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May 29, 2008

Google Earth Plugin Adopted Quickly

The new Google Earth Plugin API has been adopted quickly by both Google Maps mashup developers and Google Earth developers. Given that Google Maps has long had limitations on the number of placemarks or other KML features it can show, the Earth plugin immediately enables more KML data to be viewed. That's just one of many reasons why developers would want to quickly adopt the new plugin (besides the "show off" factor). I think this new plugin will be a huge hit and will be quickly adopted by many applications - especially once Google pushes out broader support on Mac and Linux as well. Right now, since the plugin is only working on Windows, developers should check what operating system people are using before presenting them with the plugin. No need to cause a plugin load error if a person is using Mac OS X. (See Gmap-Track below for the first example I've seen which addresses this.) In the 24 hours or so since it was released, at least 2 dozen apps have been released using the new API (probably many more than that just haven't reached my attention yet). Below are just a few examples I've noticed, and there are links to more in other posts listed at the bottom. (NOTE: if you aren't on Windows or using a browser supported by the new plugin - you won't get to try all the links without a load error):

• Takitwithme - this site lets you try any KML or Google Maps map with the new API, and lets you generate the code so you can embed the plugin on a web page (or blog post). It was developed by Virgil Zetterlind. See the post on this from yesterday.
• GMap-Track - this handy tool lets you embed a map showing a location on your web page. Stefan Geens is using it on his blog OgleEarth. According to Stefan, GMAP-Track is now letting users choose to present the Earth plugin instead of Maps, and is smart enough to check operating systems before trying to show Earth.
• GearthHacks - GearthHacks was one of the earliest web sites to aggregate content for Google Earth, and has evolved its site many times to take advantage of new Google mapping technologies. So, its no surprise that Mickey Mellen has quickly adopted some tests using the new plugin. Mickey has also developed another plugin example for another site he has developed called GolfNation.
• Magnalox - Magnalox has long been one of my favorite sites which allow for GPS track visualizations (and more). They have very quickly adopted the new plugin by simply adding the Earth button to the familiar Google Maps control buttons. But, what is cool is that you can now show tracks with animations over time in Maps or Earth.
• Housing Maps - The original Google Maps mashup - before there was an API from Google - was done by Paul Rademacher. Paul now works at Google, and in fact was the key designer behind the new Google Earth API and plugin. He gave a talk yesterday and showed how he updated his original mashup with the new 3D interface with just three lines of javascript.

Other examples can be found at OgleEarth here. Naturally, since this blog has been writing about innovative applications of Google Earth for nearly three years, expect many more posts of examples of Google Earth plugin and its API as adoption continues to grow.

Posted by FrankTaylor at 2:00 PM | Comments (4)

May 28, 2008

Monster Milk Truck Game for Google Earth Plugin

During the sessions here the Google I/O developers conference they have discussed how applications can be developed to take advantage of the new Google Earth Plugin API. One of the examples provided is a little game that I think just begins to show the possibilities of Google Earth plugin mashups - the game is called Monster Milktruck (NOTE: the GE Plugin is currently limited to Windows - and you have to install the plugin the first time you've used it). Once its loaded simply use the cursor keys to drive the little 3D truck around. Look at the bottom of the page for alternate locations where you can place the truck.

Posted by FrankTaylor at 7:25 PM | Comments (13)

Google Earth Plugin in a Blog Post

In just a few hours since the new Google Earth plug API was released, Virgil Zetterlind of EarthNC has managed to quickly modify an application he had previously developed to generate an embeddable Google Maps to one that will produce an embeddable Google Earth plug-in. Here's the application if you want to try it. So, here's an example (if you're on Windows) showing the collection of dinosaurs on Earth loaded into the Google Earth plug-in:

Try exploring the collection as if you were using Google Earth. Virgil's application lets you take either a Google My Maps map, or a KML file, and generate an embeddable view of it in the Google Earth plugin. So, you could show 3D visualizations of KML content in your blog posts for example. Hmm.... Anyway, very cool example of how the new API can be used to do powerful new things! Nice job Virgil - man you're fast!

[UPDATE: Earlier I tried the Blue Marble add-on, but it seemed to cause some problems. So, I replaced it with the dinosaur collection.]

Posted by FrankTaylor at 5:15 PM | Comments (2)

Google Earth Plugin API Links and Video

Google's documentation for the new Google Earth plugin and API are now live.

http://code.google.com/apis/earth/
http://code.google.com/apis/earth/documentation/
http://code.google.com/apis/earth/documentation/examples.html

Here's Google's video of the new plugin:

Also, Brady Forrest at O'Reilley Radar has a good overview of the new announcement. [UPDATE June 6th: See more thoughts on the API.]

Posted by FrankTaylor at 12:51 PM | Comments (5)

Google Earth Mashups on a Web Page Starting Today

[UPDATE: Links to more information and a video]

Exciting news! Today Google is releasing a Google Earth plug-in which will let developers make Google Earth 3D applications run in your browser. In addition, a Google Earth API (Application Program Interface) is being released for developers based on Javascript. This API will allow developers to control many features of the 3D plug-in and add KML features and interfaces to their web applications. It is something many developers have wanted to see made available for Google Earth for a long time. It's a way to add Google Earth's fantastic 3D views and KML presentation capabilities in a browser and on a web page. You will soon see Google Earth mashups on the web with many more applications than ever before. It's appropriate the release is happening at the opening of the Google I/O developer conference.

Today's release is NOT converting the entire Google Earth application, complete with UI, into a browser. In fact, the Google Earth application will not have to be present for the plug-in to run. Developers will have to create applications, and enable UI features, that take advantage of the plug-in before users will see the greater benefits. I will post demos here as soon as the plug-in and demos are available.

A plug-in binary will be available today (Windows only so far). The plug-in reportedly will run in Internet Explorer, Firefox, and other Mozilla-derivative browsers. In addition, the Google Earth API is designed so developers can easily develop applications using the new plug-in. Current Google Maps mashups can offer the 3D option to their applications by adding a single line of code. So now many cool Maps mashups can be 3D-enabled very easily. This should also enable new Google Earth mashups to take advantage of many Google Maps API features which have been introduced in recent months. And, it should get rapid support from Google Maps mashup developers.

The new plug-in is NOT Google Earth in a wrapper. It is a subset of the Google Earth 3D graphics rendering engine and interfaces with KML support. It DOES include support for the recently added Day/Night mode, 3D models, layers, and even supports the Sky mode. Users will not have to have the full Google Earth application installed to use web applications based on the new API and plug-in. However, the new plug-in will not have all the same features as the full Google Earth client. But, developers will be able to use the API to turn on many features and content (like the nav gadgets, 3D models, add lines and polygons, and turn on/off layers) and enable new kinds of features not seen in the full application.

Google appropriately targeted this release for the Google I/O developer conference. They plan to support the other platforms (Mac OS X, and Linux) in future releases. There will be sessions today at Google I/O which will provide details to developers about the new API. And I'm sure there will be online documentation as well. Soon GE mashup developers will know how to create applications for the new plug-in. Look for more posts today on these topics.

One of the key designers behind the new Google Earth plug-in and API is Paul Rademacher who was the guy who first developed a Google Maps mashup before Google released an API. It's somehow fitting that the first Maps mashup developer is the designer for the new Google Earth mashup generation.

[UPDATE June 6th: See more thoughts on the API and what it means.]

Posted by FrankTaylor at 12:00 PM | Comments (8)

May 27, 2008

Links: Placemark Tips, Directions Saving, Geo Sitemaps, Random tip, MapWiki

• Tutorial on Placemarks - GeoChalkboard has posted another nice tutorial, this time on making compelling placemark description bubbles. Definitely worth a read if you are trying to make some KML look professional.

• Directions Saving - Barry Hunter has posted some tips on saving driving directions on Google Maps to a Google My Maps. The technique he uses involves outputting them to KML, and involves a program he wrote. The result means you can also view the directions in Google Earth. You might want to use the Google Maps feature to drag your directions (which isn't available yet in Google Earth). Then view the directions in Google Earth. This should let you do that. He has a couple of other related articles.

