Items tagged with Google earth
The world was a different place in the 1980s, and we're not just talking about puffy hair styles held up with Aquanet and parachute pants. Parts of our planet were physically different. For example, the Aral Sea had not yet dried up, and the foliage in Madagascar was far more lush. You can see these changes in what is being described as the "biggest update to Google Earth since 2017," as part of a vastly enhanced timelapse feature. Of course, Google did not come into existence until the late 1990s, and Google Earth debuted in 2001. So how is Google able to pull off a timelapse of the past three and a half decades? Through the use of 24 million satellite photos spanning the past 37 years, which...
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The world is a wonderful place, as anyone with the means to traverse the globe can attest. Many of us do not have the resources or luxury of being able to hop around the planet to see its many wonderful sights. Fortunately we live in an era of ubiquitous broadband connections, and if you want to tour this giant rock we reside on, Google Earth is a great place to start. It's even better now that Google added some nifty new features. Google says the new version of Google Earth introduced today has been two years in the making. The goal was to offer users different and exciting ways to see the world, while throwing knowledge at them in the process. "With the new Earth, we want to open up different...
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Google Earth Timelapse is now offering a 33-year glimpse at the Earth’s human-led transformation transformation. Viewers can peruse thirty-three images of the Earth that span from 1984 to 2016 in numerous locations throughout the world. Some of these images include the rise of Dubai’s artificial Palm Islands, the retreat of Alaska’s Columbia Glacier, and the urban expansion of Las Vegas, Nevada. Google used its Earth Engine to sift through three quadrillion pixels from more than 5,000,000 satellite images. It then took the best pixels to create the thirty-three available Timelapses. Google encoded 3.95 terapixel global images into 25,000,000 overlapping multi-resolution video tiles. The majority...
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For the past ten years, Google has made it possible to traverse and explore our planet using Google Earth. Since debuting a decade ago, Google Earth has racked up over 2 billion downloads, making it possible for people to visit places they may never have an opportunity to see in real life. Well, now Google is upping the ante with a new version of Google Earth designed specifically for virtual reality. It's called Google Earth VR and it's available to download for free through Steam. As it did with Tilt Brush, a VR painting app that lets users paint in 3D, Google VR is launching to first on the HTC Vive. Since Google points that out, we imagine there will be a version for the Oculus Rift, though...
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Time flies when you’re mapping the world. Google Earth turned 10 today, so Engineering Manager Sean Aksay celebrated by announcing a new tool for finding interesting places around the world and a collection of some of the most beautiful images of our planet. “The ability to empower groups as diverse as school children and NASA scientists to learn more about the world is what I love about Google Earth,” wrote Aksay in a blog post. “It has the potential to make the planet a far more connected place, if you take the time to explore, discover and share what you learn.”Google kicked off Earth View’s birthday bash by releasing Voyager, which is a new layer to the desktop Google Earth. It dots various...
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Google dropped its pay model for Google Earth Pro this week, opening all of the software’s advanced mapping tools to the public. You can now measure buildings, records your “flights” around the virtual globe, and print hi-res photos of any location. For existing Google Earth Pro users, that means the end of a $399 annual subscription. Google Earth ProPutting Google Earth Pro on your computer isn’t difficult, but there’s more to it than simply downloading the software. You’ll need to visit the Google Earth Pro page, click Download, and create an account. You then install the software and enter your username and a license key that Google emails you, at which point you’re ready to go. Google Earth...
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It may not beat being there in person, but viewing 3D cities in Google Maps is a worthwhile experience. Google Maps and Google Earth update with 3D cities on a regular basis and the list is now in the hundreds, but what caught people’s attention today is that London has finally made the list. Thanks to aerial mapping, you can “fly” over the city with same perspective as you’d have in a plane. The London Eye in Google Maps 3D. Using the 3D feature is a piece of cake. Visit Google Maps, type London into the search bar, and click the Earth button to switch from the traditional map view. At that point, you can use the Rotate and Tilt buttons at your right to change your perspective...
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Score one for technology and notch another mark on Google Earth's belt buckle, which may have stumbled upon two Egyptian pyramids that haven't been seen by human eyeballs for thousands of years. One of the remarkable images shows a complex site with a distinct four-sided structure in the shape of a pyramid, while the other shows four mounds with a triangle-shaped plateau. Satellite archaeology researcher Angela Micol of Maiden, North Carolina discovered the ancient sites via Google Earth, both of which have been verified as undiscovered by Egyptologist and pyramid expert Nabil Selim. According to Selim, the smaller 100-foot mounds at one of the sites look an awful lot like the 13th Dynasty Egyptian...
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Google and Slooh are teaming up to map the universe. There's now a Slooh layer in Google Earth that combines Slooh's Space Camera technology and worldwide network of robotic mountaintop telescopes with the Google Earth application. With this partnership, you'll now be able to view a new map layer that shows images of space captured by Slooh's Space Camera. In addition, users with a Slooh membership will be able to control the telescopes, capture images, and share them with the world via Google Earth. Slooh to Map the Universe With Google Earth New Slooh Layer in Google Earth and New Slooh Space Camera Launch Cards Empower Everyone to Contribute to Space Exploration NEW YORK, Oct. 15 /PRNewswire/...
