Google Earth Blog: March 2008 Archives

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March 31, 2008

Links: Digital Urban Booklet, GE OSX UI Tweak, Peru Meteor Strike

I'm in Utah at the moment enjoying a few days of skiing in the heavily laden snow-covered mountains. Expect a few Google Earth visualizations showing GPS tracks of our skiing soon.

Digital Urban Booklet - Digital Urban blog has shared many interesting urban visualizations and developed useful tools for Google Earth (e.g. here, here, and here). The blog is written by Dr. Andrew Hudson-Smith and represents things of interest to the Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis, University College London (CASA). They are releasing a preview of an upcoming book in the form of a "booklet" called "Digital Geography - Geographic Visualisation for Urban Environments". The booklet has a focus on Neogeography, Web 2.0 and the various emerging techniques for urban visualisation. Available for £9.99 (worldwide postage and packaging is free). I have a copy on its way, and will provide more details after I read it.
GE OSX UI Tweak - Adam Betts decided he wanted to improve the look and feel to Google Earth on his Mac OS X. He has released a package which lets you replace some of the icons and layout of the buttons in Google Earth. MacApper has written a short tutorial explaining the steps taken to implement the tweak from Adam.
Peru Meteor Strike - Last September a meteorite struck a remote region of Peru. There were reports that locals who visited the site shortly after it struck got sick. Then scientists came to take measurements and to collect samples of debris from the site. The meteor crater was initially estimated to be 30 meters wide, but later determined to be 12 meters wide. Meanwhile, at the Google Earth Community, a member (and moderator) named 'Hill' posted his best guess from the news reports on the location of the strike. Later, as more news stories came out, he refined his guess. Eventually, a few days later, after the scientists arrived, Hill was able to get the exact coordinates of the strike - see here in Google Earth (unfortunately, low resolution imagery). Hill continued to follow the story, and recently posted that scientists have formed a new theory about the way certain types of meteorites can strike the Earth based on this strike. Read the entire thread of posts by Hill and others to follow this fascinating story (including more photos).

Posted by FrankTaylor at 09:01 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

March 28, 2008

Wilkins Ice Shelf, Sea Ice Extent Animation

A few days ago, the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) released dramatic imagery showing a huge portion of the Wilkins Ice Shelf in Antarctica, 13,680 sq. km in size, which broke off and began disintegrating a few days ago at the end of the Antarctic summer. This is another dramatic instance of the huge ice melting at both poles of our planet. The new ice in the water will have a temporary effect of cooling the nearby waters (just like ice in your drink), but as it melts - and if the temperatures continue to rise - the ice melting will only accelerate in the coming years.

Stefan at OgleEarth took the NASA photos from the NSIDC and created a couple of image overlays Google Earth File. You must have GE installed. so you can see the view of the ice shelf break-up right where it happened in Google Earth. And, you can grab the transparency slider beneath the Places pane to compare the new photos to the base imagery in GE. Stefan's post also shares a YouTube video showing a flyby of this huge ice break-up (note that the cliffs of ice are 60+ feet tall!):

The Snow and Ice Data Center has some excellent Google Earth KML visualizations (see previous GEB story). My favorite is the sea ice extent time animation Google Earth File. You must have GE installed. . This animation lets you see the extent of sea ice for either September or October from 1979 through the present. The pink lines show the normal average ice extent. Look at this past September 2007 ice extent report for the Arctic region for the dramatic drop in ice last summer (read GEB post on this). Hopefully the NSIDC will add the March 2008 update to this file soon.

Posted by FrankTaylor at 09:35 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

March 27, 2008

New Open Source libKML, New Street View Cities, API for SV

Lots of geo-spatial news from Google today! Here's the scoops:

New Open source libKML - At their open source blog, Google has announced a new library designed to help programmers develop full KML 2.2 content. According to Michael Weiss-Malik the hope is that: "libkml will reduce the need for everyone to re-invent the wheel with a custom parser or serializer, by providing a single re-usable library that implements KML's semantics." The initial 0.1 preview release is available at libkml.googlecode.com. It's a C++ library that compiles and runs on multiple platforms. I think this is a great move which will help create even more support behind KML in the developer community. UPDATE: See Andrew Turner's perspective on the announcement (which was made at the OGC committee meetign on KML today). He is also very positive on this move by Google.
New Street View Cities - Google has released 13 more cities with Street View imagery for Google Maps. Cities include: Albuquerque, NM; Anchorage, AK; Austin, TX; Cleveland, OH; Fairbanks, AK; Little Rock, AR; Madison, WI; Nashville, TN; Rockford, IL; Richmond, VA; Spokane, WA; St. Petersburg, FL; Tampa, FL. Also, they have expanded coverage in Denver, Houston, Las Vegas, Los Angeles, Pittsburgh, and the San Francisco Bay Area. And. finally, as an interesting bonus they have done Streeet View for Yosemite National Park! See example here:

View Larger Map
Street View API - Google has also announced a Street View API at the Google Maps API blog. We should see some interesting new mashups with Street View panoramas in the coming days. via DigitalEarth Blog.

Posted by FrankTaylor at 05:35 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

Will Google Earth Be Banned By China?

