Google has just released a significant update to Google Maps which allows anyone to, in a sense, create their own maps “mashups” - or what they call “My Maps”. Google was kind enough to demo the new features to me on Wednesday. Look at Google Maps for a new tab on the left which lets you view and create “My Maps”. The user interface for creating content is point and click and uses many of the same approaches and functionality as seen in Googl

Last year, Google did a fun little April Fools Joke for Google Earth. They placed some aliens cooking a BBQ dinner at the airport for Area 51. There was a special layer which popped up to draw your attention to Area 51. I was really looking forward to what they would do for this year, but apparently Google dropped the ball this year, and we didn’t get an April Fools for GE. The folks at GoogleSightseeing.com did do a pretty amusing April

[UPDATED 1130 ET] In response to the media-hyped outcry of last Friday, Google has updated the imagery for the New Orleans area with recent imagery for the area. I’m not sure yet what date, or what source, the imagery comes from, but check back here later for more details. The new imagery is from 2006 according to the new post at the official Google Blog. Google also tells me the imagery comes from the USGS. As I suggested last Friday,

[UPDATE: see the release of new imagery for New Orleans.] Many folks in the media (and even in Congress) have been asking Google why last September they changed the imagery for New Orleans, a year after Hurricane Katrina devastated the city, to show New Orleans the way it looked before the storm. Here is Google’s official response: In order to publish the best data possible, we must take into account a combination of factors including image

Amsterdam Google GeoDay - The Google Netherlands office decided to hold a Google GeoDay (for developers) during Amsterdam’s EXPO XXI yesterday. Twan Eikelenboom does an excellent job of describing the event on his blog. Twan received an invitation to the event in the form of a Google Maps placemark. Nice touch Google. There was a keynote from Bernard Seefeld (formerly with Endoxon which was acquired by Google). Also, Brandon Badg

[UPDATED 1430 ET] Google released new imagery last night. I’m sure a few folks in the UK will be happy to see some new imagery finally. Too bad about the photoshopped planes being taken out. Note: the new high res photos introduced for Sydney after Australia Day have been cleaned up. The waters in the Sydney Harbour in particular were made to look much cleaner, but the high res photos of the boats and the helicopter are still there. Here

Quite a bit of stir in the rumor mill today thanks to a blog post by TechCrunch (TC) which speculates that Google purchased a startup called Vutool. According to the description at TC, it sounds like the company had developed technology for capturing street level imagery at all angles and other “intellectual property” for processing and displaying this information. Microsoft a year ago released a technology preview (still working) of somet

If your business has already made an investment in marketing via its building signage, you could reap some unexpected marketing rewards thanks to Google Earth. When someone takes the trouble of modeling your building in 3D, you want to make sure they also implement a phototexture of your signage. The example seen here is of a Ross clothing store and a Best Buy near Denver, Colorado. You can see these buildings with Google Earth 4 by turning

The National Science Foundation is soliciting entries for its Science and Engineering Visualization Challenge. The Journal Science is also involved with organizing and selecting the winners of the Challenge. The intent is to highlight the best use of visual presentations to highlight science and engineering projects or concepts. “The winners will be published in a special section of the Sept. 28, 2007 issue of the journal Science and Scienc

Got a big laugh this morning out of this blog entry by Gary Turner of the UK. He muses about yet another way Google Earth is changing the way people think. I suppose that most people will be familiar with the notion of being told by your mother to be sure that you put on clean underwear everyday when you were a kid in case something happened to you… And so, I caught myself thinking over the weekend while attempting to find a reputable la

A mountain name which appeared in the “Geographic Features” layer of Google Earth caused some negative publicity a couple of weeks ago. I just got an E-mail from this blogger (in Spanish) that Google has removed the label from Google Earth. The mountain was re-named temporarily during the Nazi-era to “Adolf Hitler Berg”, and somehow that label found it into a database which was showing up in Google Earth. After some residents in the area disc

