« June 2007 | Main | August 2007 »

July 31, 2007

Rising Water Effects for Buenos Aires or Rio de Janeiro

Back in April and May we saw some examples of using Google Earth's time animation feature combined with 3D data to illustrate the approximate effects of rising sea levels on various locations. First we had some examples of the effect on New York City and also a fun example of what the Grand Canyon would look like if you filled it with water. Later, Leszek Pawlowicz - who authors the FreeGeographyTools blog - showed how to use some GIS tools to do a more accurate visualization of rising water on NYC.

Now, Gerardo Paz - who not only appears many times in GEB for his innovative visualizations, but also writes the spanish version of Google Earth Blog - has now produced some time animations showing the rising water effects on Buenos Aires, Argentina and another one for Rio de Janeiro, Brazil . Once you load one, click on the right-arrow "Play" button next to the time slider in the upper center of GE to start the animation. As Gerardo notes in his post, the visualization relies on the 90 meter resolution of terrain from NASA which is used in Google Earth. The simulation is only approximate, but clearly a larger rise in water could have a devastating effect on these cities.

Other examples of work by Gerardo:

• Bariloche, Argentina
• Weather forecasts for South America
• Unisphere 3D Model
• Atomium 3D Model

Posted by FrankTaylor at 7:15 AM | Comments (1)

July 30, 2007

Improved International Polar Year Content for Google Earth

Stefan Geens of OgleEarth has been working with the folks at the International Polar Year organization to help them organize Google Earth content to enable scientists to share the results of their research on the conditions at both the North and South polar regions. The result is a network link which provides you with not only an overview of the IPY and its history, but also links to many of this IPY's projects. He has also provided links to many other polar-related GE content sources. You can read more about what Stefan has done in his post, or visit the IPY site for further details. Also, see my post about the start of the IPY.

Posted by FrankTaylor at 7:12 AM | Comments (1)

July 27, 2007

New Imagery Update - July 27th

Google has released an image update. Instead of telling us where the new imagery is located, Google has posted a puzzle game on their blog with hints about the locations. I'm on my vacation, but just happened to be near a marina with WIFI so I'm typing up a quick note for you. I will give you a few tips sent to me by readers: Moscow has new imagery, all of Colorado has hi-res imagery. I'm also told that New Zealand has high resolution terrain - this is something I look forward to checking out! Also, GEC member 'Dulce' has a post on her Spanish GE blog with some of the answers to the new imagery.

Another very important part of the update (at least to me): The Virgin Islands - especially in the British Virgin Islands, now has some nice new high-resolution imagery. Since I'm sailing there right now, it's very handy. More on this when I get back. Right now, I have to finish this cold smoothie I just got and get back on my chartered sailboat!

Posted by FrankTaylor at 3:14 PM | Comments (22)

Population Data for Mexico

Juan Manuel Uribe has developed a KML file which shows population data for over 200,000 locations all over Mexico. The file uses a network link and when you zoom into an area of interest (say Mexico City) it will pull the population data for that area. You will see red circular placemark icons. If you click on the placemarks you get population broken down by male, female, and by age groups (the descriptions are in Spanish). Nice work Juan! See his post at the GEC.

via Dulce's Spanish GE Blog.

Posted by FrankTaylor at 8:00 AM | Comments (0)

Google SketchUp for Dummies Book Out

According to a post at the new Google SketchUp Blog, a new book is available called "Google SketchUp For Dummies (For Dummies (Computer/Tech))" by Aidan Chopra. The book will help those who want to use the free Google SketchUp 3d modeling tool to create their own 3D models for posting in Google Earth. SketchUp is the most intuitive and fun 3D modeling program I've ever used, and I've used programs like it for over 20 years. I'm sure this book will be worth looking into if you are just getting started with SketchUp, or have never used 3D modeling tools before.

I also encourage you to look into getting the excellent SketchUp training DVD from go-2-school.com.

Posted by FrankTaylor at 7:30 AM | Comments (1)

July 26, 2007

Google Earth Enterprise Goes 2D

ZDNet has a story about a new capability for Google Earth Enterprise customers. You can now view GIS data from your Enterprise server on a Google Maps API client. This means you can output important GIS visualizations in the robust 2D Google Maps browser client or use the Google Earth Enterprise client for 3D views. All of this can be done from behind a firewall for internal-only data visualizations. Pricing for Google Earth Enterprise starts at $20,000 and includes the new 2D viewing capability.

Thanks to a tip from Mike Pegg (of GoogleMapsMania) on this story. I'm about to leave the marina on my sailing trip, so this is my last chance to use the Internet until I run into another WiFI connection.

Posted by FrankTaylor at 9:18 AM | Comments (0)

Herbarium Data of Chile in Google Earth

The Faculty of Agronomy and Forest Engineering at Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile have a herbarium (a collection of preserved plant specimens) for the country of Chile which were collected along different vegetation regions in Chile. Someone named John Acuña, and undergraduate at the school, has produced a Google Earth file which shows you the locations of the herbarium specimens along with other information. From the post at the Google Earth Community:

Each icon, represented by a “Palma Chilena” (Jubaea Chilensis), shows one or several collection points with information about the scientific name, botanic family, geographical location and other interesting links.... This kml file is a part of the final work developed by John Acuña, undergraduate student in Forest Engineering, under the supervision of professors Marcelo Miranda and Miguel Gomez.

John contacted Gerardo Paz (who translates this blog in Spanish), and I also saw a post at this Spanish GE blog.

Posted by FrankTaylor at 7:19 AM | Comments (0)

July 25, 2007

NeoGeography Job Posting Board

Stefan Geens at OgleEarth has set up a job posting board for neogeography work. "Neogeography" is a tech term for jobs involving online mapping mashups, GIS-like functionality, KML content, and other geospatial content kind of work. It only cost $1 per day to post on the board, and he's accessing other databases of job neogeography postings as well. So, if you need a KML developer - or Google Maps mashup talent, go to OgleEarth's NeoGeo job board.

Posted by FrankTaylor at 7:44 AM | Comments (0)

July 24, 2007

Blues Brothers Bridge Jump Animation in Google Earth

After seeing my post on Sunday about the easter egg in a 3D model for Google Earth showing the "Blues Brothers" car jumping a drawbridge in Pennsylvania, several people commented they had hoped to see an animation of the car doing the jump. Well, Joey Wade - who has often done interesting 3D Model animations for Google Earth (see below) - took up the challenge. He's now produced an animation that shows the Blues Brothers car going over the bridge . Simply click on the right-arrow "Play" button to the right of the time slider in GE 4 after loading the model. Watch for the car going up one side and land on the other side. You can move your view around to see it from other angles while it animates. Or, check it out in this YouTube video I threw together:

As I recall, in the movie the Blues Brothers actually don't go over the bridge - they flip and go back the other way. But, it's still fun. Very cool Joey!

