Google Earth Blog: June 2008 Archives

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June 30, 2008

Links: Outreach Birthday, Bullit Chase Scene, NIN Downloads, KMLWiki

Outreach Birthday - Google has mentioned the first birthday of the Google Earth Outreach program. This excellent program helps organizations leverage Google Earth/Maps and other Google products to get the word out about their causes. Many great layers like Crisis in Darfur, Appalachian Voices, and many others found in the Global Awareness layer folder came from the program. Being included in the Outreach program can have a profound effect to helping get global visibility on an issue. I attended the formal announcement of the Outreach program in New York last year.
Bullit Chase Scene - This is a really cool example of using Seero which lets you geo-locate a video dynamically and show the position on a map while the video is playing. There's nothing like watching the most classic car chase scene and see where it takes place at the same time. Except, I'd like to see this done with the Earth plugin in 3D! (I've already sent Seero an E-mail).
NIN Downloads - The Nine Inch Nails band has published a Google Earth file showing the geographic distribution of the 1.4 million downloads of their latest album The Slip. I kind of like how they used what looks like red "nails" to represent the number of downloads for each location.
KMLWiki - Martin Meggle-Freund writes to let me know about his current project called KMLWiki. The idea is to let people share locations and write about them. He is now making use of the Google Earth plugin. The German version, KMLwiki.de, is more active and has more content. Kind of similar in some ways to EarthSwoop.

Posted by FrankTaylor at 08:42 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

June 29, 2008

California Fires - June 2008

[UPDATE July 13, 2008: Here is a new picture from NASA showing the fires on July 11, 2008.]

Google Earth and Maps are useful ways to get current information for events like the fires raging in California right now. The California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection made a Google My Map that showed the current locations of fires. But, the Governor's office has just created a new map that has more current information. Unfortunately, the new map doesn't yet have a Google Earth link, so we can't view it in GE yet. President Bush has just declared a state of emergency in California due to the fires. Google has taken a medium resolution satellite photo from NASA and put it in Google Earth so you can see the evidence of the fires as seen from space (taken on June 25th). I will update this post with other GE maps when they become available. via Google Lat Long Blog

US Forest Service Active Fires Map - The USFS has a web site dedicated to tracking active fires. They use a combination of satellites from space which detect the fires, and combine that with ground-based information to produce the maps. All data points are placemarks with further information. Check out the fire map for the continental US which includes the California fires.

Posted by FrankTaylor at 11:20 AM | Comments (4) | TrackBack

June 26, 2008

Notes from the Bahamas: GE in Education, AGE More KML, Disney 3D

I'm currently writing you from a beautiful resort in the Bahamas! My wife and I had an unexpected opportunity to visit the Bahamas and stay at a nice resort for a couple of days. And, since I've never flown myself to the Bahamas, I decided to make an effort. After running around getting an international FCC radio license, US customs decal, and making arrangements for other necessary equipment and charts, we finally were ready. Yesterday we got up early, and had a nice flight down to Fort Lauderdale Executive Airport (KFXE). Here we picked up some necessary survival equipment (e.g. life vests and life boat), and then headed out over the water. After getting out of the way of Miami traffic, they finally let us fly direct for Georgetown, Great Exuma (MYEF). We're staying at the St. Francis Resort which is a delightful place on beautiful island called Stocking Island. You can view our GPS tracks and the resort . Oh, and I forgot to mention that I used Google Earth to plan the route, check out the airports, check weather, and view the resort before we left (see GE for Pilots).

Here's some other news:

GE in Education - Google is having a "Google Teacher Academy" and I like this post about using Google Earth for literary teaching. Also, hundreds of teachers in Greenville County are getting exposure to Google Earth at a teacher conference.
AGE More KML - ESRI's ArcGIS Explorer has a new update - part of the ArcGIS 9.3 new release coming this week. ArcGIS Explorer is the GIS giant's own virtual globe. The new update includes better KML support. via AnyGeo.
Disney 3D - Google has now made a layer available under Gallery->Travel and Tourism->Walt Disney World Resorts which shows placemarks of many sights at the Disney Resorts in Orlando. These are worth looking at with the 3D Buildings layer because Disney and Google recently added very detailed 3D models of the resorts (including trees, rides, hotels, and more). See a YouTube demo of the Disney in 3D collection.

Posted by FrankTaylor at 08:03 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

June 25, 2008

Share and View 3D Places in EarthSwoop

Google Earth Hacks and Google Earth Blog have gotten together to create a web site to allow people to share and view 3D locations using the Google Earth plugin. We're calling the site EarthSwoop for obvious reasons. Try the tour of NFL Stadiums, or MLB Stadiums and click on the team icons to "swoop" in to each 3D model of a stadium. There are already over a dozen collections to try out. Since the plugin is limited to Windows right now, you won't be able to see the 3D sites with Mac or Linux - but, Google has promised to have a new version in August supporting more browsers/OSes.

Sign up in the EarthSwoop forums and you can easily save and create your own collections with anyone. All you have to do is position the view with the plugin you want to share and click a button to save that location. Mickey did most of the work using tools he's been developing for his site. We wanted to see if you could create ways for people to not only view places, but also create their own tours. Let us know what you think either here or in the forums at the EarthSwoop site.

Posted by FrankTaylor at 07:02 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

June 24, 2008

Google Releases More Map Crowdsourcing Tools

Nearly a year ago, Googler Michael Jones spoke about the techniques Google used to get detailed map information in India. We're not just talking about streets, but also points of interest such as tourist spots, businesses, hospitals, schools, etc. If you perform a search or turn on the "Places of Interest" layer folder items, you will see a wealth of information for many countries. The secret was to develop tools to enable local people to contribute their knowledge to help create the maps. Enabling lots of local people to provide their knowledge to gather data is a technique which has become known as "crowdsourcing". This same technique was used in the recently released data for Kenya. Now, for the first time, Google has released to the public a big part of the map creation tools which they call Google Map Maker. This is a significant milestone in accelerating the availability of more map data for the parts of the world not fully mapped.

