Google Earth Hacks blog

My wife and I have been big fans of The Amazing Race for a few years now, so I thought it’d be fun to track their route throughout the season.  Below is their map after the first leg, from Los Angeles, CA to Salvador, Brazil.  I’ll be updating the map each week with more information, photos, etc, so check back each week to see the latest updates.

The red lines/icons are areas that have already been completed (as shown on TV), the green pushpin is their current location, and the yellow lines are the future destinations for the contestants.

Be sure to zoom in on each area of the map for more details and information.

View Larger Map

Tropical Atlantic has built some useful tools for Google Earth, showing a variety of possible storm tracks for all of the major storms.  Being able to side a wide variety of computer models in Google Earth gives you a great way to see where the storms might land.  Check it out!

As I revealed on the Digital Earth Blog last night, EarthSwoop has launched.  What is it?  EarthSwoop is a tool you can use to easily create collections of locations around the globe.  Some examples:

• Some venues for the 2008 Beijing Olympics
• All 32 NFL stadiums
• The 50 US State Capitol buildings
• The 7 Wonders of the Modern World

It’s very easy to create a collection, and the result is a nice interface with lots of tools to enhance your data.  Here is a short video that shows you how to create a collection, or you can get a little more info over on the Digital Earth Blog.

Here is an example of an embedded collection, the 30 Major League Baseball stadiums:

Powered by EarthSwoop | More info about this collection

Google has just launched Sky Online.  It’s just like Google Maps, but for outer space, using the same data as “Sky Mode” in Google Earth.  Very cool!

Details on the Digital Earth Blog.  Digg their entry!

Google has released updated imagery for much of the world, but has again hidden the list of updates in a quiz.

Head over to the Digital Earth Blog for some of the answers and help fill in the remaining ones.

Google has just released a great new feature in Google Maps - streetview. It’s very similar to the old “A9 Maps” that Amazon had, but quite a bit more slick. Just go to Google Maps and click on the “Street View” button at the top near the normal “Map”, “Hybrid”, and “Satellite” buttons. So far it’s available in five cities - San Francisco, Las Vegas, Denver, Miami and New York.

For more info check out Frank Taylor’s detailed post at gearthblog.
Mickey

Just letting you know that I’m heading out tomorrow morning for the Where 2.0 conference and then Google Developer Day. Should be a fun time.  Frank Taylor at the Google Earth Blog has more information about what good stuff might come out of the developer day.
If you’re gonna be out there at either event, find me and say hi. E-mail me if you’d like to try to meet in person.

Mickey

It’s taken long enough, but I finally got a 3DConnexion “SpaceNavigator” for Google Earth.  All I can say is “wow”.  This thing is great!

The best way I can describe it is that it makes Google Earth fun again - like it was back when I first discovered it.  I’m finding myself flying around all of the same places I looked at when I first discovered GE (various houses I’ve lived in, etc), simply because it’s so fun just to fly.

Frank Taylor over at the Google Earth Blog did a nice write-up of it back in November that gives more detail about it.  Go read his review of it and then go buy one for yourself!

Mickey

From MarketingVOX:

Rumors are swirling of a Google-engineered “metaverse” - a virtual world a la Second Life - with Benchmark Capital analyst Michael Eisenberg calling the rumored project a “world game.”

The metaverse would use real-world data gathered from Google’s existing properties to craft the alternate online platform, writes play.tm. According to Eisenberg, Google is courting in-game ad company AdScape in preparation to monetize the virtual world.

Furthermore, rumor is that a firm in China has been hired to craft avatars while an internal team is building the “metaverse” itself, thanks to a team that has come over from There.com, another online virtual world.

Google already has a product called SketchUp, which is used to craft 3D models that can be layered onto Google Earth images.

It’ll be interesting to see what comes of this…

It’s been a month since Google and NASA signed their ‘Space Act Agreement’, an act that will lead to 3D mapping of the moon and mars being made available for free using Google Earth software.

In the mean time, someone called OnEarthWMS has been posting some simply marvellous network links at the GEC using some of NASA’s high-res imagery (thanks to Google Earth Blog for picking this one up).

First up is the NASA ‘Blue Marble’, many of you may have seen the version that is still available from Google’s showcase page (showing composite images across the 12 months of the year). However, the problem with this was that the images were low-res, and as soon as you zoomed in to 4,000 km eye altitude, it became pixelated. These new network links will update as you zoom, showing the full beauty of NASA’s Blue Marble at a MUCH higher resolution! You can now see snow and ice advancing and retreating on a valley scale in the Alps, for example. Here is the file:

NASA Blue Marble Next Generation for GE4 (give this a while to load!)

As many of you may be aware, NASA’s Blue Marble is a composite of many MODIS images (an instrument on board the Terra and Aqua satellites). Daily updates of MODIS images have been available at low-res for quite a while now. However, OnEarthWMS has also posted network links that show the daily updated images at full-res (the links update as you zoom). The ability to see mid-scale cloud systems developing between the Terra and Aqua images is jaw-dropping! Anyway, here are the two files:

Terra MODIS daily network link

Aqua MODIS daily network link

These new network links provide what I feel to be some of the best overlays Google Earth has seen to date. A step closer to true real-time monitoring of our planet on GE. Well done NASA, looking forward to seeing lots more.

Many thanks to Google Earth Blog, OnEarthWMS and NASA.