My Google Map Blog

With Hurricane Sandy hitting the Bahamas and heading toward the United States, Google has set up their Crisis Response Map to try to help with the situation. The map includes various tools such as public alerts, emergency shelters and (as pointed out by Google Maps Mania and shown below) wind speed probability charts.

If you're in Google Earth, there are some great tools available to you in there as well. By opening the [Weather] layer, you can turn on near-real-time [Clouds] and [Radar] layers, which show the storm gaining strength:

If you turn on the main [Places] layer in Google Earth, a small hurricane icon will appear in the center of the storm. By clicking the icon you can view news, advisories, as well as three and five day path predictions.

If you come across any other tools that help with the tracking of this storm, leave a comment below and let us know.

The Cambodian Hindu temple of Angkor Wat was built using 5-10 million enormous sandstone blocks, some weighing nearly two tons, but no one has ever definitively explained how the blocks were moved from the nearby mountain to the location of the temple. Thanks to Google Earth, we may finally have the answer.

As explained in the Huffington Post:

Researchers report in a paper in press at the Journal of Archaeological Science that when they examined Google Earth maps of the area, they saw lines that looked like a transportation network. Field surveys revealed that the lines are a series of canals, connected by short stretches of road and river, that lead from the quarries straight to Angkor. The roads and canals--some of which still hold water--would've carried blocks from the 9th century to the 13th century on a total journey of 37 kilometers or so. The researchers don't know whether the blocks would've floated down the canals on rafts or via some other method.

It seems like a solid theory, and might very well be the answer. For a bit more on Angkor Wat, go check out the various 3D models that are available, or simply fly there using this KML file.

Check out the full article and then share your thoughts below. Does this really explain how the blocks were moved?

We've enjoyed the work produced by 3D Travel over the years. Their initial 3DHawaii site was groundbreaking, and they followed it up later with a handful of excellent sites including Las Vegas and San Francisco. They've now released a pretty slick widget that allows you to embed their content directly onto your site.

Here is how the widget looks when embedded on your site:

Adding one of their widgets is quite straightforward:

1 -- Click "View Site" on any location within 3DHawaii, 3DSanFrancisco, 3DLasVegas, 3D Kaanapali or any of their Private Label client sites.
2 -- Click the "Want to embed this location on your site?" link.
3 -- Fill in the short form (name, email, etc) and grab the code.
4 -- Paste the code on your site, as shown above.

It's quite similar to embedding a YouTube video, though I could do without the data collection in step #3. Regardless, it's a great widget and an easy way to show off some of those great locations on your site.

For more information, check out the full blog entry on their website.