According to the announcement they are enabling the following countries for people to contribute data using Map Maker: Cyprus, Iceland, Pakistan, Vietnam and the Caribbean nations of: Antigua & Barbuda, Bahamas, Barbados, Bermuda, British Virgin Islands, Cayman Islands, Grenada, Jamaica, Netherlands Antilles, St. Kitts & Nevis, St. Lucia, St. Vincent & the Grenadines, Trinidad & Tobago. Hopefully even more locations will be added in the coming months since there are still quite a few countries to go. But, this is a great start!

Google had already made available some tools to allow businesses to add more accurate and current data to business listings in Google Maps/Earth. Google Blogoscoped just today released a nice post telling you how to add or modify your business listing at Google. And, Google also enabled anyone to move markers for search results in Google Maps to place the markers more accurately (so, if the placemark returned for your house or favorite business is wrong - you can fix it yourself).

By the way, Google Earth is the best way to view the vast amount of local information Google has amassed. Open up the Places of Interest layer folder and look at the long list of available information (dining, lodging, transportation, etc.). This is the hidden treasure of information Google has made available to the masses. I really wish Google would improve the interface for layers so more people could discover this very useful information. (Read about Google Earth Layers).

See also discussion about the new Map Maker at Google Operating System, and Google Maps Mania.

Posted by FrankTaylor at 08:55 AM | Comments (6) | TrackBack

June 23, 2008

2008 August 1st Total Eclipse in Google Earth

Just a week before the 2008 China Olympics, there will be a total solar eclipse occurring on the first of August which crosses China, Mongolia and central Russia. The best web resource I've found on eclipses (solar and lunar) is by Xavier Jubier. Here is his web page with all the details on the 2008 August 1 Total Eclipse including links to his Google Earth KML file of the total eclipse path . Much of Europe will also see most of the sun covered on this day. Xavier also has a Google Maps version of the map, and his web site is also available in French.

See the earlier GEB story on visualizing Solar Eclipses. Xavier also has a page showing Google Earth files of total eclipses from 1961 through the rest of this century.

Posted by FrankTaylor at 08:40 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

June 22, 2008

Google Earth Plugin Now Runs in Firefox 3

As promised by Google in a comment on my post about Firefox 3 last Tuesday, Google has quietly fixed it so the Google Earth plugin (which lets you run a subset of Google Earth in your browser on a web page) now works with Firefox 3 (as of today - Sunday, June 22). Digital Earth Blog gets points for being the first GE blog to post about it. Google's Paul Rademacher (the chief architect behind the Google Earth API and plugin) posted an announcement about the support for Firefox 3 and that it does NOT require you to download a new plugin binary. Wanna check it out? Try the Milktruck game!

Posted by FrankTaylor at 03:56 PM | Comments (7) | TrackBack

June 20, 2008

Easy Embedding of the Google Earth Plugin

Judging from the E-mails and blog posts I've been seeing, the Google Earth plugin continues to get a lot of attention from developers wanting to put Google Earth's 3D capabilities on their web pages. The very first post-announcement mashup with the new API was done by Virgil Zetterlind who made it possible for you to embed the plugin with a KML file of your choice. Since then, many other Google Earth savvy sites have started offering the ability to embed the plugin with interesting data. Here's a quick summary of Google Earth pluging embedding options starting with two new ones:

StreetCities - This is probably the slickest of the new embedding options. The guy who brought you DualMaps (which lets you embed a map view showing simultaneously Street View, Google Maps, and Virtual Earth Bird's Eye views), now has created StreetCities which lets you combine Street View, Google Maps and Google Earth plugin on your web page. Not only that, but he's included a slick "orbit" animation capability with the Google Earth plugin. I really like this!
GoogleEarthHacks - Mickey at Google Earth Hacks had already added the ability to view highlighted Google Earth content with the plugin. He's recently added above each entry a copy/paste snippet to embed any of his entries on a web page using the Earth plugin. Not only that, but he now has added a cool new feature making it easy for anyone to mark a place in Google Earth using the plugin and share it with anyone via a GE KML file, or by embedding it with the Earth plugin.
First Embed Tool - Virgil's GEEmbed tool is still very useful because it lets you give it a KML file OR a Google My Map that you can embed with the Earth plugin on your site. Read about it and see an example.
Tagzania - As previously mentioned, the place tagging site Tagzania was quick to add the ability to view their maps with the Earth plugin by simply adding the "Earth" tab in the Google Maps on the upper right. They also added the ability to embed any map from Tagzania with the plugin (see the "Embed 3D" code snippet below a map).
GMap-Track - Also previously mentioned, GMap-Track allows you to embed a map on your blog showing your current position. They now have the option to show your position with the Earth plugin, and will automatically determine whether your browser supports it and revert back to Google Maps if your browser doesn't. Definitely a great way to do it! See OgleEarth's home page for an example of it in use.

See also GoogleMapsMania's post today about the two new ones.