Other animations by Joey:

• 3D Video Inside Google Earth
• Black Perl in Google Earth
• 3D Toy Animations
• Edmund Fitzgerald
• Panama Canal
• Flight of Space Ship One
• Anousheh Ansari Blasts off to Space

Posted by FrankTaylor at 10:27 AM | Comments (5)

India Maps - Local Knowledge Power

Google's mission is to "...organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful". And the Google Earth/Maps team's mission is to add "geospatially" in front of the corporate mission. Google has the most complete global/international coverage in imagery, roads, directions, and many other points of interest data of any other 2D/3D mapping tools freely available on the Internet.

The information now available for India in Google Earth and Maps is of particular interest. According to Googler Michael Jones, Chief Technologist of Google Earth, they had a challenge in India. There basically was only one government controlled mapping dataset, and it was not available to license for publication online. So, Google developed some tools and processes to enable people living in a city to map the city and share their local knowledge with an online database. They piloted a process in India where people would mark locations with a GPS and input other data such as directions, locations of shopping centers, parks, gas stations, restaurants etc. Google used input from many different people and correlated conflicts to try and arrive at the best data. The current trend is to refer to this kind of approach to data collection as "crowdsourcing".

If you go to India now in Google Earth (or Maps) the roads information for 50 of the cities in India came from local knowledge. You can turn on other points of interest layers in Google Earth such as these layers: Shopping and Services, Transportation, Geographic Features, Travel and Tourism, Parks and Recreation, and Community Services. For example, try searching for "Hyderabad". You will see a variety of colorful icons all over the 50 cities in India where the data was collected. This data could be remarkably beneficial if you were visiting a city for the first time - or possibly even if you've lived in the area for a long time.

The process Google has been testing (which produced these results in India) is similar in many ways to efforts started in the UK by OpenStreetMap.org which also uses GPS input from people on the streets. Google has been developing a special "care package" of software, databases, and GPSes to help citizens in other countries make maps like the ones in India.

You can hear Michael Jones' talk about the maps for India in a podcast recording of a speech he gave last week at Cambridge in the UK - thanks to Philbridges.com for the recording.

Posted by FrankTaylor at 7:10 AM | Comments (6)

July 23, 2007

Sailing in the Virgin Islands - with Google Earth

Those of you who are regular readers, or know me personally, are well aware of my passion for sailing. I'm leaving later this week for a week-long sailing holiday on a catamaran in the US and British Virgin Islands. I will have limited access to the Internet, so you can expect there will be fewer GE news-related posts on this blog during the week I'm gone. I will have some scheduled posts to keep some activity going on the blog.

Of course, part of this trip is for business! :-) Seriously, I'm taking Google Earth with me and plan to review some related technologies. Here are my GE-related plans:

1. Chart Plotting with Google Earth - I plan to use EarthNC's nautical charts on a laptop. My handheld GPS will be hooked up with Goops (a tool for linking your GPS to Google Earth). With this combination, I will be one of the first people to use Google Earth as a marine navigational chart plotting. Of course, I will be careful to not rely on these new tools as my only means of navigation! I know the Virgin Island waters pretty well, and will also have other charts.
2. Geotagged Photos - Post a selection of Geotagged photos to show you after I get back. Hopefully a few will be underwater shots - see some examples of other underwater photos I've taken.
3. GPS track - A GPS track of our sailing and anchorages
4. Review - Post a review of my experiences with the software tools, and the trip itself after I get back.
5. KML file - And, publish a KML file documenting the trip afterwards.

Please don't feel too bad for all my hard work. I'm sure I'll get a few minutes of enjoyment while I'm there. :-)

By the way, I will be chartering the catamaran from Voyage Charters who have a base at Soper's Hole, on the west end of Tortola, BVIs. I chartered from them in 2001, and had a very positive experience. They use catamarans made by Voyage Yachts based in South Africa. In 2002-4 we sailed a Voyage 440 called PatiCat mostly in the Caribbean and Bahamas. You can learn about, and see details, on our travels in a Google Earth file (read more here).

Posted by FrankTaylor at 9:30 AM | Comments (4)

July 22, 2007

Blues Brothers Bridge Jump in Google Earth

Many people are creating 3D models of buildings, bridges, dams and other structures around the world and uploading them to the Google 3DWarehouse. Many of the better quality buildings end up getting included in the Google Earth 3D Buildings layer. As with most creative processes, sometimes modelers get a little carried away and sometimes include a little easter egg. I was perusing Greg Rose's SketchUp Buildings blog and noticed he had pointed out a little addition to the model of the Tacony-Palmyra bridge between Pennsylvania and New Jersey. Those of you who saw the classic "Blues Brothers" movie will recognize the car jumping the drawbridge in the model - which you can view in Google Earth here . I don't think this is the same bridge from the scene in the movie (and they didn't go over the bridge), but it certainly is a fun little easter egg for the 3D model!

[UPDATE: Check out the Google Earth animation someone made of the Blues Brothers car jumping the bridge. You can see this yourself in GE if you read the story.]

Posted by FrankTaylor at 12:01 PM | Comments (6)

July 20, 2007

Google Acquires ImageAmerica

Google has just announced on their Google Lat-Long blog that they have acquired ImageAmerica - a company that builds high resolution cameras for the collection of aerial imagery. Google previously used imagery from ImageAmerica in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Other than that, I'm not aware of any contracts or affiliation between the two companies. All they state in the announcement is:

We're excited about how ImageAmerica's technology will contribute to our mapping services down the road. Since we're in the research and development phase right now it may be some time before you see any of this imagery in Google Maps or Earth -- we'll keep you posted on this blog!

ImageAmerica was based in Clayton, Missouri and reportedly had patented camera technology and automatic image processing technologies for producing orthographic photography (photography good for use in Google Earth and maps). I'm trying to get some more details from folks in the industry, and will add to this post if I get them.

[UPDATE July 22 - Adena Shutzberg of AllPointsBlog has some interesting speculations about the acuisition.]

