These are some of the first of what I assume will be many image overlays showing the terrible damage done to the Hurricane Katrina ravaged areas. This is an overlay 
of one of the new Digital Globe images taken recently showing the flooding and damage in New Orleans. The overlay was posted here at the Google Earth Forums. NOTE: these are photos being placed by users of Google Earth, but are placed in the proper coordinates. They are not officially part of the Google Earth database.
Here are some horrifying overlays from Bay Louis, MS from another post here. Turn on the different photos in the Places sidebar – it will take a while to load each of these images (even longer if their server gets overloaded). These high resolution pictures show awful paths of destruction through this area of Mississippi. It’s like a hundred tornados came though here.
Sightseeing
California is Trashy
Not sure why someone would do this, but a guy called ‘jpbrody’ took the trouble of converting all 2500 registered trash locations in the state of California and converted them into a Google Earth KML (Keyhole Markup Language) file. You can view the trash here . He posted them at the GE Community BBS here. This means you can view all 2500 trash locations in California through Google Earth.
Actually, it is kind of interesting to browse through and see which of the sites are actually visible from the satellite or aerial photos available. I’m sure 2500 sites is not unusual for a state the size of California especially since these are both current and past sites.
‘City’-sized Sculpture
A guy named Michael Heizer has been working on a sculpture for 30 years. He’s building what looks like Aztec buildings in the middle of nowhere in the Nevada desert. I found this story while browsing the web and looked up the location in Google Earth (I wish I could remember where I found it exactly). You can read about this amazing creation in this article by the New York Times. It has ground based pictures.
Unfortunately, the resoultion is poor in this area of the Google Primary Database, but the fact you can see a sculpture from a 1km resolution photo at all is a tribute to the size of this work. You can visit this site in Google Earth here . Or you can see a better resolution shot from a aerial photo at Microsoft’s terraserver.microsoft.com.
[Edited 2:30PM to change “satellite photo” to “aerial photo”]
Slick Videos of Google Earth
Some excellent work by leanbackvids.com give you a chance to see Google Earth in video without having to install the application. Could be useful if you want to show someone who isn’t likely to install the application itself. But, they are worth a view regardless. Any Google Earth user can’t help but smile at these.
The first one is called “Wonderful World” (Quicktime required) and shows the perfect potential use of Google Earth to see videos tied to location. This shows the power of Google Earth and tying it to data all over the world, and is made perfect by a great choice of music. By the way, the guys at vlogmap.org have already created a way to view video log locations in Google Earth (the videos themselves are viewed in your browser). Note: the Wonderful World shows videos within Google Earth and is, as far as I know, a video trick. You can’t view videos as icons within Google Earth like this – yet. 🙂
The second video is called “Mirror World” (Quicktime required) and is a video of a tour of Seattle using Google Earth to do the tour and real video used to show more details. They have cleverly matched exact angle/views within Google Earth to dissolve into the real video. Very nice!
These videos were brought to my attention by Matt Savarino at vlogmap.org.
Most Popular GE Files
The GE/Keyhole Community BBS has some limited means of showing you which are the most popular Google Earth places. You can go to the subject forum of your choice – say “Earth Browsing” and then select the “Views” link (as shown to the right). This will sort the forum according to the most viewed threads. Reading the resulting threads will probably lead you to some interesting places, but it is not really a very good measure of the most popular downloaded GE files. I have yet to find a way to view the most downloaded GE files on the BBS. I assume Google will do this someday.
Another choice is the very nice gallery of Google Earth places at: www.gearthhacks.com. This site has a much nicer interface for determining good places to visit (note: you will have to do a minimal free registration to download from here). First, after going to their home page, click on “File Downloads”. Then, select “Most Popular“. Today’s top 5 places are:
- 747 on SCL final approach
- Eiffel Tower – 3d
- Statue of Liberty – 3d
- Pyramids of Giza – 3d models
- Golden Gate Bridge – 3d
To see the places themselves go here (after you have registered with GE Hacks you can load them into GE).
Another even nicer feature Google Earth Hacks has done is provide a network link which automatically shows you their current top rated places.