Posted by FrankTaylor at 09:44 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

Popular Science Highlights Scientific Applications of Google Earth

The July issue of Popular Science has a special series of articles highlighting five different scientific visualizations involving the environment using Google Earth. I'm glad to see a popular mainstream magazine giving visibility to visualizations with Google Earth that are not silly scenes found in the satellite photos, but instead show that you can share meaningful scientific and environmental data and make it meaningful. Many of these visualizations were presented at the American Geophysical Union Here's a quick summary of the five visualizations with links to the respective KML files, the Popular Science article, and links to previous GEB stories on the visualizations:

Volcano Tracker - Peter Webley of the University of Alaska’s Volcano Observatory developed tools to help track the ash plumes from volcanos in the Alaskan Ring of Fire. Because of a nearly fatal accident of a commercial airliner which flew into an ash plume, air traffic controllers are relying on tools Peter developed to visualize ash plumes in Google Earth in 3D so they can direct flights away from danger. Peter also developed a GE time animation re-enacting the near-accident of the commercial flight including the ash plume. You can see several examples of Google Earth visualizations on the plumes. See GEB story on this. By the way, special thanks to Peter for E-mailing me about the Popular Science articles.
Storm Trooper - NASA has been using Google Earth to track scientific flights into large tropical storms in real-time with their Real-Time Mission Manager (RTMM) software. Michael Goodman at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center explains that Google Earth enables the planners on the ground to follow flights into storms and help direct them to key areas of interest. "Prior to the RTMM...we couldn't follow them." This is one of the most impressive uses of Google Earth for science I've seen. GEB wrote about RTMM when they presented at last Fall's AGU. Here's a link to the RTMM site (not working at the moment), and here's a NASA story about the system.
Emotion Map - Next up, Christian Nold gets to tell his story of creating a 3D emotion map in Google Earth. He put “galvanic response” measuring devices on the wrists of 100 volunteers in Greenwhich England and used it to measure their emotions responses as they walked around town. They also had PDAs to record what they were seeing. The resulting visualization in Google Earth is really cool. GEB first wrote about it in February 2006. Here's a link to the Greenwhich emotion map . If you visit the Biomapping.net site, you'll find several other cities are getting emotion maps.
Arctic Eye - This article describes the great work by the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) at the University of Colorado who have produced a great array of Google Earth KML files illustrating their scientific results monitoring snow and ice around the world. Walt Meir of the NSIDC was interviewed by Popular Science and he describes several of their visulizations and why they are important to scientists and communicating with the public. Highlighted in the story is the ice melt time animation which shows the extent of ice over time at both poles of the Earth as they melt during the summer. See several GEB stories on NSIDC's Google Earth work.
Flight of the Bird Flu - Daniel Janies, a professor of zoology at Ohio State University’s department of biomedical informatics describes his visualization with Google Earth to show the spread of the H5N1 avian-flu virus. Their map shows mutation maps of the flu and they are now tracking up to 1000 variations of the flu and can show the data with seasonal variations. You can read more about their project at their web site, and here is a link to the mutation map . And here's a story from last year on GEB about it. Also of note is the avian flu tracker built by Declan Butler of Nature Magazine.

Posted by FrankTaylor at 08:55 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

June 19, 2008

British Pool Crashers Using Google Earth

In the UK, a bunch of teens are using Google Earth to help find houses with pools they can target for impromptu pool parties. The teens are apparently using FaceBook and other social networking tools to organize an event, according to the police. The police are pointing out that this is trespassing and is therefore illegal. Google Earth is certainly the best known satellite mapping tool - but, there are several other free satellite mapping tools which have high resolution photos for the UK: Microsoft, Ask.com and Yahoo all have suitable satellite photos for pool searches as well. Anytime new technologies reach a critical mass of popularity - teenagers will think of new ways to use them for fun. The good often comes along with some bad.

This story was picked up by a variety of other news media including US-based online tech publications like Wired and searchenginewatch. So, if you have a pool, it would be a good idea to keep a watch in case this craze catches on.

This reminds me of some other pool stories involving Google Earth:

Posted by FrankTaylor at 08:16 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

June 18, 2008

Roundup: Firefox 3 and Earth plugin, Google I/O, Spam Alert, Google Analytics

Firefox 3 and Earth plugin - The Google Earth API plugin ~~does not currently work~~ now works with the new Firefox 3 on Windows. I'm sure Google is working quickly to release a compatible update for Firefox 3. But, if you only use Firefox on Windows, you might want to wait before upgrade to Firefox 3 if you really like the Earth plugin. Otherwise, you may be stuck with using IE when you want to use the Earth plugin. If you're on the Mac, the plugin doesn't work on OS X yet, so go ahead and get Firefox 3 now!
Google I/O - I've been waiting to do a summary post on Google I/O until more videos were available for the talks. There was a talk by Paul Rademacher on the Earth API, but the video of his talk still hasn't appeared. Anyway, here are Google's photos from Google I/O, a link to all the available videos of Google I/O talks, and here's a link to some photos I took. I highly recommend watching Michael Jones' talk where he introduced the new Earth API plugin during the last half of his talk. Also, see GoogleMapsMania's excellent summary of the available information from Google I/O.
Spam Alert - Stefan Geens at OgleEarth mentioned briefly about the issue of some Google Adsense ads leading to web sites which try to sell you "Google Earth" and deliver you the free version. These sites, if you read the fine print, are trying to sell you "support" that you don't need for Google Earth. If you see an ad trying to sell you Google Earth, or support for it, you should ignore it. There are premium versions of Google Earth, but you can only buy those through Google's official site. But, please note that the premium versions do NOT get you better resolution satellite imagery.
Google Analytics - Two years ago, Jacob Cord wrote a program to let you process raw data from Google Analytics to generate a KML showing the locations of everywhere people access your web site. Unfortunately, sometime during the last year, this program stopped working because Google removed the raw data option from Analytics (I wish they would re-enable that feature). Now, there is an XML option which at least lets you get the country-level summary of your site visits. Johann Blake has written a web based application which lets you take the XML and generate a KML with placemarks showing the number of visits colorized according to scale. [UPDATE: you can map at the "City" level as well, but you are limited to 500 at a time by Analytics.] Right now, the KML is kind of boring to look at. I've suggested he might want to try generating more visually interesting maps with the data using techniques like the Thematic Mapping Engine.

