My Google Map Blog

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We've all seen how beautiful our world can be, largely due to being able to view any location through the lens of Google Earth. Paul Bourke has a website dedicated to find fractal designs in various places, one of which is Google Earth. He's collected 25 locations so far, and the imagery is amazing.

To go with the photos, Paul has uploaded KMZ files for each of them. For example, you can use this KMZ file to view the above image in Google Earth.

Great work Paul!

(via Geography Education)

Street View

Google first added Street View imagery to Google Earth in 2008, and gave it a substantial upgrade in 2010 with the release of Google Earth 6. Rather than having a separate layer for Street View, they added a "pegman" icon to the controls on the right side of the screen, very similar to how it works in Google Maps. Here's a quick video on how to use it:

Sharing

There are a variety of different ways to share a file/location with Google Earth, but the two most popular options are:

1 - Save a KML file: Simply right-click an item in your [Places] menu on the left, choose "save place as" and save the file. You can email or post that file wherever you'd like, and others can quickly download and option it.
2 - Use the "Share" options. While in Google Earth, look in the upper-right corner for a variety of ways to share your current view. This post has details about that.

Smoots

If you've ever spent much time with the Ruler tool in Google Earth, you may have noticed a unit of measure called a "smoot". Back in 1958 at Harvard University, the Harvard Bridge was measured using a student named Oliver Smoot, the result being the bridge was 364.4 smoots long.

It's a fun easter egg for Google to include, and you can read more about smoots here.

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With today marking the 11th anniversary of the attacks on the World Trade Center in New York city, we thought we'd again take a look at the ever-changing skyline of the city.

Past

The best look at the old towers comes from this KML file from Patrick Griffin. In order to see the towers clearly, you can right-click on the new buildings and choose to "hide" them. They'll come back the next time you start Google Earth.

Present

By simply flying to New York City in Google Earth you can see a few of new buildings well underway. In the screenshot below you'll see One World Trade Center on the left, and Four World Trade Center on the right.

Future

To get a glimpse of how the completed buildings will look in a few years, you can grab this KMZ file. It will be a number of years until they're all complete, but Google Earth can help give you a great feel for what things will be like when they're done.

3D Imagery

All of that said, New York could look very different in Google Earth by next year. Google is rolling out their new 3D imagery to more cities, and they plan to release it for desktop users by the end of the year. Given the size and popularity of New York City, I would expect we'll see a version of it using this new imagery before too long.

It will be interesting to see how the new 3d imagery compares to the existing 3d buildings, particularly in New York thanks to the amazing Street View-generated building facades that were added a few years ago.

It should be an interesting year to see how things develop!

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TweetThink, “Purple Haze.” LargerContinue reading

TweetThe Autodromo Nazionale Monza is a race track north of Milan, Italy. This is where the Formula One Italian Grand Prix is held. The race track opened in 1922. LargerContinue reading

TweetLynn University in Boca Raton, Florida has been selected as the host of the final presidential debate between Obama and Romney. The debate will be held on October 22 and the election is on November 6. Google Maps Street View visited in May 2012 and you can see the students welcome the crew. LargerContinue reading