January 24, 2012
100 years since the Terra Nova Expedition to Antarctica
100 years ago saw two very ill-fated attempts to explore Antarctica; Robert Scott's 1912 expedition to the South Pole and Sir Douglas Mawson's 1912 Eastern Expedition.
In honor of those events, Peter Olsen has built a handful of 3D models in Antarctica and they look amazing. You may remember Peter from his excellent models of the MLK National Memorial and Stone Mountain, among many others.
Here is a look at Robert Scott's hut at Cape Evans on Ross Island in Antarctica:
Peter has a a total of nine models available in his 3D Warehouse collection, with more on the way.
To learn more about these expeditions, you can check out this Wikipedia entry about Robert's Scotts "Terra Nova" Expedition or visit MawsonsHuts.aq for the story of Sir Douglas Mawson and his crew.
Great work, Peter!
Posted by mickmel at 7:57 AM | Comments (0)
January 23, 2012
Many improvements to Breadcrumbs
We first told you about Breadcrumbs in late 2010. They're a GPS track management site that offers a lot of great features through a nice interface. They've just gone through a major redesign and are now an even more compelling option to consider using.
In addition to the redesign, there are a handful of other great things that Breadcrumbs has done since we last mentioned them:
50,000 Tracks: Over 50,000 tracks are now in their database, including quite a few from GEB readers.
Integration with mobile apps: Breadcrumbs now can integrate with mobile apps on Garmin devices, Android, iPhone, Nokia and others.
WordPress plugin: They now have an official WordPress plugin to easily embed your tracks onto your WordPress-powered site.
Other new features: The redesign includes a handful of other features that you can read about on their blog.
All in all, it's quite a nice update. If you gather GPS tracks from anything (exercise, travel, etc), what product do you prefer to use to store and view them?
Posted by mickmel at 8:10 AM | Comments (0)
January 20, 2012
Traffic congestion visualization in Google Earth
We all know that Google Earth is great for visualizing an amazing array of information. However, sometimes it won't support a need that you have and a creative solution must be found. Such is the case today with Skycomp and their "traffic flow visualization" tool. It's no surprise to us that Paul van Dinther from PlanetInAction.com is the guy that made it happen -- he's built some amazing applications over the years, including the focus of yesterday's post on the cruise ship Costa Concordia. His solution to help Skycomp is quite innovative.
There are two main components that come together to make this happen.
First you have Skycomp, who have found a cost effective way to collect aerial footage of the same location over a sustained period. This involves maintaining an accurate position of the helicopter and complex image alignment and correction.
Secondly you have the Google Earth component. The imagery produced by Skycomp typically is taken at a 1 or 2 second interval and turned into a video. Unfortunately, Google Earth is not equipped to render video on the ground. So instead, Paul uses a sequence of ground overlays and individually turns them on and off using javascript and the Google Earth API. The application is designed to play back several minutes of footage of a busy intersection so a traffic flow analysis can be done. In order to produce a smooth looking playback the application actually fades the next image on top of the previous image. The amount of cross-fade can be reduced for more detailed frame by frame analysis. It's quite an impressive result.
You can try it for yourself by visiting www.planetinaction.com/skycomp/.
If you'd prefer, here's a video that shows off how the system works:
For more info, check out the latest edition of the Skycomp newsletter.
The next stage of the application will introduce the capability to export the animation as a KMZ file for playback on Google Earth Desktop using the tour mechanism, which would be quite impressive and very useful for people in this field.
Posted by mickmel at 8:56 AM | Comments (1)
January 19, 2012
Satellite imagery and 3D model of the cruise ship Costa Concordia
By now you've likely heard all about the wreck of the Costa Concordia, the cruise liner crashed off the Tuscan coast last Friday, killing at least 11 passengers.
DigitalGlobe has since captured aerial imagery of the site of the wreck, which can be found in their gallery or viewed below.
I've added that image to Google Earth as an image overlay, which you can view by downloading this KML file.
Another great way to view the ship is thanks to Paul van Dinther from PlanetInAction.com. A few years ago we showed you the amazing collection of cruise ships that Paul created for CleanCruising.com.au. One of the ships that Paul created for that project happened to be the Costa Concordia.