SpaceNavigator SDK - 3DConnexion, which makes 3D navigation devices, has released a Software Developer Kit (SDK) so developers can write interfaces for devices like the SpaceNavigator for their 3D applications. The Windows version is available now, and the Mac version will be available March 30. I sure hope this means the support for the Mac version of Google Earth will be out soon. Twittervision - There has been some buzz about a

Fixes for Windows Vista - A new version of Google Earth is available for Windows - V4.0.2742. This release is primarily to address some issues with Windows Vista. No new version for the Mac. And, no new features. Airshows - I missed this post at the Google Earth Community by Google and Big Moving Pictures (which makes the big jumbotron TV screens seen at sporting events and airshows). They announced the availability of a Google E

Version stats - Barry Hunter at Nearby has updated his stats on the different versions of Google Earth which have downloaded his files. This gives you an idea of what versions of GE are still in use. [UPDATE 1300: new stats reflect Mac data properly - see comments.] KML Editors - OgleEarth highlights the availability of two new KML editors. GooPs - Probably the best software for tying a GPS to Google Earth in real-time is t

The author of gCensus, Imran Haque, is a PhD student in Computer Science at Stanford University. He contacted me back in late February that he had released a subset of three states of many kinds of visualization using US Census data and Google Earth. But, he only had space for three states (California, Pennsylvania, and Oregon) since the dataset is so large. You can visit his web site for background information and try the application here (i

CNNMoney has just published (from Business 2.0) an article discussing how Google Earth (and other virtual globes) can be used successfully for advertising. The featured example is a campaign by Saturn for their car the Aura. They did a test with 6 regions last fall, which you can try here. In this case, they use video clips which show you flying into the selected dealership using Google Earth

National Geographic has just published an article for the March issue called “Ivory Wars - Last stand in Zakouma” by Michael Fay (the same guy who flew over Africa and took the aerial photos you can see inside Google Earth with the MegaFlyover sub-layer). This moving article also has a well-done detailed Google Earth presentation which I highly recommend.

Simply download the Ivory Wars for GE (GE 4 required)

Rather than trying to deduce all the updates to the layers this time, I asked the GE team what were the layers updated this weekend. Here are the details:

64×64 Icons - overhaul of icons to move from 32×32 to 64×64, also new styles for the layer icons
As reported yesterday, new Australia detailed roads, and they also say New Zealand (but, I’m not seeing this yet)
Tokyo Broadcasting System: UNESCO World Heritage Sites (in Japanese, only launched in Japanese client)
Brazil

Today Google updated the Geographic Web layer. In particular, the Panoramio photo placemarks sub-layer has over 4 times as many photos (from 80,000 to over 400,000). Because of the increased exposure since the Geographic Web Layer came out, thousands of people have loaded more photos for places all over the world

At last! After months of waiting, Google has migrated the detailed road maps they had in Google Maps into the Google Earth layer for roads. A week or two ago, we had a clue this was coming when some GEB readers pointed out the driving directions were available for Australia - just no visible layer

I’m flying south tomorrow to get out of the cold to visit warmer climates. The Miami Boat Show has already started and its time for me to check out all the new sailboats. If there are any GEB readers also attending, drop me an E-mail and we’ll try to link up. I’m always happy to meet other sailors who also like Google Earth. There’s a blog entry in the can for tomorrow - it will be automatically published in a few hours. My flight is at an awfully early hour, so it’s time to get to bed. Good night!