A recent article in the China Daily says the Chinese government plans to crack down on "illegal mapping websites". Min Yiren, Deputy Director of the State Bureau of Surveying and Mapping (SBSM), said there were nearly 10,000 online map websites in China, most of them showing unapproved maps. Those websites will be removed. He also said that foreign companies and individuals engaged in publishing online maps will be stopped. The campaign will be focused on sites "...that make mistakes such as labeling Taiwan a 'country', wrongly drawing national boundaries, or omitting islands such as the South China Islands, Diaoyu Islands and Chiwei Island." The justification for these moves are that they are a "threat to State security".

So, what will this mean for mapping applications like Google Maps and Google Earth? Will Google be able to offer a China-sanitized version of the Google Earth layers to satisfy the Chinese authorities? They could modify the borders and remove unwanted placemarks from the Google Earth Community layers.

But, what about the imagery? Chinese authorities have reportedly been concerned about satellite imagery which have shown military sites like their nuclear submarine base. Would Google actually censor the satellite imagery for all users of Google Earth because of a demand of China? My guess is they wouldn't, because as long as the imagery is available for purchase from public sources, someone can always put the images in Google Earth by simply making an image overlay.

Google's China office has a special mapping application which presumably can be made to meet local requirements.

I asked Google's Michael Jones about the news report from China. He said he couldn't speculate about planned or future policy or enforcement changes. An understandable response. I also asked him about the China mapping application and Michael said it "uses locally licensed data from reputable firms trusted by local authorities. We have no reason to expect that even the strictest enforcement of law would limit that map product in the Chinese market."

The big question is whether Google would take the righteous stance and allow Google Earth to be banned in China rather than change its policies with regards to making public information available to the world? I could see them making a modified version of their databases for Chinese users - but, I would hope they wouldn't censor the data for non-Chinese users. I guess we'll have to wait and see what happens.

Posted by FrankTaylor at 09:51 AM | Comments (7) | TrackBack

March 26, 2008

Couples Walking in Google Earth

Lover shadows in Google Earth The higher resolution imagery in Google Earth was sometimes captured when the angle of the sun is low. This enables one to see details laid out by shadows which would otherwise be invisible. Someone called 'JosieNorden' at the Google Earth Community has placemarked examples of lovers walking Google Earth File. You must have GE installed. in parks, beaches, and other places. If you are looking for something in Google Earth to brighten your day, then this collection is worth a few minutes time. You can fly through to each placemark by selecting the downloaded folder and choosing "play tour" (the button below that looks like your TV remote play button). See original post at Google Earth Community.

Posted by FrankTaylor at 08:52 AM | Comments (3) | TrackBack

March 25, 2008

Brightest Object Ever Observed in Google Sky

Last week, on the same day Arthur Clarke passed away, light from an object 7.5 billion light years away suddenly arrived at Earth. The light was brighter than any ever observed by astronomers. It was detected first in the form of a Gamma Ray Burst, and was so bright it was even visible briefly in normal light to the naked eye. According to NASA: "...it was 2.5 million times more luminous than the most luminous supernova ever recorded, making it the most intrinsically bright object ever observed by humans in the universe." See Sky & Telescope article where this photo came from:

Wow! What an amazing event. And the timing is simply uncanny. Stefan Geens posted about the remarkable coincidence today at OgleEarth and not only provides more details and links to interesting data about the object, but also has provided a KMZ file showing the exact location of the event Google Earth File. You must have GE installed. in Google Sky. The file also includes two image overlays from optical observations of the event (one close-up view, and a broader view).

The name of the object is officially GRB 080319B. GRB stands for Gamma Ray Burst, and the number is the date of the event. Given the proximity of the event to Arthur Clarke's death, I think it should be called the "Clarke Event".

Posted by FrankTaylor at 08:52 AM | Comments (6) | TrackBack

March 24, 2008

Global Temperature Trends for Google Earth

A couple of programmers from Columbia University developed a Google Earth visualization of a large database of global temperature data. They took data from NASA and other sources and mapped placemarks for cities all over the world. Download their global data file here Google Earth File. You must have GE installed. (it may take a few seconds to load the thousands of datapoints). The placemarks have colors which shows the warming trend between the baseline years and recent years. White represents pins without sufficient data in the baseline or recent years. The amount of cooling is shown in shades of blue and amount of warming in reds. But, the real interesting data is inside the placemark descriptions where graphs are shown indicating the temperature trends for each location over the past century or more.

The collection was put together by Ken Mankoff and Mark Chandler of Columbia University. There are more intricacies to the display of the data which are explained on their web page here. This project is a part of a bigger project they have been working on called Educational Global Climate Modeling. This site has a lot of interesting information about our global climate.

Posted by FrankTaylor at 08:52 AM | Comments (4) | TrackBack

March 21, 2008

Buy a Tree for the Rainforest - Get a KML

This is a really great concept! The World Wildlife Fund (WWF) offers you the opportunity to buy a tree which will be planted in a rainforest in Sebangau National Forest in Central Kalimantan, Indonesia. In return, they not only plant the tree, but give you a Google Earth KML file in return with the location coordinates of your tree. Theoretically, as Google continues to update with higher resolution satellite and aerial imagery, you should be able to watch the growth of your tree (and the others who donate trees) over the coming years. To get started, you simply go to the web site mybabytree.org. They have a very cute animation that will guide you through the process, and you can use Paypal to make your donation. You can see the location and list of trees purchased so far here Google Earth File. You must have GE installed. . Borneo is another location, like the Amazon, where rain forests are disappearing due to logging at a freightening pace. I hope WWF will extend the concept to the rapidly declining rain forests in the Amazon.

