Just when you thought -- "I wonder what Google could possibly develop next?" -- the company busts out a new layer for Google Earth which gives users the ability to browse the day's New York Times headlines by region.
In all honesty, the feature is a great idea, and we're sure the company has some work to do (hopefully adding support for other news outlets), but it comes off as "half-assed" for now with New York (what a surprise!) getting the most NY Times markers. California, Mexico, Michigan, and a few other places get a marker too, and as you can see in the picture, the NY Times provides Google with the most important of news stories. Oh well, it'll probably get a lot better.
Other Google Earth improvements in version 4.2 include a simpler GUI, high-res photos of terrain, the ability to explore stars and constellations, and more.
Time to get virtually closer to a few more pieces to the Earth's landscape. Google Earth, which will be followed by Google Maps, has updated imagery in the US, Latin America, Africa, India, China, Australia and New Zealand.
Google isn't saying exactly where to find the updates, which hit 130 countries. So if you think it is going to be easy to find the new imagery, think again. You are going to have to work a little. Google has put together a list of 11 clues as to where the updates are. Here is one to get you off and running on your Google Earth trip:
The Trojan horse from the 2004 movie Troy is visible in this city:
If any DLSers are map explorers, or have come across the recently updated satellite imagery, feel free to drop a note in the comments as to the locations.
Steve Fossett, the "greatest aviator in the world" has been missing for a while now in the Nevada desert. Friends and air patrols have been frantically searching for him, and now Google could be in on the search.
Fossett's friend, Sir Richard Branson, of Virgin fame, has tried to locate his buddy by using Google Earth to track his path. Branson has been in communication with his friends at Google to see if they can look over images of the last few days to see whether they can see which direction Fossett had been flying, and if they can pinpoint any disturbances that could have caused any issues.
So far three helicopters and six airplanes are involved in the search, focusing on a 600 sq mile area.
Are you dying to know some answers to a brewing question you have? Get the answers out with PollMappr.
There are plenty of online poll generation tools that demand a fee for usage, and a few free ones that tend to stray on the dull side. PollMappr lets users put polls on their blogs, websites or social network. The fun doesn't stop there however, PollMappr maps where on earth the answers are coming from. Upon viewing the poll results, users and poll generators can click and be taken on a trip through Google Earth to see where people came from.
So not only do you get your questions answered in a few simple steps, you can study the pinpointed locations and get a better understanding of your polls respondents.
No more forgetting where you took that picture on your vacation, Google has now made it possible for users to pinpoint the exact places they took their photos by mapping photos.
A new feature called "Map My Photos" was released on Tuesday in Picasa Web Albums, lets users show exactly where on a map pictures were taken. When creating an album, fill out the Place Taken field, or drag and drop individual photos straight onto a map. It's that simple.
You can then share these maps with friends either through Picasa Web Albums or through Google Earth (by clicking on the "View in Google Earth" button on the top right). Google has set up a test gallery you can take a peek at.
Google is all about buying companies. Not just any company, companies that help with their mission to organize all of the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful. Well, they have done it again with a site we profiled late last year, Panoramio.
Panoramio was built as a Google Maps mashup that lets users map photos based on geographic locations. The company is based in Spain and connects digital photographers with the ability to geo locate, store and organize photos in Google Earth. An API is also available with Panoramio that lets developers embed functionality into websites.
Google has already been using Panoramio's images in Google Earth as a default layer since early this year.
Over 8 million people live in New York City, and for those of them who use Google Earth, things just got a whole lot easier. The NYC Google Earth Mega Pack adds a boatload of new layers to enhance the Google Earth experience, including complete mass transit routes (including into Long Island an New Jersey), neighborhood maps, bike routes, live weather maps, NYPD precinct houses, and city parade routes.
While the Mega Pack has a more complete set of transit routes, Brian Abbott's New York City Subway for Google Earth layer is a bit cleaner and easier to read.
For the vast majority of people throughout history war crimes and genocide have taken place in dark distant places. The crimes of genocide in Nazi Germany, Cambodia, Rwanda or the former Yugoslavia were served up through old media: news reports on the breakfast table, heart rending photographs in Time magazine or gripping reports with shaky camerawork on the nightly television news. Yet despite the media coverage of ongoing war crimes in locations like the Balkans or such tragedies often lack immediacy for many people when contrasted against the normality of daily life.
A new collaboration between Google Earth and the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM) is seeking to address that distance by a new project to draw awareness to the ongoing genocide in the East African nation of Sudan. Called 'Crisis In Darfur' the project is designed to draw awareness to the ongoing human rights tragedy in that country by using the Web 2.0 functionality of the Google Earth program.
Since 2003 Arab militia groups called Janjaweed, which are backed by the Government of Sudan, have conducted a vicious campaign against African rebel groups in the Western Sudan region of Darfur. In an attempt to suppress the rebel groups, the Janjaweed have targeted innocent civilians on a massive scale, carrying out rape, murder and theft or destruction of property against the indigenous African population resulting in an estimated 300,000 deaths and 2.5 million refugees.
