New Google Earth layer(s) – coming soon

Last week we pointed out that some of the Google Earth weather layers were out of date. Google fixed the problem soon after, and at about the same time added a tantalizing new layer that just says ‘Coming soon’. This may be timed to coincide with Google Earth’s 10th birthday this coming Sunday, June 28th. According to Wikipedia, Google Earth was first released under the Google brand name on June 28th, 2005, although it was release as Google Earth 3.0 as it was a continuation of a previous product called Keyhole that had been in existence since 2001.

While you wait for the new layer(s) to appear, this would be a good time to go through all the layers that already exist and see if you can find something interesting you may have missed. We have been looking through the layers ourselves and found that although some of them are not being maintained by the data providers the majority of the layers work quite well and have a wealth of useful information.

We also discovered that the roads layer has recently seen an update – we are not sure exactly when. It had previously not been updated for over a year, so we are glad to see this update. Finally, some street names in Livingstone, Zambia, that we added to Google Maps last September are now in Google Earth. Although strangely, a name correction we made in Google Maps has not been carried through. ‘Libala Drive’ is supposed to be ‘Airport Road’ and the correct name is shown in Google Maps.

About Timothy Whitehead

Timothy has been using Google Earth since 2004 when it was still called Keyhole before it was renamed Google Earth in 2005 and has been a huge fan ever since. He is a programmer working for Red Wing Aerobatx and lives in Cape Town, South Africa.

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