The O’Reilly Where 2.0 Conference for 2007 will be held again in San Jose, California on May 29-30. Registration is now open. This is the conference to attend if you want to meet and hear leaders in the developing Web 2.0 mapping technology world. Last year all the major service providers (Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, MapQuest, etc.) and even major GIS players (ESRI) were in attendance

Google is really showing some love for us Google Earth users today. First the announcement about new Google Earth search capability, and also today they have announced new support forums. Google has long had support oriented forums at the Google Earth Community. Today it was announced Google would like to get closer to the users of the various GE products

Google has just released a capability to perform searches for relevant Google Earth content based on your current view inside GE. You don’t have to download a new version of GE - it works automagically with GE 4. This new search capability adds powerful capabilities and gives even greater credibility to the KML format

A new service called iCommunity.TV has been launched which combines video content posted at YouTube, Google Maps and Earth, and input from people around the world to tell the news. They are calling it a “collaborative broadcast network for local news, built with the intention to promote video as a media for citizen reporting“

FOX TV has begun officially offering weather data via Google Maps and Earth. An example for the New York area is a Google Maps mashup which shows winter weather. On the left navigation bar are 5 links to different weather maps available. More importantly, you can download a network link for Google Earth for each map and it shows the data for the entire US

FreeGeoTools - FreeGeoTools.blogspot.com is a blog started last month by Leszek Pawlowicz. The blog is dedicated to writing reviews and tips about free software tools for GIS, Google Earth, mapping, etc. His first series of posts was about free tools enabling you to do things in GE Plus, and Pro

Yesterday Yahoo released a new beta product called Yahoo Pipes. This tool has already been called “…a milestone in the history of the Internet” by visionary Tim O’Reilly. The full concept may be a little tricky to grasp if you are not a technologist, but in a nutshell it enables you to easily take the output from one Internet site and feed it to another site as an input which then lets you do something new with the data

Recently an online news site (20minutos.es) in Spain picked up on a “discovery” someone made in Google Earth of what looks like a submerged ancient village near San Javier in Spain. Apparently, another spanish-speaking person first posted about this in December 2005 at the Google Earth Community (GEC)

The AAAS (American Association for the Advancement of Science) has a project called the Science and Human Rights Program (SHR) and has been working with Amnesty International and the US Holocaust Memorial Museum to document human rights violations using satellite photography. According to OgleEarth, a Lars Bromley at the AAAS took data from the SRH project and created Google Earth files which use network links and GE 4 features to show increasingly higher resolution photos as you zoom into areas of concern

The LA Times has released a story entitled “Intrepid Armchair Explorers” by Chris Gaither. Chris interviewed me before the holidays about interesting things people are finding using Google Earth. He ended up wrapping his story around the “Burning Ship Story” I had mentioned to him (ok, it’s just a boat), which illustrates how involving millions of people to look at unusual sights usually ends up in the facts being discovered

The fight against a logging plan to “thin” a forest of redwoods in the Los Gatos Creek watershed continues. Late last fall, Al Gore spoke in favor of the neighbors of this forest who are against the proposed logging. A critical factor then was a presentation which used Google Earth to illustrate how cutting the trees would effect schools, streams, and homes

India Censorship - Since shortly after Google Earth was released in 2005, politicians in India have been expressing horror that locations in India of concern to national security are available for all to view. Most countries who have these concerns have contacted the suppliers of the imagery to have changes made to disguise their sights

If you go to the Google Earth Download page you can download a minor update to Google Earth 4. It includes fixes to minor bugs with mostly uncommon computer configurations. No new features. Version numbers for the new version are:

Windows - Version 4.0.2737
Mac - Version 4.0.2736
Linux - Version 4.0.2735

One bug fix noted was to “Default to DirectX on Vista on first run due to poor OpenGL support“.

Someone at the Google Earth Community named ‘randomGIS’ has posted two network links which will load up the most recent few hours of infrared (IR) satellite photos as a time animation in Google Earth 4. This means you can watch animations of clouds moving during the past few hours on the 3D surface of GE

Google announced earlier this week they would be shooting high-resolution aerial photos in the Sydney Harbour area during Australia Day today. The Sydney Morning Herald reports that they saw many people all over town setting up to be in the picture. Many of the people were putting up banners, drawing signs in the sand, or laying people out to spell words hoping their words would be immortalized in Google Earth/Maps in a few weeks after Google processes the images

TechCrunch has just published about some rumors that Google is working on using Google Earth-related technology to create an application similar to Second Life or There. These ventures are some of the more successful attempts to build an alternative 3D “universe” (called a Metaverse) where you can interact with other people through the net by building avatars who represent your self in that other world

