Category Archives: Content

Content

Once and future NYC

224264old_wtc.jpgThis one is special. Over on the Keyhole bulletin board, user equitus has posted models of both the World Trade Center and its future replacement, Freedom Tower.

(Via Google Earth Hacks, which provides thumbnails.)

Content

Ogle Earth. Now it’s official.

Just as Google Earth Beta was getting an update, so was the look of this blog.

Ogle Earth is finally looking a bit more professional, so I guess a more formal launch is in order.

The aim of Ogle Earth is to collect resources, links, and news related to Google Earth, and to spot new trends as they happen — in other words, to keep a finger on the pulse of the Google Earth community. In the coming weeks and months, expect to see interviews with people of interest, and maybe how-tos and tutorials (if and when Google releases the Mac version — VirtualPC is proving a bit on the slow side at home, where the free time is.) Ogle Earth will not itself be a repository of markers or layers, but will point to them.

The motivation is simple. I am convinced that Google Earth and its upcoming competitors are a disruptive technology; these Earth browsers will fundamentally change how we web users envisage information. Most everything on the internet can be related back to the real world, but often the location dimension has been left unused. As a result, far too many place relationships have been left unmined, until now.

Google has proven to be a master of managing related data — witness Google Search. It has done so by harvesting the link-votes of ordinary web-users. Google is taking this tack again with its Earth, this time by letting it be a canvas on which anyone can create and share. Google Earth is visually stunning, but it is this openness to community creativity that currently makes the application unique, and why is it proving to be a rave success. And all these users will probably one day see Google’s sponsored links in their locational searches inside Google Earth, just as we now do with Google Search.

I am planning to stay abreast of this revolution. I thought a blog would be a good place to store and share what I find.

Content

Google Earth the movie

Via Lifehacker: How to make Google Earth Movies for free.

Just as you can circumvent music DRM by recording the audio, you can record video from your flybys in the free version of Google Earth with this nifty hack. Otherwise, you’d need the pro version.

Re yesterday’s stereoscopic images and the wish for a “live” version of them: If you can record Google Earth video from one path, you can record the video from two paths. If one path is translated slightly vis-a-vis the other, you’d have left and right video. Mesh them together in Final Cut Pro and voila — stereoscopic video.

Content

Shooting the messenger

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It was only a matter of time before real-world border disputes would spill over into the virtual world of Google Earth. On Google Groups:

Tibet is not china (“please should someone correct the border in the earth google database?”)

Kashmir shown as part of Pakistan???? (“It has really hurt the Indian Sentiments.”)

The problem, of course, is that with the level of detail Google Earth manages, it’s rather harder to fudge borders. Perhaps a layer containing all disputed territories is in order?

Or perhaps we could resort to virtual wars on Google Earth rather than on the real thing. Anyone for a game of Google Earth Risk? Now that is a hack I’ll patiently wait for. (As it turns out, somebody seems to be working on a version for Google Maps. And many more games besides.)

Content

Been mapped on Google Earth

Beenmapped.com, which extends the notion of the bookmark to include physical locations, as of today also provides a link to a KML file for each bookmark, ready for opening that same spot in Google Earth.

(Safari for the Mac misses crucial bits of the site, as it has poor support for XSLT, apparently, but it works fine in Firefox.)

On my wishlist: the ability to keep and organize lists of my own location bookmarks, like I can with URLs in del.icio.us, instead of still needing to add them to my browser’s actual bookmarks. But otherwise this site is coming along very nicely.