Mickey Mellen

Christchurch, New Zealand now features 3D Imagery

June 9, 2014

Thanks to a tip from GEB reader ‘Anthony’, we see that Christchurch, New Zealand is now shown in full 3D thanks to Google’s “3D Imagery“.

As with all 3D cities (a list of which can be found on Wikipedia), things look awesome from the air, but get a bit melted when you get in close. That said, the streets (for the most part) are flat and smooth, as compared to some past cities that are quite lumpy. In all, it seems that Google is continuing to refine their process for adding 3D imagery and each new city looks a bit better than the previous one.

I’m still holding out hope that they eventually integrate 3d imagery with their street view imagery. They did it four years ago on the old-style 3d buildings, and it looked amazing. I’m sure the technical hurdles are much higher when working with 3d imagery, but I’m guessing they’ll get there eventually.

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.

Fun geography challenges with Google Earth

June 6, 2014

Alan Parkinson has pointed us to a fun resource from the folks at Geography All The Way — a challenge that takes you back to 1937 as a pilot for Imperial Airlines.

The year is 1937 and you work for Imperial Airways. The company has just taken delivery of a small fleet of Short Empire Flying Boats, with a range of 1200 km and an average speed of 300 km/h.

Your job is to design a route so that Imperial Airways can use their Short Empire Flying Boats to fly paying customers from Southampton, United Kingdom to Cape Town, South Africa.

You need to decide as a class the maximum safe distance for a flight leg, the time taken to refuel the flying boats and the earliest and latest the planes can fly. In 1937 planes did have radar so would not fly at night!

Use Google Earth, with it’s measurement tool, to design your route. Each stop needs to be at a settlement with a significant population. Your route should be submitted as a single Google Earth file with the placemarks in the correct order.

You should produce a route card that includes the start and end point of each leg of the journey, the distance, the duration and the take off and landing times.

The post provides additional tips on using tools such as the Google Earth Ruler and Google Spreadsheets to help facilitate your work. All in all, it’d be a fun challenge for a geography student to tackle!

(via +Alan Parkinson and Google Earth Users Guide)

About Mickey Mellen

Google releases Street View imagery for all 12 World Cup stadiums in Brazil

June 5, 2014

The 2014 World Cup is a week away, and Google has just released Street View imagery for all 12 stadiums. As you’d expect, the imagery is very sharp and looks great!

In addition, Google has released imagery for the “painted streets” in Brazil:

To go along with the new imagery in Brazil, they’ve also added fresh Street View imagery in Peru, Chile, Colombia and Mexico.

You can read more about these updates on the Google Lat Long Blog, or go explore the stadiums and painted streets for yourself.

About Mickey Mellen

Google to release Street View imagery in Greece

June 4, 2014

While Google has published Street View imagery for an amazing collection of countries around the world, one they’ve never covered before is Greece. That is set to change, potentially tomorrow (June 5).

Thanks to a tip from GEB reader ‘Konstantinos’, we’ve learned that Google has invited select people to an event announcing the new imagery, where presumably details will be revealed and the imagery will be pushed live.

The story of Street View in Greece goes back for years. Street View cars first appeared in Athens in April of 2009 but the Greek Data Regulator rejected Google’s license application, demanding from Google more details. Four years letter (November 2013), they finally announced that they received all the necessary details from Google and they gave the final OK, with the license plates and faces to be erased from the maps.

You can read more on the Greek blog Insomnia (read it translated into English) to learn more.

Thanks for the tip, Konstantios!

About Mickey Mellen

Hiking the “Little Grand Canyon” in Google Earth

June 3, 2014

A few days ago we had the chance to explore Providence Canyon (also known as Georgia’s “Little Grand Canyon”). Since it was going to be my first visit out there, I spend some time exploring the area in Google Earth. They have a few maps available on their website, so I took one of those and overlaid it on Google Earth.

If you’d like that file for yourself, you can grab this KML file.

Interestingly, while the Grand Canyon was formed over the course of millions of years, Providence Canyon only took a few hundred. The story of its creation is quite amazing:

Georgia’s “Little Grand Canyon” is a testament to the power of man’s influence on the land. Massive gullies as deep as 150 feet were caused simply by poor farming practices during the 1800s, yet today they make some of the prettiest photographs within the state. The rare Plumleaf Azalea grows only in this region and blooms during July and August when most azaleas have lost their color. The canyon soil’s pink, orange, red and purple hues make a beautiful natural painting at this quiet park.

In addition, here’s a fun 360 “photo sphere” that I took inside of the canyon:

You can learn more about Providence Canyon on the Georgia State Parks website.