Owner: Digital Earth Blog URL:http://www.digitalearthblog.com/ Join Date: Fri, 31 Aug 2007 05:41:48 -0500 Rating:0 Site Description: The latest news about the best digital mapping services including Google Earth, Google Maps, Virtual Earth and World Wind. Site statistics:Click here
A whole bunch of fresh images for Virtual Earth 2007-08-29 05:43:53 Microsoft is adding data at quite an incredible rate (their previous update was less than two weeks ago). Here’s a list of what’s imagery has just been updated:
USA Hi-Res Orthos (aka Aerial and Hybrid)
- 2006 Central Florida
- 2006 Buelton, CA
- 2006 Lancaster, CA
- 2006 Madera, CA
- 2006 Santa Maria, CA
- 2006 California City, CA
- 2006 Sanger, CA
- 2006 Jacksonville, FL (outskirts around 3Di imagery)
- 2006 Raleigh, NC
- 2006 Lake County, CA
- 2006 Salt Lake City/Park City, UT
- 2006 IL-West
- 2006 SE Michigan
- 2006 Omaha/Lincoln, NE
- 2006 Central Colorado
- 2007 Miami/Ft.Lauderdale, FL (outskirts around 3Di imagery)
- 2006 Sacramento, CA Region (outskirts around 3Di imagery)
- 2007 Mobile, AL (outskirts around 3Di imagery)
- 2007 LasVegas, NV (outskirts around 3Di imagery)
- 2006 North New Jersey
- 2007 Atlanta, GA (outskirts around 3Di imagery)
- 2006 Philadelphia, PA (outskirts around 3Di imagery)
- 2007 Birmingham, AL (outskirts around 3Di imagery)
- 2007 New Orl Read more:fresh
, Earth
Easily embed Google Maps on your site 2007-08-22 11:18:15 You can now embed
a Google
Map on your site in a similar manner as a YouTube video, rather than having to deal with the API. For novice webmasters, this will likely become a very popular thing to have.
Full details and screenshots can be found on Google Maps
Mania.
Read more:Easily
Real-time traffic now in Google Earth 2007-08-21 06:32:50 As reported on the Google
Latlong blog, Google Earth
now has a new “traffic
” layer which uses the same real-time traffic data that is used in Google Maps.
It’s not especially fancy, but that’s probably a good thing. Sometimes simple is better. The traffic is shown as a series of dots along the highway. Green=fast, yellow=ok, red=slow. The dots are clickable and provide you with the current speed read from that radar.
If I still had a highway commute, I could see myself checking this as I stepped out the door each morning. Nice work, Google!
Read more:Google Earth
Google Maps StreetView … in 1907? 2007-08-17 06:32:19 This is a neat little find by Gadling. In 1907, Rand McNally produced some “Photo Auto-maps” that they gave to drivers, which included photos with arrows to show which way to go.
The rest of their article has a few more pictures from it. Very cool.
Read more:Google
, Google Maps
Great collection of storm tracking and weather tools for Google Earth 2007-08-15 20:22:03 Frank Taylor at the GoogleEarth
Blog has posted a great round-up of the best weather
-related tools for Google Earth
.
The best piece of this post is the huge weather and storm tracking tools collection
network link. It contains a handful of folders with various kinds of data, which includes:
two global hurricane tracking tools
global cloud maps
current global lightning strikes animation
severe weather warning data and radar data for the US
a large collection of weather image overlays from TropicalAtlantic
weather observations for the US from WeatherBonk
a real-time day/night viewing tool
the global annual lightning flash rate map from NASA
If you enjoy following the weather, this is well worth checking out.
Read more:Great
Virtual Earth Imagery Update 2007-08-15 20:17:41 As per the Virtual Earth
for Government blog, a lot of new bird’s eye imagery and a few new 3D city models have been released. The 3D cities are Montreal, Canada and Toulouse, France. The new Bird’s Eye imagery is in hundreds of cities; the full list can be found here.
Read more:Imagery
, Update
, Virtual Earth
Hamburg 3D now in a layer 2007-08-03 08:32:42 As reported by Ogle Earth, the amazing 3D buildings in Hamburg
are now in the buildings layer of Google Earth.
Stefan says, “You will need a graphics card from the future — unless you are really close in, flying around Hamburg is done at extremely low fps… more like fpm”. This will become more of an issue in the future as more buildings find their way into Google Earth.
A few months ago, I suggested to the Google Earth team that they handle 3D buildings in a somewhat similar manner as Virtual Earth - low quality as you’re far away, higher quality as you zoom in. While I’m sure that’s quite a technical hurdle, they must be considering something of that nature to help combat this growing performance problem.
Tools for those affected by the I-35W bridge collapse 2007-08-02 20:05:19 The Google LatLong Blog has posted a few links with resources to help people with the aftermath of the bridgecollapse
.