• Geo Sitemap - At Where 2.0, I mentioned an announcement from Google of a new capability allowing you to create Geo Sitemaps - used to inform Google when you have new geo content for their Geo Search index (in other words, allow people to find your maps/KML). They have posted an article about how to do this at the Maps API blog.

• Random Tip - A Googler showed me an interesting tip for Google Earth. While viewing a location you are interested in, you can search for "*" in the "Fly-To" search field and it will return all known results from their Geo Search index for that location (10 at a time).

• MapWiki - Valery Hronusov has written about another cool tool (which he helped develop). He's calling it Mapwiki and announced it at the GEC. It lets people edit maps and you can see the updates immediately in a KML network link in Google Earth. There is even an interface for iPhone.

Posted by FrankTaylor at 7:49 AM | Comments (4)

May 26, 2008

Headed to Google I/O

On Wednesday and Thursday this week hordes of developers who use Google's products will invade the Moscone Center in San Francisco. Google is hosting an even bigger developer conference than last year when it was held at the San Jose Convention Center. The new event is called Google I/O (see official site), and for the first time Google is charging developers to attend (the Moscone Center is probably pretty expensive to rent).

This year I'm expecting to see a lot of geo-related sessions tied to the recent announcements of new APIs for Google Maps including the Google Geo Search API, the Google Maps API for Flash, geo sitemaps, etc. I also expect there will be tutorials on using KML for Google Earth. Google also recently updated the new libkml tool to version 0.2. I'm also hoping for at least one or two announcements of new capabilities for developers working with Google Earth. More on that soon I hope!

If you're going to Google I/O this week, make sure to look me up. You're likely to find me in any session having to do with Google Earth or KML. Or, send me an E-mail to let me know where you'd like to meet. See you there!

Posted by FrankTaylor at 3:20 PM | Comments (1)

Memorial Day - US Medal of Honor Recipients in Google Earth

The Medal of Honor is the highest military decoration awarded by the United States. It is awarded "for conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity at the risk of life, above and beyond the call of duty, in actual combat against an armed enemy force."

This collection of placemarks shows the birthplaces of recipients of the US Medal of Honor from the following campaigns:

The China (The Boxer Rebellion) 1900, Mexican (Vera Cruz) 1914, Haiti 1915 Campaign, Dominican Campaign 1916, World War I 1917-1918, Haiti 1919 - 1920, Nicaraguan Campaign 1927 - 1933, World War II 1941 - 1945, North Korea 1950 - 1953, Vietnam 1964 - 1973, Somalia 1993 and The War On Terror (2002 - 2006).

The collection shows the placemarks of the birthplaces of each winner and the descriptions show date of birth, rank, organization, location of deed, and the citation. Photos are also available in some cases. The collection was developed by 'Up_The_Spurs' from the Google Earth Community who also did the recipients of the Victoria Cross.

Posted by FrankTaylor at 2:56 PM | Comments (1)

May 23, 2008

iPhone Earth - Coolest Things I saw at Where 2.0 2008

[UPDATE 27 October 2008: If you're looking for the official Google Earth for the iPhone app story - which was released 26th of October, read this post. The post below was another iPhone app that looked like Google Earth, but was published by Earthscape earlier this summer.]

Last week at the 2008 Where 2.0, there were a number of interesting technologies being shown in the exhibit hall. One of the most interesting exhibits I saw was by a Boulder, Colorado company called earthscape. They showed a number of interesting things (see below), but what really impressed me was when their CEO Tom Churchill pulled out his iPhone to show me how they're working on a 3D Earth application for the iPhone. Check out this video I made as he demonstrated it to me:

I was particularly impressed when I saw they had used the iPhone accelerometers to allow you to tilt and rotate your view by tilting the iPhone. They weren't downloading the imagery data over the net, it was all running local with just imagery for the San Francisco area. But, it was still very cool! The application is under development using the Apple iPhone SDK. So, assuming they finish the product, it should run under iPhone 2.0. You would definitely only want to run a real app like this if you had a WiFI connection or 3G - imagery and 3D takes a lot of bandwidth. But, this demo definitely makes me look forward to the possibility Google will maybe have a version of Google Earth running on our phones. NOTE: the beta sign-up on their home page is not for the iPhone Earth it's for their geobrowser (next paragraph).

When I first saw earthscape's booth, they were showing something that grabbed my eye. They have been developing their own Google Earth-like geobrowser. When I first saw it, the browser was showing a life-like 3D model of an airliner flying over 3D terrain. I spoke to their CEO Tom Churchill at the booth, and he described what was going on. They had developed an in-flight plane tracker for passengers using their 3D browser which showed the position of the aircraft in 3D relative to ground. Passengers can switch to the inside of the cockpit (also rendered in 3D), top-down, or oblique views. They also demonstrated geotagged photos. Tom said they had been working on their browser for 3 years, and they've obviously been able to look at other browsers (like GE) and innovate new UI techniques and data. I liked how they implemented the ability to switch to different base imagery showing older aerial photos. They mentioned a Javascript API to control the geobrowser. I've signed up for the beta on their web site.

And, if that's not enough - during the Where 2.0 sessions earthscape presented demonstrations of software they are developing showing augmented reality for police helicopter pilots. They showed video of the helicopter pilot looking at infrared night video cameras through his goggles. Their software automatically showed augmented information such as street names, addresses, and other useful information so the pilot could concentrate more on flying and keeping his target (usually a car trying to escape capture) in sight. At any moment the pilot can easily tell ground forces the location of the target. Very cool technology! Because of the relevancy to Google Earth, and just the way cool way their iPhone Earth worked, they get my vote for coolest tech shown at Where 2.0.

Posted by FrankTaylor at 9:30 AM | Comments (5)

May 22, 2008

More GIS Information for Google Earth

When Google first came out, there was one GIS outfit who enthusiastically embraced KML as a way to share their GIS data with their community - the City of Portland, Oregon. This was in 2005 and they created some fantastic KML files showing things like commercial districts, tax properties, etc. I've long been expecting many other GIS shops to do the same, but apparently few have had the resources to develop the necessary software to convert their data visualizations over to KML. There are reasonably priced tools like Arc2Earth and KMLer which make it much easier to take data from ESRI GIS tools and output them as nice KML.

Last week, Google announced they had worked with ESRI to convince them to more fully embrace KML (which is now an OGC standard) so it would be easier for GIS shops to output to KML. Jack Dangermond, CEO of ESRI, actually joined Google on the stage and announced the next release of ArcGIS Server (version 9.3) will have much more support for KML.

Shortly after the big ESRI announcement, I heard from the GIS department for the State of Maine about some of their efforts with KML. They have a web page with many KML files sharing selected data with the public (warning: some of the files are quite large and may slow down GE). I'm sure they will be anxious to try out the new ESRI tools to share even more of their data, but take advantage of optimization features of KML such as regioning and view-based network links.

Jack Dangermond said there is currently some resistance in some pockets of the GIS world to sharing data. He has spoken to some GIS departments who don't want to share their data. Hopefully, the public will increasingly see the utility of professional sources to GIS data, and begin demanding more access to the data. Google Earth, through KML, enables powerful visualizations with an easy to use interface. But, we need more GIS organizations like the City of Portland and the State of Maine to embrace it.

Posted by FrankTaylor at 9:05 AM | Comments (11)

May 20, 2008

Climate Change Data for Google Earth

Yesterday, Google and the UK government announced some visualizations for Google Earth which show data indicating global climate change. The UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown actually made the announcement during a Google conference held in the UK this week (see video of Brown's speech). The data comes from the UK's Met Office and from the British Antarctic Survey. Here's some information on the two files:

• Climate Change in our World - Opening this KML file by the Met Office will first show you an image overlay of the Earth which indicates temperature change over time from 1999 and forecasted through 2099. Use the time slider to watch the changes over time. Also in the file are placemarks with accounts from people around the world speaking about how climate change has effected them, as well as information from the Met Office about possible effects as temperatures continue to rise.

