Content

Earth Search

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Should it ever happen that you run out of things to look for in Google Earth, head on over to earthsearch.net, which has a browsable index of over 5 million “features”, listed by name country, type, latitude and longitude. (Okay, so there’s duplicates, but still.)

Many of these Google will find for you if you just type the name, comma, country into Google Earth’s search field (or use yubnub), but for those that it doesn’t recognize, there’s always coordinates. (A script that opens highlighted coordinates in Google Earth sounds like a great idea. Even better, perhaps, would be a script that searches earthsearch.net if Google Earth comes up blank)

If you use earthsearch.net’s own map to zoom in on a feature, you also get a list of nearby features along the side. That functionality — and this entire site — is just begging to be turned into a monster of a dynamically updated network link.

Reviews

Hot stock tip!

Tom’s Hardware Guide has Nvidia’s CEO pinning the company’s hopes for future growth on apps like Google Earth:

While workstations will need more graphics capability for medical imaging or 3D CAD to allow collaboration around the world, he said, consumer devices such as cellphones or embedded automotive devices could soon take advantage of software such as Google Earth: “Imagine the potential using 3D graphics for search. You could fly to the next Starbucks on your navigation screen,” Huang said.

Reminds me of my post where I wished the in-flight entertainment screen maps were Google Earth-enabled.

Content

Location, location location

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Now you can even use Google Earth to profit from the misfortune of others! Look:

“I’ve created a .kml file for Google Earth that displays information about pending foreclosures (Notices of Trustee Sales) in the Phoenix Metropolitan Area. It is categorized by auction date and labeled by remaining balance in dollar amounts….” (His full post)

Opinion

It’s social software

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James Fee wonders about reactions to a blog post by David Maguire on Google Earth, entitled “Geographic Exploration – The New Fad?“, and I am happy to oblige.

Who is David Maguire? As a GIS neophyte (I have friends who do GIS!) I had no clue, but I do now. He is “director of products” (is that like product manager, only different?) for ESRI, the company considered to be the world leader in GIS software and technology, and which has been sounding a tad defensive now that mass mapping as envisaged by Google, Microsoft and Yahoo! is enjoying the limelight.

Maguire implies that Google Earth and its ilk are a fad, a bubble, and rhetorically wonders why people have written about it. He can think of six reasons: It’s Google, it’s free, it’s easy, it’s detailed, it’s fast and it’s different, (but read the post yourself).

That’s sort of stunning, because to me, the most important reason why Google Earth and Maps are a runaway success is not on his list: It’s social software. Google Earth is an extremely compelling canvas that people are using to link their experiences in the real world to the web.

Just one example: This afternoon, as soon as I heard about the copycat bombings in London, I fired up Google Earth, turned on my Blogwise network link and zoomed in on London. Five seconds later, a slew of local blogs popped up on the screen, including one I remembered having had exhaustive coverage of the bombings two weeks ago. Sure enough, within minutes I had read through a minute-by-minute account of this latest ordeal.

Meanwhile, with Google Maps, it’s all about open APIs allowing us to be creative in a myriad ways, doing things with a collective intelligence that no company, not even Google, could ever foresee.

But at least Google knows this.

Opinion

2005: A Map Odyssey

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Dave Bouwman does some prognosticating about the how Google might one day monetize Google Maps. Given that Google Maps and Google Earth have a lot of data in common, this is of interest to those wondering about eventual revenue models for Google Earth.

My own prognostication, if I may, is that I think Google will stick to contextual text ads, perhaps in a discrete transparent overlay near where the scale now is in Google Maps. In Google Earth, you might have Google text ads taking up some screen real estate, perhaps in a browser window that is forced to stay open in the free version.

But this is just brainstorming, really. I have no idea what’s in store. (Link via Spatially Adjusted)

PS. Sorry about the pun in the title. I’m sure he gets that all the time.

Content

Google Moon, properly

moon.gifBecause somebody had to do it, here is Google Moon as an overlay in Google Earth. No, it’s not at the highest resolution (just 1,024 pixels squared) and no, there is no altitude data (turn off the atmosphere and terrain to get the best results) but as a proof of concept it certainly works. Can’t wait to see Google Mars.

Notes on the political, social and scientific impact of networked digital maps and geospatial imagery, with a special focus on Google Earth.