Caution. Twittervision might make you dizzy. Maybe it is also a cure for loneliness, if you can bear it. It is certainly makes one ponder the meaning of it all. These effervescent messages from real people around the globe, vanish as quickly as they appear, an alarming demonstration of time and space convergence. Where are we headed?
Archive for the 'Google Earth and Sky' Category
Big news on May 28th when Google released a Plug-inwhich makes it possible to view Google Earth, including 3-D buildings and KML files in a browser window, without downloading the full version. Very much excitement about this, and there will certainly be some great applications very quickly. Exploring this topic, an interesting application for US boaters surfaced. EarthNC is a low-cost application/service which allow the user to add all kinds of water charts for US coastal and inland waters to Google Earth — online or offline. It looks amazing (though I don’t have any charting know-how), and appears to have been enthusiastically received. Hope to hear back from them about whether a Dutch / European version is on the way.
This same developer (EarthNC) has just released an online converter which allows you to create Google Earth Plug-in code with your own KML files or MyMaps URLs, which can then be embedded in your website. TakeItWithMe for Embedded Earth is in “Beta” form, but works handily. Demo here soon.
There’s a nice article in Technology Review, How Google Maps the World, with a simple explanation of the process from satellite to website. Makes it sound so easy. By the way, the company producing most of the high resolution satellite images is DigitalGlobe, and if you want to buy just one of the little snapshots, say a shot of the Dam Square as an 8 x 10 print, it will cost you $19.95, so I guess we can be happy Google is footing the bill for the earth. (Thank you Richard.)
On Sept 5th Google Earth Blog (top GE watchdog) posted the news that the license agreement for Google Earth Free and Plus Version 4.2 (released August 22) has been revised significantly, though this wasn’t publicized earlier. Business users can now use the browser for internal communications. This is good news for “business geographic developers”. We can now write customized KML files with internal geographic data which can be distributed within a company to employees, and viewed in the Google Earth browser, the free version as opposed to the costly Pro version. It appears that it is still illegal to use Google Earth for “external business (commercial) applications”, but the internal license opens up some very interesting possibilities! More on this change is available at GEB, and also James Fee.
While we are on earth, there are things we should not forget about. (Before we soar into space that is.) GEB (Google Earth Blog), pointed out this Central African Republic KMZ, created by Humanitarian and Development Partners in CAR. Dozens of layers provide information about this country, not far from Darfur. This is related to the Google Earth Outreach program announced in June.
These two images give an idea of the visual impact. 1) Africa is enormous, looks like half the earth here, with CAR outlined like a heart in its dark center, and 2) zoom in to the town of Bangui and it is just a village, with coffee shops, a Chinese restaurant, a football stadium, university, and government buildings, along a great winding river. So much to be learned here!
Yesterday they launched “Sky in Google Earth“. (Why not Google Sky? Probably someone snapped up the domain name and wants to get rich. Or could it be a certain embarrassed restraint: ”We’ve claimed the Earth, but can we really claim the Sky?”) Its all over the blogs, and now all over the big news channels too, probably the most significant news since Earth itself… also significant because of the additional attention it will give to Google Earth and Maps. Just took a peak and it is truly amazing. What do I know about the heavens. I did a search on “Andromeda” (the movie?), and the answer, “Do you mean the Andromeda Galaxy?” Of course! So here’s a picture. Staring hard at the screen I thought there were millions of stars indeed out there. Then realized there was also a lot of dust on my screen.
Recent Comments