• Climate Change In Our World Antarctica - The second file from the British Antarctic Survey adds more placemarks showing information on climate change based on research in Antarctica including pictures and video of melting ice and ice shelf breaks (only larger breaks have been reported by the media).

The layers were organized with help from the Google Earth Outreach program.

Posted by FrankTaylor at 2:46 PM | Comments (2)

Getting KML into Google's Geo Search Engine

Google held a tutorial last week at Where 2.0 entitled: "Searching the Geoweb: Exposing Your Geo Data to Search Engines". The tutorial was conducted by Google Maps Product Manager Lior Ron, and Google Developer Programs Engineer Mano Marks. Google has been working hard on their search technology for geo-spatial content (like KML files and GeoRSS files). Google Maps and Google Earth allow you to search for a lot more than just an address or city name. Turn on the "Show search options" and change the "Restrict Results to:" "User-created content". You can search for things like: "Spiderman in New York" or "Peaks near Yosemite" or "Pizza near Chicago".

As people develop their own content, they might want to make sure Google's Geo search can find their content. Google has already been crawling the Google Earth Community and looking for KML/KMZ files it finds linked to web pages. But, you might want to tell Google to index your content right away so other people can find it. Google has added a new syntax for "sitemap" files so you can tell it where to look for KML or GeoRSS files. Read more about Geo sitemap files, and the syntax of the files here. According to Lior and Mano, the sitemap will more quickly Geo-index your KML or GeoRSS content if you use the sitemap service. Read more about sitemaps at Webmaster Central. NOTE: as the search index grows, you'll have to depend on Google to rank its search results so your content appears first. I guess we are going to need GeoSEOs now...

Posted by FrankTaylor at 2:03 PM | Comments (1)

PictEarth Flies UAV with N95 Over WhereCamp

During WhereCamp this weekend, the guys from PictEarth flew a remote controlled plane over the Googleplex with a Nokia N95 cellphone onboard taking photos. They first flew the plane in the morning when the winds were lighter and the sun angle was high. What's really cool, is that within a couple of hours, they had selected photos processed such that they could be viewed in Google Earth. They uploaded them to the free imagery server called OpenAerialMap.org. First, you load the OpenAerialMap KML file and then fly to the Googleplex by following this KML . The imagery is super-overlayed which means it will load multiple zoom levels with more details as you get closer. You will see the imagery PictEarth took around 10:00 AM on Saturday May 17th during WhereCamp. Since this was there first run with a new plane, they didn't tell any of the attendees who were inside attending sessions. So, there aren't many people to be found in the imagery.

PictEarth's founder, David Riallant came from France to attend WhereCamp. Also involved was Jeff Johnson and Stewart Long from the USA branch of PictEarth. Stewart flew the plane. Here are some photos and video clips showing them setting up and flying the plane later in the day (NOTE: you have to click on the images to view the video clips at PicasaWeb):

For some reason, the famous "Google Pool" looks different in their imagery:

For those of you who don't know, it used to be that Google had photoshopped the Google logo on the bottom of their pool in Google Earth as shown in the screenshot above (now the base imagery shows the pool to have no logo). So, PictEarth was going to show the photoshop with their logo in the pool, but for some reason they didn't include it for the OpenAerialMap imagery.

Posted by FrankTaylor at 9:45 AM | Comments (0)

May 19, 2008

Google News Layer Available for Google Earth

As promised last week during Where 2.0, there is now a new layer in Google Earth found under the Gallery layer folder called Google News. The layer shows placemarks for articles found in Google News georeferenced to location. Turn the layer on, and as you zoom into a region you'll see placemarks begin to appear - more as you get closer to a story. Each placemarks includes the headline for a story,and when you open the placemark you get the news source (e.g. Associated Press), an excerpt of the article, and a link to the original story. You'll also see links for similar related headlines from other news sources. The example shown in the screenshot is a search for "Sichuan" with the Google News layer turned on.

What's really interesting here is that Google is using new advanced search techniques to determine whether a story applies to that specific location. For example, I don't see any Paris, France stories appearing over Paris, Texas (or vice versa). And, according to talks I heard today from Google's Factory Tour of Search, they've also been working hard on the same technology extended to many languages. I would be interested to hear from people viewing Google Earth in other languages whether the new Google News layer works for them (leave a comment to this story).

Since there can be many news stories on any given day tied to a specific location, you will either see a spiral of placemarks for each story, a summary of news items on the same topic in a placemark, or if there's just a few placemarks they will "explode" from a single visible placemark into multiple ones when you click on the placemark.

Google will also be making this new layer available under the new "More..." button in Google Maps which was just introduced last week with Panoramio photos and Wikipedia stories. Now, what I'm wondering is that if those three will be combined in Google Maps that way, why didn't they include the new Google News layer under the Geographic Web layer for Google Earth? Maybe they want to experiment with it more with a larger audience before they combine it.

[UPDATE May 20: Here is the Google announcement. No mention in their announcement about it being limited to the English version, but several people have said they don't see it in other language settings of Google Earth.]

Posted by FrankTaylor at 7:05 PM | Comments (9)

Links: KML in North, WWT Reviews, South Africa Tourism, Florida Boat Rampsa

• KML in the North - John Bailey informed me he has this new web page sharing video of the talks in the sessions held in Fairbanks, Alaska including a talk by Google's KML product manager Michael Weiss-Malik. There were also several interesting talks by scientists discussing the use of KML for visualizations on Volcanoes, climatic change, tsunamis, biodiversity and more.

• WWT Reviews - Microsoft's World Wide Telescope (beta) came out last week. Because of travel, I haven't yet tried it. But, Stefan Geens did an excellent review of WWT and compares WWT to Google Sky. He concludes that there are definitely reasons to use both applications, but the new UI of WWT is certainly fun to play with. Also reviewing WWT were Chad of Earth is Square another geobrowser perspective, and here's a review of WWT from Astroblog - an astronomy buff in Australia.

• South Africa Tourism - On their web site, the South African Tourism has posted a new KML file for Google Earth which not only highlights the many tourist sites, but also points out the venues of the 2010 World Cup. I'm expecting this will find its way into the Tourism layer under the Points of Interest folder.

• Florida Boat Ramps - EarthNC has published, with the help of Florida Fish and Wildlife to build a KML file showing all boat ramps in the state of Florida .

Posted by FrankTaylor at 4:05 PM | Comments (0)

Coming Home, WhereCamp - More to Come

Over the weekend I attended WhereCamp 2008 -which this year was hosted at the Googleplex - an informal continuation of the O'Reilly Where 2.0 conference . Google actually gave each attendee a tent which has the Google logo on one side and "I'm feeling lucky" on the other (to much amusement). There were quite a few Google Earth related discussions/events at the camp. I'm still recuperating from the trip back from California to my home in North Carolina. I'll be spending some time today writing up more details on events from the WhereCamp and last week, and highlighting new Google Earth related stories - like the new climate change layer in Google Earth from the British Antarctic Survey.

In the meantime, Ed Parsons of Google has posted a brief summary of his impressions of WhereCamp 2008 including some pictures. Expect more on WhereCamp here later today, with more details on the aerial photo shoot which was done by Pict Earth. You can see a photo of the plane they used in Ed's post.