Posted by FrankTaylor at 6:24 PM | Comments (0)

Heat Map of KML and GeoRSS of the Earth

Barry Hunter has blogged about how he recently attended OpenStreetMap's first conference called "State of the Map". What I found interesting was a slide Barry saw that was presented by Ed Parsons (who was formerly with the UK's Ordinance Survey, and now works for Google). Ed presented a slide (click on the thumbnail above for a bigger picture) which shows a heat map of all the places found in KML and GeoRSS posts which have been indexed by Google's Geo Search engine. I think this is a very cool image! Notice that you can already clearly see the shapes of the continents just from all the placemarks in the search index. As Google gets better at searching geospatial information - and more people mark things - this map should more accurately reperesent the Earth. I think Google should publish a network link image overlay of this heat map in Google Earth.

Barry believes he knows why the UK is the hottest spot (in terms of geo-located information) - Barry manages the Geograph UK site which is trying to geotag photos of every square unit of the british isles. He says about 300,000 of the 600,000 KML files he has published are in the Google index. Read more about Geograph. Barry also has an excellent web site Nearby.co.uk with useful tools for Google Earth and Maps.

Posted by FrankTaylor at 8:16 AM | Comments (1)

European Campuses Want a 3D Contest Too

Got an e-mail from Jan-Philipp of Technical University of Kaiserlautern. He and five other students built models of their campus which they felt would have qualified for the contest Google recently ran to build 3D campuses. But, Google limited the contest to participants from the US and Canada. They wanted to share the model they built and suggest that maybe Google should do a European campus contest. So, here is Technical University of Kaiserslautern in Google Earth (4.8 MBytes). More information on their web site (German) about the models, where they also have a map overlay with placemarks on locations. One thing they could do is go ahead and submit their collection of models to the Google 3DWarehouse. I'm sure Google would select them to be included in the built-in 3D Buildings layer of Google Earth.

Posted by FrankTaylor at 7:45 AM | Comments (4)

July 19, 2007

Singapore F1 Race Visualization in Google Earth

The folks at Earth@Sg have released an excellent Google Earth visualization of the setting of next year's Singapore Formula 1 (F1) car race. They have created some very nice 3D models of the downtown area, the grand stand, the race course, trees, and the Singapore Flyer ferris wheel. They also give you instructions for setting up your "Touring" options in Google Earth so you can pretend you are an F1 race car flying down the race course. Earth@Sg call themselves the Singapore Geo-Mashup Community. They have a number of Google Maps mashups at their web site as well. And they are using the same set of Singapore 3D models for Google Earth to show the setting of this summer's Singapore National Day Parade with a similar flying tour of the Singapore Marina Bay area. (NOTE: You should turn off the F1 collection before loading the National Day Parade collection). Earth@Sg has done a great job!

Posted by FrankTaylor at 8:24 AM | Comments (5)

July 18, 2007

The Solar System in Google Earth

The 34 moon collection put out a couple days ago at the Barnabu blog has now been taken to the next natural evolution. James has changed the Earth into the Sun (by adding an image overlay) and then scaled the Moons down relative to the size of the Sun and added all the planets as 3D models as well. So now you have a true-to-scale comparison of the main bodies of the solar system. The new Google Earth Solar System (7 Mbytes) collection is quite cool looking. NOTE: Turn off the "View->Atmosphere" so the sun doesn't have a blue halo around it. It's very hard to see all the detail on each 3D model with the standard Google Earth interface though. You could use the G-Force mode of Google Earth to fly over the planets. But, the best way is to use the SpaceNavigator 3D mouse. Check out this video fly-by I created - it starts with the smallest moon above 100 km in size:

Here's the link to the story at the Barnabu blog. Great work again James!

Posted by FrankTaylor at 1:16 PM | Comments (7)

New Layers Update - Earth at Night NASA Layer

[UPDATED 2009 to reflect current location of layer]

Google has just pushed out a new layers update. The biggest new addition I've found is a new NASA layer under the "Featured Content Gallery" layer. One of the new features in the NASA layer is a "Earth at Night" image overlay for the entire Earth. It shows how much light various cities are putting out at night (or light pollution for those of us who like stargazing). Not only that, but the new layer is a regionated layer so when you zoom in closer it brings in more detail. Very cool! The NASA layer also includes a couple of sub layers: 1) placemarks to Astronaut Photography taken of the Earth from space, and 2) Interesting satellite photography NASA has collected of the Earth.

I've also noticed that the icons for the Populated Places layer have changed - more noticeable stars for the capitals. I'm sure I'll get used to them, but they seem more distracting than the old one.

I will report here as I find other things. This was a surprise layers update - as I had no word from my usual sources.

The Earth at Night layer is set up as a radio button. This implies to me they mean to add other overlays. The most obvious overlay from NASA would be their Blue Marble Next Generation (like the one I mentioned in this article, or the one I created for my BMNG Add-on). But, since there is only one item in the layer now, it seems silly to use a radio button. Maybe they plan to add to it soon. NOTE: you have to open the NASA folder "Earth City Lights" to be able to turn ON or OFF the Earth at night image layer.

New Roads Layer Colors - GEB reader Marco points out there are new roads layer colors in Germany. I believe other countries are sporting new colors as well.

Road Layers available in 15 more European Countries - From Google: "...we've also updated the European roads in Google Earth, 15 countries now in Europe, as well as adding more content for the Netherlands, like business listings layers and country names in Dutch.".

NOTE: Google's official announcement on the layers update from the Google Lat-Long Blog.

Posted by FrankTaylor at 10:47 AM | Comments (8)

3D Campus Winners Now in 3D Buildings Layer

The seven winners of Google's 3D Campus contest are now viewable in the built-in 3D Buildings layer inside Google Earth. You could go look up each winning campus and find them, but I've made a placemark collection that will fly you to each campus. These collections are fun to explore, and some have interesting details (e.g. check out the sign at Purdue). For large collections of 3D buildings, if your computer is older or does not have good 3D performance, you may find these collections will slow down your performance. I've made a video which spends about a minute showing a bit of each of the campus collections (8 minutes total):

Music by TartanRascals. The movie was made using GE Pro, Microsoft MovieMaker, and - of course - the 3DConnexion SpaceNavigator. Also, note that there is an excellent 3D campus at Boulder, Colorado done by the folks at SketchUp who are based nearby. They probably didn't qualify for the contest (being Googlers now).

