Google Earth Blog: March 2009 Archives

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March 31, 2009

Using Google Earth Offline

One of Google Earth's speed features also has the benefit of enabling the application's use when Internet is not available. The key is the Google Earth cache file which stores imagery and other data locally on your hard drive. This speeds up your experience even when you have broadband Internet, but it also is the secret to offline GE use.

By using the GE cache, you can still use most of Google Earth's features while on an African Safari, while driving your car, while boating offshore, or just camping on a mountain. This includes the aerial/satellite imagery, the 3D terrain, and more. And, the iPhone Google Earth app has this feature as well. If you anticipate taking your computer (or iPhone) somewhere where you won't have an Internet connection, you can still use GE. Or you can use it for doing a demonstration somewhere without an Internet connection. You will need to do a little preparation first.

First, go to the menu item Tools->Options and select the "Cache" tab. You will not need to change the memory cache for viewing the cache (there is a trick for storing the cache with this setting - see below). The memory cache is set automatically based on your system's memory. You can make the disk cache size as large as 2000 MB (i.e. 2 Gigabytes). This will give you more data to work with. Then, you need to move to the area you want data for and zoom into that area. The most recent things you have looked at will be what's in your cache. It's important you zoom to the closest view you think you'll use. Turn on other layers for information you want cached (for example, 'Terrain', 'Roads' and 'Borders' - the more you select, the faster the cache wil fill). Also, make sure you save any KML files you might want to use in files on the same computer.

The more data you cache, the sooner the cache will fill, so be cautious. If you're going on a long trip, cache in high resolution imagery just the areas where you plan to use GE for close viewing. Avoid turning other layers if you only need imagery. It can be a pain to move around and capture an area of imagery at full high resolution and load up your cache properly. FreeGeographyTools has written some nice tutorials for some free tools for loading your GE cache in a more automated fashion - see here, here, here, and here. There is also a way you can save the cache files to extend the amount of area you can store (see this forum thread),

The GE offline capability can be really useful. I've used it personally for driving in a car, traveling by plane, and while sailing. There are still places without broadband or even cell phone connectivity. But, Google Earth can still work even in those remote places. Amazing!

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March 24, 2009

Glacier Melt Survey in Google Earth

Google Earth is probably the best way to view the evidence of dramatic climate change in the form of glaciers. The reasons being that Google Earth has the best collection of satellite and aerial imagery, it has 3D terrain, there are many user-generated photos of the glaciers, and there are many collections of placemarks from scientists showing photos and video evidence of the changes.

Most recently, Google has announced a collections of placemarks from the Extreme Ice Survey project which includes dedicated scientists and extreme photographers who have been placing time lapse cameras around many glaciers and recording the dramatic changes, sometimes in just the course of a few months, of these glaciers which have been around for thousands of years. You can see the collection of placemarks of the Extreme Ice Survey here Google Earth Required. You must have GE installed. . Here is an example of the videos found in the collection:

AK-03 Columbia Glacier from Cliff from Extreme Ice Survey on Vimeo.

Google Earth 5 has a feature called historical imagery which lets you see other imagery for the same location. Unfortunately, many of the glaciers in the Extreme Ice Survey do not yet have much in the way of historical images. However, other people have created glacier KML files which show changes over time. See for example this collection by GEC member 'blt': Glaciers Melting, another story showing some data from the National Snow and Ice Data Center (the NSIDC has lots of Google Earth content).

And, for the most dramatic view of climate change visible in Google Earth, I highly recommend viewing the NSIDC view of ice melting at the arctic and antarctic poles from 1979 to the present.

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March 23, 2009

Stereo 3D Views for Google Earth

This is something I've been hoping to see for a while now! Masuji Suto and David Sykes have created a small Windows application that uses the GE Plugin to help generate stereographic 3D views. The Stereo GE Browser (available as a zip file) can generate stereo anaglyphs which you can view with cheap red/blue anaglyph glasses, and it also supports several other outputs. Here's a great example showing New York City (use red/blue glasses):

The great thing about this app (besides that it is free) is that it works in real-time so you can move your view to the way you want it and see the Stereo 3D view at the same time. The app has to show two GE plugins and then screenshot both and combine them and draw the stereo view. So, it's slower than 1 GE plugin view would be. But, I'm impressed with the speed. If you right click the mouse in the upper view, you get options for how to present the data, and you can save favorite locations.

Here's what the app looks like when you run it:

I heard about this application at the FreeGeographyTools blog, and his post actually provided full details including screenshots of the menu choices, and information about the different options.

For the record, this isn't the first time I've seen a Stereo3D application for Google Earth. There is a company called Tri-Def which makes a product which makes stereo 3D within GE by intercepting the OpenGL driver. This worked pretty well when I tried their demo a couple of years ago (not sure if it still works today).

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March 22, 2009

Google Earth Layers

Google Earth is probably best known for its huge collection of freely available satellite and aerial photos for places all around the world. Almost everyone who has access to a computer has given it a try - usually to look for their house, or to find out about a place where they want to take a vacation. The imagery database is really huge - millions of square kilometers - the equivalent of millions of 8 megapixel digital camera photos. Google hasn't released the numbers, but we're talking hundreds of terabytes of images.

Google Earth Layers However, an equally important feature in Google Earth are its "Layers". Layers provide access to all kinds of other data for Google Earth. Seriously, all kinds of information including videos, photos, Wikipedia, real-time weather, real-time traffic, 3D buildings, GPS tracks, and more. The layers are provided through an interface on the lower left of the Google Earth application called, surprisingly, "Layers". Believe it or not, there may be even more information in the layers than in the imagery!

