Google Earth Hacks blog

With the release of the StreetView API a few weeks ago, followed by the addition of StreetView to Google Earth a few days ago, I figured it was time for us to open up a section on the site that was dedicated to showcasing fun StreetView content.

Voila! – www.gearthhacks.com/streetview

I’ve tried to make it as easy to use as possible.  If you are looking at a cool StreetView location in Google Maps, just grab the URL from inside of the “Link to this page” link and add it to our site.  The server takes it from there.

Your submissions will show up immediately.  You can vote on existing submissions (a single up/down vote) to help sort out the good from the bad.

I had hoped to be able to dynamically generate KML files for each submission that would fly you into the same view in StreetView in Google Earth, but that doesn’t appear to be possible.  I’ve done the next best thing, which is to dynamically generate a KML for each StreetView location which will fly you to that place in Google Earth — it’s up to you to enter the StreetView bubble and look around.

Play with it, add stuff, break it, etc.  It may be a bit buggy, so please let me know if you see any weirdness.  I wasn’t sure what categories to start with, so please suggest some more categories here.

Have fun!

We’ve added a few more cities to GEMMO, bringing the total to 25. The total area around those cities currently have 16,216 enemies waiting to fight!

There are over 600 people playing the game. Be sure to check out the leaderboard and see how high on the list you can climb.

If you have have any questions, problems or suggestions, you can use our GEMMO forum. Have fun!

Digg it!

It’s time for you to play! We’ve moved the game into public beta, so go download your copy of GEMMO and give it a shot.

Let us know what you think in our GEMMO forum, as the game is certainly not complete. Our first job will be to stamp out any bugs that come up, then add more enemies/cities/weapons/spells, then start working on new features. Your input is very helpful, so feel free to speak up.

Before you play, you might want to read our brief “How to Play” thread. It should give you a good idea of how to get things done in the game. Have fun!

Update: Digg It!

The 10 Millionth file has been downloaded from our site! To accurately determine the winner of our contest, we noted that the download occurred at at exactly 4:41pm EST today, February 16th. Our winners:

• 1st – tpstigers, with a guess of 4:30pm, February 17 (off by 23 hours, 49 minutes)
• 2nd – barakuda, with a guess of 5:17pm, February 17 (off by 24 hours, 36 minutes)
• 3rd – gekow, with a guess of 4:27pm, February 18 (off by 47 hours, 14 minutes)
• 4th – moko, with a guess of 5:1pm, February 18 (off by 48 hours, 34 minutes)
• 5th – egypt4, with aguess of 3:00pm, February 14 (off by 49 hours, 41 minutes)

tpstigers and barakuda will both be receiving brand new SpaceNavigators from our friends at 3DConnexion, along with some fun prizes supplied by Google. gekow, moko and egypt4 will all be receiving some of the Google goodies.

Thanks to all that entered, and thanks to all of you for your support of the site over the last 2-1/2 years!

Mickey

Update: Digg it!

We’re putting the finishing touches on our in-Earth MMO and could use some testers. The game is essentially a much-simplified version of World of Warcraft. You pick a race (Warrior, Elf or Mage), then go around the world fighting enemies, earning experience points, increasing your level, buying weapons/spells/potions, etc.

Some other features:

• Each major city is guarded by a different boss who must be defeated. Each city you defeat earns a crystal.
• You can team up with other players to take out difficult enemies.
• All gameplay (including battles, shops, messaging, etc) is done completely in Google Earth with no add-on software or web browser calls required.
• The battles are turn-based, similar to the Final Fantasy games, using our GEfootball engine.
• The shopping and messaging use Flash-based forms to handle the data, using code from our GEboards application.
• There are currently 9 cities, 14 different enemies (over 7,000 of them roaming the earth), 12 items, 8 spells and 6 weapons. All of those will likely be increased as we finish testing.

If you’re interested in helping us test it, simply let us know in this thread and we’ll get you set-up. We’re only looking for about 10 more testers, so it’s first come, first served.

Here are a few screenshots:

Atlanta

Attack this Tiger?

Fighting the Tiger

In-game Messaging

Shopping

There is a just a little more time to enter our “10 millionth download” contest – probably less than 24 hours.  Google has just sent me a package with a variety of fun prizes – a few t-shirts, yo-yos, paper notebooks and light-up pins.  We’re going to expand the prizes to five winners, with the following:

• 1st prize -  A 3DConnexion SpaceNavigator and your choice of a piece of Google swag.
• 2nd prize – Same as first
• 3rd-5th prize – Your choice of a piece of Google swag, based on what’s left after the previous winners have made their picks.

This contest is open until we reach 9,950,000 downloads.  We’re at 9,942,247 right now, and we get about 10,000/day.  At that pace, we’ll be past 9,950,000 before this time tomorrow.

You can enter in this thread or get more details here. Good luck!

We’ve just launched our new YouTube channel and we encourage you to go check it out:

http://www.youtube.com/user/GoogleEarthHacks

There are three videos up so far:

• TV and Movie Locations in Google Earth — A variety of locations of popular TV show and movie sets.
• Marvão, Portugal in 3D – A brief flyover of the beautiful new 3D models in Marvão.
• Various Hearts found in Google Earth – Showing a variety of heart-shaped objects in Google Earth, inspired by the latest issue of “The Sightseer”.

We’re open to your suggestions for future videos.  If you have any ideas, just post a thread in our Site Issues and Questions forum and we’ll talk about it with you.  Thanks!

Our 10 millionth file download will happen in the next few weeks, and 3DConnexion has given us a few more SpaceNavigators to help celebrate!

The two people with the closest guesses to the exact date/time of the 10 millionth download win.  It’s that easy!

More details can be found here, and you can enter here.  Good luck!

We’re proud to announce the launch of YourMap, a tool to make embedding a Google Map as easy as possible.

By filling out a simple form, code is generated that you can put on your site.  The code is platform independent, meaning it will work with almost any hosting provider.

Along with showing the map of your location, this program will also generate a Google Earth KML for your users.

Go check out the demo map, see a list of other sites already using YourMap, or try it yourself!

We’re always looking for ways to improve GEH, so we’re opening it up to you.  What features would you like to see us change/add?

This can be little things (”change the order of the files on xx page…”) or big things.  Post in the comments below or shoot me an e-mail.  Thanks!