Since he had a 3D model of the ship and the skills to make some great tours, Paul put together this short video showing a bit about what happened.
Thanks to the generosity of the folks at CleanCruising.com.au, they've allowed Paul and PlanetInAction.com to release a full KMZ file of the stricken ship, which you can download in this KMZ file. Paul's model is amazingly accurate, and he includes various notes in the file to show the path of the ship.
Great work, Paul!
Posted by mickmel at 8:05 AM | Comments (2)
January 18, 2012
3D Android statues at Google headquarters
As you may have noticed over the years, we're big fans of Google Android. Google Earth is phenomenal on recent devices (3D buildings on the tablets and on the Galaxy Nexus). Each release of Android is given the name of a tasty treat -- Cupcake, Donut, Eclair, Froyo, Gingerbread, Honeycomb and Ice Cream Sandwich. As each version is released, Google erects a statue in front of their headquarters of the most recent treat.
GEB reader 'Arek' felt that those statues deserved to be shown in Google Earth, so he modeled all of them and they've just been accepted into the main [3D Buildings] layer in Google Earth. They look great!
To see them for yourself, simply fly over there by using this KML file. Be sure you have the [3D Buildings] layer enabled. You can also view the collection that Arek created in the Google 3D Warehouse.
Of course, even better is viewing the 3D Android statues on an Android device, so here you go!
Great work, Arek!
Posted by mickmel at 9:20 AM | Comments (0)
January 17, 2012
Where 2.0 2012 coming in April
This spring, for the seventh year in a row, we'll be heading to the Where 2.0 conference in California. This year's event will be held at the San Francisco Marriott Marquis from April 2-4.
As they've done in past years, O'Reilly is offering a discount for GEB readers. If you register on their site and use the code 'WHR12GEB', you'll receive 15% off!
Leading up to the event, O'Reilly has quite a few mobile-themed webcasts they'll be showing. You can few them all right here:
We'll certainly be sharing more information about the conference as it approaches, but in the meantime you can visit the conference site at whereconf.com/where2012 or read below for more:
Now in its 8th year, the O'Reilly Where Conference is where the grassroots and leading-edge developers building location-aware technology intersect with the businesses and entrepreneurs seeking out location apps, platforms, and hardware to gain a competitive edge. Where Conference presents leading trends rather than chasing them. Immerse yourself in three full days of hands-on training, information-rich sessions, and an Expo Hall filled with the key players and products. Where's topics and programs include: Mobile Development, Location Development, Business & Strategy, and Marketing, including an all day Location Marketing Boot Camp.
Join with hundreds of experts and practitioners in the mobile and location ecosystems and get a handle on what's happening now and what's lurking just below the radar - and how you can leverage location for your business.
Do you plan on attending Where 2.0 2012?
Posted by mickmel at 8:31 AM | Comments (1)
January 16, 2012
Visit the MLK National Memorial in 3D
Note: This is a re-post from this past October, and is very appropriate for today ("Martin Luther King, Jr. Day" in the United States)
Not long after recreating the Stone Mountain sculpture in 3D, Peter Olsen decided to tackle the brand new Martin Luther King National Memorial, located in the National Mall in Washington, D.C. As you can see below, his model is amazingly detailed. Not only is the figure of MLK curved and detailed, but the text on the side of the statue is very clear and readable.
However, just like his Stone Mountain model, he found that it was difficult to piece together because some things simply weren't adding up.
In his words:
When you read the literature on the "creation" of the monument, the sculpture consists of a "mountain" (The Mountain of Despair) from which a "stone" (the Stone of Hope) has been pushed. (See the write-up on the official web site) There is also an animation somewhere that I came across that shows the stone centre being pushed out from the middle of the mountain.
So based on that I built the central stone first, as per the above, and was then going to clone the central faces of the mountain from the sides of the stone. There is just one slight problem. Based on numerous photos if have studied, if you take the stone and push it back into the slot in the mountain it does not line up with the cutaway sides of the mountain.
