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45th anniversary of the Apollo 11 mission

July 18, 2014

This Sunday 45 years ago, July 20, 1969, Apollo 11 astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin became the first humans to set foot on the moon.

One great way to experience the landing is by viewing this amazing Google Earth tour that Sean Askay put together a few years ago.

As you can see in the tour, the landing that Armstrong made was remarkable. With very little fuel, he had to carefully maneuver the ship into a gentle landing. Paul van Dinther created a game to simulate the landing that he calls the Apollo 11 Moon Lander. The game is very fun, and quite challenging – here is a review written by Frank when it was released. In the years since then, Paul has updated the game with some new graphics, Facebook integration and bug fixes. You can also watch this short video of the game in action:

You can check out the game for yourself at planetinaction.com/moonlander/.

Lastly, of course, is the excellent “Moon” feature in Google Earth, released in 2009. There is some remarkably sharp imagery in places on the moon, and even 3D models of the Apollo 11 Lunar Module.

Sharing adventure trek plans with Google Earth

June 24, 2014

Private Expeditions is a company founded by Paul and Jane Deakin, that takes people to some of the largest mountains around the world, such as Kilimanjaro, Everest and Machu Picchu, for private expeditions. They’ve recently added narrated videos that heavily feature Google Earth imagery to help show details of each of their routes. A great example is this route map of Mera Peak in Nepal:

From their press release:

The popular company recently launched 3D videos of all its trekking routes. These high-quality videos use Google Earth technology to show potential hikers the exact trails they will take when traveling with Private Expeditions. With a concise narration, graphic trail designation, and added photos of climbing conditions, the 3D videos give viewers a sense of where they are headed when choosing a particular route.

It’s a great use of Google Earth and an excellent way to help show this kind of information. I would hope that they’d release this data in a format that you can explore on your own, such as a KML, but for now it’s simply embedded in their videos.

Learn more and see the videos for yourself at PrivateExpeditions.com.

More about Saroo Brierley

October 17, 2013

The story of Saroo Brierley is an amazing one, which we first told you about back in March of 2012. When he was young, Saroo become separated from his family at a train station in India and found himself 1500 kilometers away. Thanks to Google Earth, he was able to find his way home years later. Here’s a brief video Google just released that tells his amazing story:

When searching for his home, Saroo compared Google Earth to being able to fly like a super hero:

In Saroo’s words, “It was just like being Superman. You are able to go over and take a photo mentally and ask, ‘Does this match?’ And when you say, ‘No,’ you keep on going and going and going.”

Saroo has since published a book titled “A Long Way Home” that details his experience. You can read more about Saroo’s journey on the Official Google Blog.

Excellent property and data visualizations in Google Earth

October 11, 2013

Google Earth is an amazing tool to visualize trends and growth when it comes to real estate. In the past we’ve shown you some tools that use historical imagery to show how things have changed, such as Google’s Timelapse project and this impressive visualization of urban growth in Spain.

Today we wanted to show you three impressive videos that use Google Earth to show historical real estate information in a very compelling way. They take three major american cities (Chicago, New York, San Francisco) and show the growth of them over the past 150 years. The videos begin with a flat city, then slowly begin dropping in colored polygons for the buildings in the order in which they were built.

It’s an impressive set of videos and a very effective way to show this kind of growth.

You can read more about these on The Source website.