Here are a bunch of maps with photos, news articles, meeting point locations, contact information for nearby hospitals and prayer service schedules.
Here is information about road closures and detours.
They also suggest searching Google maps for terms such as “35W Detour” for more information.
Read more:Tools
Google Maps now gives estimated rush hour drive times 2007-08-01 16:07:05 This is pretty slick — Google
Maps will now give you multiple estimated times for trips that you plan (in “a limited set of metropolitan areas”).
Their example has someone traveling from Berkeley to Half Moon Bay, which is “about 59 minutes”. However, the directions also say that it could take “up to 1 hour 50 minutes in traffic”. This allows you to look at multiple routes to determine which would be best if you had to travel during rush hour.
Obviously, this can’t account for accidents that might slow things down further, but it’s a neat addition. Combine this with the new click-and-drag directions, and you can quickly find the best route during heavy traffic times.
The Google LatLong blog has a full write-up with some nice screenshots.
Read more:Google Maps
, drive
3D Red Bull Air Races 2007-09-21 11:07:37 Google Earth Blog has a great post about some 3D models showing the Red Bull
Air Races
using time-lapse animations.
They were created by Joey Wade over at the Keyhole BBS. A great suggestion from the post is to use the flight sim mode and try it yourself. I’ve not tried yet, but it can’t be easy.
The post on GEB has all of the details.
GPS for the iPhone — sort of 2007-09-21 09:40:16 Gizmondo has a nice write-up about a GPS
-like add-on for the iPhone
from Navizon. Using cell tower data, along with any local wifi that it can find, the software calculates your location to within a few hundred feet. While it’s not as accurate as real GPS, it provides a nice starting point for driving directions and will push your location to the Google Maps app so it will start at your current location.
The program is free for 15 days, then $24.99. More details on the Navizon blog.
Some new layers in Google Earth 2007-09-19 14:40:51 A few new layers have been added to GoogleEarth
today:
Preview — A quick look at some of the other layers available
Gigapan Photos — High res panoramic photos
The update layers include:
UNEP
AIA Blueprint for America
North American Ferry Lines
Google Earth
Comunity
Google Earth Blog has more information about these changes.
Update: The Google LatLong Blog has a nice write-up about the “preview” layer as well.
Google Transit improvements 2007-09-18 15:55:02 As posted on the Google
LatLong blog, some nice enhancements have been made to Google Transit
over the last few weeks, including coverage for:
Buses and light rail in Dallas, Texas
The Las Vegas Monorail
Humboldt County, CA
Thousand Oaks, CA
Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART)
As well as new transit stop icons in Google Maps for a bunch of cities in Germany:
Augsburg
Bielefeld
Bochum
Bunde
Dresden
Jena
Karlsruhe
Kassel
Lubeck
Mainz
Rostock
Trier
I’m rarely a transit user, but this tool must be very useful for those that rely on transit. Full details in that LatLong post.
Digital Globe launching first of two new satellites today 2007-09-18 07:34:46 As reported on the Google Earth Blog, DigitalGlobe
is launching a new satellite today, named WorldView I. A similar satellite, WorldView II, will be launching late next year.
Digital Globe is a leading provider of imagery for Google Earth/Maps, so this is a great thing for those products.
It will be a while before we see any new imagery from this satellite (testing, etc), but once it’s live DG says it will be able to acquire data at about seven times the normal rate. This will hopefully mean much more frequent updates in the future.
Read the article on GEB for the rest of the details.
Google Earth update 2007-09-16 19:37:15 Google Earth
has just been updated to version 4.2.0198 (download here), but it’s taken a few steps to get there.
On September 14, Google released version 4.2.0196. The big thing in this release was the support for the SpaceNavigator in “sky mode”, which is a great addition. However, later that day Google pulled the new release due to some bugs and made 4.2.0180 the “current” version on their site.
Now with the release of 4.2.0198, SpaceNavigator support in “sky mode” is back in place. Frank Taylor at the Google Earth
Blog has a few additional details about this update.
Read more:Google
54 new countries added to Google Maps 2007-09-15 19:10:32 As posted on the Google
LatLong blog, 54 new countries have been added to Google Maps
. They vary in their level of detail, but they’ve got much more coming. In the coming months, they’ll be “working tirelessly to add more detail to the existing countries in Google Maps” and “adding new countries to the list“.
