My Google Map Blog

Google released quite a few 3D buildings yesterday. Not only did they publish my house (and presumably hundreds of other user-generated models), but they released two more full cities in 3D -- Berlin and Stuttgart.

As with their other recent 3D cities, these are very impressive with many thousands of models in each city.

Here is a video overview of the new buildings:

For more about this release, you can check out the Google SketchUp Blog.

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A few weeks ago, on June 26, there was a partial lunar eclipse for part of the world to see. This weekend, it gets even better with a full solar eclipse in the South Pacific on Sunday.

Michael at HeyWhatsThat.com has built a very impressive eclipse simulator using the Google Earth Plug-in. You can choose the eclipse that you want to view (like the upcoming "2010 July 11 Total Solar Eclipse"), then choose a place on the globe and a time to see what your view will look like.

Here is Michael's his brief description of how it works:

I use two instances of the Google Earth plug-in, one showing the Earth and the other the sky. Set your location by clicking on the Earth, set the time by clicking on the green timeline, and start an animation by clicking on the timeline's arrow. Use the dropdown menu on the bottom right to view other eclipses. (Note that the timeline shows your computer's local time, not the time at the chosen viewer location.)

Here is a video of the simulator in action:

If you want to try it for yourself, just head over to his site and explore. It's a very impressive simulation, and is a great use of the Google Earth Plug-in.

Google released some interesting news today about the WiFi problems and Street View:

Having spoken to the relevant regulators we have decided to start Street View driving in Ireland, Norway, South Africa and Sweden again starting next week. We expect to add more countries in time. Our cars will no longer collect any WiFi information at all, but will continue to collect photos and 3D imagery as they did before. (Google)

Ireland is the only new country mentioned here not yet covered by StreetView. Hopefully they will be able to publish images from Germany soon too.

Where would you want StreetView cars to go next?

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