Google Earth layers provide a wealth of information about our planet on a variety of subjects, and the layers are also a way for Google to share valuable contributions of information from many individuals, and organizations. The layers are organized using a folder-like structure with broad category layer folders at the highest level. You can open each folder with a "+" sign to then selectively view sub-layers. There is so much information here, it takes time to explore and learn what is available. To turn on a layer, simply click the box to the left. A check-box appears when all the layers in a folder are turned on, the box is filled with green when only some of the layers in the folder are turned on.

One thing you probably don't want to do is turn on too many layers at once. I recommend only turning on a few layers at a time at most, and turn them off when you are done. When you see a placemark icon for some information, make sure you try clicking on some of them. Some of these layers provide a lot of information in the descriptions of the placemarks.

For basic geographic information, I suggest you try the following:

Terrain - This layer is currently found at the bottom of the list and you should almost always leave it on. It is the 3D terrain you seen when you "tilt" your view in Google Earth and allows you to see things like mountain, valleys, and canyons. Without this turned on, you also can not dive into the ocean. And, 3D models may not sit properly on the ground if you don't have Terrain turned on.
Roads - Google has detailed roads and streets for many countries around the world. As you zoom in you get more detail for the roads including street names. From higher altitudes you'll see fewer (or no) roads.
Borders and labels - this layer folder lets you see the outlines of countries, island names, coastlines, and administrative orders (states, counties, provinces, etc.). It even includes details on some disputed border regions. It also contains a sub-layer for populated places (names of cities and towns). Again, as you zoom you may see more or less information.
Geographic features - this layer folder contains sub-layers for things like locations of volcanoes, names of mountains, and water bodies. This layer folder is now found under the Places of Interest layer folder near the middle of the list.

Another selection of the layers serve the purpose of highlighting points of interest if you are traveling. This is the same kind of information you get with a modern car navigation device (or GPS) for finding hotels, restaurants, etc. Examples of these kinds of layers in GE are: Dining, Lodging, Shopping and Services, Transportation, Travel and Tourism, Parks and Recreation, and Community Services. Like with the roads, Google has been steadily deploying this kind of information for more countries. You can find these layers under the Places of Interest layer folder. The layer contains a LOT of information. I recommend turning on the folder whenever you are exploring a broad area for the first time.

All of the layers mentioned above are useful and important, but the really interesting layers are coming from a variety of sources not originally maintained or created by Google. In 2006, Google released the "Geographic Web" layers which consist of a careful selection of useful information inlcuding millions of user-generated photos, and articles from Wikipedia of places all over the planet. And, when that isn't enough, you can turn to the Gallery -> Google Earth Community layer which show placemarks from posts made by hundreds of thousands of contributors about virtually everywhere on the Earth (read more).

Another important layer folder: the "Gallery" layer folder highlights content from a variety of organizations. Here you will find information from Rumsey Historical Maps, National Geographic Magazine, Discovery Channel, European Space Agency, and even the United Nations. These layers highlight information of human interest, science, history, the environment, and more.

If you haven't explored the Layers in Google Earth, you are missing out on a world of information. And Google is continually adding and updating the layers. New and updated layer information comes out nearly every month.

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Overview Map of Google Earth

View Menu The Overview Map is an available feature in Google Earth to help you determine your position on the Earth. You can turn it on by going to the "View" menu as shown to the right and select "Overview Map".

The overview map is a handy tool which shows a miniature overview of the earth map in the lower right corner of the 3D view. A red rectangle (or a cross hair when very close) highlights your current zoomed view. If you point your mouse at another location on the overview map and double click your left mouse button you will be flown over to the new location (and end up at the same altitude as your last position).

The overview map helps you keep perspective where on the Earth you are looking at, and is a fast way to go to another part of the world you want to see. You can turn the overview map on and off by keyboard shortcut: Control-M (a different combination on the Mac). You can also adjust the size of the Overview Map by going to the GE Options (under "Tools->Options" on Windows, or "Preferences" on the Mac). Here you can also change the "Zoom Relation" which means how close the Overview Map matches the zoom level of your current view (default is infinity, a smaller value has the zoom level more closely match your view). The smaller-value zoom relation can be handy if you need to compare your view to a slightly larger zoom level.

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March 20, 2009

Links: Wally Found, Unemployment Map, 1000-Year Old Fish Trap, New GeoEye Photos

Wally Found - Google let it be known that they had hidden a "Where's Wally" appearance in the new Street View imagery in the UK. The folks at GoogleSightseeing were the first to find him right here.
Unemployment Map - GEB reader Tommy Albo imported unemployment data by county for the US back in February. The data came from the Bureau of Labor Statistics and represent unemployment numbers as of December 2008. View the map here . While the map is very somber in terms of what it means to the lives of a lot of people, the visualization is definitely worth checking out as it shows off Google Earth's ability to show a vast array of data effectively.
1000-Year Old Fish Trap - Scientists found evidence of a 1000 year-old fish trap in the aerial imagery of Google Earth off the coast of Wales. In this news report, they showed a picture and discussed how they verified the find by scuba diving on the site. The fish trap is a v-shaped row of rocks beneath the sea which, along with nets, trapped the fish as the rivers tides and currents changed. They didn't release any coordinates, but I was able to use the photo to find the location in Google Earth .
New GeoEye Photos - Google is building some more anticipation for the high-quality photos the new GeoEye-1 satellite will bring to Google Earth. The satellite was launched last fall, but it can take months to test and verify the systems, and get the data processing systems working properly. The link here shows several photos, and you can fly to each location to see them in a GE plugin. They are using the KML feature called "Regions" to share very large images. Google has exclusive rights to the online publication of GeoEye-1 imagery.