Architecture just got a little closer with the virtual world. The American Institute of Architects has formed a partnership with Google Earth that will allow users to explore popular structures and possibly enhance the communities we live in.
3D layers can be added to Google Earth that will allow for flythroughs of America's Favorite Architecture, featuring 150 structures including 3D models of buildings, ballparks, bridges, and memorials. Another 3D layer features a Blueprint of America which is a community service funded by AIA will showcase on Google Earth how special developments are enhancing the lives of communities.
What happens when you mix up the ever popular Skype, with Google Earth? Well, you get Unype, an interesting virtual world mashup application.
With Unype, users can utilize Skype's chatting and VoiP with Google Earth to chat and share Google Earth sessions with other users that have the same applications installed at their end.
To get up and running, users have to install a Windows PC application running locally, and connect to both Skype and Google Earth. Once the Unype application is up and running, users will have access to the Unype server, which then interacts with local copies of both Google Earth and Skype. When connected to the server, users will be able to see other users that are active in the virtual world. Unype then lets users chat or call each other to communicate, or click on other user's information to be transported to their location in the world.
Taking a cue from Microsoft's Virtual Earth 3D, Google has been dishing out some local ads in Google Earth. The ads are sponsored listings from Google Local advertisers and it is not clear how long they have been appearing in Google Earth. A reader on the Search Engine Land reports receiving clarification of the issue from Google. It said that if Local Business Ads were created in AdWords accounts, they will now be appearing in Google Earth, as well as on Google Maps. Customized icons can also be made to help the locations stand out even more on the map. Have they gone a bit too far by dropping ads in Earth though? I don't mind them in Google Local, but I would prefer if the Earth was clear of litter. At least we don't have to view the ads until we decide to click on the location pins.
Google and Nasa officially announced their special Space Act Agreement Monday. Through this new relationship, both companyies and government agency will work on technical problems that face large scale data management and human-computer interfaces. Google and NASA's Ames Research Center's first focus will be to make NASA's information readably available on the internet, namely real time weather tracking, high-res 3D maps of the moon and mars, and real time tracking of the International Space Station. This partnership, which began in September of last year, was a long while coming, but now that it's actually in the works, it's getting a lot of people excited at the possibilities that both organizations bring to the table in the long run.
[Update: Thanks to Jeremy for reminding me that NASA is still a government agency, and hasnt made the switch over to a company as of yet! ]
Santa is coming to Google Earth! And its up to you to find the treasures that Santa's elves have left all over Google Earth! Starting December 12th, and finishing up on December 24th, a clue will appear outside of Santa's North Pole workshop every day. If you can solve it, you will be lead to a toy hiding in Google's satellite imagery. Don't worry if you get stuck, the whereabouts will be revealed the next day, when the next clue gets dropped. What are you waiting for? Start hunting!
Gaia was working on reverse engineering Google Earth seeing as there was no open source API that has been made available yet. The work stopped when Gaia received a request to discontinue the project from Google's Michael Jones. The project was well on its way to producing a full-fledged open and customizable application. Gaia was being built to support Keyhole authentication, 3D views and layers. Jones, Google's Chief Technologist of Google Earth, Google Maps, and Google Local search served the email papers and told the project team that they do not own the data, and neither does Google. It is licensed to Google on the restriction that it is not to be accessed or used outside Google's client software. If this project was released in mass to the public, Google's license to use the raw data could be in jeopardy, forcing Google to potentially shut down their satellite mapping application due to the possible disruption of services, and loss of trust from data providers. For the whole letter from Jones visit the Gaia website.
Microsoft is keeping things interesting in the mapping community by releasing its Virtual Earth online application. Microsoft has actually decided to add in real photographs of buildings, a feature that Google Earth has not yet implemented. Microsoft currently has 15 US cities with the 3D views, and plans to have more than 100 cities by the third quarter of next year. Another difference with Microsoft's new Virtual Earth is the integration of ads in the 3D environment. Not sure how I feel about this integration of virtual billboards yet. Aren't we bombarded with too many ads during the day as it is? Next we're sure to see the time on our watches having hourly sponsors! That aside, the Virtual Earth team has done a nice job with this interesting 3D feature. It's a great way to totally immerse yourself into a kind of realistic flight through your local map searches. Look for a name change in the future as well. The team will be changing the name from Live Local Search to Live Search Maps. Unlike Google Earth, this application runs totally inside the browser with an internet connection, and a special virtual earth setup file. Unfortunately I was unable to test this out yet. The installation bar kept giving me the message that "The installation is taking longer than expected." It's been 20 Minutes so far, and I gave up. Was anyone able to check this out yet?
For the vast majority of people throughout history war crimes and genocide have taken place in dark distant places. The crimes of genocide in Nazi Germany, Cambodia, Rwanda or the former Yugoslavia were served up through old media: news reports on the breakfast table, heart rending photographs in Time magazine or gripping reports with shaky camerawork on the nightly television news. Yet despite the media coverage of ongoing war crimes in locations like the Balkans or such tragedies often lack immediacy for many people when contrasted against the normality of daily life.
