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February 28, 2011
Google Earth on the Motorola Xoom
I just picked up my Motorola Xoom last week, and I've gotta say that I'm very impressed so far. It's running Android 3.0 "Honeycomb" and it's a very worthy competitor to the iPad. You can read my full thoughts on the Xoom here, but I'm going to take this time to talk about Google Earth specifically.
While Google hasn't released a Honeycomb-specific version of Google Earth yet, the phone version scales up very nicely. This is largely due to how Honeycomb deals with phone-based apps. On the iPad, it simply doubles the size of the iPhone app, which made it quite blurry. On Honeycomb, they actually scale the app properly so it stays sharp.
This works very well for many apps, but not so good for other. For example, the Facebook app looks kind of funny with a few little icons in the middle, and status updates rolling along the full width of the 10.1" screen. However, for Google Earth it works great!
While the icons are a bit small on the big screen, the quality of the imagery takes excellent advantage of the 1280x800 screen and it looks amazing. The dual-core processor and 1GB of memory help it to be as smooth as silk, too. Check out the video below for a quick review.
Even if you fly down to terrain-heavy areas such as the Grand Canyon, the app doesn't even stutter a bit. This is certainly a very powerful device.
Google has yet to announce anything related to Google Earth on Honeycomb, but I have to think they're working on a new version for it. The power in this tablet might mean we'll finally see some 3D buildings in the app, too! Even better, I hope we see more of the features that Frank suggested in this post earlier this month.
Do you have a Xoom yet? Are you holding out to see what the iPad 2 has to offer? Or just not sure you need/want a tablet at all?
Posted by mickmel at 8:18 AM
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February 22, 2011
Resources for the latest Christchurch earthquake
It was just last September that we were discussing the earthquake that struck Christchurch, New Zealand, and now they've been hit by another powerful quake.
As you might expect, and as reported by Google Maps Mania, there are already a variety of resources available to assist those in the area.
The easiest is the Google Person Finder for Christchurch, to help track down anyone that has been affected by the earthquake. You can use the site if you're looking for someone, or if you know the condition of someone that others may be looking for. As of now, the site already has nearly 5000 records.
I'm very happy to report that Frank Taylor is doing well. He and his wife Karen were in downtown Christchurch when the quake struck, and while they saw a lot of damage around them, they were luckily unharmed. You can read about it on the Tahina Expedition blog, which includes some photos he has just taken in Christchurch.
Another great resource for the quake is this very useful Ushahidi-powered site, which provides information about hospitals, road conditions, hazard zones and other related information. It's an excellent resource to have available if you're on the ground in the area.
Finally, I encourage you to check out the Christchurch Quake Map, which shows all of the quakes and aftershocks in the area for the past year (nearly 5,000 of them). You can filter the map to show only the 55 quakes that have struck in the past 24 hours.
If you're aware of any other great resources, please leave a comment and we'll update this post as needed.
Posted by mickmel at 8:39 AM
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February 21, 2011
Learn more about the US Presidents by using Google Earth
Today is "President's Day" in the United States, and Google has built a pretty neat site using the Google Earth Plug-in to show off information about all 44 presidents that we've had in the US.
You can view it for yourself in the U.S. Presidents Showcase
page, which uses the Google Earth Plug-in and various tours to show you around. If you'd rather just explore the information on your own, as seen above, you can use this KMZ file to see them in Google Earth.
In their President's Day blog entry, Google also points out a few other presidential items to explore in Google Earth, such as:
• A quick tour of the White House in 3D (KML)
• Valley Forge National Park (3D Warehouse)
Beyond those, here are a few other Presidential Google Earth Resources:
• The tour of all 50 State Capitol buildings, as many of the U.S. Presidents were state Governors at one time.
• Grave site locations for many of the Presidents (KMZ, via Google Earth Hacks)
If you know of other great resources to help educate on President's Day, please leave a comment below and let us know about them!
Posted by mickmel at 8:12 AM
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February 18, 2011
The workshop to model The Hague
Last month, we told you about an upcoming workshop to help model more The Hague, Netherlands in 3D. They were hoping for a solid turnout, and certainly got one with more than 60 people attending!