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March 19, 2009

Another Sneaky Google Earth Imagery Update - March 2009

[NOTE: Article retracted. Last night I posted some information on possible new imagery, based on some speculations from some GEB readers. At first it appeared to be new, but after doing some better cross-checking it appeared it wasn't new. Others have sent comments here indicating some other new imagery. But, if you check Google's official details posted on March 4th, most of the imagery people have found were on the list. I'll leave the comments here for everyone to decide for themselves until Google verifies with a possible announcement.]

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March 18, 2009

Google Adds User Photos to Street View

Just noticed a very cool feature for Street View. Last month Google added "User Photos" to Google Maps. These are geotagged photos from Google's Panoramio free photo upload service for geotagged photos, but presented with a slick Flash-like interface. Well, now Street Views where photos are available will show an icon in the upper right called "User Photos". If you click on it, it will show the same slick presentation of available photos. A click on a photo and it quickly shows you that photo for the scene you are looking at in Street View. This is very cool! I like how it works a lot (even though its not in Google Earth).

So, here's the new part: I just noticed something even MORE AMAZING! If you rotate your view around a popular place, the "User Photo" icon shows a photo for the orientation you are looking at. This means Google has figured out the orientation of the photo you are viewing. Not just the location, but WHICH DIRECTION the photo was taken! My guess is they are comparing the Street View photos to the user photos to determine how the shot was taken. Or, they are using the Panoramio Look Around technology. Awesome! For a good example location, try this location in Times Square NYC.

The example I first saw it with was Trafalgar Square in London. You have to visit Google Maps to see the User Photos - they don't work embedded on a web site. But, here's a screenshot showing the photos at the top, and viewing a user photo on the main page:

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New Google Street View for UK, Netherlands in Google Earth/Maps

Google has pushed out an update to the Street View imagery for cities in the UK and the Netherlands and some other new areas in countries which had coverage. Here's a screenshot showing the new countries covered:

New Google Street View coverage for March 2009

As you can see, cities in England, Ireland, Scotland and the Neth erlands are new. A little checking shows that Spain has two new cities: Oviedo and Zaragoza.

You can see the new coverage in either Google Maps, or by turning on the Street View layer in Google Earth. Read about using Street View in Google Earth.

Thanks for the tip from GEB reader Noel M. See also report by Blogoscoped.

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Google Earth Used for Good, Mostly

There was recently some news about a thief who made off with tons of lead from roofs which he then sold for a tidy profit. The reason he was in the news is that after he was caught he revealed he used Google Earth satellite photos to scout the target roofs with lead on them. With every great technology with many good uses, there are always going to be potential evil uses as well. Information Week does a great job of describing how people just haven't yet come to terms with the notion that Google Earth, like the telephone and many other gadgets, will have its positive and negative uses as it continues to become a mainstream tool. The question is whether the tool's positive uses outweigh the negative.

After the terrorist incident in Mumbai last November, it was revealed that Google Earth, phones, maps, digital cameras, GPS, duffel bags, etc. were used by the terrorists. People reacted by saying we should ban Google Earth or its data because evil people could use it. But, no one suggested the same for phones, digital cameras, etc. Even the Times of India reversed this position after a more careful examination of the facts. It is interesting how after a gadget becomes mainstream, it is less newsworthy to suggest the gadget be banned (as Stefan of OgleEarth points out after the Taliban posted a video showing how they really like the iPhone).

If you are sitting on the fence on this subject, I suggest you read through the nearly 2000 posts from this blog over the last 3.5 years showing the positive uses of Google Earth. Or, to make it easier just read some of these uses of Google Earth: Education, the Environment, Weather, disaster assistance, human rights violations, Tourism, Art, Science, and even saving mountains.

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March 17, 2009

St. Patrick's Day Fun with Google Earth

This is probably late in the day for some of you, but I thought I would share a few important tips about Google Earth with regards to St. Patrick's Day. Did you know you can search for Irish Pubs with Google Earth? Did you know someone created a huge tribute to St. Patrick's in the shape of trees visible from space? The following YouTube video will show you all this and more:

Note, I first saw the tree tribute to St. Patrick's at GoogleSightseeing (they have the location there). Music in the video is called "The Girl's Set" from the album "Live at Painted Sky" by Banshee in the Kitchen.

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The Google Earth 3D Buildings Layer

This is an overview of the 3D Buildings layer in Google Earth as it currently exists with Google Earth 5. The 3D Buildings layer has evolved a great deal since Google Earth was first released. In the early days, Google only provided simple 3D gray buildings with no color or photo textures (see example). Over time, as Google Earth graphics capabilities advanced, the 3D Buildings layer models have become much more realistic and interesting. You can now find many complete 3D cities rendered in photorealistic detail in the layer for Google Earth. One of the biggest detailed examples is New York City.

3D Buildings Layer folder in Google Earth The 3D Buildings layer folder actually has two sub-layers: Photorealistic (models with photos applied to add complex details and colors), and Gray Buildings which are 3D geometric models without photo textures or colors. The latter usually came from GIS databases provided to Google by cities or 3D city database companies. Eventually Google acquires photo data for these gray cities and adds the photorealistic details to the models.

GE has really begun to outgrow the "3D Buildings" label because the layer also includes many other kinds of objects such as: sculptures, bridges, ships, and even whales! Maybe "3D Objects" would be more appropriate?

The 3D models in the layer actually were built by many different people and organizations. Google actually encourages people and organizations to make or upload their favorite 3D buildings and upload them to the Google 3DWarehouse. You will find many 3D buildings all over the world in Google Earth - most of them have been built by people using SketchUp and uploading them to the 3D Warehouse. The ones which get included in the layer are picked by Google and have to adhere to basic guidelines (see some examples of the criteria for selection).

