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Top 25 Stories of Google Earth 2007

The following are my favorite stories about Google Earth in 2007. In retrospect, Google Earth had a fantastic year both in terms of new features and data added, but also in the wide acceptance and influence the application has created throughout the world. There also were a lot of interesting finds in the imagery, and cool content developed by creative GE users around the world. The list is presented in chronological order – with a few comments for perspective.

  1. Google Earth 4 Officially Released – Major new release, lots of new features added.
  2. Car parked on side of building – Not a fake!
  3. Guatemala Sinkhole – Found the location of a bizarre news story.
  4. Swiss Alps Fighter Tour – I was told Eric Schmidt, CEO of Google, liked this one!
  5. Dig a Hole Through Google Earth – Ever wondered what is under you?
  6. Clean Underwear and Google Earth – Funny!
  7. Rising Sea Level Animations – Popular animations.
  8. Google Earth on the Simpsons – This proves GE has reached critical mass!
  9. Crisis in Darfur Layer Released – Gets Presidential Notice – Most significant new layer.
  10. Google Acquires Panoramio – Very cool news!
  11. Weather and Storm Tracking Tools for Google Earth – Weather is cool stuff in GE!
  12. Google Earth Outreach Announced – Significant new program for reaching the public.
  13. Western US High Resolution Terrain – Lots of new high-res terrain added this year!
  14. Blues Brothers Jump Bridge – You have to watch this video if you’re a fan!
  15. Our Sailing Holiday – GPS tracks, photos, and placemarks.
  16. Google Earth Layers – the most overlooked feature of Google Earth
  17. Google Earth 4.2 Released – Google Sky – Big new release! Lots of new features!
  18. Google Earth Flight Simulator Tips – Tips on how to use this cool easter egg.
  19. Star Wars 3D Sky Animation – Fun animation for Sky
  20. Help Find Steve Fossett – No one found him, but they sure tried. Notice comments.
  21. YouTube Layer in Google Earth – Cool new layer.
  22. California Fires in Google Earth – Big news turns to Maps and Earth
  23. Weather Layer in Google Earth – Finally a weather layer!
  24. Arctic Ice Melting Animation – Whoa, the ice melted that much!?
  25. Astronaut Mode in Google Earth – Very fun add-on for Google Earth

Rolex Sydney Hobart Yacht Race 2007

Sydney Hobart Yacht Race in Google EarthThe official site of the Rolex Sydney Hobart Yacht Race 2007 is again supporting Google Earth to track the race. The race began on December 26th and the positions are updated every ten minutes. The route goes from Sydney, Australia to the Royal Yacht Club of Tasmania. This yacht race has been going on for about 60 years and has often been in the news. You can download the Sydney Hobart Yacht Race Google Earth network link and follow the race right now.

Links: Daily Earth Imagery, Antarctica Photos, Panoramio Searchable, Santa Sleigh

  • Daily Earth Imagery – I was contacted by the University of Wisconsin at Madison that they have worked to produce the most recent imagery available of the Earth viewable in Google Earth. They are grabbing some of the photos from NASA’s satellites and color-enhancing them. The photos are as recent as 1 hour old. As you zoom in you get more details. The University has a web site which lets you choose which day you would like to view in GE from this page. See for example December 18 imagery in Google Earth.
    NASA’s OnEarth site also has a repository of whole earth imagery from the same satellites. They have a mosaic of the entire Earth (the imagery in this one is as little as 6 hours old, and much of it is 24 hours or older) – NOTE: Zoom in to load more detail! According to NASA: This layer is the most current, near-global image of the earth available. The 80 GBytes of daily imagery is made available through NASA’s OnEarth program. The satellite imagery from all of these come from the NASA MODIS Terra and Aqua satellites and has been processed with natural colors (read more). The University of Wisconsin also have similar data showing just the US available at this page or click on the link for viewing in GE.

  • Antarctica Photos – Google did a huge imagery update for Google Earth on Sunday which included the Landsat Image Mosaic of Antarctica (LIMA). This very nice quality medium resolution imagery of the Earth’s most southernmost continent is much better than what was previously in GE. Google is asking anyone who has photos of Antarctica to upload them to Panoramio so they can be viewed in the Panoramio layer in GE.

  • Panoramio Searchable – Speaking of Panoramio, Google announced the other day that they have again updated their searching in Google Maps to include other data. These same searches also work in Google Earth. So for example, go to the GE “Fly to” search pane and enter “Big Ben in London“. The placemarks you get back include search results related to Big Ben. Not only that, but some of the placemarks are from the Panoramio layer which include photos of Big Ben. You can also turn on the “Geographic Web” layer (which includes the Panoramio layer), and see lots more photos. The Geographic Web layer also includes a Wikipedia placemarks about Big Ben and other sights nearby, best of GEC placemarks, and a Discovery Channel placemark showing a video of London.

