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Mickey Mellen

Happy 4th of July!

July 4, 2014

Today in the US it is Independence Day, often referred to as simply the 4th of July. Banks are closed, BBQs are being heated up, and fireworks will fill the sky for most of us today.

Speaking of firewoks, here’s a neat post I found from Rick Klau a few years ago, when he used Google Earth to determine if he’d be able to view a local fireworks display from the comfort of his home.

He determined that fireworks typically reach a height of 300m, so he drew a polygon to that height, then used Google Earth’s terrain feature to see if the polygon was visible from his house. It was, and they enjoyed a great show that evening!

fireworks.jpg
If you’re looking for more fireworks, check out the thousands of geotagged photos on Panorama tagged with the words “fireworks“. If you take any yourself, be sure to upload them on Panoramio for everyone else to enjoy.

fireworks-panoramio.jpg
For those of you running (or watching) the Peachtree Road Race in Atlanta today, our post from a few years ago shows you a lot of neat ways to view the course. The easiest is to simply load up this KML file and explore it for yourself.

Peachtree Road Race
Whatever you do today, have a great time and please stay safe!

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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Filed Under: Sightseeing Tagged With: 4th of july, independence day, peachtree road race

New Google Earth Imagery – July 3, 2014

July 3, 2014

It appears that Google has just pushed out a fresh batch of imagery. Thanks to sharp-eyed GEB reader ‘Munden’ for being the first to let us know about it.

norfolk

It seems to be quite a huge update, based on the areas we’ve found so far!

  • Japan: Ako, Fukui, Himeji, Kahoku, Kanazawa, Nishi
  • United States: Arizona (Grand Canyon West airport, Lake Mead), California (Fremont, San Leandro, Sonora, Avery, Tuolumne, Placerville, Diamond Springs, Jackson, San Andreas), Hawaii (island of Kaua’i, island of Ni’ihau), Illinois (Champaign, Mattoon, Moline), Iowa (Davenport, Muscatine), Kansas (Topeka), Mississippi (Jackson), Missouri (Warrensburg, Whiteman AFB), New Mexico (Las Cruces), North Dakota (Fargo), Texas (Anthony, El Paso, Fort Bliss, Houston), Virginia (Newport News, Norfolk, Virginia Beach), Wisconsin (Racine, Milwaukee, Waukeshia, Hartford, West Bend)

If you find any other updated areas, please 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.

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Filed Under: Google Earth News, Sightseeing Tagged With: imagery

Using Google Earth tour builder as a real estate agent

July 2, 2014

Since the introduction of Google Earth nearly a decade ago, it has been a great tool for real estate agents. One of the earliest examples was when Trulia added Google Earth support for real estate searches back in 2006. We’ve also seen property visualizations, Re/Max using Google Earth and many others.

Thanks to improved tools in recent years, particularly related to embedding Google Earth on websites, we’ve seen many other amazing pieces come along. A great example is what some agents are doing with Google Earth’s Tour Builder. An example is this handy tour of a home, which shows a variety of amenities and stores nearby to help give potential buyers a solid understanding of the area.

bothell-parks-tour

A great explanation of how realtors can use the tool came from Jason Fox, a realtor who has build some himself. From Fox’s blog:

By utilizing the Google Earth Application you can easily zoom around your community, neighborhood, city, or county and place a pin on the location you would like to highlight. Then add up to 25 Photos or Videos, Description, Title, Pin Style, and pan and zoom into your highlighted area to capture what you want your audience to see.

Once you have completed your tour you can share it with your client with a link to opens the Tour of your community.

(via Inman News)

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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Filed Under: Business Tagged With: jason fox, real estate, tour builder

The technology behind Google’s “Santa Tracker”

July 1, 2014

Back in 1955, CONAD (handing it off to NORAD a few years later) began “tracking” Santa on Christmas Eve night for children to call in and get his current location. Starting in 2004, that information has been available in Google Earth and it is a stunningly popular feature.

The technology behind Google’s latest Christmas Eve tracking service is quite impressive. As explained by an article on ZDNet:

By 2013, the Santa Tracker user experience grew into a full-fledged online, snow-kissed winter village with interactive HTML5 games, keystroke animations, a soundtrack, and of course, an elaborate Google Map that can even be integrated with Chromecast for viewing on larger screens.

As part of Google I/O, there was a session titled “How 20% engineers built Santa Tracker” that explained it quite a lot. The full video of that session can be seen here:

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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Filed Under: Google Earth Tips Tagged With: google io, santa tracker

The best of Google Earth for June, 2014

June 30, 2014

We saw some amazing new Google Earth-related stories in June, and here are some of my favorites.

We saw an amazing use of historical Street View imagery in Detroit, showing the rapid decay of some neighborhoods.

detroit street view

Hurricane season has begun, and Google has some tips for staying on top of the weather.

hurricane

DigitalGlobe announced that they will be allowed to sell higher resolution imagery to companies such as Google, so look for that in the coming months.

digitalglobe

We took a look at some more famous movie locations in Google Earth.

famous movies

Thanks to Google Sightseeing, we looked at the rapid growth of kudzu in the United States.

kudzu

We showed you the 12 stadiums being used for the 2014 World Cup.

world cup stadiums

The 2014 Tour de France begins soon, so we showed you a map of the entire course.

tour de france

What was your favorite story from June?

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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Filed Under: Sightseeing Tagged With: june

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