Watch a video they have prepared which explains the process:

via Adena Shutzberg at AllPointsBlog - she says this reminds her of the Star Registry where you can name a star after someone. I agree!

Posted by FrankTaylor at 11:15 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

March 20, 2008

Google Adds More Countries with Weather Radar Layer

Last November Google added a weather layer which included a global cloud layer, and weather radar for the US. Today Google has expanded the radar layer coverage to include: Europe, Canada, Alaska, Hawaii, and Puerto Rico. (The European coverage is limited to the north central part of Europe.) The new weather radar data once again comes from Weather.com. You can find the new weather information under the Weather layer on the lower left of Google Earth like this:

If you open the Weather layer folder, and click on the Information placemark, you can load a 6 hour radar animation as well.

There's another weather site which has some great Google Earth weather files called GuiWeather. They have a weather radar visualization Google Earth File. You must have GE installed. for the US which I think looks even better (higher resolution for one thing). And they have a radar animation built-in to the same file.

See also NOAA Radar data in Google Earth here, and here.

Posted by FrankTaylor at 10:38 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBack

Links: Seero GPS Videos, GE Labels, Wikitude POIs, 3D Egyptian Viz

Seero GPS Videos - Seero is a new live, on location video site. They have been in beta for a while, but just went live last night. What I find interesting is Seero's ability to not only share location of a video (like the geotagging of YouTube videos), but you can actually play the Video alongside a GPS track and see the changing location on a dynamically updating Google Map mashup. I'm not sure of the utility of live broadcasting for this medium, but they also support playing them back from archives. See the examples by Seero themselves. They tell me they have plans to implement the same playback capability inside Google Earth soon. I'll report on it more when they have it ready.
GE Labels -Valery Hrosunov has developed a cool tool for putting fancy labels in Google Earth. Since Google only has limited label capability (only one font), they decided to build something themselves. They use Google Maps for the initial interface, but you generate a KML file when you've got the label the way you want it. The resulting text and icons are an image - so they don't scaled with your view. But, could be quite helpful in presentation files.
Wikitude POIs - Wikitude.org allows you to search for places of interest and presents placemarks all from Wikipedia on a Google Maps mashup. But, what makes it really interesting is you also get the option to view a KML file or output the resulting points of interest (POI) to a TomTom GPS. Given the availability of Garmin's easy interface, I'm surprised they don't also offer an option for Garmin. But, since there are tools for taking KML and generating waypoints for Garmin already, that's not a huge problem.
3D Egyptian Viz - I meant to mention an excellent article posted by Stefan Geens about a 3D Google Earth visualization he discovered of Elephantine, one of the most important archeaological sites in Egypt. Definitely worth checking out.

Posted by FrankTaylor at 08:20 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

March 19, 2008

Sir Arthur C. Clarke - R.I.P.

Sir Arthur C. Clarke passed away yesterday in his Sri Lankan home (NY Times obituary). Arthur Clarke was a technological visionary, scuba diver, scientist, science fiction author, and an inspiration to many, many people. Several of his books were an inspiration to me and my dreams about the future. I was fortunate enough to meet him when he came to do his cameo appearance in the movie 2010: Odyssey Two (I believe it was in 1983). He appeared in a scene in Washington, DC in front of the White House. Arthur is feeding pigeons on a park bench in the movie. Arthur came to speak at a conference we were holding in Washington while he was doing the movie.

Some friends of mine got to know Arthur through some of our efforts as space program proponents. On a few occasions I got to speak to Arthur on the phone, once from my apartment in Houston. He was kind enough to let us call him "Uncle Arthur". Arthur often made virtual appearances via satellite video conferences from his home in Sri Lanka. A fitting way for him to communicate since he was the person who first envisioned communications satellites in geosynchronous orbit. The last time I spoke to him was by satellite video conferencing. I had planned to visit him in Sri Lanka by sailboat in a few years, but I knew there was a chance his failing health would keep it from happening.

In memory of Uncle Arthur, here are a few relevant things to look at in Google Earth:

Colombo, Sri Lanka - the city near where Arthur lived for the last 50 years.
Space Elevator - One of Arthur's most amazing visions was the concept of a space elevator. Rather than always launching rockets to get into space, why not ride an elevator? He put the concept in the form of a science fiction book called "Fountains of Paradise" where the characters actually build such a system. Here are a couple of articles about space elevator 3D models for Google Earth (first, a crude simple one I did before SketchUp - and another better one by Gerardo).
2001: A Space Odyssey - Someone at the GEC posted a 3D model of the space station from this classic movie which is based on Arthur's book.

