James Fee lauds Brian Flood’s Arc2Earth (which the cool people already call A2E).
A2E (was that subtle?) is a conversion tool for stuff created in ESRI’s ArcGIS, the Microsoft Office for GIS pros (costing $1,500 and up).
All of which raises a broader question in my mind — let’s say you know nothing about GIS but you’ve been impressed with Google Earth. So impressed, in fact, that you’re inspired to contribute your own creations for the greater good of the Google Earth community. Given the conversion tools now available, what’s the best application to be creative with? What is the cheapest? What is the best value for money?
It’s an open question, and I don’t know the answer. I’m aware of ArcGIS (now with a 60-day evaluation CD), as well as SketchUp, for Windows and Mac, (free trial), Amber iQ (with, you guessed it, a 15-day free trial), Google Earth Pro Beta (7-day trial!) and then I run out of ideas. Could GIS pros be so kind as to help us neophytes with a leg up on the product offerings? Cheapness is definitely a virtue for a first application, given most of us are not about to get a student discount on ESRI GIS software.
Jerry Paffendorf will be speaking at the Accelerating Change 2005 conference at Stanford University this coming weekend, about “Brave New Virtual Worlds.” Google Earth is one of them. He’s just posted his slides online, and they are quite a trip.
We need world-class software engineers to help us create petabyte databases of Google Earth imagery and terrain. You will have a chance to contribute to the most powerful mapping application service on the planet.
James at Spatially Adjusted will be happy to know that “Experience with GIS data, formats, and conversions would be a plus.”
Luca Mori, who discovered a Roman Villa using Google’s mapping tools, writes a followup post that includes a link to the TV broadcast showing shots of him walking through the fields in question, interspersed with screenshots of Google Earth. The segment is at 21.30 minutes into the stream.
I can’t wait for the remote parts of the world to enjoy the same resolutions as the cities. I think there are many more such discoveries coming.
By definition, you have to be in the same place as a band be able to hear them play live in concert, which is why it is crucial to know A) where you are and B) where the bands you like will be.
You usually know A. Why not let a web service do the rest? Something called Foafing-the-music sets out to do just that. There is a demo here, and all of it is exportable to Google Earth.
Here is a site that seems to have taken off in Scandinavia, so to speak: Flightlog.org lets people upload and share their GPS enabled paragliding flights. Why share? I asked myself that too, until I realized that the original impetus of the site was (and is) to act as a clearing house for paragliding races.
What’s new, and the reason I mention it here, is that all the flights in its database can now be viewed in Google Earth. For example here is a flight near Stockholm that ended up ditching in the sea.
Notes on the political, social and scientific impact of networked digital maps and geospatial imagery, with a special focus on Google Earth.