Posted by FrankTaylor at 09:32 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

June 16, 2008

Links: Another Deer, KML Power Tools, Ride the Lobster, Optimize 3D, Altered Oceans

Another Deer - Another deer has had a tracker attached on a collar, and you can track its position in Google Earth. They have named this deer Solomon and you can watch its track here in Google Earth , or in Google Maps. This is part of a research project to study how deer live near suburban areas. The transmitter and battery are more industrial than was realized when I first reported on this back in March. The battery in that one lasted over a month. This one has already been tracking for two weeks I think.
KML Power Tools - Valery Hronusov dropped me a note to let me know about a post describing their newest release of KML2KML Version 2.1. Valery has done a lot of work with KML in the past 3 years. This application could take a lot of work out of complex KML tasks for doing sophisticated KML jobs like regioning, splitting large kml files, assembling complex nested network links, importing data, creating maps image tiles, and getting terrain from GE. Price is US$ 50.
Ride the Lobster - Kyle DeMilner wrote me to let me know about a unicycle race which just started this morning. You can track them on Google Maps (and presumably Google Earth). Yes, I said a unicycle race! The race is called Ride The Lobster and is a relay race in Nova Scotia, Canada and involves about 100 riders and 35 teams. You can check their progress in Google Maps here - I'm still trying to find the Google Earth network link.
Optimize 3D - Looking over notes from the 3D Basecamp at Google last week, I saw a useful link to a Google video tutorial on how to optimize 3D models for Google Earth. This one is definitely worth looking at if you like building 3D models and having them selected for the 3D Buildings layer.
Altered Oceans - About 1.5 years ago GEB mentioned some placemarks developed by GEC member 'Hill' which showed some of the locations in a series of interesting articles posted by the LA Times called Altered Oceans. This very interesting series did an excellent job of raising awareness about some of the challenges facing Earth's oceans. I didn't realize until recently that the series had received a Pulitzer Prize last year. I recommend you read the story, and read Hill's posts with a couple of placemark collections for reference.

Posted by FrankTaylor at 08:07 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

June 13, 2008

Double Chicago Building Error in Google Earth

If you fly to Chicago right now in Google Earth with the 3D Buildings layer turned on, you will find that there are two John Hancock buildings in the layer. And, one of them isn't even in the right spot (the one with the white antennas). Not sure how the second one slipped in, but this wouldn't be the first time 3D model errors slipped in. You have to give Google credit - with millions of 3D models being added to the 3D Warehouse, it's hard to make sure only the correct data gets into the layer. See for example the giant building (actually a model conversion bug) found last year - but, was fixed shortly thereafter.

Posted by FrankTaylor at 03:58 PM | Comments (6) | TrackBack

Links: Big Dog, Plugins, Smoke, Stonehenge, SketchUp Camp, Kenya

Regular readers should read this one carefully - lots of interesting little tidbits today.

Big Dog - A bunch of news writers picked up on this story about a huge dog "seen from space" in the front of a hotel in London. And, you can in fact see the dog (just barely) in Google Earth. However, the imagery is actually from an airplane - not a satellite photo (you can see "BlueSky" in the copyright message - which is an aerial photography company in the UK). Aerial imagery is often better than satellite imagery since its easier to get higher resolution if you're closer to the ground. Read more about Google Earth imagery.
Plugins - James Stafford has added a page dedicated to his experiments with the Earth API plugin. I have not yet written about his cute experiment with a mini-flight simulator (I was waiting for some new features like altitude changes). He's added three new applications he's playing with: 1) A polygon editor , 2) put some of his flight tracking KMLs into the plugin, and 3) my favorite - an astronomy application showing stars categorized on a Hertzsprung-Russell diagram (I'm looking forward to his explanation on how that was done).
Smoke - My local TV news station's web site used a Google Maps My Map to explain where smoke from a wildfire was coming from - blanketing the Raleigh area with smoke yesterday. This of course means you could view the map with Google Earth too. So, I had to mention this.
Stonehenge - Stonehenge has been in the news quite a bit lately. Saw this video from National Geographic showing Stonehenge being viewed through Microsoft Photosynth based on photos taken by a NG photographer (via VerySpatial). This made me wonder whether Panoramio's new Look Around feature was available for Stonehenge. Sure enough, you can see Stonehenge using Look Around based on photos by many people. And, it works on the Mac as well as Windows!
SketchUp Camp - Google hosted Google SketchUp 3D Basecamp this week. Only 300 of 4500 people who expressed interest were able to go. AEC News Randall Newton has been live-blog reporting on 3D Basecamp. So far that's the only source of regular news I've seen from the event. According to AEC News Google is saying there won't be any product announcements at the event.
Kenya - Google recently released new street maps in Kenya. According to NetworkWorld students and a team from India were involved in creating the street maps. I believe this is based on Google's methods used for street maps in India which uses GPSes in the hands of many people ("crowd sourcing") to collect data. This way you use local knowledge to enhance the quality of the data. The new street maps are not yet in the Roads layer in Google Earth. So you can compare what they used to look like to now. Interestingly, the very useful Tracks4Africa (which was recently upgraded) and included Kenya with their crowd sourced data - has now been "demoted"/moved to the "More" layer folder in Google Earth.

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

June 12, 2008

Disappearing Forests Google Earth Visualizations

An excellent set of 3D visualizations has been added to the Google Earth Outreach Showcase. The visualizations show the state of forests around the world by country. The world has lost close to half of its forests already today, and the continued high pace of deforestation contributes greatly to climate change and the loss of biodiversity. When you first load the Disappearing Forests KML , you will see deforestation rate by area. Red indicates a decline in forests, and the scale indicates the number of hectares changed in the last year. Each country has a placemark which provides very interesting details on the state of the forests. You can also choose from a list of other forest maps in the Places pane under the folder called "Country deforestation data".