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Google Earth has been a huge addition to the navigation and technological world, but we haven't really seen it used for anything other than TED demonstrations and at-home tinkering. But now, the cops are onto the software, and they're using it to track down the bad boys we hear about so often.According to a new report from Florida, the virtual globe has been used to track down an illegally dumped boat. Deputy Gregory Barnes is the man deserving the praise, as he used Google Earth in order to assist him in discovering who owners a 1-ton boat that was dumped in an area he oversees. A 57 year old male was arrested this past weekend on a "felony charge of littering more than 500 pounds of waste."Upon...
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According to price comparison service Confused.com, people who use social media websites such as Twitter and Facebook might have to pay a higher home insurance premium someday. Social networking services could alert criminals when users are not at home. Some social networking services even show the specific location of an individual. Darren Black, the head of home insurance at Confused.com, said: "I wouldn't be surprised if, as social media grow in popularity and more location-based applications come to fore, insurance providers consider these in their pricing of an individual's risk. We could see rises of up to 10pc for people who use these sites. Black continued, explaining "Criminals are becoming...
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Where's the first place you'd look for maps of Mars?If you didn't say Google Earth, why not? After all, a 3D mapping tool of Mars was added to Google Earth for the 5.0 release. But Google today announced an update to the program that includes historical maps and images, a stream of the latest images from the Red Planet and not one, but TWO guided tours of the fourth rock from the Sun.In the Google Earth toolbar, you can select "Mars," and you then swoop in on the planet, with a 3-D view that includes layers and imagery. You can do all sorts of nifty things, just as if you were looking at, say, Earth - zooming in and out, switching camera views or giving the entire planet a nice rotation by clicking...
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California Assemblyman Joel Anderson (R-El Cajon) has proposed legislation that would probably make people look askance at California again. Seriously, he has proposed AB-255, a bill that would require online mapping services such as Google Earth to blur satellite images of schools, hospitals, churches, and government buildings, all in the name of security. Those not in compliance would face heavy fines, $250,000 for each day, in fact. The bill states: (a) An operator of a commercial Internet Web site or online service that makes a virtual globe browser available to members of the public shall not provide aerial or satellite photographs or imagery of a building or facility in this state that...
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Should cell phones, GPS devices and, heck, even cars be banned just because the bad guys use them?John Hanke, the man in charge of Google Earth and Google Maps, invoked those three pieces of modern technology in defense of his company's satellite imagery application, which has been blamed by some for helping terrorists plot their acts of destruction.A brief filed in Indian court in the investigation into the deadly November attacks in Mumbai cited cited Google Earth as having aided the terrorists who coordinated the series of 10 attacks. And The Jerusalem Post wrote about a Hamas documentary that showed terrorists using the application to plot an attack on Israel.Some have cited those two instances...
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There's a lot more to history and archeology than just uncovering the past. Sometimes recreating the past in our present time is the best way to understand how people lived thousands of years ago. One such project, the Rome Reborn project of the University of Virginia's Institute for Advanced Technology in the Humanities, seeks to digitally rebuild the city of Rome "as it might have appeared at the height of its urban development in the time of Constantine the Great in A.D. 320."The first version of the Rome Reborn project was ten years in the making and was completed only last year. It included digital models of the terrain and over 7,000 structures--250 of which were highly detailed. The source...
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Here's a way to peruse the globe while getting regional updates.New York Times "placemarks" will appear on maps where there's relevant news, and showing the New York Times layer in the software will show a window with a month's worth of headlines, Google's LatLong blog said.Google spokeswoman Kate Hurowitz said the company is open to partnerships with other media outlets and that extending such a feature to Google Maps--a much more widely used service than the Google Earth software--"would be a logical progression," though the company has nothing to announce right now. Google's interest in extending this to Google Maps is not only natural, it's a lot more exciting. Naturally if you want...
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Google Earth is already "sharp" enough. So sharp that insurgents in Iraq have used it to pinpoint troop positions, and so sharp that some countries want Google to restrict the images that it publishes of their land. A new satellite will be launched Tuesday that will produce even sharper images.DigitalGlobe, provider of imagery for Google Inc's (GOOG.O) interactive mapping program Google Earth, said a new high-resolution satellite will boost the accuracy of its satellite images and flesh out its archive. The new spacecraft, dubbed WorldView I, is to be launched on Tuesday. Together with the company's existing Quickbird satellite, it will offer half-meter...
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Some Easter Egg! It's not going to make you want to quit Microsoft Flight Simulator, but there's a hidden flight simulator inside Google Earth. You can even use a joystick with it. Though it’s nowhere close in features to the competition, Marco Gallotta found a hidden flight simulator feature inside the newest version of Google Earth — it’s actually not too shabby for the first go-around. There are two airplanes to choose from, several airports and of course the satellite imagery you have come to love in the actual Google Earth application. It would be cool if they took this free product - a flight simulator with satellite imagery - and turned it into a real product. 'Course, Google has...
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