia Andorra US: Imperial County (CA); Yellowstone National Park (WY); Galveston/Houston (TX); Peterborough (NH); Cheyenne (WY); Burke, Wake, and Cabarrus Counties (NC); Racine and Kenosha Counties (WI); Washington, DC; St Paul (MN); and the State of Alabama Japan: City/Regions of Kochi, Asahikawa, Koriyama, Miyazaki, Nagano, Utsunomiya, Akita, and Toyama

Large DigitalGlobe (60cm) update includes areas in Sudan, expanded Africa, Australia, Mexico coverage and smaller areas of coverage in Asia, Polynesia, South America, Canada, Europe, Middle East plus some interesting islands in Antarctica and Greenland.

Updated Imagery:

Americas: Bogotá, Columbia; Mission Viejo (CA, US); Hillsborough County (FL, US) EU: Dublin, Ireland Middle East/Africa: Beirut, Lebanon and Tripoli, Libya Asia: Hong Kong and Manila, Philippine

Updated Terrain:

Western US 10m, Canary Islands 10m

More details coming! By the way, you can use the new handy "Google Maps" button in GE 4.1 to compare the new imagery in Google Earth. It hasn't been pushed to Google Maps yet. Special thanks to María who first alerted me to the update this morning by E-mail and with this post (Spanish).

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Posted by FrankTaylor at 11:24 AM | Comments (40)

Weather and Storm Tracking Tools for Google Earth

The Hurricane season has officially begun. And the second named storm - Tropical Depression Barry - is currently providing much needed wetness to a dry southeastern US. One of Google Earth's most powerful features is the ability to pull in real-time information from other sites and overlay the information for visualization. Weather data is one of my favorite applications of this ability. Imagine pulling in the latest satellite photos, radar animations, hurricane tracking, live web cams on the ground, sea surface temperature analysis, etc. Well, you can do all that with the set of tools I've bundled together into this: the weather and storm tracking tools collection . Simply drag this network link into your Places folder to keep it handy. It won't take up space until you turn it on. It first loads several folders of weather tools you can explore. Right now it includes: a global hurricane tracking tool, global cloud maps, severe weather warning data and radar data from NOAA for the US, weather observations for the US from WeatherBonk, a real-time day/night viewing tool, and the global annual lightning flash rate map from NASA. Turn on the Hurricanes - Live Positions link to see T.D. Barry's current position. You will see the past track, forecasted path, current position, and the red dots are nearby web cams. The position o the storm, when a hurricane, will show it's storm strength (level 1, 2, etc.). These tools were put together by a variety of people in the Google Earth Community. I will add more storm and weather tools to the network link periodically, but if you save this network link, you will automatically see them added. Read about each here:

• Hurricanes - Live positions
• Global Cloud Map
• NOAA Severe Weather
• Weather Bonk - For Google Maps, but GE file available
• Real-Time Day and Night Earth
• Annual Lightning Flash Rate

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Posted by FrankTaylor at 11:03 AM | Comments (3)

June 1, 2007

Google Developer Day - Videos Released

Google has posted video recordings of the presentations at Google Developer Day from around the world. There are already 76 video recordings posted here. Even if you were able to go to one of the 10 locations where GDD was held, you may find it useful to catch a presentation held somewhere else for more details. Very slick that Google has already posted so many recordings, but not surprising considering its Google. I don't think a conference has ever been conducted in 10 different countries and had all of its presentations available for viewing on the Internet within 24 hours - not to mention the live web casts.

Here is the opening Keynote at the US San Jose Google Developer Day:

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Posted by FrankTaylor at 12:09 PM | Comments (1)

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