The KML was developed by David Tryse who also was involved with the Edge of Existence collections highlighted earlier this year in an Outreach Case Study. David used data from the World Resources Institute (WRI): The Last Frontier Forests: Ecosystems and Economies on the Edge (1997), Greenpeace: The Worlds Last Intact Forest Landscapes (2006), and United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization: Global Forest Resources Assessment (2005). David used the following tools: PHP(+Ming for flash counter) & MySQL: XAMPP, World Borders Dataset (+chartAPI-icon idea): thematicmapping.

This deforestation visualization is really an excellent example of putting Google Earth KML to work. The graph type used is called a prism map and has been used in many KML files (see list below). Recently a tool Thematic Mapping Engine has been developed by Bjorn Sandvik to make it easy to create your own prism maps for Google Earth (as well as other map types like choropleths and proportional symbols).

Here are some other examples of prism maps done for Google Earth:

Posted by FrankTaylor at 10:04 AM | Comments (6) | TrackBack

June 11, 2008

June 2008 Update Has More Unannounced 3D Buildings

The 3D Buildings layer update on June 4th, which included the huge collection for Disney World in 3D, included many other 3D Buildings for cities around the world. Already mentioned were those in San Diego and Chicago. But, Google hasn't announced that there are some other significant 3D building model additions in other cities like:

Dallas - Many of the buildings in downtown Dallas, Texas area have been modeled
Memphis, Tennessee - Most of the buildings in the downtown area now available (thanks to GEB reader danstan)
St. Louis, Missouri - Another large group of buildings for most of the downtown area - including the Gateway Arch.
Sydney - A bunch of new notable skyscrapers in Sydney have been added, and the Sydney Opera House has returned (the 3D model had disappeared in Google Earth a couple of months ago). And Crocodile Man is back.
Tokyo - Many new 3D building models are scattered about this huge city in Japan.
Christchurch - In 2007 many of the buildings in Christchurch were added. Now there are even more and they've been converted to the loading format supported by GE 4.3.

There are hundreds of cities with at least a few 3D buildings in Google Earth. But, there are now dozens of cities with nearly complete 3D renderings of at least the major skyscrapers. I'm sure there were many more cities who had significant new 3D buildings added on June 4th. Feel free to drop a comment here if you know of any other substantial additions (more than a few scattered buildings). No comment at this time comparing Google's approach to the way Microsoft's Virtual Earth team is doing things (but, I plan to). But, right now I like to just look at both when I want to see a city in 3D - after all, they're both free to use and view!

Posted by FrankTaylor at 07:12 AM | Comments (7) | TrackBack

June 10, 2008

Google Updates Street View Imagery in US, Adds 37 New Areas

In celebration of Street View's first year of public availability, Google has made a major update to the Street View imagery. Unfortunately, none of the imagery is outside the US yet (despite the many sightings of Street View cars taking imagery in Europe). But, this update not only includes the many new cities in over a dozen states, but also updated and expanded coverage in many of the cities which already had Street View imagery. In particular, Google says more of the imagery now has more spherical panoramas (so you can look up and down in addition to 360 degree panoramas). And, they've worked on improving resolution and picture quality. Also, all the imagery has been processed with their new face-blurring technology to address some privacy concerns. Not only that, but the entire update is also available in the Google Earth Street View layer. Just to whet your appetite, here's one of the new cities:

View Larger Map

Read the full details on the new and expanded coverage over at Google's LatLong Blog. And, to see interesting sights found in Street View, or to share interesting things you find in the new imagery, try out Google Earth Hack's new Street View sightings database.

P.S. My apologies for the small number of posts the last few days. Had a bit of family crisis when my nephew Jason was involved in a traffic accident. Thankfully, he is miraculously all right now, and should completely mend in a few weeks. The other good news is that I got to do some flying in a Cessna between several states during the last few days.

Posted by FrankTaylor at 04:28 PM | Comments (8) | TrackBack

June 09, 2008

Links: 3D Cities Expanded, Backpacker, Touring Mode

3D Cities Expanded - Google has announced they are expanding their Cities in 3D program to several European countries including the UK, Germany, France, Italy, Spain and The Netherlands. The program encourages cities to provide Google with 3D data in a variety of formats, and Google will then convert the data so it can be presented in the Google Earth 3D Buildings layer.
Backpacker - BACKPACKER Magazine has released their first ever digitally generated cover photo (see press release). They went to Google and asked them to create the shot using Google Earth. They emphasized how Google's 3D terrain and detailed imagery provdes "stellar detail" of beautiful places on our planet. BACKPACKER is in the process of promoting a new online service called iHike and apparently wanted to emphasize their new technological prowess by doing a techie cover page. Unfortunately, I haven't been able to find a high resolution scan of the cover.
Touring Mode - Keire Clarke illustrated the new Disney World in 3D models by using the new Google Earth plugin in a post at GoogleMapsMania. He created placemarks for popular rides and sights at Disney World , and let's you use the plugin to quickly fly to the different locations all from the comfort of your browser.