This update includes:
Afghanistan, Aruba, Bahamas, Bahrain, Bangladesh, Belize, Bermuda, Brunei Darussalam, Bhutan, Bolivia, Cambodia, Chile, Columbia, Costa Rica, Cuba, Ecuador, El Salvador, Fiji, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras, Indonesia, Iraq, Iran, Jordan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Kuwait, Laos, Lebanon, Mexico, Myanmar (Burma), Mongolia, Nepal, Nicaragua, Oman, Pakistan, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Philippines, Papua New Guinea, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Sri Lanka, Syria, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Timor-Leste, Uruguay, Uzbekistan, Venezuela, Vietnam, Yemen
Neat way to waste some time with Google Maps 2007-09-14 08:50:22 Here is an interesting take on the idea behind sites like Google
Earthing. This one is called PlaceSpotting. It shows you a zoomed in map via Google Maps
and you have to figure out where it is. A few cool things they’ve done, though:
You solve it by adjusting a world map (zooming, panning, etc) until it matches the clue, not just leaving a comment with your answer
You’re given up to four clues for each one.
You’re told the zoom level you need to be at. To solve it, you only need to get the lat/lon “close”.
Best of all, you can create your own!
I know there are a lot of different games out there for the various digital earth products, but I couldn’t begin to summarize them all. Instead, leave us a comment to show off some your favorites!
Read more:waste
EPA chooses Virtual Earth 2007-09-13 15:35:15 The Environmental Protection Agency in the U.S. has a large number of geospacial apps for things such as oil spills, beach water quality, etc.
Today they announced that they’ll be using Virtual Earth
as the platform for these applications. The reasons for choosing Virtual Earth
over Google Earth weren’t clear, but two things stuck out:
”Virtual Earth is the only existing platform that offers developers and end users the ability to work with and view satellite, aerial, oblique and 3-D imagery of the Earth.” – Is the Bird’s Eye view that important for something like this?
“Before we selected Microsoft’s Web-based Virtual Earth, the EPA relied on more expensive and cumbersome desktop applications” — That almost sounds like a shot at Google Earth, but I don’t think it is.
I’m still not sure why they chose VE over GE, but it seems that for this type of application either platform would do the job. It might just be
Updates to Google Moon 2007-09-13 15:24:45 As reported in the Google
Lat-Long blog, a new version of Google Moon
has been released. Included is text search, higher-res imagery, and stories and photos from every Apollo landing.
They even included a few Street Viewish images of the moon’s surface (taken by the Apollo astronauts) and some scientific charts.
It’s a nice update. Check it out!
New imagery for Virtual Earth 2007-09-27 07:36:58 Microsoft continues to impress me with the pace of their imagery updates, all of which contain piles of data (10TB this time, according to their blog).
To go with the list of new/updated cities in 3D that we posted a few days ago, here is a list of cities with updated imagery.
New / Updated Oblique Imagery (Bird’s Eye)
New York / Newark, NY/NJ
Los Angeles / Long Beach / Huntington Beach, CA
Chicago, IL
Philadelphia, PA
Phoenix, AZ
San Diego / Oceanside, CA
San Francisco, CA
San Jose, CA
Miami, FL
Boston, MA
Seattle, WA
Houston, TX
Denver, CO
Las Vegas, NV
Portland, OR
Minneapolis / St. Paul, MN
Ft. Worth, TX
Sacramento, CA
Atlanta, GA
Detroit, MI
Baltimore, MD
Austin, TX
Jacksonville, FL
Indianapolis, IN
Tampa, FL
St. Petersburg, FL
Milwaukee, WI
New Orleans, LA
Orlando, FL
Birmingham, AL
Cincinnati, OH
Niagara Falls / Buffalo, NY
Eastbourne, United Kingdom
Gloucester, United Kingdom
Swindon, United Kingdom
Bristol, United Kingdom
Cardiff, United Kingdom
Wolverhampton, United Ki Read more:Earth
The Swastika building is getting a face-lift 2007-09-26 15:25:05 (found via Natural Search Blog)
One of the first odd finds that we posted on Google Earth Hacks back in mid-2005 was a building in California that was shaped like a Swastika
. Since that time, it’s been downloaded from GEH over 8,000 times. The same image on Flickr has been viewed over 16,000 times.
Chris Smith at the Natural Search Blog did some research into the building and found that is a Navy building, unintentionally built in that shape, because no one then expected millions of people to be able to view it from above.
CNN reported on the building today and included one new detail: The Navy has taken so much grief for the building that they’re going to spend about $600,000 to add landscaping and structures to make it look different from above.
As Chris says, while more and more companies are looking into rooftop advertising this is the first case of a building being modified just to improve PR.
More about StreetView privacy 2007-09-24 09:55:37 Google has just put up a post on their LatLong blog with some of their thoughts about privacy expectations in StreetView.
It’s kind of a rambling post (paragraph break, anyone?) and there’s nothing too exciting in there, but here are some snippets:
“…we designed a simple process for anyone to contact us and have their image removed.” (note: When viewing an image, click on “Street View Help” at the top and you’ll find a link to report the image.
“…people don’t have the same expectations of privacy as they do in their homes.”