You can also view the many thousands of 3D models people have placed for viewing in Google Earth in the 3D Warehouse by viewing the new 3D Warehouse network link. Some of the models you will find, are already in the 3D Buildings layer, but there are many which either don't meet the criteria, are duplicates of the same model, are fantasy models, or just not appropriate for Google Earth. But, some of them are entertaining anyway. For fun, just check out the many 3D objects for Google Earth written about in GEB over the years (many of which can still be downloaded and viewed in GE).

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Google Earth Competition News

Yesterday Google both announced the winners of one competition, and announced a new competition - both involving Google Earth and SketchUp (the Google 3D modeling program).

First, when Google announced the release of the Ancient Rome in 3D collection, they also announced a competition for K-12 educators in the US to come up with the best lesson plan involved the Ancient Rome collection. Yesterday, Google announced six winners of this competition. The winners got an Apple Macbook, a digital classroom projector, a digital camera, and more. You can see the winning lessons at the competition web page. I'm happy to note a North Carolina teacher won.

Second, Google has announced a new competition. The new one is the Google 2009 International Student Bridge Modeling Competition. You just need to be a student of a higher education institution almost anywhere in the world. The competition is to build the best 3D bridge and place it in Google Earth, then submit it to the Google 3DWarehouse. And there are cash prizes including a US$5000 first prize! Read more at the competition site including rules and instructions and guidelines on building proper models. I love seeing 3D bridges in Google Earth, so I hope we'll see lots of students enter this competition. I also hope we get a lot of variety in bridges, not just the famous ones (like the Golden Gate Bridge).

Related: The bridge in the picture shows a creative 3D model you can see in Google Earth which depicts a scene from the Blues Brothers movie where they jump a drawbridge. Read more.

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March 16, 2009

Google Earth Historical Imagery Update - 16-March-2009

Google has released a big update to the historical imagery feature available only through Google Earth 5. The historical imagery contains a massive amount of imagery which surpasses the data you already see when viewing Google Earth satellite and aerial imagery by default. Google has basically been archiving the imagery they used in previous releases of imagery since 2005, plus historical imagery they've acquired from many sources for some places going back decades old. It's hard to express just how big this data really is - we're talking many, many terabytes (terrabytes?) of data! One terabyte is 1,000,000,000,000 bytes.

When GE 5 was first released, the bulk of the new historical imagery was concentrated on the US. There were places with new historical imagery all over the globe, but it wasn't pervasive. Now there is even more historical imagery all over the globe. Google mentions a few locations in their LatLong post to check out: watch the construction of the Dubai man-made archipelago known as "The World", witness the deforestation of the Amazon forests, see what happened to New Orleans when Katrina flooded the city. Unfortunately, they neglected to include a Google Earth file so you could find and see the imagery yourself. So, check out all three of these locations here Google Earth 5 Required. You must have GE 5 installed. in a quick tour (you must have GE 5 installed, and turn on "Historical Imagery").

Amazon deforestation comparison in Google Earth

Deforestation of Amazon

I haven't been able to determine the full scale of this new update. But, there seems to be many more historical instances between 2000 and the present for rural areas around the globe (mostly strips of satellite photography from DigitalGlobe). Perhaps Google wasn't finished with processing all of this data before the GE 5 release. But, now its there. If anyone finds other interesting locations with historical imagery, please leave a comment here. Particularly interesting ones I'll write about in future posts and make tours so others can check them out.

By the way, I also discovered Google added the historical image of the predator drones in Pakistan which Stefan was talking about last month. Visit this location Google Earth 5 Required. You must have GE 5 installed. and check out the oldest historical image.

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About Google Earth Imagery

You would be surprised how many people initially think Google Earth will show imagery in real-time. Or, that surely it will only be a day old. I guess part of this thinking comes from watching the weather satellite photos which are only a few hours old, or live weather radar. But, the problems of getting high resolution imagery are very challenging. Weather satellites are at geosynchronous orbits (36,000 km). High resolution satellites (e.g. those operated by commercial satellite companies like GeoEye or DigitalGlobe) operate just a few hundred kilometers above the Earth. This means they only see a small part of the Earth with their camera as they orbit over. They typically go around the Earth every 90 minutes, but only cover about 1% of the Earth on each pass (you can see strips of imagery if you look at the imagery in Google Earth) - but, most of the area covered in a pass is water. Not only that, but imagery for Google Earth is only going to be good if the sun is at a high angle when the satellite goes over (fewer shadows), when there are no clouds, and as little haze/pollution as possible. Believe it or not, the times when these factors all come together are pretty rare.

Once the imagery is taken, it takes time to process the data by a commercial provider like GeoEye before it is available to customers. Google is one of these customers (a really big one). Google has to evaluate the new imagery against the current imagery to determine whether the new is better than the current. I assume they are trying to automate as much of this as possible. But, for important areas with large populations the process most likely involves people. This process takes time - especially when you think about the quantities of land mass of the Earth. Once an image is selected, it has to be processed into the format and coordinate system of Google Earth's databases. Then it has to go through a quality control process and fed into a processing system before it gets distributed to the live Google Earth database servers. This is one reason why you usually do not find any imagery younger than about 6 months in Google Earth. And why updates only happen about once every 60 days.

Not all the imagery in Google Earth comes from satellites. A lot of the imagery comes from aerial photographers mostly in airplanes with special high resolution cameras. Some of the imagery even comes from kites and balloons. Google acquires imagery from a variety of providers. Some of the imagery is given to Google by city or state governments. The age of the imagery varies greatly, but most of the high resolution imagery is between 6 months and 5 years of age. Again, because the imagery comes from a variety of sources, the process to get this imagery into Google Earth is complex and involves a great deal of time and effort.

Another reason why you don't find imagery that is newer is that it can cost a great deal of money to acquire quality aerial imagery. The companies who spend this money need a way to recover their costs. More recent imagery is more valuable than older imagery. As a result, these companies are reluctant to have their newest imagery available for free for anyone to view in Google Earth. Read the agreements for Google Earth before you try to use its imagery for business applications (more information). You can't sell or use the imagery from Google Earth for business purposes without permission.

