Applications

Integrating Street View with the Google Earth Diorama

March 19, 2012

A few weeks ago we showed you the Google Earth Diorama, a powerful tool that Paul van Dinther created to help website owners more easily integrate powerful visualizations using the Google Earth Plug-in.
Over the the past few weeks, Paul has continued to improve and refine the tool, and has recently integrated Google Street View into it. Here’s a quick video showing how it works:

He’s also in the process of adding a new “addAnimation” feature which will allow you to build an entire self-running presentation (rather than stopping at various points to ask for user input). The new feature isn’t live yet, but is looking quite impressive:

In particular, the cut scenes look quite impressive. We’ll keep you posted for when this new feature is released, and feel free to go play with the existing features over at planetinaction.com/diorama/.

Google Earth 6.2 released for Android and iOS

March 15, 2012

Google has just released Google Earth version 6.2 for Android and iOS, and it comes with a lot of nice enhancements. Frank Taylor: This is the upgrade to the mobile version of Google Earth I’ve been waiting for!
The biggest improvement — KML support! As you’re browsing around on your phone or tablet, KML files that you come across will now load in Google Earth. I’ve loaded a few on my tablet and so far they all work great. Frank Taylor: I’m also thrilled to be able to load KML files, but I found some advanced KML features with network links and time animations don’t work properly yet with this version. But, this update brings Google Earth for mobile up to a whole new level of usefulness.
In addition, the Google Earth Gallery is now available, giving you easy access to some great maps while you’re on the go. Just click the “menu” button in the app, choose “Earth Gallery”, and it’s very simple to load any of those items into your mobile Google Earth.

There are some other minor enhancements in navigation, making it easier to cruise around the globe to see your favorite places, and easier to view 3D buildings and other 3D objects in Google Earth.
Specifically for Android users, it also comes with a slick new “share” option. Choose that option from the menu, and you can quickly share a screenshot of your current view with anyone that you’d like.

All in all it’s a great update! Android users can grab the update right now in Google Play (Android Market), and it’ll be available in the iTunes App Store for iOS users soon.
(via Google Lat Long Blog)

Many improvements to Breadcrumbs

January 23, 2012

We first told you about Breadcrumbs in late 2010. They’re a GPS track management site that offers a lot of great features through a nice interface. They’ve just gone through a major redesign and are now an even more compelling option to consider using.

In addition to the redesign, there are a handful of other great things that Breadcrumbs has done since we last mentioned them:
50,000 Tracks: Over 50,000 tracks are now in their database, including quite a few from GEB readers.
Integration with mobile apps: Breadcrumbs now can integrate with mobile apps on Garmin devices, Android, iPhone, Nokia and others.
WordPress plugin: They now have an official WordPress plugin to easily embed your tracks onto your WordPress-powered site.
Other new features: The redesign includes a handful of other features that you can read about on their blog.
All in all, it’s quite a nice update. If you gather GPS tracks from anything (exercise, travel, etc), what product do you prefer to use to store and view them?

Traffic congestion visualization in Google Earth

January 20, 2012

We all know that Google Earth is great for visualizing an amazing array of information. However, sometimes it won’t support a need that you have and a creative solution must be found. Such is the case today with Skycomp and their “traffic flow visualization” tool. It’s no surprise to us that Paul van Dinther from PlanetInAction.com is the guy that made it happen — he’s built some amazing applications over the years, including the focus of yesterday’s post on the cruise ship Costa Concordia. His solution to help Skycomp is quite innovative.

There are two main components that come together to make this happen.
First you have Skycomp, who have found a cost effective way to collect aerial footage of the same location over a sustained period. This involves maintaining an accurate position of the helicopter and complex image alignment and correction.
Secondly you have the Google Earth component. The imagery produced by Skycomp typically is taken at a 1 or 2 second interval and turned into a video. Unfortunately, Google Earth is not equipped to render video on the ground. So instead, Paul uses a sequence of ground overlays and individually turns them on and off using javascript and the Google Earth API. The application is designed to play back several minutes of footage of a busy intersection so a traffic flow analysis can be done. In order to produce a smooth looking playback the application actually fades the next image on top of the previous image. The amount of cross-fade can be reduced for more detailed frame by frame analysis. It’s quite an impressive result.
You can try it for yourself by visiting www.planetinaction.com/skycomp/.

Google Earth File. You must have GE installed.

If you’d prefer, here’s a video that shows off how the system works:

For more info, check out the latest edition of the Skycomp newsletter.
The next stage of the application will introduce the capability to export the animation as a KMZ file for playback on Google Earth Desktop using the tour mechanism, which would be quite impressive and very useful for people in this field.

The Year 2011 in Google Earth

December 30, 2011

Google Earth had a tremendous year in 2011. Our most popular story of the year, by far, was from people searching for Osama bin Laden’s compound in May. There was also quite a bit of interest in resources for the Japanese earthquake, as Google Earth is an excellent platform to share imagery and information for an event like that.
Here’s a quick look back at the biggest stories for each month of 2011.
January
There wasn’t any major Google Earth news in January, but we saw cool things like Louis Zamperini’s journey mapped in Google Earth and Google hosted the 2011 GSA Penrose Conference.
February
Google brought art galleries into Street View and GeoEye provided some amazing imagery of the protests in Egypt.

March
Google was quick to respond to the Japanese earthquake and tsunami with high-resolution post-earthquake imagery shortly after the disaster and 3DConnexion sold their one millionth 3D mouse.
April
This month Google made some great enhancements to the mountain layer in Google Earth and we got some fresh imagery from the tornadoes that ravaged Alabama.

May
Google added 3D building support for Android tablets and people flocked to Google Earth to try to see Osama bin Laden’s compound.
June
More 3D trees started appearing in a few cities and fresh imagery was released from the Nabro Volcano in Africa.

July
July brought the 100th anniversary of the discovery of Machu Picchu, South Sudan became a new country and the final space shuttle launch was tracked in Google Earth.
August
In August we showed you some fresh imagery of the damage from Hurricane Irene and we explored the true size of the Stone Mountain carving.

September
Google Earth 6.1 was released, bringing some nice new KML features with it. We also looked at the past, present and future of the World Trade Center complex in New York on the 10-year anniversary of the 9/11 attacks.
October
Peter Olsen created an excellent 3D model of the MLK National Memorial and Google Earth reached the one billion download milestone.

November
We took an early look at the 2012 London Olympic venues and enjoyed the cool new Fluid Nebula tool for Google Earth.
December
We played with Google Earth on the Samsung Galaxy Nexus and saw a new island being formed in the Red Sea by a volcano.

It’s been another amazing year for Google Earth. What was your favorite story of the year?