“…Street View will respect local laws…” (repeated a few more times with different wording)
It seems like kind of a random post, but maybe they felt they should put up an official stance on the privacy issues surrounding StreetView. Prior to this, I don’t think they’ve done anything but respond to criticism against it (example 1, 2).
A bunch of new 3D cities in Virtual Earth 2007-09-23 21:18:13 Yesterday, Microsoft added 3D data to a bunch of cities. They include:
Arizona
Phoenix
Tucson
Tempe
Mesa
Avondale
Gilbert
Peoria
Glendate
Augusta, GA
Denver, CO
Nashville, TN
Chicago, IL
Fort Worth, TX
Coral Springs, FL
Edmonton (Canada)
Chicago, in particular, is quite impressive. Enlarge the screenshot at the top, check out a great video of it, or go see it for yourself!
Read more:Earth
, Virtual Earth
Updates to Google Earth imagery 2007-10-02 12:37:48 As reported in the Google
LatLong Blog, a “significant” amount of 60cm imagery has been added to Google Earth
, with the Google Maps update coming soon.
As they did with the July update, most of what has been updated is hidden in clues.
Frank Taylor at the Google Earth
Blog already has many of the answers, so head over there and help finish them up.
The first fully in-Earth message board 2007-10-02 09:10:22 Over on Google Earth
Hacks we’ve just released GEboards, a completely in-Earth message board.
Following the release of Google Earth version 4.2, we realized that we could use the Flash player to accept text input in Google Earth. Many lines of code later, we have GEboards.
Once you load the KML, you can create threads about any location on earth - the restaurant down the road, the strange plane in the sky, etc. All of this happens without the need to use anything but Google Earth - not even the integrated web browser.
In addition, we’re giving away a SpaceNavigator to one lucky user. Details on that can be found in our main forums here.
If you have any suggestions on how we could improve GEboards, please let us know.
Thanks!
Read more:fully
Another 10TB of new imagery in Virtual Earth 2007-10-13 15:23:48 Microsoft continues their rapid, massive updates to Virtual Earth
. This one totals 10TB (28TB worth of refreshed street map tiles) and it includes a ton of new Birds Eye View imagery.
The full list of areas updated:
UK
Aldershot
Newbury
Ayre
Warwick/Leamington
Telford
Mansfield
Blackburn/Darwen
Basingstoke/Basing
Burnley/Nelson
Cannock/Great Wyrley
Craigavon
Nuneaton
Redditch/Astwood
Abergele/Rhyl/Prestatyn
Weymouth
US
Worcester, MD
Orange, CT. (plus more CT)
Warren, NJ
Hunterdon, NJ
Cape May, NJ
Jackson, MS
Tulsa, OK
Reno, NV
Marion, OR
Fulton, NY
Northampton, PA
Albany Metro, NY
Henrico, VA
Yonkers Metro, NY
Fresno, CA
Harford, MD
Larimer, CO
Erie, NY
I continue to be impressed by the speed and depth of Microsoft’s VE updates lately.
Read more:Virtual Earth
Zoom in closer in Google Maps 2007-10-13 08:15:48 As posted on the Google
LatLong Blog, you can now zoom in one step closer
on Google Maps
, world-wide!
They showed some cool examples, such as a Life-size Chess Board and some Elephants in Africa. I tried it on my house, and sure enough - it went in a bit tighter.
It doesn’t appear that there is any new imagery, but it’s nice to be able to get a closer look.
YouTube videos now a layer in Google Earth 2007-10-11 08:18:48 As reported by the GoogleEarth
Blog, there is now a new layer in Google Earth
for geotagged YouTubevideos
. In the Windows version of GE the videos appear right in the description bubbles; in the Mac and Linux versions you get a link to view the video in a browser.
It works like most other layers - as you zoom further in, more videos appear. To get your video to appear, simply allow embedding and map its location. It should then appear in the next layer update, which occurs roughly once a month.
10 best new features in Google Earth since its release 2007-10-10 14:56:18 When GoogleEarth
was first released, there was talk about it everywhere and they were overwhelmed with downloads. Since then, it’s become more and more popular. However, I’m sure there are a lot of folks that downloaded it two years ago, checked it out a little bit, and then haven’t gone back in. Here’s what you’re missing now:
10. PhotoOverlays: In the latest release of Google Earth
they now have PhotoOverlays - photos that seem to be hung in mid-air or wrapped around a sphere.
9. Improved terrain: The 3D terrain in Google Earth is the main thing that separates it from Google Maps. You can tilt down and see the mountains and valleys in beautiful 3D. There is now an option to allow you to choose the terrain quality (lower=better performance, high=more eye candy).
8. Time animations: Starting with the beta version of GE4 you could have time animations — items that update as time rolls by. This can be for long periods (spread of Avian flu) or for shor Read more:features
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