Prizes were awarded for the best models created that day and MILO Minderbinder, who isn't old enough to drive and had to take a three-hour train ride each way in order to attend, was the clear winner. He built an excellent model of "De Bijenkorf Den Haag", which can be seen here:
For his efforts, he was awared with a 3D print of the model, which was provided by i.materalise. Local firm Design8 organized and promoted the event.
With that many people excited about modeling buildings in The Hague, along with the obvious talent that some of them have, I expect to see quite a few buildings pop up there over the next few months.
For more about the event, be sure to check out this article in the SketchUp Blog.
Posted by mickmel at 8:55 AM
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February 17, 2011
Animate your SketchUp models
In the past five years since Google purchased SketchUp (and then made it free), we've seen it receive a ton of improvements. Last fall saw the release of SketchUp 8, which added a bunch of great new features, and last month they released another update that provided SpaceNavigator support and a very helpful bug fix.
Despite all of that, there is still one feature missing that users are wanting -- animation. Wouldn't it be great to be able to animate your models from within SketchUp? Thanks to developer MorisDov and his "Proper Animation" plugin, now you can!
Check out the video below for a brief sample:
The plugin works by allowing you to create various positions for your model, and then those model moves to those various positions, creating the animation. It's a very useful plugin, and I'm sure many SketchUp modelers will be thankful to MorisDov for creating it.
To get started, head over to his site, read this SketchUcation thread, or head over to the Google SketchUp Blog for a nice walk-through.
Have you tried this plug-in yet? What do you think of it?
Posted by mickmel at 6:41 AM
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February 16, 2011
New imagery in Sudan to help with humanitarian efforts
In the past few years, Google has been working harder than ever to provide high-quality imagery to help in various relief efforts, such as the earthquake in Haiti, the Yazoo City tornado and the Qinghai earthquake.
They're at it again with some amazingly fresh imagery from Sudan, to help the various humanitarian organizations on the ground over there. The new imagery went up just a few days ago, and the imagery from Sudan was less than two weeks old at that point! If you understand how Google Earth imagery works, you'll agree that it's a remarkably fast turnaround.
Over the years, we've had users ask why this kind of imagery is useful to those working on the ground. Google has provided a list of potential uses for this imagery, which they stated in a recent blog entry:
In Melut, there is a humanitarian hub where many services are delivered to at risk populations, including food, water, health care, education, and more. Given the varying needs of each of these services, maps can provide a variety of planning benefits for expansion, staff safety, and emergency procedures.
Google is asking for your help to build other tools to assist those in Sudan, such as using Map Maker to help map out the various roads and natural features in the area. A full list of tools available can be found here.
If you'd like to fly to Sudan in Google Earth to see the new imagery for yourself, you can use this KML file to fly to Melut.
Posted by mickmel at 7:21 AM
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February 15, 2011
Paved highways of clouds
The NASA Earth Observatory "Image of the Day" often posts some amazing images, such as some great images from the Gulf oil spill last April.
I love the way that NASA describes today's image, shown below, as a "paved highways of clouds". It's a striking image, taken on January 24, that shows incredible clouds off the coast of the northeastern United States, while the clear skies above land uncover the freshly fallen snow.
Like many of their images, they provide a few different ways to view it. You can view it directly on their site, download a 6MB jpg or download a 97MB GeoTiff.
Of course, the best way to view great images like this is with Google Earth! I compressed their jpg down to slightly a more reasonable size and put it in this KML file for you to use in Google Earth.
NASA often releases great images for us to enjoy, and this is another fine example.
Posted by mickmel at 7:19 AM
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February 14, 2011
Valentine's Day in Google Earth
Happy Valentine's Day! In honor of this day, we'll show you some of the best romantic placemarks in Google Earth.
To start, we again show this collection of hearts in Google Earth, which can also been seen in the video below:
If you want to show off the collection on your own site, you can embed it from this page.
As shown on Google Maps Mania this morning, you can use the new Map Your Valentine tool to send a virtual Valentine's card to a loved one. It features a nice integration of Google Maps and Street View, tucked inside of the virtual card.
Lastly, be sure to check out a Valentine's Day message from Google Earth Blog, powered by GeoGreeting.com. Have a fun and happy Valentine's Day 2011!
Posted by mickmel at 8:41 AM
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February 12, 2011
New Google Earth Imagery - February 12
Google has just pushed out another update, and they've already pushed it completely out, as this imagery can already be found in Google Maps and in the official updated areas KML file. Thanks to GEB reader 'Andreas' for letting us know about it!