Posted by FrankTaylor at 9:40 AM | Comments (0)

May 17, 2008

Visualizing China's Sichuan Earthquake in Google Earth

By now most of you have heard that another terrible natural disaster occurred near Sichuan, China last week. It is feared 50,000 people may have lost their lives. There have been a number of Google Earth visualizations created to help inform the public about the location of the quake and the effects. Here's a brief list of some of the better KML files I've seen:

• Real-time Quake Monitoring - The USGS earthquake monitoring tool is the first thing I turn on when I hear there has been a quake (I keep this network link in my Places folder). It shows all significant seismic activity for the past 7 days. There have been many after-shocks since the major magnitude 7.9 quake occurred.
• Earthquake Visualization - Steven Ho from Taiwan published an excellent KML time animation showing the scale of the main quake. See a video of the animation here. You can adjust the animation speed by clicking the little clock icon to the left of the time slider. Then click the "play" button to the right of the time slider to start it.
• Post-quake satellite imagery - On Thursday Google published a KML file showing new satellite imagery of the area of the quake. Google thanked NSPO, Taiwan's national space agency for helping provide the imagery. It's amazing Google managed to get this new imagery and make it available so quickly after the event.
• Dam damage - The quakes occurred along a valley with several dams. Some of these dams have been damaged, and there is great concern about whether they will hold. OgleEarth points to a KML file which were put together by a "geo Wiki" organized by Dr. Mark Mulligan of King's College London showing the location of the dams.

Posted by FrankTaylor at 10:55 AM | Comments (0)

May 16, 2008

Disney World in 3D for Google Earth

[UPDATE June 4th: Now available - read more here.]

According to USA Today, as early as next Tuesday Disney World will be available in 3D for Google Earth. Included will be Walt Disney World's Epcot Center, Animal Kingdom, Disney's Hollywood Studios and 22 Disney hotels and resorts. I'm particularly intrigued by the comment the "map" will have "interactive features". Apparently you'll be able to see videos of rides, and make reservations by clicking on a hotel you see. I'm wondering if we'll be able to watch rides move. Google's John Hanke is quoted as saying the huge 3D collection is "truly innovative and unique". That certainly makes me anxious to see this. The screenshot from the article certainly looks quite detailed:

Expect to see a review here at GEB as soon as this goes public.

Posted by FrankTaylor at 11:15 AM | Comments (1)

StreetView Cars Collecting 3D Data on Buildings

San Francisco in Google Earth 4.3

CNET has a story "revealing" that Google has been collecting 3D data in addition to the imagery shown in the StreetView map views. This may come as a surprise to some out there, but there was a May 2007 story from the San Jose Mercury News that Google would be using technology from Stanford University to collect 3D data from the car systems This does pose the question whether the new 3D buildings added with Google Earth 4.3 for several cities used the new system. But, since Baltimore for example got the new 3D buildings, and there aren't StreetView photos for that city, I'm thinking perhaps they have yet another method of generating 3D buildings. Also, I think it would be hard to generate 3D buildings of skyscrapers using this technology. My guess is it would be better for smaller buildings - and maybe trees? - than for cities. My theory: Google will use a combination of technologies for 3D model generation - and they'll be trade secrets.

Posted by FrankTaylor at 10:27 AM | Comments (2)

Mike's Flying Bike for Google Earth

Ok, I have to say this is the craziest way to control Google Earth I've seen yet (even crazier than the ping pong ball interface). This guy Mike has used a SunSPOT (a 3D sensor device that has a Java software interface) to enable his bicycle to serve as a flight control joystick for Google Earth's flight simulator. He claims the pedals serve as the power control, and has built a couple other lever controls for what looks like aerolon (banking) controls. Anyway, check out Mike's Flying Bike YouTube video:

Thanks to Mike Pegg for the tip!

Btw, here are tips on flying the Google Earth flight simulator.

Posted by FrankTaylor at 10:05 AM | Comments (1)

May 15, 2008

Winner of Google Earth Blog SpaceNavigator Giveaway

Yesterday, as promised, I did a random drawing from people who gave me their business cards during the Where 2.0 conference. The lucky winner got a free 3DConnexion SpaceNavigator for Notebooks. And the winner was...

Alberto Andrés Lucas, of the cool Google Maps social network site ipoki. I was especially glad to give this one away as ipoki came a long way for this conference - all the way from Spain. I had met them previously last year during Where 2.0 when those famous guys from Panoramio announced they had been bought by Google (see photo of one celebration).

Posted by FrankTaylor at 12:36 PM | Comments (0)

Where 2.0 2008 - Day 3 - Wednesday

This was the last day of Where 2.0. A diverse collection of talks representing innovative startup-technology, innovative applications of free and open source apps for disasters and humanitarian purposes, long-established geospatial data providers, academics, and top tech companies like Yahoo and Google were all in the mix. In other words, another day at Where 2.0. Schedule.

Ok, so here is another summary of those talks with a Google Earth perspective:

• Disaster Tech - Jesse Robbins, Mikel Maron - These guys mentioned how Google Maps/Earth have been used in numerous disaster situations like Hurricane Katrina and the California fires. They also spent some time pointing out some issues in using traditional mapping technologies. For example, Google Maps did not modify the routing around a bridge that was destroyed in New Orleans during the hurricane. It wasn't until the media wrote some stories about this problem many months after the disaster that Google managed to fix it. Jesse and Mikel of course pointed to Open Street Map's technology which enables anyone to suggest/make edits to the maps as one possible path. Although they recognized that relying on crowd-source derived maps only may not be the best course by emergency professionals in a large human disaster. They also pointed out that even if the data were updated, the Red Cross and other organizations may not have the time during the disaster to check the right sources with the updated data.
• Eye-Fi - Eye-Fi is a new WiFi aware SD memory card you can put in a camera. They have announced a new card that can use WiFi location technology (like the iPhone) to closely approximate the position of your photos and automatically write the location to your pictures on the memory card. Not only that, but their card will automatically upload your photos to a secure server when it detects a WiFi (they support WayPort which can be found at McDonalds). You don't have to log-in, or pay for a subscription - just turn on the phone and wait a few minutes and your geotagged photos are sent. See the Wired story.
• Dash - Dash is the company giving Garmin some real competition in car navigation. Dash personal navigation systems have two way communication enabling them to give data back to other Dash users on the conditions of important thing like real-time traffic. In other words - crowd-sourced traffic. Their units also support geoRSS and KML so you can share location information. They also encourage independent developers of software and data to support their platform and they announced relationships with WeatherBug for local weather info, a service that lets you find out the name of the song you just heard on the radio, and Trapster - a service that points out likely police hide-outs.
• Navteq - Navteq is one of the two main suppliers of geospatial data for navigation systems. Anyone who has looked at road maps has seen their data. They are being bought by mobile phone company Nokia. Their VP of Internet/Wireless, George Filley presented. He made an appeal to the Where 2.0 audience of developers that they should work with Navteq to gain access to their huge resource of geospatial data for unique applications. He stated that Navteq understands the importance of flexible business models - so it sounds like that more unique deals may be possible.
• Yahoo Flickr - Next up was Rev Dan Catt from the Yahoo Flickr team. Dan has been well known the last few years for his efforts to proliferate geotagged photos and boost Yahoo's use of mapping technologies (read his geobloggers blog). He also brought along one of their developers (whose name I didn't catch) who spent some time clearly explaining some issues they've encountered in trying to derive the names of locations people have geotagged, as well as issues with inaccurately placed photos. Interesting stuff.
• Google Maps announcements - Ok, so yesterday I shared the announcement from Lior Ron, Product Manager of Google Maps, on the new upcoming News layer. But, he also made a bunch of other Google Maps announcements (some previously reported). Here's some highlights: the new Geo Search API, new "layers" ("More...") option in Google Maps currently showing Panoramio Photos or Wikipedia articles as layers over Google Maps (see more), the recently introduce "Explore this area" option, the new StreetView data in New York, the "show search options" for Google Maps (to the right of the Search button) now have two new search criteria: "mapped web pages" and "real estate" - cool new ways to search maps, when you click on "more info" in business search result - you will see a new tab for "user-created content", and finally they have announced a Flash version of Google Maps available through the Maps API. Wow! Now that was some announcements!
• History's Best Geo-Hacks - Chris Spurgeon gave the most popular talk of the day. An engaging speaker with great stories. He explained the history behind the Mercator map projection, and the development of longitude navigation using clocks. Unfortunately he ran out of time and the crowd was bummed.
• Venrock - Venrock is an investment firm with a long track record. Dev Khare presented his view of the opportunity matrix in the geo-spatial arena. I was impressed with his analysis of where the money could be. Car electronics/software, weather, geobrowsers, mobile phones and LBS, voice technologies, etc. Obvious areas, but he provided useful insights on where to look. I noticed he had several startups rushing to talk to him afterwards.
• Academic Satellite Analysis - (my title) Lisa Parks of the University of California Santa Barbara has been analyzing the uses of satellite imagery for all kinds of purposes (military, political, disaster, humanitarian, etc.). She has written many papers, articles, and even books on the subject. She shared a very brief glimpse into insights including many things that Stefan Geens often points out at OgleEarth about improper analysis of satellite imagery. And she mentioned the Crisis in Darfur layer (which was also mentioned by at least 5 other talks at Where).
• InSTEDD - InSTEDD is an organization dedicated to using technology innovation to help with human collaboration especially in the area of disaster response. They gave an interesting talk on using wiki-like input through Google Earth to allow people to quickly see and provide information about disaster situations. They developed a Twitter gateway server that can let people during the disaster use mobile phones to provide geo-spatial input on where important things are happening. Then, when someone views the data in Google Earth, people can use the wiki interface to augment the information with further data or comments. Very cool stuff. And, it's open source so anyone can use it.
• Lifemapper 2.0 - Aimee Stewart of the University of Kansas gave an interesting overview of how they have helped to archive biological/ecological data from various universities (and other sources) and provide web services to enable geospatial visualizations - using Google Earth as well as other geodata resources.
• Google Maps Mobile - Adel Youssef, Product Manager for GMM gave a "behind the scenes" look at their mobile maps technology. He explained how they are determining locations on phones - with or without GPS units. He also made sure to point out they are using anonymous data collection and strong security technology to insure privacy and prevent abuse. And, he explained their software platforms and tools such as Android and Gears.