Google has been known to release much more recent imagery in GE for unique events. For example, for the 2008 Beijing Olympics Google released 2-week old imagery for the Beijing area.

However, near real-time imagery of Earth is available in Google Earth! "What?! After all that you are saying it is available?" you ask. Sure, first there's the new Clouds layer. Found under the Weather layer folder. The clouds are actually taken from weather satellites and are a global picture of the clouds as recent as 3 hours old. Ok, so that's not the kind of imagery you meant.

NASA has a layer they call DailyPlanet which shows the entire Earth at a medium resolution (about 250 meter resolution per pixel). You can view DailyPlanet in Google Earth . The imagery is taken by the MODIS Terra satellite and is processed as quickly as possible and shows the entire Earth between 6 - 12 hours old. The imagery is continuously updating. When you download the network link above you see the Earth with clouds. Clouds may not line up properly because the satellite has to make multiple passes to get a full picture and the images have to be spliced together. As you zoom in, you will see higher resolution imagery load - up to a point (since this is medium resolution imagery). Remember the fires in California last October? You could have watched the smoke visible from space with this layer (except the layer just became available in December). You can see dust storms, large fires, volcanoes, haze conditions, droughts, floods, and - of course - clouds. Right now, this layer from NASA is the most recent, highest resolution imagery of the Earth continuously updating available to the general public.

And, with the release of Google Earth 5, Google added a new historical imagery feature, so you're not limited to just the imagery shown by default in Google Earth. Google has archives of imagery from many sources and dates. Now for many places, Google has 2, 3, or even 30 different images over time for any one location. In some cases, you can even find newer imagery than the one shown by default. Usually in a case where older imagery looks better than the newer. The historical imagery feature is a an amazing resource, which I encourage everyone to check out.

Anyway, I hope this article helps provide a better understanding of the imagery in Google Earth and how it all works. This is a high-level overview and is based on my own observations and opinions. Feel free to comment below. (Originally posted Feb 2008)

[NOTE: This article also available in Spanish, and in French.]

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Updating Important Old Posts

Now that Google Earth 5 is out, its time to do some house cleaning at Google Earth Blog. The GE Basics page is intended to provide an overview of important features and interfaces for Google Earth. However, many of these sections describe features which have changed with GE 5. So, expect to see some of these older posts appear again with updated descriptions in the coming days or weeks. If you're a long time GEB reader, just consider it an opportunity to refresh your knowledge with some new facts. I'll try to add interesting new details and examples where it makes sense.

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March 13, 2009

Google Earth Mars Update - Live Imagery from Another Planet

Just last month, Google released Google Earth 5 which not only had a ton of new cool features including the 3D oceans of Earth, but also included a very cool 3D Mars. If you haven't checked out Mars yet, now you have even more reason to try it out. Today, in honor of Giovanni Schiaparelli's birthday, Google has released a big update to the Mars layers in GE 5 (you don't need to re-download GE 5).

To see the update just load up GE 5 (or go here to download it if you haven't already downloaded GE 5), then look for the "planet" icon at the top and choose "Mars":

Once the new Mars loads, there are three new features added today (all found under the Mars Gallery layer folder):

Live from Mars - This new layer includes two sub-layers which show the most current imagery from two Mars orbiters: THEMIS and HiRES. NASA worked with Google to streamline their processing of imagery so that you can see the latest imagery from these satellites in as little as a few hours from when the imagery was received by NASA. It's almost like webcams from space! If you haven't already done so, make sure you check out some of the other super high-res imagery available for loading in Mars under the "Spacecraft Imagery" layers. Amazing stuff!
Historical Maps - Load up antique global maps of Mars to see what historical astronomers saw and compare to our current views of the planet. You'll find maps of Mars by Giovanni, Percival Lowell (who thought he saw canals on Mars), and others. One interesting note - the older astronomers appeared to have picked the wrong pole for North (basically because their refracting telescopes had the image upside down).
Guided Tours - Google is making use of the new GE 5 touring function to have narrated tours of mars by NPR Science Friday's Ira Flatow and one by Bill Nye the Science Guy. But, it's not just the famous narrators, check out these 3D fly-throughs of Mars. These tours will really give you an education about Mars in just a few minutes, and really give you a feel for the immense amount of useful information availabe in GE 5's Mars. If you haven't tried anything else, at least try these tours!!

Also, check out the video of my first impressions of the Mars mode when it was first released.

Google says the new data was made possible by Google's Space Act Agreement with NASA, which enabled NASA Ames researchers to develop much of this content. You can visit earth.google.com/mars to learn more about Mars in Google Earth. I was fortunate enough to speak with Michael Weiss-Malik of Google to get some of these details. He's written more about the new Mars update in his post at Google LatLong.

UPDATE 1630 ET: Google also released this video of the new Mars data:

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Links: KML Research Winners, Tour Tutorial, Tour for Mountains, Mining Tour

KML Research Winners - Google announced the winners of their contest for the best cases of using KML for Research. Each winner will receive a prize pack including an iPod Touch, Garmin GPS, and Google swag. All entries will appear in the Google Earth Gallery. Bjorn Sandvik, who has appeared in GEB several times, was one of the winners and has shared his winning entry.
Narrated Tour Tutorial - The Google Earth Outreach team has created a nice tutorial on how to create a narrated tour using the new Google Earth Record Tour feature. via the March Sightseer.
Tour for Mountains - Appalachian Voices - the non-profit which is trying to raise awareness of the awful coal mining technique which simply blows the tops off mountains - has produced this excellent narrated GE 5 tour which very effectively makes their points.
Mining Tour - A long-time GEB reader, and geologist, Jiro Shirota wrote to tell me about his latest GE project to share data. This time he has created a visualization tool for mining claims data in Canada. What I like about this tool is that it has: 1) a custom search query tool using a placemark bubble; 2) you can see polygons for mining claim properties and when you put your mouse over them it tells you who has the claim; and 3) he has included a GE 5 tour to show off the data.