Posted by FrankTaylor at 09:00 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

March 18, 2008

Australian Geologist Accidentally Discovers Meteor Crater in Google Earth

Geologist Arthur Hickman now has a meteor crater named after himself. He discovered Hickman Crater while looking for likely places to find iron ore in mountains in the western part of Australia. He sent a screenshot and the coordinates over to a colleague at Australian National University who later confirmed it is a well-perserved meteor crater between 10,000 and 100,000 years old. via ScienceAlert. You can see the crater in Google Earth here , or look at it with Google Maps.

This is not the first crater discovered with Google Earth. Two years ago a huge crater was discovered in the Saharan Desert with Google Earth.

If you want to start searching for craters in Google Earth, you might want to load this super-collection showing placemarks of known and suspected meteor craters on Earth . There are several folders which show various datasets of craters and some show the size of the craters as well. Also, be aware that not all things that look like meteor craters are. Besides the obvious volcano craters, there are other geological objects which appear as meteor craters but are not. Read this article from NASA.

Posted by FrankTaylor at 09:20 AM | Comments (6) | TrackBack

March 17, 2008

Where 2.0 2008 - Early Registration Deadline March 23rd

The O'Reilly Media Where 2.0 2008 conference is being held this year at the San Francisco Airport Marriott. This conference is all about Web 2.0 mapping technologies like Google Maps, Google Earth, Yahoo Maps, Microsoft Virtual Earth, and many other mapping technologies for the developing GeoWeb. This has been one of my favorite conferences during the last two years for meeting up with the folks behind the developing Internet-based mapping technologies. To make sure I would like it this year, they invited me to be on the Program Committee.

The early registration deadline for this year's event is March 23rd. Register here. If you are a Google Earth Blog reader, enter this special discount code: 'whr08gl' for an addition 15% discount off your registration.

See notes from Where 2.0 2007 - part 1, part 2; And Where 2.0 2006 - Day 1, Day 2

Posted by FrankTaylor at 02:01 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Deer Blogs His Own GPS Position in Google Earth

[UPDATE:The batteries finally ran out on April 28th. ]

In what may be a short-lived cool geo hack of the day, a deer named "Thor" now has his own blog where he shares his GPS position every five minutes. Someone named 'Siberian' at the Google Earth Community posted how he managed to make this happen. Turns out he had collared a deer they named "Thor" with a GPS and cellphone with SMS capability. They are studying deers living in suburban areas in Pennsylvania. Siberian then hacked up a way to use the resulting E-mail to create a spreadsheet which is then converted into a file you can use to track the deer in Google Earth . The system is totally automated using free services. His post goes into detail on how this was all accomplished. Siberian is using some tools by Valery Hronusov - who has developed and posted dozens of cool geo hacks for Google Earth (see his global rainfall example). Valery came up with the idea to let the deer blog his coordinates as well. Thanks to Valery for the tip on this cool deer hack! Note: you can also view the deer's map in Google Maps.

Any bets on how long it will be before someone hunts down the poor deer?

Other examples of tracking in Google Earth:

Posted by FrankTaylor at 08:08 AM | Comments (18) | TrackBack

Links: SR22 Cockpit, Jane Austen, Magnetic Pole, Taiwan GE Bonanza, Tutorial, VE3D on Mac

SR22 Cockpit - Not satisfied with just doing a cockpit add-on for the F16, Gerardo has also done a cockpit add-on for the SR22 for Google Earth's built-in flight simulator. It's a screen overlay showing the cockpit while you fly the simulator. Make sure to check out the tips on using GE's flight simulator.
Jane Austen - An excellent Google Earth documentary showing the life and works of literary legend Jane Austen (3.5 Mbytes) has been posted by GEC member 'LuciaM'. The collection is organized into three sections: The biography layer shows the actual places that she experienced over the course of her life from the small town of her birth to estates in Kent through to her final resting place amidst Saxon kings. The second marks the real places in her literary works. The final section identifies the historical buildings used as backdrops for the major film adaptations of her books. The placemarks are annotated with information about Austen's life, as well as quotes from her letters and books. LuciaM also developed the excellent collection about the Six Wives of Henry VIII.
Magnetic Pole - An excellent collection of time animations for Google Earth visualizing the Earth's magnetic fields changing over time has been posted at the GEC by Stefan Maus. The animation covers from the year 1590 to 2010. Be careful not to load all the visualizations at once as they will bog down your memory. But, carefully used these animations are excellent. Turn on the time animation and prepare to wait a while to load each frame.
Taiwan GE Bonanza - Steven Ho of Taiwan has done a huge amount of work in Google Earth, but most of it hasn't been seen in the English-speaking world. He has recently started a new blog in English to share some of his amazing collection for Google Earth. His posts usually have YouTube videos as well as links to the KML files. I especially like this post with a very innovative application of screen image overlays. Note that the KML file has a jet fighter instead of a remote control plane in the animation.
Tutorial - Spatial education site Geochalkboard has released a tutorial for the spreadsheet mapper which Google released that lets you create nice KML files without programming KML.
VE3D on Mac - Stefan Geens discovers that the Windows emulator software for Mac OS X from VMWare called Fusion is now good enough to run Virtual Earth 3D on Internet Explorer. While you still can't run VE3D on a Mac natively - this at least lets you check things out with it without having to boot up Windows under bootcamp.