Posted by FrankTaylor at 9:03 AM | Comments (0)

July 17, 2007

Energy Production Information for Western US

Got an E-mail from Brian Timoney (as did Stefan at OgleEarth), of the Timoney Group, that they have just published a new web site focused on Energy Production information on the Rocky Mountains area of the Western US. They are taking full advantage of KML's ability to access remote servers to pull in more detail as you zoom in closer to an area of interest. This means you get access to a great deal of information without paying a performance penalty in GE. They did this by using both network links and regioning features of KML (technical information on Regions). See below for more details about the setup. Or, just go visit the new web site, and try out the layers. I particularly like their federal lands layer which lets you see an overlay with labels of the various different federal lands in the Western US (click on the "Federal Lands" placemark for a legend).

Here are some excerpts from Brian Timoney's thoughts (OgleEarth just posted the full details) on the significance and quantity of the data in the new layers:

...over 500,000 wells spread over four states, more than 25,000 lease polygons, township/section grid, big raster layers, etc. ....every well and every lease is linked to an online data source (for the wells, their respective states’ Oil & Gas sites; for the leases, the Bureau of Land Management’s LR2000 site) that has detailed drill-down information. The value-add is that each site has a different method for navigating its offerings, often in a text-driven, non-intuitive fashion. Here we have a single visual platform giving the user easy one-click access to five different online datasources. ... We’re serving up all of the KML using Amazon’s S3 service. ... One of the implications of the <Region>/<NetworkLink> combo is that you get all of the capability of streaming large datasets without a web server having to actively parse out the user’s Viewport parameters and then deciding what data to stream back as KML. So now, passive, web-accessible storage is quite attractive not only because of the low storage/transfer costs, but more importantly, the management overhead of a webserver dealing with live requests and database uptime.

Posted by FrankTaylor at 7:17 PM | Comments (0)

TakItWithMe - Handy GPS Tool

My friend Virgil of EarthNC.com has produced a very handy tool called TakItWithMe (in beta) which allows you to take placemarks, lines/paths, etc. from Google MyMaps or from Google Earth (or KML content from wherever) and download it straight to most Garmin GPSes - or port it to many other GPSes using the standard GPX file format. I've been talking to Virgil throughout the development of TakitWithMe. He started working on the ability to output directly to GPSes right after Garmin announced their new API at Where 2.0 in late-May.

Don't let the simple interface fool you. By combining the power of the new Google My Maps, or by using Google Earth, you can quickly and easily create - or use existing - location information you might want with you when traveling to a destination into your handheld GPS. You can even create and port over a route between points. You will need to install the Garmin plug-in the first time which enables the browser application to interface to your Garmin. Once you have it installed, you won't believe how easy it is to get place information to your GPS with TakitWithMe. If you don't have a Garmin GPS, you can still output a GPX file and use a variety of other tools to port the information to your GPS. See Leszek's FreeGeographyTools blog for all kinds of ways to output to a GPS. Here is a video demonstration of TakItWithMe:

By the way, you can literally select a waypoint (or a collection of them) in Google Earth in the "Places" pane with your right mouse button and copy the placemark. Then paste it to TakItWithMe's KML conversion page and then output it to your Garmin or to a GPX file. This is practically drag and drop!

EarthNC is an excellent Google Earth resource for boaters. Check it out - especially if you boat in the US. See my previous review of EarthNC's announcement last May, and the details on their US chart data for Google Earth.

Posted by FrankTaylor at 3:55 PM | Comments (0)

Solar Eclipses in Google Earth

If you want to know about upcoming solar eclipses, there is an excellent web site by Xavier M. Jubier. Not only that, but he supports showing the paths showing where the eclipses are visible from (as well as historical eclipses back to 1961) in Google Earth. Here is an example of the next total solar eclipse viewable in China and Russia on August 1st, 2008. Here is the web page with the list of upcoming eclipses in GE.

Another fun Google Earth file was posted at the Google Earth Community by someone calling himself 'yaohua2000'. It's a huge repository of all the solar eclipses (4.7 Mbytes) since the year 1001 for GE. WARNING: this might take a while to load (4.7 Mbytes), and your Earth will look like a yarn ball after it loads (he defaults with all the eclipse paths turned on). I recommend after it loads you find the placemark folder in your Temporary Places folder called "Eclipses" and turn it off. Then open the folder and turn on the type and year of eclipses you want to see (it is well organized hierachically). This is a very interesting collection of data. I was able to find a total eclipse I saw as a child (a long time ago).

Posted by FrankTaylor at 9:37 AM | Comments (5)

July 16, 2007

Encompassing the Globe

The Smithsonian Institute has a special exhibition through September 16th at the Freer Gallery of Art and the Arthur M. Sackler Gallery which is located on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. The exhibition is called "Encompassing the Globe: Portugal and the World in the 16th and 17th Centuries". I'm really disappointed I just found out about it, because I was in Washington just two weeks ago - and I really enjoy learning about the early great mariners and explorers. The exhibition tells the tale of early exploration and world trade by the Portuguese and has all kinds of cartographical delights. Not only that, but the Smithsonian Institute has put together a Google Earth file to whet your appetite and help you learn a bit about the travels during this period. Definitely worth a look if you are at all interested in the history of early global exploration, world trade, and mapping. The new file is featured at the Google Earth Gallery this week.

Posted by FrankTaylor at 8:23 AM | Comments (2)

July 15, 2007

Solar System Moons in Google Earth

This is interesting: a size comparison of every moon (natural satellite of a planet) in the solar system larger in diameter than 100 km - all 34 of them - viewable in Google Earth. Download the 34 moons KML file here (4.5 Mbytes). James Stafford released the collection at his Barnabu blog today. The moons are actually fully texture-mapped 3D models placed in a single orbit around the Earth. This is a very cool way of applying 3D models to make a scientific illustration! James used, with proper credits, texture maps from a variety of sources including NASA, USGS, and the Naval Research Laboratory, and many others (see his post for more details). Not only that, but he made a handy video which shows each moon in order around Google Earth:

Thanks for the fun James!

Learn how to turn Google Earth into other planets:

• Google Jupiter - Turn GE into Jupiter and show clouds in motion
• Google Saturn - this uses a 3D model for the clouds, also done by 'barnabu'
• Mars Add-on for Google Earth
• Google Mars in Google Maps
• Moon and Mars overlay for GE

Other cool Google Earth content found at Barnabu recently:

• How to add sky to Google Earth
• London Eye Animation with Shadows
• Monthly Cloud Animations in Google Earth

Posted by FrankTaylor at 7:33 PM | Comments (9)

July 13, 2007

News Roundup: GE Design, Live Tour de France, PhotoSketch, Iran Nuclear Project

• GE Design - I met Richard Treves recently at ISDE5 in California. Richard developed some excellent tutorials over a year ago which helped people better understand how to use GE and how to develop basic KML files. He has now started a blog called Google Earth Design. Make sure you look at some of the earlier entries for some interesting material about how to create Google Earth content.