The average person would never notice this anomaly. However, Peter takes great pride in building incredibly accurate models and little missteps like this can be frustrating.
In any case, he did an amazing job with the models. As you can see, he built all three sections of the memorial -- the mountain, the model of MLK, and the memorial wall.
To see it for yourself in Google Earth, simply fly there using this KML file.
As always, great work Peter!
Posted by mickmel at 8:43 AM | Comments (0)
January 13, 2012
Explore university campuses in 3D, then dive into StreetView
As part of the continual additions to Street View, Google has just added more university campuses around the world to the product, bringing the total number of Street View-able campuses to nearly 100.
Combine that with the fact that thousands of new 3D buildings are added to Google Earth each week, along with 3D trees in a growing number of cities, and you have some excellent tools at your disposal to help browse around your favorite college.
For example, below is Stanford University shown in Google Earth and Street View so you can compare the views:
Google has spotlighted a few other universities in a recent blog post and you can view the full list of Street View-enabled campuses on their site.
You can also view some extra goodies at a few schools (like the virtual campus at Northeastern University) and utilities such as Campus Bird help provide more geo context for hundreds of schools.
As good continues to add Street View at more schools, and schools continue to work on their 3D buildings, this kind of exploration will only get better!
Posted by mickmel at 8:00 AM | Comments (0)
January 12, 2012
New Google Earth Imagery - January 12
It's taken a few weeks, but we finally have our first imagery update of 2012! Thanks to 'Ali' for tipping us off to it on our Google+ page and thanks to 'Steven' for being the first to discover and confirm some fresh imagery. Also thanks to @NoelBallantyne for noticing a few other changes, such as some brightened imagery in Ireland.
As is almost always the case, you can use Google Maps to determine for sure whether or not a specific area is fresh. This new imagery isn't in Google Maps yet, so you can compare Earth vs. Maps to see what's new; the fresh imagery is already in Google Earth, but the old imagery is still in Google Maps. If you compare the two side-by-side and they're not identical, that means that you've found a freshly updated area in Google Earth!
[UPDATED -- 12-January, 5:12pm EST]
- Austria: Innsbruck, Linz -- thanks 'McMaster_de'
- France: Libourne and other areas -- thanks 'McMaster_de'
- Libya: Homs -- thanks 'McMaster_de'
- Trinidad: Port of Spain -- thanks 'Mark'
- United States: Arizona (Kingman), California (Colfax, Oakland), Mississippi (Grenada), New Mexico (Las Cruces), South Carolina (Greenwood), Texas (Brownwood, El Paso, Levelland, Longview, Lufkin, Ozona, San Angelo) -- thanks 'Steven'
If you find any other updated areas, please leave a comment and let us know!
Posted by mickmel at 8:00 AM | Comments (42)
January 11, 2012
iSTAR: Using Google SketchUp to bring out the best in those with autism
It's amazing to see some of the ways that Google products can connect people, often in very unexpected ways. Cheryl Wright, Associate Professor in Family & Consumer Studies at the University of Utah, recently hosted some SketchUp camps known as iSTAR. The camps are designed for children on the autism spectrum, and have proven to be very useful for a variety of reasons.
The idea came from a seed planted almost eight years ago, as told by the Google SketchUp Blog:
About 8 years ago, the SketchUp team started receiving some pretty intriguing calls: parents of children on the autism spectrum were calling to let us know how SketchUp was changing their kids' lives. People with autism tend to be unusually strong visual and spatial thinkers, and it became clear that SketchUp plays to those strengths. With that bit of information (and help from the Autism Society of Boulder County), we launched Project Spectrum with a single goal: connecting the autism community with SketchUp.
The video below provides a brief look at the iSTAR camps:
Cheryl and her team have studied hours of footage from the iSTAR camps and have published a paper that details their findings. In addition, you can read more in this article on the University of Utah's web site.
SketchUp is an amazing tool to help model our 3D world, but has uses that go far beyond its original intent. Learn more about these excellent programs on the Google SketchUp Blog.
Posted by mickmel at 8:57 AM | Comments (3)
Links marked with this icon are Google Earth files. You must have Google Earth installed to use these links.