Posted by FrankTaylor at 08:05 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

March 14, 2008

Layer Update for Google Earth - 94 new countries with Roads - March 14

Google has made a layer update today for Google Earth (and Maps). Included in this layer update:

New Roads - 94 new countries have roads including 58 in Africa, 32 in Asia, and 4 in the Caribbean. And supposedly the roads data is also available in Google Maps. Just turn on the Roads layer and visit the countries to see the new layer information. Zoom in for more details. (Report in the comments if you know which countries have been added). NOTE: While I see some main roads in many countries in Africa, I haven't found a lot of city street roads in this update for those countries.
Business Listings - Layers on businesses like Dining, Lodging, etc. (found under the Places of Interest layer folder) are now added for Brazil and a few cities in Russia.
Russian Cyrillic - Placemark balloons now support cyrillic or latin translated addresses.
New Zealand - The New Zealand tourism board has added some placemarks with details about their airports. They are found under the following layer folder: Gallery->Travel and Tourism->100% Pure New Zealand->New Zealand Airports
Geographic Web Update - Also the Wikipedia entries and Panoramio photo layers have new additions (found under the Geographic Web layer. ~~If I'm reading the announcement right, the Panoramio layer will now begin updating daily.~~ According to the Panoramio blog, the update adds 600,000 new photos - bringing the total to 5.1 million in Google Earth! There's no mention that the process will be changing for when photos are added to the layer. Of course, you can view new photos added to Panoramio's site every day.

via Google Lat Long

Posted by FrankTaylor at 03:51 PM | Comments (9) | TrackBack

Armageddon Pills in Google Earth

Yesterday I spent some time viewing a really excellent Google Earth travel documentary. The story is about a family who took off for a year to travel all the way around the world. They've written a book and a web site called "Armageddon Pills" (they were stuck in a desert with nothing to eat but a bag of M&Ms which they ended up dubbing Armageddon Pills). Anyway, they've had a very well-done KML file developed which lets you see the route they took, and includes placemarks with snippets and photos from the book. Open up the Armageddon Pills KML . You can simply start with any placemark and view the description. You'll usually see a photo, and a snippet describing their experiences in that location. The descriptions are engaging. I spent a few minutes scrolling through the placemarks to find out when and how their daughter broke her leg. There are arrows in the placemark descriptions that let you follow each placemark in sequence. You can also click on one of the "Menu" placemarks which lets you view several sections of the books and choose a story that grabs your attention.

The Armageddon Pills KML file was developed by concept3D, which in addition to making great SketchUp 3D models, also creates very professional KML files. I really like their work on this Armageddon Pills documentary. It works well, looks very pleasing to the eye, and with the excellent writing from the book, is quite fun to read. I think I'll have to buy the book when it's available.

I think Google Earth is a great way to document trips. My favorite being the story of Sir Ernest Shackleton. On a personal note, I documented our voyages in a sailing catamaran in 2002-2003 with a KML file. I may have to seek out concept3D to make a better version since I haven't upgraded the file to use any of the fancier KML 2.2 features.

Posted by FrankTaylor at 09:10 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

YouTube API on Swiss Fighter Video

Last year in March I was planning to show off the new Swiss Alps imagery and high resolution 3D terrain in Google Earth. I decided to mimic a cool YouTube video of a Swiss Airforce fighter flying through the alps by flying the same flight in Google Earth (mind you, this was before the flight simulator was added to Google Earth, so I had to use the much more difficult G-force mode to do the flying). The video was a huge success, and even Google's CEO Eric Schmidt is a fan of my stunt. I set it up so you could play both videos next to each other so they were in synch. But, you had to push both play buttons.

Juan Ignacio from the Canary Islands sent me an E-mail that he has used the new YouTube API to add a single Play button to start both videos at the same time. You can visit his post to try it out (it's in Spanish - but, just hit the big Play button). I asked Juan if it was possible to use the API to turn off the volume on my version of the video (where I made a poor copy of the original song). UPDATE: He's already implemented this request!

See my original post which goes into detail on how the flight in GE was created.

Posted by FrankTaylor at 08:05 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

March 13, 2008

Google Brings Sky from Google Earth to Maps

Google today has released a more complete implementation of the Google Sky data to Google Maps. Back in mid-December Google released an API to sky so you could make mashups with Google Sky data for use with the Google Maps web-based interface. However, it didn't allow you full access to all the layers available in Google Earth's version. According to the post at the Official Google Blog, a code jam winner who became an intern at Google was given the opportunity to develop a full Maps interface for Sky - and the results were released today at: Sky.Google.Com

The new release sports some nice features which lets you view many of the new layers which were introduced to the Google Earth Sky interface back in January. This includes the full-sky microwave layer, samples from the Spitz Infrared space telescope, and much more. Not only that, but there are handy opacity (transparency) sliders which let you compare one frequency with another. Just today I was remarking on the way to do this in a post about a new add-on for the Earth-based Sky which shows a bunch of other wavelengths from NASA's Skyview database (read the bottom of the post under "Advanced tips"). I may have to do a video tutorial explaining how to use this feature. Right now its easier to use the transparency feature in this new Maps-based version. (I do wish there was a name change to differentiate between the Google Sky mode in Google Earth verses the new Google Sky mode for Google maps.) Anyway, I'm glad to see yet another way to view the data. I love astronomy!