The updated areas include:
- Brazil: Many small patches across the country
- Chile: Various areas
- India: Mumbai
- Iran: Various areas
- Italy: Patches in the northern part of the country
- Japan: Various northern areas
- Namibia: Various areas
- Pakistan: Central area
- South Africa: Various areas
- Sudan: Many areas in the southern part of the country
- Switzerland: Large area just south of Bern
- United States: Parts of California, Florida, Kentucky and Virginia
- Zimbabwe: Various areas
A few other areas have been updated as well, but those are the main ones. To see all of the updates, simply load the updated areas KML file and check them out for yourself!
Posted by mickmel at 10:54 AM
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February 11, 2011
Helpful markers in Building Maker
We've been big fans of Google Building Maker since day one. It provides an easy way for users to model 3D buildings in select cities, helping the total number of 3D buildings in Google Earth to increase quite rapidly.
One ongoing problem that Builder Maker has had is the ability to see which buildings have been modeled and which haven't. The feature has improved over the years, and had become acceptable, but now I think that Google finally has it right!
It's really quite simple. If a building has been modeled, it has one of six markers on it, as shown below:
The bottom line is to find a building with a gray marker or without any marker at all, and start modeling! Google is constantly adding more cities to the list available, and even started expanding the size of a few late last year.
Head over to Building Maker and model some for yourself!
Posted by mickmel at 7:21 AM
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February 10, 2011
Some amazing rides in Street View
A few days ago, Google Sightseeing posted a few of their "most breathtaking rides" in Street View and they certainly found some great areas.
As you know, Google Earth 6 greatly enhanced the way that Street View works inside of Google Earth, allowing you to "drive" the routes much better than you can in Google Maps.
Even better, Google Sightseeing has put all of the locations they highlighted (plus a few extra) in a KML file for you to download. The only problem is that each location is a simple placemark, and doesn't fly you directly into the Street View imagery.
Fortunately in Google Earth 6 it's a simple fix! Just drag "peg man" from the top right corner of your screen onto the road they've highlighted, and you'll instantly be taken into Street View mode, as shown below:
Google Earth has an abundance of amazing sights to see, and this is another great example of that. Thanks to the Google Sightseeing guys for putting together the list of breathtaking rides!
Posted by mickmel at 9:22 AM
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February 9, 2011
Planning new roads with Google Earth
If you watched the second episode of the Geospatial Revolution that we posted a few months ago, you may remember how the city of Portland was making excellent use of mapping technologies such as Google Earth to help with city planning.
I'm reminded of that story when looking at what the city of Douglasville, Georgia is doing as they prepare to undertake a massive highway widening and reconstruction project. The Highway 92 Project uses similar tools as other projects, with a variety of charts, PDFs and Word documents. However, they also are using Google Earth so people can get a very close look at how the proposed changes would impact their lives.
As you can see from the image above and the video below, this project will make some massive changes to the layout of the road:
During recent meetings, the video was shown for the audience to view, and the presenters had the KMZ file loaded so they could walk through any questions that viewers might have.
Croy Engineering created the file for the City of Douglasville for use in the public information portion of the project concept phase. Greg Teague, Director of Engineering Services and Wayne McGary were the driving force behind the creation of the kmz file and movie.
For a project like this, Google Earth seems to be the perfect way to show it off. Novice users can watch the fly-through video, while more advanced users can use the KMZ to dig in deep.
The only thing that would make this better is the addition of 3D buildings and trees to help get a better feel for the affected area, but that will come over time as Google continues to expand those into more areas of the world.
Posted by mickmel at 7:15 AM
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February 8, 2011
Imagery from the landslides in Brazil
Back in mid-January, Rio de Janeiro, Santa Catarina and other areas of Brazil expereinced devastating mudslides as the result of nearly 10 inches of rain in a single day. The landslides are reported to have killed nearly 1000 people, and have left at least 8,700 homeless. Since then, NASA has been attempting to capture fresh imagery of the area but has been unable to due to satellite imagery's biggest nemesis -- clouds.
The situation is similar to the flooding in Pakistan last year; Google wanted to provide imagery of the area to assist those that were trying to help, but they were unable to get any for quite a while due to persistent cloud cover.
