Category: Google Earth

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Google Earth Technology

Backyard Space Photography

Picture from 30km

From the excellent Google Earth Blog, Frank links to another great example of what the process of democratising technology has achieved.

A group of guys launched a fully instrumented sensor package below a helium balloon, which was tracked in real time using google earth and produced some stunning images. The video on their site of the launch and recovery of the balloon, are great fun – you can just sense the excitement !!

Ok so this may not be a practical remote sensing application yet, but it’s amazing.. pictures from 30 km high, a third of the way to space, taking with a Canon Digital camera you could buy on the high street.

Written and submitted from home, using my home 802.11 network.

Categories
Google Earth

The Earth just moved for me..

For the first time in my many trips to the valley, I felt the earth move this evening as the San Francisco Bay area experienced a moderate earthquake.

quake map

Of course as soon as I could I looked online at the USGS site, and within minutes the KML of the epicentre was there to view – a system that just works !

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Google Earth Thoughts

Flying Google Earth

F-16AM

As with all software Easter Eggs who first finds them is open to debate, Marco’s Blog a blog by a South African student has at least been reported in a couple of places..

Well it’s a bit of fun, and actually if you are into to VFR flying (looking out of the windows rather than using instruments) it’s a pretty good expereince. As many have noted the SR22 is easier to get started with than with the F16 , which is way sensitive.

Just don’t expect the FAA to allow hours on Google Earth to count towards your ticket 🙂

Written and submitted from the BA Lounge, Gatwick Airport, using the BT Openzone network.

Categories
Google Earth

Only a matter of time… a Starship discovered

Enterprise…

We were joking in the office last week, while preparing for the launch of sky in Goggle earth, how long would it take for somebody to mash-up the USS enterprise somewhere in the universe.

Well we were close in our estimates,Captain Kirk was found within a few hours !

Written and submitted from home, using my home 802.11 network.

Categories
Google Earth Nokia N95 Technology

Put your pictures on the planet..

After the buzz has died down about the new sky feature in Earth, I personally think one of the most useful new features is the ability to place images in the landscape, matching the perspective of the location from which they where taken.

The new photooverlay element in KML 2.2 is used to great effect with the gigapxl images, which you just have to try out to really appreciate.

Gigapxl in Google Earth

You can just keep on zooming into these amazing images..

Gigapxl in Google Earth zoomed

And these are taken with a single exposure, so they are very useful for analysis of the images.

For me the most exciting development is the potential now for those millions of geotagged photos already online to be placed in the locations from where the pictures were taken, this would provide another great way of representing the “sense of place” of a location.

Phone pic in google earth

As a simple example, this is a picture of the Google Office in London, taken with the Camera in my Nokia N95. With its GPS, and the additional of a simple compass to provide the bearing of the shot, you have all your need.

Written and submitted from home, using my home 802.11 network.

Categories
Google Earth Technology Thoughts

Ogle Earth TV

Stefan Geens the man behind the fantastic Ogle Earth blog, has put together an amazing DIY TV show using Google Earth and Wirecast.

Everyday the tools that where once only in the hands of the professionals are now available to the professional-amateur, although I think Stefan may have another career on IPTV waiting for him! 

Written and Submitted from the Google Office, London.

Categories
Google Earth Thoughts

How to get Kids interested in Geography

This week I sat in on a course run by the Royal Geographical Society to train teachers to use Google Earth in their classes. The course was excellent and will run again in October and is highly recommended. In talking to some of the teachers we soon got on to the topic of the impact that Google Earth has had in exciting their students, and the extent to which their preferred images to Cartographic view of the world.

As a teaching tool just creating a tour and visiting places without any labels displayed is very powerful, asking students to describe the shape of the landscape, patterns of settlement and of course trying to recognise the locations is fascinating.

Last week I saw this same effect in a different environment visiting the Swiss Museum of Transport Swiss in Lucerne. For an aviation anorak such as myself, this is well worth the visit, but for all geographers you must visit the swissarena, a 1:20 000 scale photo mosaic of all of Switzerland on the floor of a dedicated building.

Swissarena

This is just amazing.. constructed from nearly 8,000 images and detailed enough so that you can see individual buildings it is a huge hit with children visitors and is a brilliant tool to understand the geography of Switzerland.

We really must make the most of this opportunity, new technology has made geography interesting again.. lets make the most of it and move beyond the LandRanger extract !!!

Written and Submitted from the Terminal 2, Heathrow Airport, London using the BTOpenzone wifi network.

Categories
Google Earth neogeography Thoughts

Plazes in Google Earth

Despite a few hiccups with the latest Plazer client, I’m sticking with my experiment of using Plazes to track my presence and location. I’m glad I have because, the very interested data behind plazes has now been exposed in the form of a plazes KML file. This is really neat, by logging in you can view your own locations, without logging in, you can view the global plazes database and see a real time feed of the latest plazes registered by users. Credit to Tim at Plazes for a really nice use of KML !!

Plazes in Earth

Like the recent twittermap, in can be almost hypnotic watching the geeks of the world posting their locations, and the experience is all the more interesting in Google Earth.

The plazes KML is available for download at www.plazes.com/kml

Written and Submitted from the Google Office, Zurich.

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Data Policy Google Earth opensource

The next step in Open Geodata ?

Projects like OpenStreetMap have proved that it is possible to replicate professional ground survey using low cost consumer grade GPS to create vector data sets that have the potential to complete with commercial datasets. Today I came across a website which describes a technology that could do the same for aerial imagery. Pict’Earth describe combining low cost devices which many of us already have to develop a very low cost real time aerial surveillance platform.

Using a Nokia N95, Imagery and positional information is captured and sent to the ground live during flight on a low cost model aircraft and displayed in Google Earth in near real-time. This imagery can be shared via the web with any internet connected google earth client, anywhere in the world.

Alternatively the same information can be post-processed to produce geo-referenced photo mosaics.

This is just amazing !! Ok so its not orthophotography, but then for most applications that’s not needed, key other than some good software, is the use of the N95, a 5 megapixel camera, a commuincation device and a GPS is a small cheap package – and you thought it was a phone !

Written and submitted from home, using my home 802.11 network.

Categories
Google Earth Google Maps neogeography opensource

Google Developer Day – BBC leads the mash-ups revolution..

As a follow up to the Google Developer Day event last week , Silicon.com has a great article on the adoption of mash-up culture at the BBC and their brilliant backstage project.

GDD PinFor other content owning organisations BBC Backstage sets a great example highlighting the way that forward thinking licensing of information can really aid the innovation process and develop truly useful new content driven sites.

During my time at the OS we made no secret of the fact that Backstage was an inspiration to the OpenSpace project.

Just imagine the mashups which could be created if other content owners in the public sector were as open.. indeed in just this last week, we are beginning to see a more innovative approach to publishing content with the reporting of Brents use of google maps and the Maritime and Coastguard Agency decision to publish some of it’s charts in KML.

A point I made during last weeks London Keynote (about 30 mins in, but its well worth listening to the great Chris di Bona) is that there are still huge amounts of geographic information still to be liberated from existing corporate silos, in addition to the user generated content we are beginning to provide the tools to create.

When you think about it, this is less a technology issue that it has even been – this is now really about information policy..

Written and Submitted from the Google Office, London.