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March 12, 2009

Google Adds More User Content to Maps/Earth Search Results

Google made an announcement today, at the LatLong Blog, about how they are now blending more quality user-generated content to map-based searches. They indicated that the results come from KML, GeoRSS or even Wikipedia content sources. As Google says, they have already been doing this for a while (see a GEB post from October 2007). However, they are more prominently featuring user-generated results than previously. The LatLong post neglects to point out that the new results also appear in Google Earth. A comparison of search results for the samples they provided showed similar (but, not identical) search results for the same terms. However, the results returned are more similar if you re-issue the searches once located over the same geographic region. In either app, the search results seem relevant and useful. Opening search result placemarks exposes more details, and possibly other user-generated content (such as pictures, videos, and even links to 3D models from the 3DWarehouse). The user-generated content results are colored blue. Those results with more familiar red placemarks are the normal Google-based search results from more established sources. I did notice that some results in Google Maps include snapshots of available Street View images for that location.

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Heli-Ski Tour in Google Earth

A few weeks ago, Oliver Davis, who is CEO of Concept3D (which does 3D modeling for Google Earth for one thing), took a holiday trip to British Columbia and went on a Helicopter Ski run. Being a savvy Google Earth user, he took along a GPS device and recorded his track both in the air, and while skiing down the snowy mountains. He got one of his engineers to produce a Google Earth 5 tour of the heli-ski GPS track which lets you fly along his trip. You'll have to use your imagination for the sounds, and the pauses for putting on skis, and the strenuous, but exhilirating, runs down the mountain. But, you get to enjoy the views, and really get a sense of what a heli-ski trip would be like. Oliver posted about his trip and the tour at his blog, and they created a video showing the tour here:

To get the full experience, you should download their GE 5 tour file here Google Earth 5 Required. You must have GE 5 installed. . Once it loads in GE, open the folder "OliversHeliTrip" and look for the "Tour" placemark. Double-click that to start the tour. NOTE: If you are prone to motion-sickness from watching fast moving flying scenes, watch out. If not, I suggest you can speed up the tour by using the fast-forward button during the playback. You can also grab the land with the mouse during playback to take control of the view so you can look in all directions (a very cool feature of GE 5's tour controls).

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March 11, 2009

US Solar Jobs Map

With the volatility of oil cost, and its negative impacts on the environment, solar energy is destined to get a lot of attention in the coming years. The Solar Energy Research Education Foundation (SEREF) has produced maps illustrating the growth of jobs likely to result from growth in the solar energy industry for the US. They got help from Google Earth Outreach and Google.org to produce the maps using Google Earth technology. The maps show over 400,000 new jobs due to solar energy industry growth by the year 2016.

You can view the map using the GE plugin on a web page here Google Earth Required. You must have GE installed. . Or, you can load it directly in Google Earth using this KML file .

The KML file also includes additional maps for the different types of solar energy, and includes a 4D animated prism map of the job growth (but, the last map file is missing at the moment). via Official Google Blog

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March 10, 2009

Paris-Nice 2009 in Google Earth

Thomas Vergouwen has posted Google Earth files to illustrate the routes for the various stages of the Paris-Nice 2009 bike race. Paris-Nice is put on by the same organization which does the Tour de France and serves as the spring precursor race for the bigger summer race. Check out Thomas' complete collection of routes and sprints for Paris-Nice 2009 in Google Earth Google Earth Required. You must have GE installed. .

The race started on Sunday - my apologies for not posting about this sooner. Thomas contacted me about it last week. Thomas also created a Tour de France network link for Google Earth last year which showed live positions of the lead racers. Thanks for helping us follow the races Thomas!

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Upcoming Conferences

There are a number of conferences which Google Earth followers or developersmight want to put on their calendar. Here's a round-up of a few I'll be watching or attending:

Where 2.0 - May 19-21, 2009. The ever popular O'Reilley event for everything web 2.0 mapping. There have been lots of Google Earth/Maps and other major mapping announcements made at this conference. And, it is well attended by international geo-mapping developers. I highly recommend this even held in San Jose, California. Deadline for early registration is March 31.
Google I/O - May 27-28, 2009 - San Francisco, California. This is the big Google developer conference. Last year over 2000 developers attended. This is your chance to meet the Googlers who built your favorite applications and tell them what you want changed.
GeoWeb 2009 - July 27-31, 2009, Vancouver, BC, Canada. An event about GIS, mapping, and other geospatial technologies with a focus on making the GeoWeb and its economic potential evolve. This year the theme is on urban planning.
GeoNorth 2009 - The actual name of this one is "Second Circumpolar Conference on Geospatial Sciences and Applications". Held in Fairbanks, Alaska on August 4-6, 2009. The conferences is to discuss issues and present current research related to geospatial activities in the arctic environment. They have a particular focus on the use of virtual globe technologies like Google Earth. Results of the International Polar Year will be presented as well.

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March 9, 2009

Upside Down Earthquakes

No, this isn't news about some new geological process. It's about a way of visualizing earthquakes in three dimensions (actually four dimensions) using KML with Google Earth. Duncan Agnew of the University of California in San Diego has taken earthquake seismographic data and processed it in a unique way. He shows both the magnitude and location of each quake using the size of icons (as we've seen in the USGS real-time earthquakes network link). But, he also places the location of earthquakes depth by showing the depth as an altitude (hence, the "upside" down part). The result is a view of the location of the quakes visualized in space upside down as they would be viewed underground (if inverted). The file Duncan forwarded to me includes major earthquakes since the year 1900. Since the data is also time stamped, so you have to use the time slider to see it properly. Load the file here Google Earth Required. You must have GE installed. . IMPORTANT: You need to separate the time slider by grabbing the left handle and separating it from the right handle so you are showing a range of data (as shown in the screenshot). Then you can grab the right handle to adjust for the range of years you want to view.