  • Santa Sleigh – Google has been seeking a good 3D model of Santa’s sleigh in 3D made with Google SketchUp (a fantastic free 3D modeling program). They are asking folks to make a sleigh in SketchUp and post it at the 3D Warehouse (deadline is December 31st). Of course, once a model has been placed in the 3DWarehouse, you can use Google SketchUp to place it in Google Earth. Maybe they’ll use it in next year’s Santa Tracker. Don’t forget to follow this year’s Santa Tracker by Google and NORAD.

AGU Fall Meeting – Day 1 Highlights

Yesterday was the first day of the special session called “Using Geobrowsers for Science” at the American Geophysical Union Fall Meeting in San Francisco. Like last year, I’m attending this conference to report on the many scientific visualizations using Google Earth to share their results. The principal organizers of this session are: John Bailey and Jon Dehn (Geophysical Institute, University of Alaska at Fairbanks), Glenn Richard (Stonybrook University), and Dina Venezky (USGS).
On Wednesday, there were eight oral presentations followed by about a dozen poster sessions held during the afternoon. Today, there will be a similar set of oral and poster sessions. Since I am presenting today, I will not be providing a detailed summary of all the sessions from yesterday just yet. A full summary will have to wait until I have more time.
For this first summary, I will highlight two interesting applications of Google Earth:
Animating data chart in Google EarthAn interesting display of multiple datasets with time animations was being shown by Daiki Yoshida and Akinori Saito of Kyoto University, Japan. They have a system called DAGIK – showing daily geospace data in Google Earth using data from many sources showing solar wind, magnetometer, GOES satellite magnetic fields, and many other options. You can choose data from a calendar for specific days. Some of the data visualizations use unique 3D representations, and the time slider is used to show animations. I was particularly intrigued to see an innovative use of screen overlays to show a “progress bar” on 2D data charts overlayed on the screen while the time animations were in action. Daiki implemented this using time stamped colored gifs which were constrained to line widths and projected in their own screen overlay designed to match the underlying chart screen overlay. You can see the data and have a look at the KML of the screen overlays by visiting the DAGIK web site. You might want to watch this video first for tips on how to get it working (or just see the charts in action).
Real time mission monitor from NASA in Google EarthAnother excellent use of Google Earth was presented during the oral sessions by Danny Hardin of the NASA Marshall Space Flight Center. The application referred to in the talk was the Real Time Mission Monitor (RTMM) which is an interactive visualization application based on Google Earth which is used in real-time to provide situational awareness and strategic decision making during field campaigns. These field campaigns involve multiple aircraft which are sent to monitor tropical storms in the Central American and Caribbean waters. They show the position and tracks of the aircraft, along with the planned routes, overlays of live radar and lightning strike data, and other information unique to each mission. By using Google Earth and network links, they are able to share this real-time data with scientists, air-flight personnel, and management at locations all over the world simultaneously during a live exercise. I was very impressed by this application of Google Earth, and hope to find out more about it. Their web site unfortunately has very few details on the GE capabilities.
My apologies that I don’t have time to summarize all of the applications of GE I saw yesterday today. But, watch for more details in the coming days.

Earthquake Activity Time Animation

This week I am attending the American Geophysical Union (AGU) fall meeting. Over 10,000 scientists from around the world attend this event in San Francisco each year. There are thousands of presentations and poster sessions discussing a broad range of topics on geology, atmospheric sciences, marine science, hydrology, etc. I will be reporting on several presentations and poster presentations regarding the use of virtual globes for science applications over the next few days.
Yesterday, I was talking to a scientist at the USGS about their Earthquake Monitoring tool for Google Earth. Although their tool has not changed much since it was originally made available, it still serves as an excellent example of showing near-real-time data of global science data in a meaningful way to the public. I did suggest they should consider creating a time animation in GE showing the progression of seismic activity over the course of many days. Today I just remembered, I had found an example by ‘giasen’ who did this and posted it at the Google Earth Community. He created this time animation which shows: “Latest Earthquakes Magnitude 2.5 or Greater in the United States and Adjacent Area sand Magnitude 4.0 or Greater in the Rest of the World – Last 7 days”. Based on data from the USGS here. I suggest clicking on the little clock icon to the left of the time slider and selecting “Clamp beginning of time window” so you can see the progression of the earthquakes. I’d like to see the USGS create KML files for several variations of their data for time animations like these.