Fortunately, clouds broke a few days ago and NASA's EO-1 satellite was able to capture some remarkable images of the area.
They've also provided a KML file with imagery of the mudslides, for those that wish to view the imagery inside of Google Earth.
UPDATE: After we published this post, DigitalGlobe sent us a great PDF they put together showing before/after shots of some of the affected areas. Download the PDF here.
Posted by mickmel at 8:29 AM
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More Armchair Archaelogy using Google Earth
Back in 2006, Scott Madry made news by with some archeological discoveries in France, and was first given the name of an "armchair archeologist" to describe a person that uses Google Earth (or related software) to make significant archeological discoveries in other areas of the world.
More recent examples include the discovery of a buried Peruvian pyramid and meteor craters in Australia and the Saharan Desert.
However, today's story takes those to a whole new level, with David Kennedy of Perth, Australia discovering nearly 2,000 archaeological sites in Saudi Arabia!
To be sure of what he was looking at, Kennedy had a friend in Saudi Arabia visit a few of the sites to make sure they weren't just shadows or other natural formations. His friend was able to confirm his discoveries, as seem in the image below:
Details of these finds and the methods used to uncover them have been posted in the Journal of Archaeological Sciences
As Curt Hopkins at ReadWriteWeb points out, tools such as Google Earth won't allow archaeologists to do all of their work from a computer. However, we've already seen many examples of how data discovered in Google Earth can be used to pinpoint locations to dig, potentially saving many hours.
Posted by mickmel at 7:35 AM
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February 4, 2011
Aerial imagery of the protests in Egypt
GeoEye has just released some high-resolution imagery of the protests in Egypt, taken over Tahrir Square in Cairo on January 29.
GeoEye does a great job of capturing fresh imagery from a variety of noteworthy events throughout the world. In the past, they've provided imagery from Burning Man 2010, the volcano in Iceland last April and President Obama's inauguration two years ago.
I've taken this latest image and added it to Google Earth as an overlay, so you can download this KML file to see it for yourself.
Posted by mickmel at 4:11 PM
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Cowboys Stadium, home of this years Super Bowl, looks great in 3D
As recently mentioned on the Google Lat Long blog, Cowboys Stadium -- the home of the NFL's Dallas Cowboys and host of the Super Bowl this year -- looks amazing in 3D!
Like a few other recent areas, including the guide to Turkey that we posted this morning, the inside of the stadium is built out as well.
The interior is quite interesting; on one had, they have excellent details such as all of the handrails around the stadium. On the other hand, the imagery for the field itself is quite fuzzy. Still, it's very cool to be able to fly around inside the stadium.
To see it for yourself, you can fly there in Google Maps "Earth View", use this KML file to fly there in Google Earth, or watch the short video below that gives a nice tour of the model.
Posted by mickmel at 1:30 PM
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A great guide to Turkey in Google Earth
Following in the footsteps of great sites such as 3DHawaii and 3DLasVegas, we travel to the other side of the globe to check out 3DLocationEarth, set in Turkey.
The basic idea of the site is similar the concept behind the Hawaii and Las Vegas sites; provide information about area hotels, businesses, schools, etc, and "fly" the user to each place using the 3D map on the screen.
Note: When the site first loads, all of the text is in Turkish. To convert, find the "language" drop-down near the top-right corner and select "English".
While the amount of content on this site is quite impressive, it's a bit clunky to use when compared to sites like 3DLasVegas. The Vegas site, if you recall, has a slick "Location Navigator" at the bottom of each item to help you easily explore it in 3D. This site has similar icons at the top of the page, but they're very inconsistent. I suppose that's part of the issue when dealing with such a large dataset. In addition, 3DLasVegas has thumbnails of all their locations on the left site, whereas 3DLocationEarth simply has a text-based list.
However, what is truly amazing is the 3D content that 3DLocationEarth has contributed to the 3D Warehouse, and therefore to Google Earth. As of right now, they have nearly 3400 models in Google Earth, including some notable items such as the Google headquarters in Mountain View, CA!
Even more impressive is their ability to view inside of various buildings. A great example of that is the Sirkeci Konak Hotel. Once you load that page, play with the silver icons at the top to go to the lobby, various rooms, the pool, etc.
We've shown you a few 3d interiors before, but this hotel is quite remarkable.