Posted by FrankTaylor at 10:45 AM | Comments (0)

Google News Layer for Google Earth Next Week

I will be writing some more summaries from Where 2.0 2008 tomorrow. But, I just wanted to share one bit of Google Earth news from today's sessions. Lior Ron, Product Manager of Google Maps, made several Google Maps announcements in his talk today (more details tomorrow). One thing he announced, is a plan to release a Google News layer for both Google Earth and Google Maps (in the new "More..." layer option for Google Maps). Google News aggregates news from thousands of news sources all over the world.

Google joined up with the New York Times and released just over a month ago the first built-in live updating layer of news from the NY Times in Google Earth. Now they have apparently determined some ways to get geospatial information for a wide range of news sources and will release this new layer - according to Lior Ron - in about a week. It will be interesting to see how they highlight each news agency's content and attribution in this new layer. I assume you'll have to link back to their web page to read the full stories.

More Where 2.0 news tomorrow. You can read more Where 2.0 news for Google Earth: Day 1 summary, Google John Hanke Keynote, and Day 2 summary.

Posted by FrankTaylor at 1:05 AM | Comments (2)

May 14, 2008

Where 2.0 2008 - Day 2 - Tuesday

Yesterday was the first full day of sessions at Where 2.0 2008. Of course, I already blogged the Google keynote by Director of Google Geo John Hanke (I've added a video of his presentation to the post). Also, note there are other videos of some of the presentations at Where available at where.blip.tv. I'm not going to have time to write summaries of all the talks from yesterday right now. So, here are a few notable summaries which I found most interesting from a Google Earth perspective.

• Microsoft Virtual Earth - The other important keynote of the day, from a GE perspective, was from the Microsoft Virtual Earth team (for a good summary of the entire talk, see Chris Spagnuolo's post). Microsoft's Vincent Tao, formerly the founder of GeoTango, gave an enthusiastic presentation - and revealed not only current progress, but some interesting glimpses at future technology they are working on. I found it interesting that Vincent claimed "VE is the largest mapping project ever in the industry". Given the amount of money have spent, and the huge volume of data they have generated (3D city models, Bird's Eye Views, as well as high resolution ortho photos and street maps) - they are certainly generating a lot of bytes of imagery. But, don't forget Google has StreetView imagery, ortho imagery, street maps, and 3D city models as well. And, Google has many layers of information not found in Virtual Earth (borders, places of interest, Gigapan photos, Panaramio, etc., etc.). Google started the process of "crowd sourced" mapping data which has generated vast amounts of data as well. So, I think it is presumptuous to say Microsoft's project is bigger. Vincent also demonstrated the impressive Virtual Earth upgrade from last month with a particular emphasis on the new "version 2" 3D cities. Currently there are only four new cities, but I heard from other Microsoft people they plan to add several new v2 cities a month soon. As I've said before, the new 3D trees they've added look awesome, and the upgraded model textures definitely enhance the look of their cities. Probably the most interesting new demonstration by Vincent was a new upcoming capability they are working on: automatically placed photo overlays. The demo appeared to offer the same 3D placement of photos as Google Earth's new PhotoOverlay (first introduced last fall). But, the big difference is that Vincent claimed they could automatically place the photo. I suspect this is using the same underlying photogrammetry technology used to generate their 3D models. This could be a huge development since putting photos in Google Earth's PhotoOverlay manually is a real pain. Now, if only Microsoft will do it in such a way that the photos can be output through KML using the PhotoOverlay parameter - that would be cool! Vincent also briefly demoed a "StreetView" technology they are working on - it was showing "video" of the street views. Another last minute demo Vincent gave was showing the ability to add sunlight time animations in Virtual Earth 3D in some future update. Microsoft is definitely pushing hard to earn the "best" title in virtual world technology. And, they certainly do have some of the best data (BEV, their ortho photos, the size of their 3D city models, and the new 3D trees in their v2 city models). I certainly hope Google is working hard to add new and better models and features or they may lose their lead.
• Poly9 - Poly9 are the creators of FreeEarth - a free browser-based 3D virtual globe which was one of the first to support KML. They have added a number of features to Free Earth - including some not even in Google Earth (like sound). More recently they have announced a new commercial product to help emergency responders called "GeoAlert" (see press release). They claim the system can help save lives. They've teamed with another company which can automatically call people when an emergency (like a chemical fire) requires evacuations.
• Fortius One - Sean Gorman - Sean has a good grasp of the development of the GeoWeb. He gave a good summary of progress in that arena and described efforts by his company with their GeoCommons (announced at Where last year) which lets people upload data and get back interesting visualization maps. He said they ran into a bottleneck with their design oncce they reached 1.6 billion uploaded features. They formally announced a new application for GeoCommons called Finder! whose mission is to allow you to "Upload, Organize, and Share your GeoData".
• Pict Earth and DIYDrones - Pict Earth's David Riallant and Jeff Johnson gave a great overview of their aerial photography technologies using primarily unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), and some regular general aviation aircraft. (I've written about Pict Earth several times because they have used Google Earth as a platform for visualizing their data). The significance of what they are doing is the real-time geo-location and mapping of the photos, and the experiments they have made with using off-the-shelf technlologies like smart phones to acquire the photos, provide GPS location, and communicate with the ground. They have also worked with Chris Anderson who has been developing technologies to create auto-pilot capabilities to turn basic remote controlled aircrafts into UAVs. Chris gave a very engaging talk also describing the evoloution of their technologies (and some great stories about succeses and failures). Their goal is to create open source software and very low cost solutions that anyone can add to create their own UAVs. See his web site DIYDrones.com.

I'll try to update this post with other observations from Day 2 later. But, I need to go prepare for today's sessions. I also want to mention a few things I observed in the booths and at the Where Fair.

More Where 2.0 news: Day 1 summary, Google John Hanke Keynote

Posted by FrankTaylor at 10:40 AM | Comments (0)

May 13, 2008

New Imagery for Google Earth - May 2008

[UPDATED 14-May 1510 ET - official details on the imagery updated added below.]

