My Google Map Blog

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It's a story we've heard quite a few times; Google releases Street View in a new area, and people complain about it "compromising their security". The most well-known example was in Germany, where thousands of people opted out and had their home/business blurred.

Street View imagery was recently released in Botswana and it's been met with a similar (though less intense) reaction. In short:

"We feel such places as the military base and the office of the president, the American embassy and any other such high-security areas should not have been allowed to be published," the Monitor newspaper opined in an editorial on Monday. "This compromises our security."

You can read the full article for yourself on the Guardian website.

Disagreements aside, the imagery in Botswana is remarkable.

Check it out for yourself in Google Earth or Google Maps by simply searching for "Botswana" and then dropping pegman onto the map. If you've not done it in Google Earth before, here's a quick video that shows how it works.

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Tebowing is to get down on a knee and start praying. The name comes from Tim Tebow, the American football quarterback who made this into his trademark.

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We've discussed the impressive "blue marble" overlay here on GEB a few times. It's a beautiful overlay that makes Google Earth look awesome. The "pretty earth" update earlier this year made it much less important, but it's still a fun overlay to play with.

Now NASA has released the "black marble" -- an amazing view of the earth covered in darkness with only city lights glowing.

Here's how they did it:

This new global view and animation of Earth's city lights is a composite assembled from data acquired by the Suomi National Polar-orbiting Partnership (Suomi NPP) satellite. The data was acquired over nine days in April 2012 and thirteen days in October 2012. It took satellite 312 orbits and 2.5 terabytes of data to get a clear shot of every parcel of Earth's land surface and islands. This new data was then mapped over existing Blue Marble imagery to provide a realistic view of the planet.

You can read more on their site, or just grab this KML file to try it for yourself.

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