It will be interesting to see which direction Google pushes going forward. While the interior of this hotel feels similar to the Street View-based art gallery interiors that Google released earlier this week, they're vastly different technologies. You would think that a single method for creating interiors would be ideal, but we may be a few years away from that.
In any case, check out 3DLocationEarth to see all of the great work these guys have done.
Posted by mickmel at 8:35 AM
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February 3, 2011
Google Earth for Tablets Should Have Desktop Features
Google Earth on the mobile platform was first released for the iPhone in October 2008. It was very popular (and continues to be so today) thanks to being able to move and zoom with the touch screen, and the beauty of the imagery on high resolution smart phone screens. But, the new app would not let you see much in the way of map information - very little KML content was made available, and you couldn't load KML files. Even so, most of us were just thrilled to see such a cool 3D app on a phone at all, so we weren't too disappointed.
There weren't many updates to the mobile application until Google Earth for iPhone 2.0 was released in November 2009. Before 2.0 was released Google had added some new layers you could see in Google Earth (like photos, roads, and Wikipedia placemarks). But, you couldn't load KML files - only view the Google Earth terrain and imagery and the built-in layers. Google finally added an ability to add some KML content indirectly in the iPhone 2.0 version by allowing you to load maps you had saved in My Maps. But, only certain basic KML content was viewable. There hasn't been a big update to the iPhone version since since 2009.
Early last year, with the introduction of the Nexus One, Google released Google Earth for Android. It had some differences from the iPhone version, including some support for GPS following. But, it also did not support KML content. A few updates to the Android came out in 2010, including version 1.1 which added the Ocean layers and undersea 3D terrain. But, you still can't load KML content on the Android platform.
Even without more features, Google Earth is already one of the most popular apps on smart phones and tablets like the iPad (see ten must have apps for the iPad).
What about tablets?
With the introduction of the new wave of tablets coming out this year (e.g. the Google/Motorola XOOM with Android 3.0/Honeycomb and Apple iPad 2), we are going to see new CPU horsepower (and 3D horsepower) made available. These computers will actually be more powerful than many desktops that run the full desktop version of Google Earth. There's no reason I can see that tablets couldn't run a more fully capable Google Earth application (besides the need for it to be ported to the iOS and Android operating systems). Since Google Earth already runs on Linux, Mac OS, and Windows - I'm sure Google could make a porting of the app happen!
We realize that Google is also developing the Google Maps application on the mobile platform to have more 3D capabilities. But, there's a huge difference between adding 3D to the Maps application and the full desktop capabilities of Google Earth.
We would like to see Google Earth on tablets take full advantage of the built in features - better UI features for the touch screen; take full advantage of built-in GPS, compass, gyro, and accelerometers (imagine flying the flight simulator using those features!); better features for recording GPS tracks and showing your position during travels. Not only that, but features from the desktop version such as: measuring distances, adjusting mapping routes, historical imagery, time animations, and interfacing with Google Maps should be included. And, it's even more critical to have the offline capabilities of Google Earth on mobile platforms like a tablet. Most importantly, you should be able to load any KML content on a tablet just like on a desktop - including network links (which enable live content such as weather and real-time position updating). I'm certain the tablet platforms can support most of the capabilities of the desktop client. Google just needs to port the app to those operating systems.
While we're on our soapbox pleading for new features, there's one new feature Mickey and I have been discussing that needs to come to Google Earth regardless of OS (but, especially if you have more KML capability on the tablets and/or mobile platform). Google should support the ability to put your "My Places" content (the content you want to be there when you load Google Earth) up into the cloud. Whether its stored in your Dropbox, or maybe Google Docs - you should be able to point your "My Places" to a file storage space on the net somewhere. That way when you move from one system to another, you can point Google Earth at your centrally located "My Places" content and have your favorite content (and other GE settings) always available.
So, consider this our vote for Google to port the full Google Earth capabilities to the mobile tablet platforms. I hope most of you other Google Earth lovers will agree that you'd like to see this happen for your upcoming tablet acquisition. Because, it seems like there's going to be a lot of people with tablets in the not so distant future.
Posted by FrankTaylor at 3:48 PM
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Stunning imagery of Tropical Cyclone Yasi
As you probably heard, Tropical Cyclone Yasi recently made landfall just south of Cairns, Australia. Residents have had plenty of time to make plans, so hopefully most were able to get out of the path of the storm.