Earthquakes in four dimensions in Google Earth

Duncan describes the visualization in more detail on this web page. He also produced to some software to help make the visualizations which he is sharing here. Great work Duncan!

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March 7, 2009

Google Announces Two New 3D Cities

Yesterday Google announced some new 3D city content on their LatLong blog. While there are a few nice buildings and other structures in each of these two new cities, they are not complete cities like the ones Google has been doing for some cities in the US. These were actually 3D projects done by representatives of the cities themselves and include just a few notable structures and attractions. What Google is pointing out, is that by contributing 3D content you can help raise the profile of your city from flat aerial/satellite imagery to 3D realism. Google's post also includes details on how to submit your own 3D content. The two new cities announced are Lucerne, Switzerland and Santa Rosa, California.

Lucerne, Switzerland in 3D in Google Earth

Now that Google Earth 5 has been released, I think announcements like this should also include a fly-by demonstration to show off the new 3D content using the new "Record Tour" feature. Something with music and narration would be really nice, but even just a quick perusal of some of the new content would be helpful.

Here is a short 3D tour Google Earth 5 Required. You must have GE 5 installed. I've put together with GE 5 showing some of the 3D content in the two new cities of Lucerne and Santa Rosa. After the file loads, double-click "Play Tour" to start the tour. I used a SpaceNavigator to do the flying - which the Record Tour mode captures very nicely. I'm thinking a lot of people have difficulty flying around to look at the details in 3D buildings. Maybe tours like this will help people see why these 3D cities can be so interesting. Learning to use the 3D navigation in GE can really help as well.

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March 6, 2009

Google Geo Hackathon Report

When Google announced they were having a Google Earth and Maps Hackathon a couple of weeks ago, Virgil Zetterlind of EarthNC decided he would go to New York to attend. I asked him if he would make a report for GEB readers about his experience. The following is Virgil's report (which includes a summary of his own presentation to the group):

Approximately 40 people gathered at Google's New York City office yesterday afternoon for a 'Geo Hackathon'. Googler's Mano Marks and Roman Nurik provided brief overviews of recent updates to Google Geo API's and applications including Google Earth 5.0, the Google Earth API, and the Google Maps API. As the event name suggested, the bulk of the evening was spent 'hacking' by the various participants and sharing hints, tips, and ideas among attendees.

Towards the end of the evening, participants were given a chance to present examples of their own work and projects to the group. Presenters included:

Evan Sandhaus from the New York Times Research and Development team. Evan gave an interesting overview of the tagging process used for each new Times story and how adding geotags to stories led to the current New York Times layer in Google Earth. The Google Earth layer includes stories 7 to 30 days old based on the general topic area (hard news stories expire quickest). The layer is updated every 10 minutes by the Times and the Google Earth network link refreshes every 15 automatically.

David Rosenberg, an engineer from Sense Networks (http://www.sensenetworks.com/), demoed the output of various GPS track analysis algorithms which seek to extract 'stops' and other individual behaviors based on cooperative GPS tracking via cell-phone. This can be a challenging problem in the urban environment where geolocation errors due to poor GPS signal (at which point the phones revert to cell tower locating) and low update rates (only once per hour in some cases).

Virgil Zetterlind, founder of EarthNC.com, highlighted their latest applications which leverage Google Earth 5.0 including their 3D Chart Demo (http://earthnc.com/google-ocean-chart) and YouTube interactive map search (http://maplify.com/blog/2009/02/02/youtube-search/). Virgil now offers a 2-day KML design course (http://maplify.com/blog/kml-design-course/) for organizations looking to jump start their Google Earth design skills.

Mitchell Bring presented a project to create an online Hudson River Atlas featuring both realtime boating and fishing information as well as a large collection of historical maps of the Hudson River going back to the original explorations of Henry Hudson (who explored the Hudson in the hopes that it was the Northwest Passage to China). This year marks the 400th anniversary of the founding of New York City and many attendees where involved in projects to commemorate the area's history.

Michael Bloch, a graphics editor at the New York Times, showed some great thematic maps he has produced. Most of his maps are flash-based, but they highlight some great simple, intuitive design principles that would be great to apply to Google Earth thematic maps. Michael's personal website (http://maps.grammata.com/) shows many examples of his maps. KML developers who work with ESRI shapefiles should check out Michael's "MapShaper" application which supports interactive, configurable line and polygon simplification - a great tool to reduce map complexity (and hence improve Google Earth performance) where exact contours are not needed. Michaels is considering adding KML support to MapShaper.

As usual, Google was a gracious host and provided a great forum to interact with the creative developers who attended. Google's annual large developer conference - Google I/O is coming up in May in San Francisco. If you're an active KML developer or thinking of becoming one, Google I/O is a great place to learn about the latest Google Earth and KML features direct from the engineers who create them.

Thanks for the report Virgil!

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A Tribute to Danescombe - RIP

The Google Earth Community (GEC) has over 1 million subscribers and tens of millions more who have visited posts describing many thousands of topics there at one time or another. It was started long before there was Google Earth as a place for people to share interesting sites found in Keyhole's EarthViewer (which is what Google Earth was called before Google bought it). Since that time, the site has experience massive growth and covers a wide range of topics and types of content related to Google Earth.