Watch the short video Google put up in their post today which gives you a brief glimpse at the features:

Thanks to Mickey Mellen of Digital Earth Blog for actually calling me on the phone to let me know about this new announcement! He knew I would like it.

Posted by FrankTaylor at 06:35 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Google Sky Wavelength Slider Mashup

In yet another example of the power of KML and Google Earth's powerful developer features, someone has developed a cool new feature which lets you view multiple wavelengths of stellar objects as an animation in the Sky mode. Robert Simpson is a PhD student in Astronomy who posted the new feature at his blog Orbiting Frog. What he did was create a KML file which when you zoom in on an area of the night sky - it fetches imagery from the NASA Skyview database. (Note:- it can take a while to load because it is loading multiple images in different wavelengths of light for that area of the sky from the NASA server.) Robert's application overlays the images and uses the time slider to allow you to view each wavelength as an animation. Currently the time slider just shows a different date for each wavelength (kind of confusing, but he is re-purposing the time slider for a different application). However, the resulting effect is quite amazing! Just drag the time slider in the upper center and you can see the images in different wavelengths. Move to a new area of the sky to load a different set of images (each time you move it has to load a different set).

By the way, Sky also has a number of high resolution images built in to the layers from different observatories showing different wavelengths of light. Some of the images are very high resolution, others are simply amazing alternate views of objects we are used to only seeing in the optical wavelength. If you look at the layers in the lower left and open the Featured Observatories layer folder you will see a list showing:

Hubble Showcase - Optical wavelength
Spitzer Infrared Showcase
GALEX Ultraviolet Showcase
Chandra X-Ray Showcase
WMAP Microwave Sky - Full sky in microwave
IRIS Infrared Sky - Full sky in infrared

Important tips: If you select one of the showcases, you need to look for a corresponding placemark and click on the image in the description bubble to fly to the location. Then make sure the image layer is turned on by selecting "Show this layer". Turn off each layer when you are done so you can return to seeing the original imagery. Advanced tip: This is a little-known trick built in to Google Earth/Sky - If you select the layer on the lower left (it will be highlighted), you can then use the transparency slider above the layer pane to change transparency for the imagery in the given layer. This is another way to compare wavelength imagery in Google Sky, and has a very cool effect. You can also do that with Robert's SkyView overlay to compare imagery.

Posted by FrankTaylor at 08:51 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

March 12, 2008

Video Tutorials Inside Google Earth

Google has been releasing a number of useful video tutorials both through the Google Earth Outreach program, as well as through the GE basics blog called Using Google Earth. Richard Treves, who writes a blog about Google Earth design, decided to try making tutorials inside GE by leveraging GE 4.2's ability to show videos in placemark balloons (currently works only on the Windows version). And to make it even more convoluted, but eminently logical, the tutorials are about using Google Earth. He recently posted an initial collection of tutorials and explains some of the reasoning and pluses and minuses. You can try out the collection of tutorials inside GE here . The tutorials provide help on using Google Earth features and navigation interfaces. Richard is using these at the University of Southampton, where he teaches, but also has released them under a creative commons license for others to use. Great idea Richard! Hopefully other people - maybe even Google - will follow this concept to extend people's understanding of the power of Google Earth.

Posted by FrankTaylor at 06:30 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

March 11, 2008

How Nanaimo Became Best Known Google Earth Town

Those of you who are astute readers of this blog (and other geo-spatial blogs) will probably already know that the small town of Nanaimo in British Columbia, Canada has been garnering the reputation of the best town to leverage Google Earth. Even Google has helped with this reputation when Google Earth Chief Technologist Michael Jones last year mentioned Nanaimo in a couple keynote presentations.

Nanaimo has set out to make the most out of GIS and mapping technologies. And, they've chosen Google Earth and Maps for many of their public-facing applications. One of the chief architects of the effort in Nanaimo is a GIS professional named Jason Birch who is a regular GEB reader, and has his own techie blog called Random Nodes. Nanaimo has some of the highest resolution imagery of any town inside GE. He recently appeared on national TV about the project. Now Nanaimo has received even bigger exposure through an article in Time Magazine called "How Google Earth Ate Our Town". Which talks all about the project.

Nanaimo has some amazing content available for GE which includes maps, information on city parks, 3D visualization of the buildings, parcel information, and complete business listings. Recently Nanaimo announced (PDF) they have a new tool allowing citizens (and the world) to track real-time fire department incident reports on Google Maps (or you can save it to your My Maps and view it in Google Earth as well).

Visit the City of Nanaimo web site to find out even more about this very geo-progressive town. There are more maps and GIS information available there. All the news about these data and tools, combined with the beautiful summer-time aerial photography of Nanaimo, is sure to improve the tourism and possibly even increase the population of this very pretty town.

Posted by FrankTaylor at 09:07 PM | Comments (5) | TrackBack

Great Places: Extremes of the Earth

A great collection of places showing extremes like: Tallest bridge on the Earth, Windiest place on the Earth, and bizarre things like the Largest seed on the Earth was put together by a member of the Google Earth Community with the unpronounceable pseudonym 'satishgsk'. The collection, which is called the Extreme Series, was put together over the course of several months with input from the community. Once you load the Extreme Series each placemark shows the location, and often contains a photo showing more details of each sight. You may also want to check out satishgsk's post which includes bigger photos and information.