Google has released new imagery today for Google Earth. As usual, they are not revealing the locations yet - instead we get some hints of locations in the form of some riddles. I've been busy with attending the Where 2.0 conference, and haven't had time yet to check out the imagery myself.

Here's the answers to some of the riddles (thanks to help from some comments below): 1) Los Angeles, 2) Coronado Island near San Diego, 3) Houston, Tx, 4) Lisbon, Portugal, 5) Madrid, Spain; 6) Milan, Italy, 7) Melbourne, Australia, 8) Miami, Florida, 9) Isle of Man

Thanks to GEB readers for find a lot of the new imagery, but here are the official details from Google's LatLong blog:

New high resolution:

Significant amount of new satellite imagery in Ecuador, Peru, Senegal, Nigeria, Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, India, Iran, Bangladesh, Thailand, Vietnam, Malaysia, and The Philippines. Additionally, new 2.5m imagery for part of Western Australia

Updated Imagery:
Americas:
- USA: LA, San Diego, Houston, Miami, Chicago and Milwaukee area suburbs, New York City area suburbs, much of coastal New Jersey, and Harney County (Oregon).

Europe, Middle East & Africa:

- England: Suffolk
- Isle of Man
- Spain: Madrid
- Portugal: Lisbon, Guimaraes, Porto, Sevilla, Coimbra, Costa del Sol, Costa Blanca
- Italy: Milan
- France: Toulon, Montbeliard
- The Netherlands: Assen

Asia & Oceania:

- Armenia: Yerevan
- Australia: Melbourne, Darwin

Updated Terrain:
- Westport, Ireland
- Hawaii
- Puerto Rico

Posted by FrankTaylor at 11:42 PM | Comments (49)

Times Square at Night in Google Earth/Maps StreetView

Thanks to Google Earth's StreetView layer, I noticed some of the new StreetView images released today have some night-time views of Times Square. See it here in Google Maps:

View Larger Map

In Google Earth (v4.3 only), if you turn on the StreetView layer and zoom down to near street level, you'll see miniature spheres showing the images in place of the icons. That's how I quickly noticed the different set of images. See more about StreetView in the video demonstration of Google Earth 4.3 here (the last half of the video shows it).

The Times Square area is a particularly good area to check out the new face blurring technique Google is using to help reduce privacy concerns about StreetView imagery. They have face detection software to help with the blurring process.

Posted by FrankTaylor at 5:31 PM | Comments (3)

Google Geo Search API, ESRI and Google Collaborate

[UPDATED 1730PT: Added the video of the talk below.]

At Where 2.0 today John Hanke, the Director of the Google Geo team, had a couple of announcements. He started out by giving a report on the state of the GeoWeb as he sees it. According to Google's statistics geospatial data grew by 300% since last year's Where 2.0. He also described the progress in their geosearching which started with Google Earth and has progressed into Google Maps with more features. He said he had one announcement related to that: Google is now releasing a GeoSearch API. An AJAX API that allows you to tap into Google's geodata search indices. It will be interesting to see if you can get more results than the standard Maps/Earth interfaces and then output the results in KML. I'll link to details on their web site after they formally make this announcement.

The other interesting thing that happened during John's talk was his strategy to get more GIS data into the Where 2.0 type applications world. John went and spoke to Jack Dangermond, CEO of ESRI, to see if he could convince him to work on ways to better enable access to GIS data. He invited Jack up to the stage and Jack quite enthusiastically described his shared vision with Google to get GIS data more accessible. Apparently ESRI will be intorducing new features in the applications to facilitate KML output of GIS data. Jack said the new features will start rolling out in about 4 weeks. The implication was that it would be possible to create mashups between GIS databases and neogeography databases and tools. They discussed a bit the issues that might crop up between crowdsourced data vs. professional GIS data, but that in the long run it could be for the best. Emergency situations like the California fires was given as an example where both data types proved useful.

Here's a video of the presentation:

More Where 2.0 2008 coverage: Day 2 summary

Posted by FrankTaylor at 2:57 PM | Comments (2)

Links: New StreetView Stuff, WorldWide Telescope, Yahoo WOE, Dishpointer, GPSAnimator

• New StreeView Stuff - Google pre-announced new StreetView data for New York City. The data reportedly has higher resolution data. However, so far I'm not seeing the new StreetView imagery. But, those of you concerned about seeing your face appear there - don't worry - Google has used face-detection software that "blurs" the faces in the imagery. The data is also reportedly more recent. I did notice a new "More" drop-down option that lets you turn on Panoramio or Wikipedia placemarks though.
• WorldWide Telescope - Microsoft has surprised many of us by releasing a beta of their widely anticipated WorldWide Telescope application. Stefan Geens at OgleEarth calls it "stunning", and further says: "this is easily the most impressive thing I've seen Microsoft do in a long time...". I haven't had a chance to try installing it, but hopefully will before the week is out. I'll draw comparisons with Google Earth's Sky mode. Mickey says it has some bugs, but is definitely worth checking out. The New York Times has an interesting article describing both WWT and Google Earth Sky and compares them from a philosophical approach.
• Dishpointer.com - Stefan at OgleEarth also has a great review of an interesting new web site called Dishpointer. This site will calculate the angle for TV satellite antennas. More importantly, it will let you see it in Google Earth so you can turn on 3D buildings and see if you might be obscured by buildings.
• Yahoo WOE - Rev Dan Catt announced a new Yahoo capability to offer "Where on Earth IDs". Here's the Yahoo announcement. Dan focuses on the Flickr aspects of using these new ids. Ed Parsons from Google also comments positively on the Yahoo effort.
• GPSAnimator.com - Got an E-mail from some folks who have developed an application called StarTRAX which lets you visualize your GPS tracks in Google Earth. I haven't had a chance to try it out, but it sounds a lot like GPSVisualizer.

Posted by FrankTaylor at 11:19 AM | Comments (3)

Where 2.0 - Day 1

Left my house near Raleigh, NC at 4 AM to fly out to California. I was a bit weary after nearly 11 hours of travel when I arrived at the Where 2.0 registration desk. But, I did manage to show up just in time for lunch! Brady Forrest of O'Reilley, Program Chair for Where 2.0, joined me for lunch and brought me up to date on events thus far. He said the morning tutorials were well attended and seemed to be quite popular (see schedule for Monday). Also, nearly half the people who registered for the conference were in attendance for the first day events. Also, overall attendance looked to be higher than last year. Several announcements are lined up for the week as well from both big and new players in the geospatial community. Looks like lots of good stuff for this year's event!

The afternoon tutorials included another four tutorials. Naturally, I chose to attend the one by Google entitled: "Searching the Geoweb: Exposing Your Geo Data to Search Engines" by Lior Ron and Mano Marks. Their session focused on how to get your geospatial data to be recognized by search engines (or at least Google). Google has already been scanning web sites for links to GeoRSS, KML, or KMZ files as well as the Google Earth Community and other known locations. They gave tips on how to improve the chances things will be indexed. A significant point is that you shouldn't make a single large file with tens of thousands of placemarks. Better to break down the content into different files. The one piece of real news in this session is that Google is now supporting a new sitemap file format for geospatial content. This means you can very specifically tell the search engines to look for a KML, KMZ, or GeoRSS file which will then be almost immediately scanned into the geosearch index. The last half of the session was dedicated to discussing how to create good KML content using various tools as well as directly coding KML. Google said there will be more of these tutorials during the Google I/O developer conference later this month.

Keep reading for some details on Ignite/Launchpad.

After a short nap, I managed to pull my weary body down to the Ignite/Launchpad. I really enjoy this format because each talk/demo only lasts 5 minutes. So, you get a blazingly fast dump of information usually well targeted to get the main points across.