In order to keep the community thriving, there are a group of volunteers who contribute quality content, guide people on how to use the forums, help people understand features in Google Earth, and help make sure appropriate content finds the proper place within the community. These people are known as "moderators" of the GEC. Many of these people just take an intense interest in the subject matter of the GEC and later are recruited by the forum administrators to help as moderators.

Picture of Dave - aka Danescombe On March 4th, the GEC lost a shining light among the many stars of the forums. He was a member, he was a prolific contributor of content, he was a moderator, and he was more. His name in the forums was 'Danescombe' - in real life, his name was Dave. He left us too soon, on his birthday at the age of 44, leaving behind a loving wife and family. He succumbed to complications from heart surgery. The Google Earth Community will miss him greatly - as seen in this thread of posts.

Dave had an obvious enthusiasm for Google Earth, and an earnest desire to share it. So much so, that Dave posted thousands of times to the forums in the past three years. Dave was one of the smartest people I've met in the forums with in-depth posts on a wide range of topics. He was a visionary with ideas which later became a part of GE. His greatest pursuit was in the "Fun & Games" forums - where Dave posted some of the most challenging and interesting puzzles for people to solve and was often the one to find the answer to other puzzles. He was even given the title of "Gaming Master", but because of his tact and ability to guide people with his humor and whit he was more like a "Gaming Maestro". Here was his last post to the fun & games forum while he was waiting to go into the hospital.

I was fortunate enough to meet Dave on a few occasions because I was invited to meet the moderators during some of their annual meetings. Dave was as engaging and cheerful in person as he was in the forums. We are fortunate that we have thousands of bits of wisdom from Danescombe left in the GEC archives. But, in tribute to Dave - I would like to see a place named in his honor in Google Earth. In real life there are roads and places named in memorial to people. Can we do no less for someone who contributed so much to Google Earth?

Dave we miss you, and our hearts go out to the family you left behind.

[UPDATE 10-March: The GEC has dedicated a forum to some of Danescombe's posts.]

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March 5, 2009

Creating Large Panoramas for Google Earth

Google has a number of recommended articles for creating KML content. They've just linked to an article by panorama specialists 360cities.net which provides great details on making panoramas for Google Earth. The article is called "Converting Large Panoramic Images to PhotoOverlays for Google Earth with 360 Cities". And, if you have any interest in creating panoramas for Google Earth, I highly recommend it. It even gives you tips on how to take panoramas, what equipment to buy, what software tools (including freeware) will help you create the best looking panoramas, and explains in detail how the advanced features of Google Earth PhotoOverlays work.

Here's an example of what 360Cities panoramas look like in Google Earth:

Also, read this story about Gigapxl Photos with a video as well.

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March 4, 2009

Huge Update to Berlin's 3D Building Collection for Google Earth

Back in March of 2007, the City of Berlin released a huge collection of 44,000 3D building models for their city (see a video demonstration of the city then). Now, two years later, they've released the other 90% apparently. According to their web site (German - the English page hasn't been updated with the new information), they now have 500,000 building models (look for the link in the top center for the KMZ file to load the models). Not only that, they also have more accurate photo textures on the sides of buildings taken from aerial photos. Details on this were brought to my attention by GEB reader Stefan Höffken who posted about the new models on his blog (in German).

Here is a screenshot comparison Stefan sent to me showing the same seen from the previous release and the new one now available:

Berlin in 3D comparison 2007 to 2009 in Google Earth

My laptop is on a flaky Internet connection at the moment, so I'm not able to verify how well the 3D models load. I imagine this many models could use up quite a bit of memory and bandwidth though. I'll provide an update on how fast it is when I get a better connection. Also, since they've just released the new update, I imagine their servers will be running hard for the next few days as people go to have a look.

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March 3, 2009

Links: New 3D Town Project, Model Underwater, World's Largest Ship Graveyard

New 3D Town Project - A small town in New Jersey called Madison is now embarking to become a 3D town in Google Earth. The Mayor of the town recruited a neighbor's son to pick the project for his eagle scout program. Googler Bruce Polderman offered to help with some training by Googlers, copies of SketchUp were set up, and they even brought the author of SketchUp for Dummies along. Other towns have done something similar by building a 3D presence in Google Earth - e.g. Westport, Ireland; McMinnville, Tennessee; and Nanaimo, British Columbia. But, these guys even got a CNN TV story about their efforts in addition to the Google LatLong post. So, big cities, small towns, and even historical towns and cities are being done in Google Earth.
Model Underwater - With the addition of Google Earth 5's new 3D ocean, it is now possible to place 3D models in the ocean. Google demonstrated this with the addition of some cool 3D objects shortly after the announcement of GE 5. Now Google has posted some tips on making 3D models for GE 5's oceans. One thing you may want is the update to SketchUp which makes it easier to place models in the ocean. Or just download the latest SketchUp.
Ship Graveyard - GoogleSightseeing.com regularly highlights interesting places visible in Google Earth's satellite or aerial imagery. The site of the world's largest ship graveyard is pretty amazing. And, as usual, the GoogleSightseeing post provides some thoughts and links to more information.

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March 2, 2009

Las Vegas Growth - 1984-2009

NASA's Earth Observatory has released a series of satellite images from Landsat V showing Las Vegas from space in five-year intervals from 1984 - 2009. The growth of this city is incredible when viewed this way. Jonathan Crowe of The Map Room created a video showing a time animation of the images. So, of course I decided to make a Google Earth KML file Google Earth Required. You must have GE installed. so you could use the time slider to show the images in geospatial context. Simply load the KML file and look for the time slider in the upper left. Then hit the play button or move the slider to load the different images. Once they all load, they should animate smoothly. For a better experience, select the time slider option (a "wrench" icon in GE 5) and adjust the time animation speed, and select "loop animation".

Las Vegas Time Animation 1984-2009 in Google Earth

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