Tour Tips: You can select the Extreme Series folder and hit the "Play" button (looks like the play button on a tv remote) below the Places pane to watch a flying tour of each location. Go to the "Tools->Options" (or "Preferences" on the Mac) and select "Touring->Show Balloon when Tour is Paused" to have it automatically show the balloons during the tour playback. You also might want to adjust the "Tour Pause" speed to give more time to read the balloons.

A sample of other interesting collections for GE:

Posted by FrankTaylor at 09:20 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

March 10, 2008

Iditarod 2008 Dog Sled Race Live in Google Earth

EarthSLOT, whose mission is "to advance earth science and earth science education through the use of on-line 3D terrain visualization and GIS tools", has once again published a Google Earth file about the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race which is an 1150 mile dog sled race through the middle of Alaska. The race just started a few days ago, and the EarthSLOT Iditarod file shows the route of the race, and the live GPS position of the teams, along with the satellite photos and 3D terrain in Google Earth.

Matt Nolan, who runs EarthSLOT, has also included in the Iditarod file a link to the International Polar Year network link which contain all kinds of information about the Arctic and Antarctic and the science missions studying our polar regions. Matt is a scientist who studies Glaciers and other polar environmental features and worked with the IPY to develop the Google Earth content.

Posted by FrankTaylor at 07:53 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

March 07, 2008

Pentagon Did NOT Ban Google Earth

The Pentagon did NOT ban Google Earth! This is just to clarify the many erroneous news and blog reports which started circulating yesterday. The stories were based on an AP report that came out which actually involved Google's Street View photos.

The story is kind of amusing. As most of you know, Google has been driving cars around with special video cameras which take panoramic photos which are then placed in Google Maps. The intent is to help you get a look at places and get a feel for your surroundings before you go. The service is called Street View and was first released last May.

One of the Google drivers of a Street View car drove up to Fort Sam Houston in San Antonio, TX and asked for permission to go on the base to do his work - and the request was granted. Then, the photos appeared in Street View until some military personnel noticed and realized it probably isn't a good idea to have photos of a military base shared with the world. The photos could show locations of guards, barricades, and other sensitive information. The Pentagon contacted Google and requested they take the photos down, which Google did immediately within 24 hours. Google also said it was against their policy for their drivers to go to restricted areas. The Pentagon sent a message to all bases telling them to not allow such crews with big cameras on the top to drive all over the base taking pictures. Duh.

View Larger Map

Footnote: I was actually interviewed by BBC Radio last night on the "Pentagon ban" story. I found out it actually aired the next morning. Also, I was interviewed on 13-March on Federal News Radio about the incident - listen to the interview here (mp3).

Posted by FrankTaylor at 07:50 AM | Comments (12) | TrackBack

March 06, 2008

Super UK Photo Project geograph Turns Three

geograph is an amazing project which set out to collect photos of every square kilometer of the UK on a web site and map the locations and photos. Anyone can contribute to the project, and people view it as a game to go out and explore new areas of the islands with their GPS and contribute as many photos as they can. Statistically, the project has already made huge progress - with nearly 85% (see statistics) of the Great Britain part of the islands photographed. Not only that, but the site has grown up with the advances in mapping technologies, and there are now a myriad of ways to look at the data. In particular, Barry Hunter - who is a developer of great mapping tools available at his Nearby site - has added some really great Google Earth visualization tools for geograph. You can find the geograph GE tools at this web page, or you can just download his KML collection which lets you try all the different presentations in one place. The screenshot here shows a 3D representation of photos taken for every 10 square kilometer section. You can also load visualizations that let you view each photo, and more.

geograph was started on March 6th, 2005. So today the project turns 3 years old! In honor of the date, they've made a cool picture mosaic which you can view in this blog post.

See previous story on geograph.

Posted by FrankTaylor at 08:22 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

March 05, 2008

Google Earth 3D Cities Program

Google has announced a formalized program to help cities who would like to organize a project to have their cities put into Google Earth in 3D. There have already been many cities (especially in Germany) who have taken it upon themselves to develop 3D models of their cities and coordinate with Google to put their models into Google Earth. See for example: Dresden, Hamburg, Westport (Ireland), Las Vegas, and Beaver Creek (Colorado). When GE was first released by Google, they included over 30 cities in US with plain grey buildings. Then when Google Earth 4 was released with photo texture capabilities, Google built some sample cities like Boulder and Denver, Colorado with the new capabilities, hoping more cities would be added by others, and encouraged people to submit their own buildings.

Google's new web site to encourage city managers to participate in the 3D cities program points out that the resulting data can easily be shared for urban planning, real estate development, tourism, and more. Google will, of course, encourage the use of Google SketchUp for the model building. Google will also assist to make sure the cities build the models with the right criteria to make sure they get included in Google Earth's layers. By the way, I think having at least your most significant buildings added to Google Earth in 3D is a very good idea. It helps give potential visitors a better perspective of your city and gives you an opportunity to entice more tourism and business. Google Earth is by far the most popular 3D geo browser on the planet, so its important to use this avenue to market your city.