• Live Tour de France - As with the past two years you can see the route for Le Tour de France in Google Earth. Last year someone enabled live tracking of the race progress in GE, but this year I have yet to see anyone do that. However, there is an excellent Google Maps mashup which lets you track the race live by Ubilabs. via GoogleMapsMania.

• PhotoSketch - Found a video of a very interesting Google Tech Talk given by George Wolberg. The talk describes technology he has been developing designed to take casual photographs and convert them quickly into texture-mapped 3D buildings. The technology is intended to automate as much of the process as possible, but still requires some human input. The key is that the methods do not require expensive cameras, laser finders, etc. It extrapolates camera angle and position from the derived 3D of the building based on the photos. The results are designed to integrate with Google SketchUp, and are particularly suited to creating buildings for display in Google Earth.

• Iran Nuclear Project - Stefan Geens of OgleEarth noticed some new published analysis which showed new tunneling activity near the Natanz nuclear complex in Iran. The analysis results released recent DigitalGlobe photography. Stefan points out you can overlay the imagery and make comparisons using the transparency slider in the Places pane of Google Earth. He also pointed out he had created a similar overlay last year, so you can look at three different images of the construction. Download these two files to see the project at different stages: June 11, 2007 , and last year's overlay .

Posted by FrankTaylor at 7:47 AM | Comments (1)

July 12, 2007

Bienvenidos!

Google Earth Blog (GEB) has many readers from different parts of the world. And now you can read this blog not only in English, but also en Español! The Spanish version can be found at es.gearthblog.com. Since I only speak and write fluently (well, sort of) in English, I received help in translation from a long-time GEB reader named Gerardo Paz of Argentina. Gerardo is an enthusiastic user of Google Earth and is active in the Google Earth Community (where he goes by 'Gerardo64'). He has also published many interesting KML files. For the past few weeks he has worked to translate many of the components of GEB, and also has translated many entries - especially those from the last month. There are still hundreds of entries (there are over 1,200 in the last 2 years) that are in English, but all the new ones already are available in Spanish. We will try to translate the most popular of the older entries as time permits. Gerardo also has a normal life, so it may be a day or two before he updates the daily entries that I write in the English version of the Blog. But, the new site should still be a great aid to those readers who know Spanish better than English. We hope you like the new Spanish version of GEB. Please, leave a comment here or E-mail me (Frank Taylor) what you think of the Spanish version. If all goes well, perhaps in a few months I may try adding another language or two. Thank you Gerardo!

Posted by FrankTaylor at 10:45 AM | Comments (3)

Largest Coca Cola Logo - Made from Bottles

According to a post at the Google Earth Community (GEC) by 'hugolvagancia', the world's largest Coca Cola logo is on a mountainside in Chile. The logo was made in honor of the 100th anniversary of coke (1986) and was made from 70,000 bottles of Coca Cola. The logo appears to be about 100 feet tall, and 400 feet wide (30 by 120 meters). Read about the history of Coca Cola at Wikipedia.

You can find this and dozens of other corporate signs visible in Google Earth in one of the longest running threads at the GEC. The thread was started in June of 2003 when the forums were dedicated to finds in the predecessor to Google Earth: Keyhole's Earth Viewer. Keyhole was bought by Google in 2004 and rapidly redesigned into Google Earth which was released in June of 2005. For example, the first post was the Ford Motor Company logo on the top of their headquarters in Detroit.

Posted by FrankTaylor at 8:05 AM | Comments (2)

July 11, 2007

Google Mapplets Officially Released - Mashups 2.0

Google has officially released the new Mapplets technology which were first released as a preview at the Where 2.0 conference on May 29th. Interestingly, Google is now referring to the new Mapplets as "Mashup 2.0". I think this is appropriate because the new approach is truly an evolution in the idea of mashup presentation. Here's a video introducing you to the new capability of My Maps:

To see the new maps technology, simply go to Google Maps. The tab which says "My Maps" now not only lets you create your own maps annotations, but also combines the features of mapplets. You can add mapplets from others by selecting "Add content". You can also try out some "featured content" which are sample mapplets. The Panoramio example should be very familiar to Google Earth users who have long had the ability to view photos from Panoramio as a layer.

As I mentioned shortly after the announcement, a little known feature of the new mapplets is that you can now enable some KML files from Google Earth as your own Google Maps mashup. For example, you can type in the URL of a KML file into the "Search" pane of Google Maps and view placemarks on the map (not all KML files work - for example you can't view 3D models in Google Maps). You also get a button under the "My Maps" tab which lets you "Save to My Maps" the KML to your My Maps. So, for example, look at the KML file of the New Seven Wonders of the World in Google Maps. All I did was copy the URL of the KML file into the search pane of Google Maps. Try out the "Save to My Maps" button and you now have your own copy of the New Seven Wonders which was intended for just viewing in Google Earth. Instant Google Maps mashup!

One important feature of the new Mashups 2.0 capability is that it enables people to have their content highlighted and presented as gadgets which can be added to your My Maps. Given that Google has said you will be able to add Adsense ads to your custom Maps Mashups, this means people will soon be able to earn income from popular mashups. This will further incentivize people to develop innovative mashups.

Posted by FrankTaylor at 9:21 AM | Comments (3)

Winners of 3D Campus Competition Announced

Google has announced the winners of the Build Your Campus in 3D Competition. The competition was to get college campuses around the US or Canada to build their campus in 3D using SketchUp and viewable in Google Earth. Over 4000 campus buildings were built and seven campuses were selected as winners. The winners - 41 people involved - will will be flown to Google's headquarters in Mountain View for a 3-day visit and a workshop on 3D modeling techniques. Here are the winning campuses:

University of Minnesota - Department of Architecture
Purdue University - Departments of Computer Graphics Technology and Education
Concordia University, Loyola Campus - Department of Civil Engineering
Stanford University - Department of Architectural Design
Indiana University Purdue University Fort Wayne (IPFW) - Departments of Engineering and Computer Science
Franklin W. Olin College of Engineering - Department of Engineering
Dartmouth College - Departments of Computer Science and Digital Art

Google plans to include the models in their 3D Buildings layer in the coming weeks. You could load the zip files from each campus and start viewing the models. But, it is a slow process loading up hundreds of building models this way. I'll let you know when the models are in the layers. A sample of the University of Minnesota campus is shown in the screenshot - click on the thumbnail for a bigger picture.