Posted by FrankTaylor at 08:50 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

June 07, 2008

June 06, 2008

Volunteering GIS and Google Earth Content for Humanitarian Relief in Myanmar

Scott Madry, a professor at the University of North Carolina, best known in the Google Earth (GE) world for his moniker as the Armchair Archeologist, actually has skills in many disciplines. I first met him years ago when he was lecturing on space sciences at the International Space University. He's also worked with GIS (Geographical Information Systems) for many years. Recently he was contacted to help with projects in Myanmar to help humanitarian relief efforts understand the situation in the aftermath of Cyclone Nargis. Scott sent me an E-mail last week which does a great job of describing how Google Earth is really helping in disaster situations like this:

I am working with a group called the GISCorps, which is a volunteer group of GIS professionals who volunteer their time for humanitarian relief activities:

http://www.govtech.com/gt/323386
http://www.giscorps.org/burma.php
http://www.urisa.org/node/1090

I got a call to ask if I could help with doing image analysis and GIS for the Myanmar, and I have been working for the past week in using Google Earth to digitize areas of the country. What is very interesting about this effort is that it is entirely voluntary and uses GE. We have a wiki with the interpretation instructions. People around North America and Europe are involved, and we are all using GE to do the image analysis and GIS work. When we finish one area it is sent to another person for QA and then is further analyzed for damage assessment. The final results are converted to ArcGIS and are sent to the UN for creation of detailed maps that are made available by the internet to relief organizations.

http://unosat.web.cern.ch/unosat/

I think it is fascinating that GE is largely making this effort possible. We have 20 people working now, identifying features such as structures, roads, airports, and places that can be used as assembly and relief sites (mostly Buddhist monasteries) on pre-cyclone imagery. Another person does the same using post storm imagery and the two are combined with the results mapped. We can do this around the world quickly and get results in to the UN in days. By using GE we don't have any issues with data formats, proprietary software, etc. We each use our own computers and KML files sent to us with the areas we are to analyze. We submit our KML files as soon as we can and are given another place to work on. It really harnesses the potential power of the GE community.

Posted by FrankTaylor at 09:55 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

Thematic Mapping Engine, Plugin

Periodically during the last three years since Google Earth was released, some talented developer gets the Google Earth bug and develops a wave of cool stuff. Right now, the guy with the most momentum is Bjørn Sandvik at the United Nations Association (UNA) of Norway. He's written a flood of blog posts in the last few weeks at his Thematic Mapping Blog with really innovative visualizations and applications of GIS technology for Google Earth. This week, he's released a cool new application he calls the Thematic Mapping Engine (TME). TME lets you easily take data (no programming required!) from UNdata and create initially 3D prism charts (country shape files represent data about each according to height for things like life expectancy, population, etc.). Bjørn's TME lets you easily create different charts and view them in Google Earth in 3D. He also has plans for other kinds of chart projections/symbols. Not only that, but based on initial feedback, he's now added the ability to view the output using the new Earth API plugin. So, if you're on Windows with a supported browser, you can view the output right on the web page. The screenshot here shows one of the charts with the plugin. You can still get a KML version for loading in the full GE as well. Great idea!

See also Bjørn's series of posts on different ways to map symbols in Google Earth.

Posted by FrankTaylor at 09:26 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Links: General Electric, Stadiums, CyberCity Buildings, KML Validator, Tour de France

General Electric - GE recently released a new initiative on their corporate web site (www.ge.com) about the increasing scarcity of fresh water on our planet. They have a Google Earth file called WaterExplorer which gives an overview about fresh water problems and what GE is doing to help. Definitely worth having a look. It seems appropriate GE should do a Google Earth collection. I do wish I could get my own GE.com e-mail address. :-)
European Championship Stadiums - Google is really getting into the spirit of the European Football Championship 2008. First Google released a some cool fan map mashup. They have all kinds of details on the venues (stadiums), teams, and matches. And, they've made the map available in several different flavors (Spain, Netherlands, Germany, etc.). They have now released special versions of Google Transit for Austria and Switzerland so you can get transportation tips and driving directions if you're attending in person. Google has also made 3D models of all the stadiums. I snagged a KMZ file from a Maps search and modified the stadium placemarks so you can fly a tour of the stadiums in Google Earth (apologies to whoever owned the original KML file - although it may be Google's). The placemarks have some details about the stadiums as well.
Cybercity Buildings - The recent 3d Buildings layer upgrade also includes some new buildings added through the Google Earth Cities in 3D program. In particular, new non-textured buildings in Downtown San Diego were done by CyberCity 3D. They also reportedly did the new non-textured 3D buildings for Chicago. By the way, I just noticed the imagery layer was updated in Chicago including, sadly, the old Miegs Field which no longer shows the runway.
KML Validator - Galdos Systems has released a free online service to validate KML files. The validator assumes your KML is version 2.2 compliant. Galdos is releasing this service for free, but can also provide professional validation services for developers needing validated KML from their applications, and will also offer KML training and development support.
Tour de France - Thomas Vergouwen is the first to send me a 2008 Tour de France KML file , which he's created, which shows the full 2008 Tour de France course in Google Earth. Viewing the course in Google Earth this year is better than ever! In the last Year, Google has improved the satellite and aerial imagery for France, and the terrain has also been improved in places. With any luck, Google may update the terrain for even more areas before it starts. Great work Thomas!

Posted by FrankTaylor at 09:05 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

June 04, 2008

Disney World 3D for Google Earth YouTube Demo

Here is a 3 minute video giving a quick tour of just the 3D Disney World Magic Kingdom - now all visible in Google Earth (read more about Disney in GE and how to turn it on):

I captured the video straight from the Google Earth 3D window using Fraps and used a 3DConnexion SpaceNavigator to fly around and simulate a walking tour of the park. You get a sense of the incredible detail of the park - Disney's new additions are now one of the most densely packed 3D model collections now available in Google Earth. Unless you have a fast 3D game machine, you may notice the update rate will be a bit slow for this collection. My machine was a bit bogged down at times since it was also capturing the video.

Posted by FrankTaylor at 08:55 PM | Comments (6) | TrackBack

Disney World in 3D in Google Earth has Arrived!