While Google is trying to get cities to develop 3D models of their buildings themselves, Microsoft has taken a different approach. Microsoft has been investing millions of dollars to have all new custom aerial photography of cities all over the world. In addition to the normal straight-down aerial imagery, they also fly their planes in a grid pattern and take photos at 45 degree (oblique) angles such that they get images in four different directions of all buildings in a city. These are the Bird's Eye Views you can see in Virtual Earth. These images are also used to automatically generate 3D buildings. And so, Microsoft Virtual Earth already has dozens of cities already modeled in 3D (see the 20 or so just released in February for example). While the fidelity (resolution) of the 3D data may not be as high in VE as building the models by hand, the number of buildings modeled is quite high - and it takes a lot fewer people to do the work. Virtual Earth is not nearly as popular - so there are much fewer people who are likely to browse your city with it. But, to get your entire city modeled for free is a good deal. And, as Microsoft gets more and more cities modeled, and enhances their interfaces, the popularity of the application will go up.

Last spring I wrote a comparison between Virtual Earth and Google Earth - especially as it relates to the 3D buildings.

Posted by FrankTaylor at 07:34 AM | Comments (5) | TrackBack

March 04, 2008

Links: Games, KML, Data, and more

DND Game For Google Earth - Mickey at Google Earth Hacks has been working on a new game that's played entirely within Google Earth. It's a massively multi-player online role playing game (MMORPG), which he is calling GEMMO. He has announced a public beta now, so you can try it out and join those who are helping give Mickey ideas on further development. The idea is you look around on the Earth and find stores, or monsters to fight. You use the layers folders on the left of GE to execute actions like fighting, buying things at stores, or checking your inventory. You need to register with his forums to get started.
Sky Add-on - Robert Simpson released a file for Google Sky to show astronomical observations by submillimeter camera, SCUBA, on the JCMT telelscope in Hawaii. You see imagery in 450 or 850 microns, and green hexagon placemarks showing other significant observational data in these wavelengths. Check it out . Very nicely done!
Microsoft Bird's Eye Views on Sundials - Steve Lombardi at Microsoft read the GEB post about the sundials collection and shows how you can view the same collection in Virtual Earth (since VE also supports some parts of KML now). Many of the sundials can be viewed with the VE Bird's Eye views which give you high resolution oblique (side) views allowing you to get a better idea of the shapes of the sundials.
Nearby Data Analysis - Barry Hunter has created many useful apps for enhancing your experience with Google Earth (see his list here). With some of the applications he's been logging statistics, and he's created some really interesting heat maps of where people are looking at things in Google Earth (at least the ones who are using his tools).
Virtual Earth Data Update - Microsoft released another monthly update last week adding dozens of new cities around the world with Bird's Eye views, high resolution aerial imagery, and 3D models. The output of free new imagery and 3D models is just amazing.
KML observations - Christopher Schmidt makes some interesting observations about how he sees KML fitting into the GeoWeb as a standard equivalent to HTML.
Handling KML Regions - Richard Treves regularly talks about design ideas for Google Earth visualizations at his blog. He recently posts about the need to handle regionated content so that when you zoom out rather than large numbers of placemarks just disappearing, they are grouped together and an icon showing a magnifying glass is shown. See the next item for an example showing this concept put to use.
Marine Wrecks and Obstructions Database - EarthNC is a site dedicated to sharing marine/boating related data in Google Earth that will be useful to boaters. Virgil has just released a new Google Earth file which shows NOAA Automated Wreck and Obstruction Information System (AWOIS) data. He uses KML regions so as you zoom in you get more information. Zoomed out, you just see each zone of the dataset. Each placemark contains more information describing the wreck from the AWOIS database.

Posted by FrankTaylor at 10:05 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

March 03, 2008

Live Orbit Tracker in Google Earth

Robert Simpson is studying for his doctorate in Astronomy at Cardiff University in the UK. He has a blog called Orbiting Frog, and recently posted a tool that lets you view current positions of objects in orbit including the International Space Station, GPS satellites, Iridium satellites, and much more. He is using the NORAD two-line element (TLE) datasets that are published via the Celestrak website and are used by satellite enthusiasts for all kinds of software visualizations. He uses a Google Earth network link to automatically update the orbital positions every 30 seconds. He offers three different links for viewing in Google Earth:

ISS Locator - This file shows the position of International Space Station, it's horizon, and a two hour orbital track so you can see what it's passing over.
100+ Brightest Satellites - This network link shows the positions of the 100 brightest satellites. Notice how the heights of the orbits are shown as well as position.
Advanced Tracker - This network link by default shows the Hubble Space Telescope like the ISS one above. But, it lets you change the satellite ID to any other satellite (search the Celestrak database).

The last really good orbit tracking visualization for Google Earth was done by Paul Seabury - but, he took it down after he got a contract to do something similar for someone. Hopefully Robert will keep this one running for a while. Robert also recently posted a cool astronomy layer for Google Earth - which I plan to write about later.

If you like live tracking applications, check out this really cool live airline flight tracking tool from FBOWeb.

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