This one is rather hard to verify, but it would appear that Bristol student and layabout Matthew Wilkes is the first person to have found himself in Google Earth, as reported in The Register.
All posts by Stefan Geens
Adidas uses Google Earth for World Cup promo
Run, don’t walk, to this incredibly slick implementation of Google Earth as a game cum World Cup marketing exercise by Adidas. It’s seamless and impressive, with clever use of Flash to boot (and I hate Flash). (Via Sammi Needham)
GPSVisualizer: GPS => KML
Not sure if it’s old, but it certainly is new to me. Adam Schneider’s GPS Visualizer is a web app that converts GPS data files to KML but it comes with oodles of parameters that you can set. Definitely worth checking out in case it solves your needs. (Via GPS Blog.)
CAD => Google Earth via ExtractKML
For AutoCAD users, Beau Turner has posted instructions on how to turn your work into KML files, using the ExtractKML (beta) application developed by Avatech. If you visit the Avatech website, you’ll see that the application uses Google Earth in quite a nifty way: you import placemarks to indicate a place and direction, which are then used to generate the requisite KML.
The madness reaches the Torygraph.
It’s a sad day for journalism when this article gets published in a supposedly serious British paper: Telegraph: Insurgents ‘using Google Earth’
The two specific errors are rather egregious:
1) The title says “Insurgents ‘using Google Earth'”, but the first paragraph already distances itself from that claim: “Insurgents could be using satellite images from a popular website to mount attacks on British and American bases in Iraq, defence experts said last night.”
In other words, these experts don’t know if terrorists are using Google Earth. Who, then, said that they are? The only source maintaining that this is actually the case is an anonymous, apocryphal “marine” who’s posted a rant that’s been circulated on blogs of a certain persuasion. Kathryn Cramer has already done an excellent job debunking this particular meme. The likelihood is strong that it’s a hoax, simply. Fine basis for an article in the Torygraph, though — one source, anonymous even to the journalist, who learns about it on the lunatic fringes of the internet.
2) “The Google Earth website, which uses free software downloaded from the internet, …” This is just so clueless on so many levels. Has the reporter, Jasper Copping, even used Google Earth?
For good measure, the Telegraph gets a Tory MP to pander:
The Conservative MP James Arbuthnot, who is the chairman of the House of Commons defence select committee, last night promised to look into the claims.
One day, someone will use Google Earth (or ESRI ArcGIS Explorer, or MSN Local) as part of the planning in a terrorist attack. That’s because Google Earth is one of the most versatile tools for geospatial analysis, and it is the product of the inevitable marriage between satellite imagery, the public internet and 3D display technology. When these people inevitably do end up using Google Earth to do harm, bear in mind that they also used email instead of letters, mobile phones instead of CB radios, cars instead of donkeys, computers instead of typewriters and credit cards instead of barter. The benefits of all these technologies far outweigh the harm they can do in the wrong hands. Today’s neo-luddite hacks lack that crucial insight, however.
Google Earth censored in China?
The Opposite End of China comments on a thorough Wall Street Journal article about Google’s efforts to enter China, and the compromises it has had to make with the Chinese government regarding the censorship of information within its borders. Apparently, bits of Earth and Maps are censored in certain parts of China, as of a few weeks ago:
The balance has already proved tricky. Until recently, Google’s map and satellite-photo service offered Chinese Internet users something they rarely could see: a bird’s-eye view of the secret compound of Zhongnanhai, where the country’s top leaders live and work.
But in recent weeks, close-up views from Google’s satellite images of the leadership compound in Beijing have been blocked in at least parts of China. It’s not clear how widespread the blocking is, or whether the government is behind it. Google says it didn’t alter that part of its service for Chinese users. In any case, the feat betrays a high level of technical expertise.
Barring the possibility of this just being due to a bad connection, it is also not clear whether this censorship exist in just Maps, just Earth or both. I can imagine how it might be relatively easy to block specific high-resolution tiles for Maps, as these have specific fixed names, but it must be a lot more difficult to sniff out what Google Earth is sending and receiving. Another thing I wonder about — wouldn’t a dose of encryption make Google Earth exploration completely opaque to outside snoopers?
BTW, here is a site that links to Zhongnanhai. If anybody in China reads this, I’d love to see a screenshot of what Google Maps and Earth show at this location. (Location in Earth [KML], Maps)
If the Chinese government is blocking its own citizens from seeing where their leaders live, whereas the rest of the world can see just fine, we’re talking some major institutional paranoia.
Earth Contest relaunch?
Earth Contest, a game that uses Google Earth as its playing field, appears to be relaunching, replete with PRWeb press release:
For users who are interested in more advanced game play (or simply become addicted to Earth Contest) the BIG GAME, scheduled to launch at midnight January 2006, is a completely virtual world with thousands more locations to discover.
“Big prizes” are promised.