Posted by FrankTaylor at 8:36 AM | Comments (2)

Google Finds Matt in Google Earth

[UPDATED 1445 ET: New video from Matt talking about his new KML file]

Matt Harding became a phenomenon in the early days of videos on the Internet. While traveling on a vacation he decided to take video of him performing silly little dances in front of interesting places. He posted his video and became an Internet video hit. People were amazed at all the locations he went, and the silly things that would happen in the background as he danced. He got a sponsor and began traveling all over the world to do more little dances. He started up a web site called "Where the Hell is Matt?" and inspired dozens of people to copy, spoof, or fake their own videos like his. You can read a rather self-deprecating summary about Matt on his website. Here is a video of Matt introducing the new KML file:

Now Google has worked with Matt to produce a KML file showing a sample of Matt's dancing locations in Google Earth. The KML uses an animating placemark of Matt dancing, and flies you to seven different locations where Matt has done a dance. Sometimes 3D models have been added to give you a taste of the setting. A brief synopsis of each visit and a photo are in the placemark descriptions.

The new KML file appeared in this week's collection at the Google Earth Gallery. But, I'm thinking this must be just a taste of what is to come. There are only a few example locations in the collection. Matt has visited dozens (or hundreds?) of places. And, there are no links to his videos in the placemarks. Maybe Google plans to add more of Matt's dancing locations and include links to videos of each location in future versions of this file. If not, maybe Matt will do it. I think it would be cool.

Here is a sample of his original videos (this one has been viewed over 7 million times at YouTube):

Posted by FrankTaylor at 7:35 AM | Comments (4)

July 10, 2007

Pool Guy Taps Google Earth

A few days ago, KUTV of Salt Lake City reported on an interesting business model developed by Chris McCall of Provo, Utah. Chris is a young entrepreneur who has started a pool service and cleaning business and thanks to Google Earth, his business is doing very well. Rather than just sending a mailer to every house in a neighborhood, Chris got onto Google Earth and found the neighborhoods with the most pools. Then he drove out and wrote down the addresses of each house with a pool. He then used that mailing list to do more targeted marketing of his services. “It took me a long time to drive by each house,” says McCall. “It was worth it.”

Too bad someone didn't tell Chris that he could use a site like Zillow to identify the addresses of the houses he found. He could have saved some driving time.

I imagine this concept of using Google Earth/Maps for identifying new prospects could apply to many other businesses. Lawn companies could target houses with the biggest yards. Landscapers could target houses that look like they could use improvement - :-). I've heard of roof repair companies using Google Earth to find houses that might need work. There is a caveat for some of these things though - the aerial or satellite photos you see in Google Earth may be as little as a few months old to as much as four years old - so new work may have already been done. There are other mapping sites to look at as well - like Virtual Earth - which might give you photos taken at other times or from different angles to further evaluate prospects. The pool guy story via AllPointsBlog.

Here are some other ways Google Earth has been used to market a business, or sell products around Google Earth (for even more, look at the Business category for GEB):

• Pirates of the Caribbean Promotion
• King Kong DVD promotion
• Maxim Cover in Google Earth
• RoboGeo software - geotag with Google Earth
• Real estate shopping with Google Earth

Posted by FrankTaylor at 3:30 PM | Comments (3)

July 9, 2007

3D Dresden in Google Earth

The City of Dresden, Germany published today a huge collection of 3D building models of their city for viewing in Google Earth (also, see German version of the web announcement). Over 150,000 buildings are reported (German article) to be in the collection. That would make Dresden the city with the most number of 3D buildings available for Google Earth to date. The models were generated in collaboration with the companies virtualcitysystems GmbH from Chemnitz and 3D Geo GmbH from Potsdam. Unfortunately, they apparently were not prepared for the huge throngs of Google Earth users who would want to see the collection. I've been waiting several hours on this story to get access to see the models. But, no luck so far. The servers have apparently been overloaded. Here is the link to start the City of Dresden 3D building network link. Once it loads, double click on the Dresden3D folder - or enter "Dresden, Germany" in the "Fly To" window to fly to Dresden. Then, if their servers are working smoothly, you can zoom into different parts of the city and the models will load. In the meantime, there are some links to PDF screenshots of the new 3D Dresden on the German page here.

[UPDATE 10-July 0800 ET: Late last night I checked and got to see the new Dresden models. The collection is quite impressive. Some of the models are quite detailed with quality photo textures. Most others also have photo textures, and a few scattered ones do not - but, still give you a feeling of the dimensions of the city. Here is a video from Spiegel Online (thanks to GEB reader Mathias). Note: the video appears to have been done before they finished many buildings with textures.]

What I would like to know is where are those 3D building models that Hamburg claimed they were going to be releasing soon back at the beginning of the year?

Posted by FrankTaylor at 2:01 PM | Comments (6)

News Roundup - New GeoSearch, GeoWeb 2007, Traffic Gadget, Earthplot, Environmental Data

• New GeoSearch - In Google's latest Sightseer newsletter, Google describes new features to their KML search - which they are calling Geo search. When you are searching for something other than just a place - e.g. rollercoasters, you can get user-generated results which come from files (including Google My Maps) people have posted somewhere on the Internet. The Geo searching now supports both KML and GeoRSS. So, things people have posted via GeoRSS (for example, blog posts or news articles tagged with location) will also be found when searching results. Also, search results now show details, including images, in the placemark descriptions. For an example, search for "chimpanzees in Tanzania" in the search for Google Earth, or Google Maps. Some of the results come from Jane Goodall's Chimpanzee blog complete with photos and links.

• GeoWeb 2007 - The conference - July 23-27 - now has a new blog. I wish they had picked different dates for this conference. I'll be sailing in the Caribbean instead. But, there are some interesting speakers and workshops at this conference. Hopefully, the blogging will be thorough and I won't miss too much.

• Traffic Gadget - Google has announced a new gadget for your iGoogle page which lets you use Google Maps Traffic mapping tool. You can find the gadget here.

