Google Earth Blog

The amazing things about Google Earth


Mickey Mellen

Street View now available in Serbia

Thanks to sharp-eyed GEB reader ‘Nikola’, we’ve learned that Street View imagery is now available in a number of cities in Serbia.

serbia street view

Some of the new cities include Pancevo, Novi Sad, Belgrade and Niš. You can see it for yourself in Google Maps using this link or fly there in Google Earth by using this KML file and following the video below:

Thanks Nikola!

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.

Engineering road systems and housing developments using Google Earth

Three years ago we showed you the very useful visualization that the city of Douglasville, Georgia created to show how new road construction would be laid out. It was a great use of Google Earth and made it very easy for people to see how things would be situated.

The folks at Site3D are doing similar work, taking drawing layers and overlaying them on Google Earth. Even better, their various drawing layers are imported as individual Google Earth layers so that you can toggle off individual layers as needed.

They also support taking Google Earth paths via KML and importing them back into the Site3D software.

site design

To learn more about what they offer, check them out at site3d.co.uk. You can also read more about them on this post on Google+, which is how I found them.

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.

Tracking Flight MH17 in Google Earth

Last week, Malaysia Airlines flight 17 was shot down over Ukraine by a surface-to-air missile, killing all 298 people on board. While blame is still being passed around for the crash, there are some places using Google Earth to try to better understand what happened.

First is the photo below, found via Twitter, which is using Google Earth to show the path of the flight, the path of the missile, and the crash site. At this point I’ve not been able to find a KML file for this image, but the image itself is rather striking:

MH17 in Google Earth

Next is a series of images of the crash site, provided by DigitalGlobe. As they often do after a major news event, DigitalGlobe was able to capture imagery of the crash site to help document it from the air. They were unable to capture imagery on July 17 due to cloud cover, but have some from a few days around it.

MH17 DigitalGlobe

They’ve also released two KML files to show some of the imagery:

That info comes to us from Amy Svitak at Aviation Week, who has a full article with more photos that is worth checking out.

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.

Looking at nuclear disasters in Google Earth

Sylvan Lane at Mashable recently posted an in-depth look at nuclear disasters over the years, and he made solid use of Google Earth and Google Maps to explain each event. Along with discussions of Chernobyl and Fukushima, Sylvan also took a look at Three Mile Island and Kyshtym.

chernobyl

You can check out the full article for yourself over on Mashable.

To highlight other nuclear facilities around the world, the folks at Google Sightseeing have put together a few “nuclear power megaposts” over the years.

The first post covered nine reactors around the world, and the second post covered seven more. As they always do, they’ve posted KML files for all of the sites that they listed in the posts (part one – part two).

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.

New Google Earth imagery – July 18, 2014

It turns out that a few days ago while we were telling you about the new 3D imagery in London, Google had also pushed out quite a lot of fresh satellite imagery. Thanks to ‘munden’, ‘dario’ and ‘Wguayana’ for letting us know about it.

kansas city

Some of the updated areas include:

  • Canada: Halifax
  • China: Dinghai, Fangjia, Longtoujing, Nanyaowan, Caoluzhen
  • Croatia: Karlovac, Zagreb
  • Germany: Heidenheim
  • India: Mumbai, New Delhi
  • Lebanon: Beirut
  • Moldova: Chisinau
  • Russia: Putayatin, bukhta Krasheninnikova, Severomorsk, Polyarny, guba Zapadnaya Litsa, Monino, Sevastopol
  • Thailand: Bangkok, Phai Ling, Sattahip
  • United States: Florida (Carrabelle, Keystone Heights, Tallahassee), Kansas (Kansas City), Maryland (Assateague Island, Princess Anne, Snow Hill), Missouri (Kansas City), Nevada (Las Vegas), Virginia (Cape Charles, Wallops Island)
  • Venezuela: Ciudad Guayana, Puerto Piritu

If you find any other updated areas, be sure to leave a comment and let us know.

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.