Run, don't walk, and check out Disney in 3D in Google Earth! Originally this layer was supposed to come out over a week ago, but it's finally here! (See the official page). Walt Disney World has released 3D models of their parks in Orlando, and, with Google's help, they are now part of the "3D Buildings" layer built in to Google Earth. There is also a layer found under "Gallery->Travel and Tourism->Walt Disney World" which provides placemarks with more information (video, audio, and fun facts) about the parks and the hotels. Included are complete 3D models and information of the Magic Kingdom, EPCOT, Disney's Hollywood Studios, Disney's Animal Kingdom, and Disney's Resorts. And, as you would expect from Disney, the 3D models are very beautiful - including not only the rides and buildings - but, also trees, statues, benches, posts, banners and more!
I'm including this screenshot ~~for now, but expect a YouTube video showing a fly through of this amazing collection shortly~~ (see video demo here):

Once again, to see Disney in 3D, you need to fly to Disney World in Orlando (enter "Disney World" in the "Fly To" search of Google Earth). Then make sure you have the "3D Buildings" layer turned on. Turn on the other layer mentioned above to see fun placemarks with more information, video, and audio describing the parks and sights.

[UPDATE JUNE 5: Here's Google's announcement of Disney in 3D.]

Posted by FrankTaylor at 06:25 PM | Comments (7) | TrackBack

June 03, 2008

Look Around with Google Panoramio

In a move sure to draw comparisons with Microsoft's Photosynth, Google has released a new feature to Panoramio letting you "Look Around" at popular locations around the world. Panoramio is a photo uploading site which uniquely requires all photos to be geotagged when they are uploaded. There are over 5 million photos from Panoramio accessible through both Google Earth and now also available through Google Maps.

To create the new "Look Around" feature, Google is taking locations with a high density of photos (like the Sydney Opera House for example) and, using photogrammetry techniques, they are indexing photos that are close approximations of the same location except maybe from a slightly different perspective. Check out this YouTube video to see it in action:

This gives you a way of sensing the 3D relationship of the location of photos - and, in fact, Microsoft's Photosynth can generate 3D points from the photos. Google's "Look Around" is a Flash application, and is easy and fun to use. And, they've already made available a lot of locations (they are leveraging their large database of geotagged photos to help with the process). Just check out some of these cool examples of popular destinations:

There are even more locations than those represented here. Just explore Panoramio photos for popular destinations and look for the "Look Around" link underneath the photos. This has nothing to do with Google Earth at this point - but, maybe Google will write an algorithm to automatically generate Google Earth PhotoOverlays of these photos?

Posted by FrankTaylor at 11:18 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

June 02, 2008

Sweet! Bouncing Google Earth Plugin Animation with Controls

It's been a few months since James Stafford has treated us with one of his innovative creations for Google Earth. But, the Google Earth API was too cool for him to resist. He has taken one of his old ideas of a bouncing Earth animation, and used the API to create something similar - but, with a very cool twist. Check out his new bouncing Earth in the plugin . The bouncing Earth animation speed can be controlled, and you can select one of several different kinds of camera views. My first two favorites are the "Look Up" and "Bounce cam (down)" views. These definitely gave me a laugh. But, the one that really grabbed my attention was the "Bounce cam (rotate)" view - definitely one to induce spatial disorientation (aka tossing your cookies)! As James points out, using the API it's now possible to create all kinds of animations using your own programming skills, SketchUp models, and the plugin. In fact, lots of folks were talking about "Second Life" kind of applications at Google I/O last week. Anyway, great idea James! Read his post for more details. Here's a screenshot:

Posted by FrankTaylor at 10:35 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

June 01, 2008

Sneaky Google Earth Imagery Update

Last week, during the Google I/O conference, it appears Google managed to make another imagery update for Google Earth - and apparently already in Maps as well. So far Google has not officially announced the update. Maybe they were trying to turn it into a June update? However, GEB readers are way too savvy for that. Thanks to several tips from readers here, I have a list of sites which do indeed appear to have received new imagery last week (I'm still waiting for confirmation from Google):

Europe - Austria was the first place I heard got new imagery. There was even a news piece about this new 25 cm aerial imagery. Thanks to Martin for the tip. Several other eastern european countries appear to have updates including Poland, Hungary, Slovakia, Czech Republic, Serbia, and Montenegro.
Central America - Mexico - many areas around the country, but particularly the outskirts of Mexico City; Guatemala, Belize, Nicaragua, Panama, and Honduras - all got some new strips of Digital Globe imagery. Also, a lot of new coverage for Dominican Republic.
South America - Some new coverage for Peru, Brazil; also, Trinidad and Tobago. A bit north, Grenada got some new strips as well.
Africa - Nigeria got a lot of new coverage; nearby countries may also have some new coverage as well. Abidjan for example got a bunch of new images. Kampala in Uganda got some.
India - It appears a lot of new imagery was added for India.
Myanmar - Not surprisingly, some new imagery showed up for this storm-damaged country.
Thailand - Lots of new imagery for Thailand.
Philippines - I have seen many reports about the new imagery in the Philippines.

Thanks to all the many folks who sent me tips on the imagery over the last week. My apologies for not listing everyone's name, it's been a busy day of posts and catching up with E-mails! If you've heard of other areas, leave a comment here.

