2013 was another amazing year for Google Earth. While there weren’t any new groundbreaking releases of the main product, we saw some excellent uses of Google Earth and some amazing discoveries. Here is some of the best of 2013:
January
In January Google released Street View imagery in Israel, saw some great updates to the Google Earth Flight Simulator, and showed you a creative way to view the map of “Westeros” from Game of Thrones in Google Earth.
February
In February we showed you some ways to created animated GPS tracks in Google Earth, tracked the path of the Chelyabinsk meteor, and got some great imagery of the Sakurajima Volcano in Japan.
March
In March Google released Street View imagery for Mount Everest, we looked at ways to track satellites in Google Earth, and showed you some ways that authorities are using Google Earth to fight crime in Bangalore.
April
In April we showed you a map that tracked the spread of the H7N9 avian flu, showed you how to make Google Earth look shockingly realistic, Google released Google Earth 7.1, and settled the great “murder or a wet dog?” debate.
May
In May we celebrated the 60th anniversary of Sir Edmund Hillary’s ascent of Mount Everest, discussed the future of the Street View Trekker, Google launched a version of Google Earth in the browser that didn’t require a plugin, and we showed you a neat site that did the “powers of ten” centered on your own house.
June
In June we showed you some tips for optimizing Google Earth, looked at the massive Bingham Canyon Mine landslide, and viewed some imagery from the tornado that hit Moore, Oklahoma.
July
In July we showed you some tips on how to use Google Earth to create high-quality movies, celebrated the 44th anniversary of the Apollo 11 mission, looked at a detailed map of the Trayvon Martin murder case, and looked at the 150th anniversary of the Battle of Gettysburg.
August
In August we showed you some tips for using the Google Earth Ruler and took a first look at the innovative Leap Motion Controller.
September
In September we showed you a neat way to embed Google+ posts in Google Earth, looked at a recreation of the July train accident in Spain, and looked at some great tri-bridges around the world.
October
In October we showed you an ancient Greek “strip mall”, looked at the best roller coasters in Google Earth, and highlighted some of the best 3D models of all time.
November
In November we took another look at the popular Google Earth War game, showed you the very impressive Lit Trips site, showed you new Street View imagery in Venice and DigitalGlobe released some initial imagery from the aftermath of Typhoon Haiyan.
December
In December we saw some neat things like an underwater waterfall and lava flow shapes, along with an impressive recreation of Charles Lingburgh’s famous flight.
All in all it’s been a great year! What was your favorite story of the year?
About Mickey Mellen
Mickey has been using Google Earth since it was released in 2005, and has created a variety of geo-related sites including Google Earth Hacks. He runs a web design firm in Marietta, GA, where he lives with his wife and two kids.
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is there any way to make google earth be cached and you can then work it offline ? the cache option in it is limited and you cant cache alot !!