GPS

PEACE on Earth message using GPS

December 24, 2015

Back in 2010 Japanese GPS artist Yassan (also known as Yasushi Takahashi) wrote the world’s largest marriage proposal by travelling around Japan while recording his GPS track. He holds the Guinness World Record for ‘Largest GPS drawing by an individual’. We have, however, previously looked at the work of Nick Newcomen, whose GPS writing was even bigger.

Now, with the help of Japan Airlines Yassan has out done himself and Nick Newcomen by using GPS tracks to literally write the word ‘PEACE’ on the Earth.

For more of Yassan’s GPS artwork see his website.

We were not able to find a source of Yassan’s work in KML format, but Nick Newcomen’s can be found here.

The World’s Largest Marriage Proposal

November 19, 2014

Back in 2006 we looked at a few marriage proposals visible in satellite imagery. Then in 2008 we saw a marriage proposal in Street View.

Tokyo artist, Yassan lays claim to the world’s largest marriage proposal written using GPS tracks shown in Google Earth.

You can see some of his work here and watch a YouTube video about him below:

Yassan is not the only person to think of writing with GPS tracks. Nick Newcomen created some even bigger writing by this method, which we looked at in 2010.

Mapping your hike with Google Earth

February 27, 2014

A recent article at Popular Mechanics discusses some great ways to share your hikes with your friends via Google Earth, and they include some great tips.

To start of course, they recommend that you carry a handheld GPS unit. You can also use various apps on your cell phone, but because the big battery drain of GPS-related apps, be sure you have enough battery power to make it through the hike. When you finish the hike, upload the resulting file to Google Earth, mark it up with other placemarks and photos, then export the file as a KMZ to share with your friends.

You can also use apps such as Everytrail, which makes great use of Google Earth Tours, to share your adventures.

Lastly, be sure to check out some of the great ways you can use the Google Earth ruler. You can use it before your hike to estimate distances, or afterwards to see how far you went.

What are your favorite tips for using Google Earth to supplement your hiking?

Adopt a shark and track it in Google Earth

February 26, 2014

David Shiffman at Southern Fried Science has come up with a very innovative way to attract donations to shark feeding ecology project. If you make a donation of over $3,000, you will be able to name the shark and track it in Google Earth for up to two years!

Their project has raised over $6000 so far (more than double their original goal), so it seems to be in good shape. From the project website:

We will be using a non-lethal research technique called stable isotope analysis to help understand the diet and food web interactions of several species of sharks in coastal South Florida, information that will help fisheries and wildlife managers to better conserve and protect them!

You can read more about this project over on the Southern Fried Science website.

Google’s new “Project Tango”

February 21, 2014

Google has just unveiled a new initiative known as “Project Tango” that has the potential to reshape many areas of our lives. This new combination of hardware and software could be of huge benefit to vision-impaired humans, but could also drastically change the state of indoor 3D modeling.

To this point, there have been two ways to view the interior of buildings with Google Earth. We’ve seen a few examples of interior 3D models, which have been very cool but very seldom (and seemingly going away). The other direction Google has gone is with interior Street View imagery, which they continue to rapidly expand upon. Project Tango looks to be an interesting combination of both, using some amazing technology. Here is a quick video to show you what it’s about:

It’ll be quite a while before we see this technology integrated into our devices, but the potential is amazing. In the meantime, if you’re a developer that would like to begin working with Project Tango, fill out the form at the bottom of the main Project Tango to be considered for one of their 200 prototype dev kits. They hope to release the dev kits next month.

What do you think of Project Tango? Amazing potential, or just a fun idea that’s going nowhere?