• Earthplot - FreeGeographyTools blog posts about the Earthplot tools which were released in the early days of Google Earth. These tools enabled features which at the time were not in the free version of Google Earth (such as line and polygon drawing). But, the tools are now at version 1.3, are free, and have some other neat features. One feature was from a tip I suggested to the author in 2005 which allows you to fly a path in Google Earth at altitude (i.e. you can follow a plane's path at altitude). This feature uses the COM API in KML.

• Environmental Data - OgleEarth discovers a huge collection of Google Earth KML environmental content from King's College of London. These are complex KML files with tons of interesting data buried within them. The Amazon forest layer shows all kinds of information including imagery showing deforestation (logging) - which uses regionated KML to pull in higher resolution imagery. There is a huge list of KML files available for things all over the Earth.

Posted by FrankTaylor at 7:38 AM | Comments (1)

July 8, 2007

New Seven Wonders of the World in Google Earth

Of the original seven wonders of the ancient world (man-made) only the pyramids of Giza are still standing. A web site called New Seven Wonders held a vote during the last several months in which many millions of people voted out of 21 different sites to select the next seven wonders. The winners were announced, appropriately enough, on 7/7/7 - yesterday. Here is a Google Earth file which shows the new seven wonders of the world . This file was posted at the Google Earth Community by someone called NorCalHarris. I updated the file a bit to better position the placemarks and add some suggestions on how to see more information on each location in GE. The best tip is to turn on the Geographic Web layer so you can see many photos taken of each site available from Panoramio. There are also 3D models available of some of the locations.

Here's a quick list of the new seven wonders:

1. Ancient City of Petra
2. Machu Picchu
3. The Great Wall of China
4. Taj Mahal
5. Christ Redeemer, Rio
6. The Roman Colloseum
7. Chichén Itzá

You can see the full list of 21 candidates for the new seven wonders in Google Earth (also posted by NorCalHarris). Also, there is a collection of several different Seven Wonders: the Ancient World, Medieval World, the Natural World, and the Underwater World. By the way, I kind of feel like the Pyramids of Giza - since they are still standing - should have automatically stayed on the list.

See also:

• Great Pyramid of Giza in 3D (transparent)
• Taj Majal in 3D

Posted by FrankTaylor at 9:32 AM | Comments (27)

July 6, 2007

Chinese Nuclear Sub in Google Earth

Hans Kristensen of the Federation of American Scientists has blogged he believes a sub found in satellite photos of Google Earth near Xiaopingdao Submarine Base south of Dalian is one of the new "JIN-class" nuclear submarines. You can see the submarine here in Google Earth.

Also, check an earlier post on a Chinese submarine base, and some other photos of submarines at sea in Google Earth.

Posted by FrankTaylor at 11:57 AM | Comments (6)

Live Earth Concerts in Google Earth

There is a lot of buzz in the news about the Live Earth concerts which are a series of concerts being held in 8 countries, and one special concert in Antarctica, this Saturday for 24 hours with the goal of raising awareness on the issues of global warming. Note the date is 7-7-07. Not surprisingly, Al Gore is one of the people behind it. It is being organized by Kevin Wall, and I saw them both on Larry King last night. Already some pretty big-name artists have been announced including Madonna at Wembeley stadium in the UK.

So, I went to do a search to find out where these events are being held. It surprised me that a quick search didn't produce a map of the venues (note: someone pointed out there is a map on the official site now with Microsoft Virtual Earth). So, after a bit of research, I created a list of placemarks of the Live Earth venues that lets you see each of the venues, including the rather remote concert at Rothera Research Station in Antarctica, inside Google Earth. You can hit the right-arrow "Play" button below the "Places" pane (or select "Tools->Play Tour" menu choice - more info here), and you'll be flown to each location. You'll notice the Wembley stadium is still under construction in the Google Earth satellite view. And, you'll get close-up views of all the other locations.

[EDIT 1632 ET: corrected Hamburg venue location to correct stadium, and added missing Sydney, Australia venue.]

Posted by FrankTaylor at 7:59 AM | Comments (12)

July 5, 2007

Philosophy Behind Google Earth and Maps

This week seems to be a good week to learn more about the technology and approaches behind the Google Earth/Maps applications. First we had one of the founders, Avi Bar-Ze'ev, of Keyhole publish an article on how Google Earth works and how it gets such smooth visualizations. It turns out, that Michael Jones - another founder of Keyhole, and now the Chief Technologist of Google Earth - has published an interesting article in the IEEE "Computer Graphics and Applications" magazine. It's a subscription magazine, but we're fortunate the article is available in PDF form. The article is called "Google’s Geospatial Organizing Principle" (PDF, 2.4 MBytes). In this article, Michael describes some of the philosophy behind the Google geospatial team's mission to "geospatially organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful". Much of the article centers around the concepts of how Google is helping people find geospatial information (with Google Earth and Maps) and gives many examples of information that goes way beyond just a simple location (such as an address, city, or country). Examples such as how Google Earth has been used for disaster relief, to help demonstrate environmental issues, or even monitoring viruses. It points out why people so joyfully embrace not only the ability to see the places in their lives, but why its important to be able to share the information. I think this is an excellent article which reveals some powerful thinking from one of the key people behind Google's geospatial technology strategy. With this kind of thinking, I'm sure Google will be continuing to develop new and useful tools and features for Google Earth and Maps. Nice work Michael!

Posted by FrankTaylor at 7:13 AM | Comments (1)

July 4, 2007

How Google Earth Really Works

One of the co-founders of Keyhole who helped build the virtual globe which later became Google Earth is Avi Bar-Ze'ev. Avi has worked on many interesting graphics projects in his career in addition to Keyhole, he worked on Second Life, and he worked on one of Disney Imagineering's virtual reality rides (Alladin's Magic Carpet). He has some unique understandings of the technical inner-workings of these popular applications. Although he doesn't work at Google, he sometimes comments on technical mis-interpretations that are being discussed about Google Earth and Second Life in the blogosphere. He recently moved his technical writings from his personal blog over to a new blog called RealityPrime. Yesterday, I heard that Avi had just published a very interesting technical description called "How Google Earth [Really] Works".

Avi was frustrated with the quality of the description at HowStuffWorks.com for Google Earth, and decided to write his own article. Avi's article is well-written and a bit lengthy. And, it does include some techincal concepts - most of which he describes in terms most can understand. But, I highly encourage you to read his article if you are interested in better understanding why Google Earth works so well. He makes sure to point out that although he has some insight from his early work, Google has made substantial changes to the application and some of the inner-workings may have changed significantly since that time. But, the fundamental visualization methodologies are certainly still true. This is just the first installment of Avi's description of How Google Earth Really Works. I highly recommend Avi's article. I look forward to reading the rest!