Last fall, Jeff Han demonstrated a multi-touch large screen interface, to allow you to interface to a computer through touch, at TED Talks (check out last year’s video of his presentation). Now, Jeff has formed a company called Perceptive Pixel to bring this idea to market. He was interviewed by Fast Company and they have released this really awesome video demonstrating even more applications including Google Earth being used with a wall-sized touch screen:

This is a truly inspiring demonstration

Google Vs. Microsoft Aerial Dogfight - Yesterday I reported that Google announced plans to shoot aerial photos on Friday for Australia Day in Sydney. Today, the Sydney Morning Herald reports that Microsoft has also announced to do the same thing. Gee, I wonder if they both plan to take photos of the Superbowl?
3D San Jose - The GIS folks in San Jose have released the 3D buildings which I mentioned they were developing last November

This is pretty interesting. I read about this at Ionut Alex. Chitu’s blog. In honor of the celebration of the national holiday Australia Day 2007 on January 26, Google has announced it will be taking new aerial photos of Sydney. The announcement includes a Google Maps mashup where you can drag a placemark around to find out approximately what time the plane is expected to fly over

Google has updated imagery for France, Portugal, and France to use CNES/Spot Image imagery at 2.5 meter resolution imagery instead of the old Terrametrics/NASA 15 m resolution base imagery. So, in other words the low resolution areas are 6X better resolution. Stefan Geens at OgleEarth got the details from Spot Image’s Jean-Francois Faudi:

It covers France, Spain, Portugal and Belgium

KML 2.1 Docs - Google has substantially updated the KML documentation. This includes new KML samples, KML tutorials, and KML reference docs.
New Blue Marble - Someone at NASA has put out a GE 4 network link allowing you to view the Blue Marble Next Generation from a WMS (Web Mapping Service)

Spiegel Online in Germany has posted a story (in German) about an awesome collection of phototextured 3d buildings for Google Earth. According to the article the collection will be published soon by Google, but the models were not created by Google. Apparently the models were developed by the “city and private sector”

gebhqGoogle Earth Blog World HQ

After working several years from my home office, I started off 2007 by leasing an office in a building with other business people. It seems I reached my limit in working in solitude, and needed some business oriented social interaction. Since I’ve been an entrepreneur all my life, I naturally checked out the First Flight Venture Center in Research Triangle Park, North Carolina

For a while now, DigitalUrban - a blog focused on visualizing urban areas with visualization tools like Google Earth - has been tantalizing us with talk and video about a new way to view panorama photographs using GE. They have finally released their method. What they have done is released a basic spherical 3D model, and showed you how to add a panoramic photo as a texture to the inside of the sphere

It seems everyone wants to start off the new year with new Google Earth stuff. Which is great! I’ve had a virtual flood of people wanting me to write about their new interesting GE content. I really appreciate the input, but I’m starting to fall behind in reporting all of them. This week, you regular GEB readers probably noticed about double the normal number of posts at GEB

Those of you who are regular readers of Google Earth Blog (GEB) know that I have been campaigning Google to create a better view of Earth from space. I really don’t like Google Earth’s default ugly-looking view which is a hodge-podge of different satellite photos. They could easily offer an option in the layers to allow a prettier view of the Earth to those of us who would prefer it

Google Earth 4 is officially released! The beta program began 6 months ago, and now almost exactly 1 year after GE 3 was released, GE 4 is no longer in beta (latest version is 4.0.2722). See the Google Earth home page for details, or just go download GE 4 now. GE 4 has many new features not available in the earlier version

GlobeXplorer Acquired by Digital Globe - Reuters reports on this acquisition which is interesting because Digital Globe is the primary provider of satellite imagery for Google Earth. GlobeXplorer provides software for distributing imagery and also previously acquired an aerial photography business

Here’s a funny video someone made involving Google Earth from YouTube:

via UrbanCartography