Monthly Archives: January 2006

Process

New improved GPS Visualizer

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GPS Visualizer, the web app that lets you convert GPS data files to Google Earth KML while adding lots of customization, just got better. Writes Adam Schneider:

GPS Visualizer can now draw Google Earth tracks that are colorized by altitude, speed, etc. Unfortunately, GE only lets you assign one color to each placemark, so I have to do it by breaking the track into hundreds of individual placemarks collected in a folder — but it’s actually not too bad. (In Google Maps, doing the same thing is terrible.)

That should produce some stunning results for anyone who hang glides, hikes, or drives. You can even colorize according to your heart rate (!).

Content

Google Earth Locals

While Google Earth has search built in for businesses and layers for restaurants, bars and museums, these features only work in a few countries. For most of the world, this kind of local cultural knowledge has been provided ad hoc by committed amateurs, but now some enterprising businesses are taking advantage of this gap in the market.

Exhibit A: Ticnet.se, a Swedish service I use regularly to buy tickets to concerts, has come out with a network link that lists all venues in Sweden, and also all its upcoming events sorted by dated folders, with pop-ups for information. It’s still beta — the obvious thing missing is the link to the ticket-sale page in the pop-up — but it is immediately useful for things beyond tickets: It comes with high resolution overlays for Sweden’s second city, G√∂teborg, which has not yet been blessed with Google Earth’s own hi-res images.

(The dated folders are a kind of stop-gap measure for doing your own time-based search. If/when Google Earth adds a time browser, this kind of network link will become even easier to use.)

Exhibit B: About month ago Cape Town Magazine came out with a static KML file that obsessively listed every hip coffee shop, restaurant and clothing store in Cape Town, and much else besides. Most items are linked back to articles in the magazine, providing a whole new way of navigating its content.

At the moment, you have to send them an email to get access to the file, but they are planning to soon come out with a proper network link, so that updated content in their magazine is reflected simultaneously on Google Earth. That’s a clever tactic — not just because it increases interest for new content, but because I think there is a first-mover advantage in effect here: Whoever lays claim to a city with comprehensive coverage first will likely become the default option with the locals — there is no point in having four placemarks enabled for each museum.

Content

More short news

Bull of Bull’s Rambles blogs how he’s managed to convert simple KML files into NASA World Wind add-on files, and posts some examples. He doesn’t post the application he used, though. If he were to do so, World Wind would suddenly have a wealth of data available. But why not support KML (and network links) natively?

Bashing The Times of India about their Google Earth coverage: Outsourced!

Friday eye candy: A 3D blimp in Puerto Rico; check out the size of CERN; a map of the battle of Little Big Horn.

Uncategorized

Google Earth Tidbits

So much news, so little time. Here we go…

Sell your KML scripting skills to the entertainment industry: “A major film studio” wants to use Google Earth to promote a movie, and they need your help.

Digitally Distributed Environments decides to use several of Microsoft’s “bird’s eye views” in Live Local to generate a real 3D map of a location. The result is a-m-a-z-i-n-g (check out the QT movie). If I am not mistaken, this is akin to the SilverEye technology that Geotango possesses and which Microsoft bought that company for.

How often is Google Earth mentioned on the internets? This much.

A blog to watch if you do GPS: Jeepx.

CNET asks, Where on Google Earth is this? Brand watchers among us, note how CNET did not ask “Where on MSN Live Local…”, “Where on World Wind…” (despite the lovely alliteration) or “Where on ESRI ArcGIS Explorer…”.

Talking of the competition: Matt Giger, maker of EarthBrowser, has just started blogging. So has Chris Maxwell, a lead developer of World Wind. And Bull’s Rambles, a new blog dedicated to “this and that, mainly World Wind rants” lives up to the promise of its tag line, offering up three reasons why the free version of Google Earth isn’t really free. (Can we really not take screenshots? :-)

Reviews

Navizon lets you be geo-social

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A free mobile application for Symbian/WinMob5 devices called Navizon gets some clever new functionality, and it is now just begging for Google Earth integration.

The background: Navizon uses GPS, wifi and cellular signals to position you geographically inside a peer-to-peer network with other Navizon users, where you then get to be all geo-social with one another: You can track buddies (with their permission), or search Google Local, for example.

But now there’s a new version and a new feature: Geotags. No, these are not the geotags we know and love on Flickr; these “geotags” are messages written by Navizon users that are posted to a physical location instead of to a URL (at least metaphorically).

For example: You have an atrocious meal at a restaurant, and decide to warn people away: You write a message on your mobile device, tag it (√Ü la Technorati) and post it to Navizon’s server then and there. Anybody else plugged into the network and passing nearby will from now one be altered by it, if they are listening for the right tags. It’s a very clever idea (one that some Swedish friends have been mooting for a while), and it was only a matter of time before somebody implemented it.

So what’s still missing? The Navizon database of tags is crying out for a Google Earth network link that we all can access. These messages would also make great content for insertion in GeoUrl, and why not use the network to post phonecam pictures, both to other users nearby, and automatically geo-tagged to Flickr?

I think that in five years, when we all have our iPodGPScamPhoneMacBooklet, what Navizon offers will be commonplace, but for now, it’s an early adopters’ playground.

(Bonus nefarious uses of Navizon: Listing security codes to doors (especially useful in Stockholm), listing locations of speed traps… But it would also be an excellent tool for treasure hunts.)

(Via GIS user weblog)

Reviews

Google confirms Earth ads being tested

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adingoogle.pngSearch Engine Watch gets a spokesperson to confirm that “We are currently conducting a limited test of ads in Google Earth. We do not have any other specifics to share at this time.”

Here is what they look like. (Via Search Engine Lowdown.)

Clearly, what Google is experimenting with this time around is a kind of Adwords for Google Earth, not Adsense. Adwords are the ads that appear next to a search in Google, while Adsense is the kind of ads you get to see on a blog like this one.

If you like discussing what Google’s ad strategy might be for Google Earth, there was an interesting flurry of speculation back in November. The suggesttion then by Brian Flood was that Google Earth might someday have Adsense ads, as a way for freelance content producers to get paid for their KML.

As for whether ads in Google Earth are a good thing or a bad thing, Check out the post and comment thread on James Fee’s blog from around then.

Uncategorized

Road layers updated in US, Canada

Over on Google Earth Community, sysop PenguinOpus informs us that “The road layers have been updated in a number of ways. Have a look in the US, in Canada, in Puerto Rico, and in the US Virgin Islands to see some of the enhancements.”

I don’t immediately notice a difference in appearance (but then, I’ve never looked very closely at the roads). There definitely seems to be a difference in the manner that the roads layer shows up, however, and this change probably matches the improvements for Europe back in December, which aimed to make Google Earth zippier for older systems.

My system went from zippy to… zippy, so if Google Earth got faster for anybody with a slowish computer, do tell.