You also might want to read Avi's comments about the MIT Technology Review article called "Second Earth" discussing the future trends (and possible convergence) of Google Earth and Second Life.

Posted by FrankTaylor at 3:42 PM | Comments (0)

July 4th, Map within a Map, and Google Earth Moderator Meeting

It's July 4th, US Independence Day, and I'm visiting Washington, D.C. for a few days. Google invited a few dedicated volunteers here for a few days to see the sights while meeting to discuss some work for Google Earth. The moderators of the Google Earth Community (GEC) volunteer their time to help manage the huge population (850,000 registered members and millions of readers) of forum participants who post things they find interesting in Google Earth or discuss what has been found or shown. The moderators are a very interesting group of individuals who come from all over the world: New Zealand, Australia, England, Scotland, Spain, the US, and more. They range in age from 18 to past retirement, and have backgrounds from many walks of life like the military, computer science, home makers, an ophthalmologist surgeon, a pilot instructor, and many other careers. More importantly, many have been involved with managing the forums since the days of Keyhole (the application Google bought which became Google Earth). These are really good, intelligent people who want to help the growing community of GE share their enthusiasm for the many ways you can learn about our planet, or learn about many topics thanks to the information sharing possible through the GEC forums.

Near the hotel where the meeting is being held is the Washington Freedom Plaza. This Plaza has a very large map engraved on the ground which represents the streets, mall, and area near the US Capitol building (you can find it by simply searching for "Freedom Plaza" while looking at the US). It occurred to me that someday they should upgrade the map to Freedom Plaza 2.0. A large printout of the satellite photos from GE could be shown instead for the map. To demonstrate, check out this image overlay for Google Earth of the concept - zoom in to see the map within a map. If you keep zooming and look for the Freedom Plaza again, you'll see I also added an image overlay of the original map. Its really kind of a recursive loop. :-)

I guess since I often write about things posted at the GEC, and about some of the efforts the moderators perform, they invited me to come to the meeting as well. I also briefly attended last year's meeting of the moderators in Mountain View. As with any Google event, we are being treated to large amounts of food, so its a good thing we are all planning to do a fair bit of walking to see the Washington museums and sights. I'll keep an eye out for other KML files related to the trip and report on them later. In the meantime, I hope the moderators all enjoy a bit of fun for all the hard work they have performed in the service of the GE Community. Google certainly recognizes their efforts, and I'm sure many of the other regulars participants in the community do as well. By the way, one of the moderators has just officially become a Googler: Phil Verney. Congrats Phil!

Posted by FrankTaylor at 8:00 AM | Comments (0)

July 3, 2007

Quasi-global Near real-time Rainfall in Google Earth

Valery Hronusov, who is often innovating ways to get data into Google Earth, has developed a Google Earth visualization from data at a NASA research web site to produce this near global near real-time rainfall time animation. That's right, you can watch where rain has been falling over about a 12 hour time period. You simply load the rainfall network link , and then turn it on to initiate the animation. It needs to load several global image overlays before the animation can start. You can expand the time animation interval in the time slider to get it to load them all. Once it is done loading, reduce the time slider interval to between 3 and 6 hours. Then hit the "Play" button on the right of the time slider.

The rainfall data comes from this NASA site. The Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) is a joint U.S.-Japan satellite mission to monitor tropical and subtropical precipitation and to estimate its associated latent heating. TRMM provides systematic, multi-year, visible, infrared, and microwave measurements of rainfall in the tropics as key inputs to weather and climate research. The satellite observations are complemented by ground radar and rain gauge measurements to validate the satellite rain estimation techniques. You can turn on a "Legend" in the network link which will tell you what values of rainfall the colors mean.

Valery puts the data into a spreadsheet and then manages to output the results into a KML file. He has been a been advocate for using spreadsheet technology to convert data for use with KML. This is a pretty cool example of the technique, and is useful for getting an idea where rain is falling at least in the tropics. Great work as usual Valery!

Related - other interesting Google Earth visualizations Valery has produced, or been involved with producing:

• Global Paleogeographic Time Animation
• UAV Aerial Photography Solution
• Earth on Fire
• Aeronautical Information System
• NASA Annual Global Day Land Tempteratures

Posted by FrankTaylor at 7:05 AM | Comments (1)

July 2, 2007

Visualizing LIDAR with Google Earth

[UPDATE 1430 ET: corrected attributions] A couple of researchers from UC Berkeley contacted me to share some visualizations they have developed for Google Earth using LIDAR data (a kind of optical radar system that allows you to collect 3D information in digital form of outdoor scenery). Martin Isenburg and Jonathan Shewchuk have published some of their results at this web page (which is at UNC where Martin got his PHD). They are using view-based network links to let you view image overlays of LIDAR data, and they have developed tools so they can generate isocontours from the LIDAR and generate contour tiles viewable in Google Earth as well.

Check out this example of LIDAR aerial imagery overlayed for Toronto, Canada . As you zoom in you will see the tiles of imagery they have available. The imagery has a shaded relief appearance which reflects the presence of 3D shapes. You can see trees, cars, and even people in the data.

Also, try the contour example they have for Mount Saint Helens in GE. You can see that the interior of the volcano in GE does not reflect the full extent of terrain in the interior (tilt your view in GE to see this).

Posted by FrankTaylor at 10:42 AM | Comments (5)

July 1, 2007

Google Maps New Additions for India and UAE

According to Mike Pegg's Google Maps Mania, Google has made some significant updates to Google Maps. This is on top of the really cool new addition to Google Maps two days ago which lets you do draggable driving directions. Here are the two main additions:

• Expanded Coverage for India - In Google Maps, you can now search India with addresses and you can search for local businesses. For example, search for Bombay Hospital, or how about the Taj Majal?

• 

  United Arab Emirates (UAE) Added to Google Maps - You can now see detailed roads for the UAE. You can't yet search for addresses. Support for searching for businesses is not built-in, but you can search and see web results for things people have already marked with KML. For example, search for "Ski Dubai".

The new data is only available in Google Maps for now. In a few weeks or months they will probably push the new data over to Google Earth as well. For example, the recent layer update added several new countries with detailed roads and searches in Google Earth.

Posted by FrankTaylor at 3:24 PM | Comments (2)

Google Earth Blog Copyright © 2005-2009 Frank Taylor. All Rights Reserved.