Posted by FrankTaylor at 11:08 AM | Comments (22) | TrackBack

Plugin Links: Singapore Tour, Tagzania, PhotoFlyr, EveryTrail,

Here are some more interesting applications of the Google Earth Plugin API. If you are using a supported browser/OS, then check out some of these new implementations:

Singapore F1 3D - This is an excellent example for using the Earth plugin for a 3D application. Earth@sg had developed 3D models for the area where the Singapore F1 Race will be held later this year. Now, they are able to use the API to show the 3D models and provide a simple click interface to tour key parts of the race scenery. The only caveat is that the models are high fidelity and may slow things down while viewing the collection. But, I really like the interface. Thanks to Shinwe who developed the models and whom I met at Where 2.0 this year.
Tagzania Googleplex - Tagzania is still one of the best sites I've seen for tagging the planet and cleverly using Google Maps and GE. They have quickly adopted the use of the GE Plugin API and enabled you to view tagged locations with the 3D plugin. The example here of the Googleplex is pretty cool since the plex is modeled in 3D. See here for the Googleplex in the normal 2D interface - the link to the 3D version appears below the map. Notice there is only a slight difference to the URL between the 2D and 3D versions. They've implemented this for all the individual tagged locations so far.
PhotoFlyr - This is an application which lets you see the latest posted geo-tagged Flickr photos. Virgil Zetterlind (of EarthNC) and I developed this application last year after Twittervision was released. At the time, there was no official plugin for Google Earth, so we used a tool from GoogleEarthAirlines which let you embed the Google Earth client itself as a plugin in a browser. It was a simple matter for Virgil to make the tool he had developed the last time run within the new API.
EveryTrail - Biking Example - EveryTrail has also broadly implemented the Earth Plugin API. When you view a trail , you can select from the Maps option in the upper right "Google Earth (3D)" and it will load the plugin. A mountain bike trail is a particularly good example to use with the plugin since the Earth view lets you see the 3D terrain of the trail.

I haven't checked, but hopefully some of these sites are checking to see if your browser/OS supports the plugin, and doesn't bother to offer you the option if you can't use the plugin. I just had the thought that maybe I should use a different colored GE icon for links that go to the API (at least until all the main browsers/OSes are supported)...

Posted by FrankTaylor at 10:07 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

More on Google Earth Plugin API, GE License Changes

It's now been a few days since the Google Earth Plugin API was released during the Google I/O developer conference in San Francisco. I can tell you that I witnessed many KML developers get very excited about the possible applications of the new API and plugin. Several enthusiastic developers developed both demonstrations and actual tools within 24 hours of the announcement. An important note: Google made it plain they were releasing this new API and plugin without a full and rigorous testing. They wanted to take advantage of the opportunity to release it into the hands of developers at the Google I/O. This is part of the reason they didn't wait until they had Mac OS X, and Linux versions of the plugin and API ready. Personally, I'm glad they are willing to get it into developer's hands quickly even if there may be some flaws initially.

The new API provides access to many of the more popular features of Google Earth in a web browser. Quick implementations which take existing content viewed in Google Maps and show it with the power of Google Earth's 3D rendering and rich data are just the low hanging fruit. What I'm more excited about is that the API will enable new kinds of applications not practical, or not possible, with the regular Google Earth client. Here are just a few ideas I've had which could be implemented with the new API: more sophisticated games as implied by the Monster Milktruck example; custom flight simulators (or even combat flight games); guided tours with audio annotations; scientific visualizations with multiple layers of information; many kinds of 3D model animations will now be possible; geographic quizes/games; educational lessons; etc., etc. For a long time many of us have wished for scripting capabilities for Google Earth. But, the API is more than that. In fact, someone could program a scripting language now and publishes it through an application using the API.

Some problems with the new plugin exist. Some of the problems are due to the 4.3 engine still being under beta test. I've noticed several navigational glitches (also present in 4.3). And, it's a real bummer that the SpaceNavigator doesn't work with the plugin (I understand from Google that part of this is due to the ability to have several instances of the plugin running simultaneously - hopefully someone will figure a way around this). Speaking of which, being able to open several instances at once is a nice feature. Microsoft's Virtual Earth can only open one instance of their 3D plug-in at a time. One other thing - the current implementation is limited to only showing the following built in layers: Terrain, Borders, 3D Buildings, and Roads. Hopefully other global layers will also be added to those supported by the API - like Panoramio, Weather, Wikipedia, and places of interest layers. I can understand not supporting external sourced layers such as: NASA, National Geographic, etc.

On the legal side - some developers were wondering how the new API would be effected from a legal/licensing perspective. Michael T. Jones, CTO of Google Earth, just left this comment on GEB:

Two weeks ago the Google Earth free license was changed to allow broader use--especially in governments. Last week we launched the Google Earth API under the same liberal Terms of Service as the Google Maps API (essentially, free use for public-facing sites and inexpensive for inward-facing sites.) If you think there are legal barriers to your making good use of either, please have your attorneys review the latest agreements.

Next up, a post with some more interesting applications of the API/plugin.

Posted by FrankTaylor at 09:54 AM | Comments (5) | TrackBack

Links: Australia News, Map legends, Happiness, Worms, 4500 Webcams

Australia News - The Google Lat Long has announced availability of yet another news outlet for Google Earth. The Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) has launched ABC Earth, which promotes its Google Earth network link showing a variety of content from the ABC including: National News and video news updated every 5 minutes, stories from 50 Years of National and international News, Foreign Correspondent as well as Local Radio.
Map legends - Bjorn shows another great KML idea: generate map legends on the fly with image screen overlays. He uses a tool to generate images for the legends complete with text.
Happiness - Stefan at OgleEarth points us to the location of the happiest place on Earth (according to the BBC). It's a small island in Vanautu called Metoma. Once again, the BBC should have included a KML link to the location in their story. I notice that the Google News layer hasn't figured out the location either (yet).
Worms - F-Secure talks about how they are using Google Earth to monitor the spread of worms, viruses, and spam. Google Earth is definitely a great tool for monitoring live events. There are many disaster centers around the world using it - and computer network disasters should definitely use it too.
4500 Webcams - A member of the Google Earth Community named 'ingooppe' has posted a layer containing 4500 webcams from around the world from the Webcams.travel web site. The layer uses regioning, so when you zoom in you see more placemarks. The placemarks, once opened, show you the current live webcam photo, and look professional. Definitely worth checking out.

Posted by FrankTaylor at 09:12 AM | Comments (0) |