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January 15, 2009
Google Earth Community Forums (BBS) is Back!
It's back! The very popular Google Earth Community (GEC) BBS / Forums was taken offline suddenly last week (with no explanation given by Google). The GEC is the place where people interested in Google Earth content can share things they find or develop, or talk about places they see in Google Earth. But, its more than that for many regular Google Earth users who have various hobbies on hundreds of different topics who find the community a place to meet people with similar interests or get credit for their hard work in developing interesting collections.
Google put up a message on January 13th saying they were "upgrading software" and it would "be back very soon". Now, two days later, the BBS is finally back. The site is using a much upgraded version of the UBB BBS system. Hopefully this will mean some improvements to the options for readers and posters.
There has been much speculation on why the site went down. But, no official word yet what went wrong. Whatever the reason for it being down, it's good to have it back. There are hundreds of posts here at GEB, and thousands more all over the web, which point to files and posts at the GEC. It's a relief to not have those returning "file not found" errors.
[UPDATE 19-January: Special thanks to Googler and GEC systems admin 'Ink_polaroid' who did some amazing coding this week and finally fixed it so all the old link references still work with the new forum system. This fixed literally thousands of web sites and blogs from having broken links.]
Posted by FrankTaylor at January 15, 2009 7:01 PM
Comments
Posted by: Michael at January 16, 2009 2:16 AM
The new site looks great.
A couple of tweaks and it should be fully running again.
A vote of thanks should go out to the Team at Google
All the best
MM
Posted by: masonicmoron at January 16, 2009 4:46 AM
A few preliminary remarks:
- the internal links are indeed not yet working, these will be fixed later today
- Japanese characters are not yet rendered correctly (you get code instead)
- it seems the Google Maps option is not available (yet)
- some of the older folders need intervention by moderators to allow users to edit them
There is some tweaking to do, but I hope it will improve the coming days.
Posted by: Hetty at January 16, 2009 7:22 AM
What is that giant rectangular anomaly in the center of Iceland!
Posted by: brad wellstone at January 16, 2009 9:05 PM
and this was no ordinary upgrade... that would have been done in one day, no?
to be completly offline for SEVERAL days is a major ***-up...!
Posted by: smokeonit at January 17, 2009 8:54 AM
Ok. I dont know how to contact GE Blog author but hope he will see this msg here.
Better resolution picture of oceans around the globe.
I think you can see the bottom, like radar picture. You can see underwater "mountains", cracks, shallow and dipper ends...
GE is starting to look more and more natural. Great job.
Posted by: barakuda at January 17, 2009 6:55 PM
You have done a great job. Thanks alot for giving a wonderful idea to all. Thanks Google.
Posted by: seoblogcentral01 at May 29, 2009 6:17 AM
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We're aware that the redirection of old links isn't working yet. We're on it!