I didn't manage to get details on every speaker, but here's a few I did catch:

• Andrew Turner - Mapufacture - Andrew managed to get about 10 minutes worth by speaking really fast. He described Mapufacture which provides a way to view maps of geospatial content from a variety of sources and with different mapping applications. It supports GeoRSS feeds and KML. All their maps are also available in GeoRSS or KML so you can view them in Google Earth as well. And there's an API for doing more with the data like searching both spatially and over spatial timeframes. And the site supports OGC WMS interface specification for querying the data.
• GPSMission - Got a quick demonstration of this new geospatial gaming system. It can be played with GPS-enabled phones (possibly with just a GPS as well?). They have an interface called the "Mission planner" which makes it easy to create a game where you go outside and find specific locations (like a scavenger hunt?). Anyway, this could be worth looking at.
• ipoki - These guys were at last year's Where 2.0 Ignite and they've made a lot of progress. They changed their name slightly, but their purpose is still the same. They provide a site with a focus on helping you keep track of the locations of people you want to keep in touch with. The goal being to find ways to get together when it makes sense. They're announcing a new interface to Facebook so you can invite all your Facebook friends to share their location with you in ipoki. A smart move! Their site is most popular in Spain, but from their KML map for Google Earth showing the ipoki population sharing location publicly, it appears they are getting increasingly popular in other parts of the world.
• Neighborhood Maps - Bernt Wahl of UC Berkeley gave an interesting overview of their efforts to enhance neighborhood mapping. They have researched new ways to better identify the boundaries of neighborhoods. Most data available is typically not very accurate. Yet, according to their research, you can get very interesting information by analyzing data according to neighborhoods rather than for example by city or town. He briefly showed an example of crime statistics by neighborhood. Interesting information, but I didn't get a URL for where they are publishing it.
• GreenMap.org - an organization trying to get the entire world to collect information for creating more environmentally sustainable living. They have helped nearly 500 communities in 50 countries so far create maps. They've been refining and sharing new iconography for showing information on maps important to environmental efforts. They also are announcing an effort to start using opensource technologies called OpenGreenMap.org. I'm wondering why they would spend all that extra effort?
• Pushpin - Pushpin has its origins in financial sector data analysis. They've had a API available for commercial applications providing access to a vast array of data with mapping capabilities. They are now working on a free Rest API which will allow access to a subset of their data sources and mapping technologies. He described their efforts to help organize geospatial information by using URLs - which reminded me immediately of Tagzania which was doing this over two years ago. But, I do agree with him that using this technique makes things more discoverable to search engines - if the engines get smarter about scanning according to URLs.
• Focation - Two guys from Vietnam have worked hard to create a mapping mashup that not only provides good travel information for their country, but also provides a Wiki-like interface for people to annotate and add new information to the maps. The site is Ajax enabled, so you often don't have to re-load the page to make the changes (making it speedier). I think these guys won the contest for the furthest traveled for the Ignite talks. They did have some innovative techniques. I liked an idea they have for showing large amounts of placemarks using a colorized grid instead of overlapping icons.
• Ordnance Survey - the last talk from Ian Holt was - intriguingly amusing. The last organization I expected here was Ordnance Survey from the UK. They have been universally panned by most of the Where 2.0 generation of geospatial technologists. The primary reason being that OS refuses to let anyone use their mapping data without their collecting a license fee. I guess they are trying to improve their image because they came here saying they will be offering an "open source" project. Only it wasn't clear how this would change anything. Ian demonstrated an application which amusingly lets you compare the OS data to "other" maps (specifically Google Maps) to show how the OS data is so much better. For those of you who don't know, a former OS technologist named Ed Parsons left there and is now one of the top dogs on the Google Geo team.

More Where 2.0 2008 coverage: Google John Hanke Keynote

Posted by FrankTaylor at 10:21 AM | Comments (2)

May 12, 2008

New Rumsey Historical Maps for Google Earth

Over 100 new historical maps have been added to the Rumsey layer in Google Earth from David Rumsey's map collection of over 17,000 maps he has available online. The maps range from complete global maps to historical maps for cities around the world. Turn on the layer under "Gallery->Rumsey Historical Maps". You see placemarks for each map along with the date of the map and a thumbnail of what it looks like. Click on the thumbnail to load the map as an overlay in Google Earth. The maps are very fascinating to look at, and compare to the underlying "real" world. Select the layer and grab the transparency slider above to make comparisons, or turn on the "Borders" layer and adjust your zoom level to see how the borders match up to modern day political boundaries and coastlines. via Google Lat Long

Posted by FrankTaylor at 3:56 PM | Comments (3)

Watch Where 2.0 Events Live Here with Seero

Seero is a new service which offers geo-spatially aware video content in either Google Maps or Google Earth. You can even watch the position of a video broadcast change during the playback of the content, or you can do your own broadcasts. See my previous post on this.

The Seero team will be offering live video content from the O'Reilly Where 2.0 conference starting today. They now have a new service allowing you to embed a video with the geospatial context on web sites, so I'm including an embed of the Where 2.0 content here (Note: until they start broadcast the content you'll see here will be other content available from Seero - See below for a Google Earth link to watch the video from within Google Earth):

Or, you can watch the broadcast through a placemark in Google Earth through this link . I'll be attending Where 2.0 myself this week, make sure you look me up in person if you're going. Or, watch Seero, you might see me right here on video at some point.

Posted by FrankTaylor at 5:16 AM | Comments (0)

May 9, 2008

Google Earth 3D Model Friday

It's been a while since I highlighted 3D models for viewing in Google Earth on a Friday. The Google 3D Warehouse has continued to evolve over the last two years. They now have an excellent way of sharing cool 3D models called "Collections". Anyone can set up a collection and point to various 3D models already in the warehouse. And, you can rate and comment on the ones you like.

Today I'd like to point out an excellent collection of 3D structures, put together by someone called 'scarpimp', which are UNESCO Cultural Heritage sites. Places like the Taj Majal or the Himeji Castle and 50 other UNESCO sites are already in the collection. Many of these buildings are already built in to the 3D Buildings layer of Google Earth. Some, like the Himeji Caslte seen in the screenshot are not well optimized, so they aren't in the 3D Buildings layer. You can find the locations of these UNESCO sites more quickly by just viewing the 3D Warehouse collection. Hopefully this collection will inspire 3D modelers to create more of the other 500 or so UNESCO sites.

Posted by FrankTaylor at 10:55 AM | Comments (2)

May 8, 2008

Many Visualizations of Myanmar Disaster for Google Earth

I've been updating my original post with a list of visualizations on the Myanmar disaster for Google Earth showing Cyclone Nargis's path, weather data, and the resulting flooding from satellite photos. Google and other organizations have released all kinds of data in the aftermath of the storm to help people realize the extent of the disaster.

Google has a link for places to send support to Myanmar in their time of need.

Posted by FrankTaylor at 8:01 AM | Comments (0)

May 7, 2008

Links: NBA Destination, EarthNC 2.0, Geo Education

• NBA Destination - The National Basketball Association and ESPN have commissioned a Google Earth visualization showing all kinds of NBA and basketball content including 3D models of stadiums, placemarks with trivia and history, and a few little basketball "easter eggs" (Tip: try looking to the east of Mt. Hood, Oregon after loading the KML). You can go to their fancy flash-based web site NBAEarth.com which includes a video introduction, or you can go straight to the KML file . Thanks to Anandaroop Roy, the author of the KML content, for telling me. This is a well done KML file with lots of interesting content.

• EarthNC 2.0 - EarthNC has celebrated their one year anniversary by releasing version 2.0 of their online and Plus versions of EarthNC electronic charts and other marine data for Google Earth. If you're a boater (particularly in US waters) you should definitely check out this fantastic resource of marine data. EarthNC has some of the best KML, and most thorough, content available for Google Earth. And, their rates are very reasonable, especially compared to other data providers in the marine industry.