Yesterday, NASA's Aqua satellite captured an amazing image of the storm, which you can see here:
To view that image in Google Earth, simply download this KML file.
Another great source of information about the storm was the aus-maps severe weather page. They had a lot of info on the page, and also included special maps such as this one, from which you could pull down the KMZ file and view it yourself in Google Earth.
There has also been some very useful threads over in the Google Earth Community, with users sharing information and files as quickly as they became available.
Finally, don't forget about the Weather Layer that's built into Google Earth. The forecasts aren't particularly helpful for a storm like this, but quick access to the satellite imagery for the area is certainly a great feature to have.
Posted by mickmel at 7:03 AM
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February 2, 2011
Cycling the Alps adds games, tours and much more
When we showed you the "Cycling the Alps" site last year, it was pretty neat. It had information and tours for hundreds of cycling routes in the Alps, and it was very well crafted.
They've just taken the site to the next level and it's quite impressive now! When you click an area on the site, you're now given as many as 12 options for things to do. Along with the standard "route" and "tour", there are options to play games, explore in 3D in sort of a first-person shooter style as well as a few other goodies.
While you could start at their home page and choose a route, I'd advise you to start with the "Little Saint Bernard Pass", as it features all of the available options.
Clicking the "Pac-Man Earth" icon will let you ride a bike on that path, with the code heavily borrowed from the popular "Monster Milktruck" demo. It's certainly a fun way to try it route. Simply use your arrow keys to move around.
Clicking the "Earth with magnifying glass" icon you'll get the "Explore in 3D" version of the map. Use the [A], [W], [S] and [D] keys to move around, and the arrow keys to change your view. You can use the [Page Up] and [Page Down] keys to fly in the air. If you explore "Grosse Scheidegg" you'll even find a little GEB marker!
A few of the options, including the 3D Tours and the Profiles can now be embedded into your own website, and they've created a version of the site specifically for the Chrome web store, though I'm not sure it offers any major advantages.
All in all, they've made some very impressive improvements to the site, and they're doing all they can to help you fully experience the Alps from the comfort of your home.
Posted by mickmel at 8:22 AM
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February 1, 2011
Travel inside of Art Galleries with Street View
Google has just unveiled the Google Art Project, which offers some amazing tools to help art lovers explore the venues and paintings that they enjoy.
One of the neatest new features is the "brushstroke-level detail", which allow you to see some of the images in astoundingly high resolution; nearly 7 billion pixels, roughly 1,000 times higher quality than you can capture with a digital camera. For an example of one, check out "The Merchant Georg Gisze" and use the [+]/[-] controls in the upper left corner to zoom in and out.
The other great new feature they've added is Street View imagery inside of many of the world's most famous galleries. To view them from Google Maps, simply go to maps.google.com/museums and browse the list of museums on the left.
Even better is that you can view all of them from Google Earth, as long as you're running Version 6. To enter a museum, simply grab the "Peg Man" from your controls in the upper-right corner and drag him onto one. You'll see the blue Street View lines appear more "blob-like" over museums, as seen below:
This kind of imagery is currently available for 17 galleries, including places such as the Freer Gallery of Art in Washington D.C. (KML), the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City (KML), and the National Gallery in London (KML).
For more information, check out the post on the Official Google Blog, or simply head over to www.googleartproject.com.
Posted by mickmel at 10:20 AM
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Satellites around the earth
A few years ago, Frank showed you a great visualization from AGI that shows the real-time positions for over 13,000 satellites around the Earth. That post, along with the page he built to show off the visualization using the Google Earth plug-in, have been some of our most popular pages ever, having been viewed nearly 200,000 times!
With that in mind, we thought we'd show you all of the great ways to view this data so that new users that may have missed it the first time around can see it as well. The Google Earth files below will automatically update every 30 seconds with the current positions of every satellite, so you can just sit back and watch.
There are three great ways to view these satellites:
1 - The official KML file
2 - Via the Google Earth Plug-in
3 - Watching the video below
As BoingBoing pointed out last year, these 13,000 satellites "represent an infinitesimal drop in the overall volume of their orbits", but it's still an amazing display. Thanks to AGI for providing such a great tool to view these satellites.
Posted by mickmel at 8:24 AM
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