• Google Geo Education - Google has released a new web site to help educators find their geospatial related educational tools and content I'm a little disappointed they don't highlight more examples of Google Earth content. But, they do have some interesting classroom ideas, and on that page they link to a post I did last September with more relevant links for educators.

Posted by FrankTaylor at 7:48 AM | Comments (2)

May 6, 2008

Win a SpaceNavigator or Pass to Where 2.0 from GearthBlog

Next week, I will be attending the O'Reilly Where 2.0 Conference in San Francisco. If you're planning to go, and you regularly read this blog, please make sure to look for me and let me know you're a GEB reader. I'm planning to give away one free SpaceNavigator for Notebooks on Wednesday May 14th to a random pick from GEB readers who give me their business card while at Where 2.0 (like GEB did last year).

Also, if you want to attend Where 2.0, but the cost is causing you to hesitate, GEB is giving away two free passes to Where 2.0. Leave a comment to this post if you're interested (the comments won't be posted). Ardent Google Earth fans are more likely to get the passes, but tell me why you want to attend Where 2.0 in your comment and include your e-mail address. I'll select the winners by Thursday (May 8th) afternoon.

[UPDATE May 8th: I've selected the two winners of the free passes. There's a chance some of you may still get a free pass from O'Reilly because I suggested the runners up to them. Hope to see you there at Where!]

Posted by FrankTaylor at 1:00 PM | Comments (1)

Myanmar Cyclone Data in Google Earth

[UPDATED May 9th: Google and other organizations have released many Myanmar visualizations for Google Earth including storm tracks, flooding data, and before/after satellite imagery. This post is being updated with the latest.]

Over the weekend, Tropical Cyclone Nargis struck Myanmar as a category 4 storm with winds greater than 115 knots. The storms caused terrible flooding as well, and thousands of lives were lost. The UN Institute for Training and Research Operational Satellite Applications Programme (UNOSAT) regularly creates maps to track disaster situations and has released a visualization for Google Earth showing the track and strength of the storm and the extent of flooding which resulted. via Google LatLong Blog.

Also, here are a couple of NASA satellite photos of the storm before it struck and as it was over Myanmar . via GEarthHacks and NASA.

Google provided a new KML showing an animation of Cyclone Nargis from the Naval Research Laboratory's satellite imagery. You have to wait for each set of images to load (it takes a minute or two) before the animation plays smoothly. Also, adjust the animation speed for smoother playback (click on the clock icon on the left of the time slider). Google also linked to an NRL KML which shows more details during the timeline of the hurricane. via Google LatLong Blog.

HurricaneMapping.com sent me a Nargis KML which shows the track of the storm along with wind swaths, and details at various stages of the path.

Google has posted a new KML file which shows a variety of before and after Cyclone Nargis imagery of Myanmar. The imagery comes from a variety of sources including NASA, DigitalGlobe, and GeoEye/CRISP Singapore. You can clearly see the tremendous flooding which has caused the worst of the damage and fatalities from this storm.

As an aid to workers in Myanmar, Direct Relief International has released this KML file showing all of the Myanmar Ministry of Health facilities (over 700 sites) using data from the WHO 2002 Global Health Atlas survey. They used the spreadsheet mapper tool to make the collection.

Posted by FrankTaylor at 7:08 AM | Comments (1)

May 5, 2008

NASA Time Animation of Ionosphere For Google Earth

Last week, NASA announced the release of an amazing dynamic Google Earth resource which shows time animated condition of the Earth's Ionosphere. The ionosphere is used to bounce radio signals over the horizon for long distance communication. But, when storms occur on the sun's surface they can mess up parts of the ionosphere and disrupt ionosphere-based communications. The new NASA Google Earth data can be used to quickly understand where and when there may be radio communication issues.

See for example their primary network link which shows the current condition of the ionosphere in the form of total electron content. Then, check out an animation of the total electron content for the past 24 hours . You use the time slider to see the animation, but note that it will take a while to load each image overlay which covers the entire Earth. Red means area of strong atmospheric disturbance where communications problems are likely to occur. Blue/dark means communications will be fine. You will notice that the night side of the Earth is the best time for radio communications.

This NASA information not only makes for cool looking Google Earth visualizations, but is very useful to anyone with a profession or need for using short-wave radio (e.g. HAM radio operators, mariners, coast guards, etc.). Airliners are increasingly flying over the arctic regions to take shorter routes, but in this area they can't use satellite communications based on geosynchronous satellites. So, they resort to short wave radio over the poles. If the ionosphere is important to you, check out the full list of GE ionosphere visualizations from NASA here. NASA also has a communications alert and prediction system which uses this data.

NASA has done many other Google Earth visualizations. Here are just a few:

• NASA Earth at Night Layer

• NASA Annual Lightning Flash Map

• NASA Sea Surface Temperature and more

• NASA Earth Day Top Photos

Posted by FrankTaylor at 8:47 AM | Comments (1)

May 2, 2008

Links: Night Cities, Educators, VE Imagery, Space Telescopes, Custom Compass

• Night Cities - Some of the International Space Station crew have been taking night-time photos of cities around the world. NASA has released a number of these night-time images and explain the background on what was involved taking them. Not only that, but they have created KML files showing the location of each photo, and the placemark description includes a photo. See for example this page for the Tokyo photo, and the KML file from that page. I was disappointed at first that they hadn't attempted to overlay them. But, after spending more than an hour trying to align just a couple of photos I gave up myself. NASA hasn't give the position of the space station as a component of the data, so it it is difficult to determine the angle the photos were taken. I had similar problems when I aligned these daytime NASA photos.

• Educators - Discovered another useful reference for educators looking to use Google Earth. Steve Kluge of Fox Lane High School in Bedford, New York has created this web page that serves as a manual for using Google Earth designed for educators. He also makes it availabe in PDF form. It has suggestions for ways to use GE in the classroom, and basic tips on using Google Earth. See also JuicyGeography by Noel Jenkins in the UK. Noel has been an enthusiastic GE educator since it first came out.

• VE Imagery - Microsoft has released another huge (22 Terabyte) update to their imagery. Not only normal orthographic aerial imagery, but also a huge new batch of Bird's Eye oblique imagery - in new places like Australia, Greece, and the UK. See the full list here along with some screenshots/links.

• Space Telescopes - Orbiting Frog has released a KML file for tracking the current positions of some of the more noted space telescopes. He is using his tool previously reported which shows the position of orbiting objects around the Earth.

• 

  Custom Compass - Gerardo has posted a really nice compass modification for Google Earth which adds a compass rose (adding E, S, W, and other cardinal points). Borrowing on the idea from Barry Hunter, Gerardo's version is more versatile. However, this requires you to modify the default image by replacing an image in the Google Earth directory. This way the compass turns with your view just like you would expect. Read his post for details.

Posted by FrankTaylor at 9:20 AM | Comments (5)

May 1, 2008

Incremental Update to Google Earth 4.3.7204.0836 (beta)

Google has released an update to the 4.3 beta released two weeks ago which fixes some bugs (no new features that I see). This is still a beta version, so Google probably has more things they plan to fix before finalizing 4.3. You can download it through the Google Earth Download page, or if you haven't downloaded 4.3 before, you can use GEB's download Google Earth page. Thanks to Frederic for the tip that this was now available.

Here are some of the things they fixed in this incremental release (still waiting for official release notes):

• MAC only- Whenever balloon has enough text to require a vertical scroll bar, the horizontal scroll bar shows up as well. Even though the horizontal text are not wide enough.
• Bottom margin of balloon is too big.
• Balloons sometime do not render image when clicked repeatedly.
• Sometime balloon does not open in Vista machine.
• "to here"/"from here" does not work in newly created placemark.
• Navigation from camera views (above horizon) is broken.
• Crash at exiting sky mode.

By the way, if you are looking to report a problem you're having with GE 4.3, or you want to go back to GE 4.2, read this excellent post at the GE Community by 'Noisette'. Or just go to the Google Earth support forum.

Posted by FrankTaylor at 8:38 AM | Comments (5)

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