My Google Map Blog

In just over a year, the 2014 Winter Olympics will be held in Sochi, Russia and the folks at Google Sightseeing have taken a close look at the various venues in Google Earth to see how they're progressing. The current Google Earth imagery is from roughly 17 months ago and shows the buildings in various stages of progress. A good example of that is Fisht Stadium, home of the opening and closing ceremonies.

I expect we'll see a nice imagery update in the area in the coming months, as Google tends to update cities prior to them hosting the Olympics as they did for London in 2012 and Vancouver in 2010.

In addition, I expect we'll see most of the venues in 3D and perhaps even Street View imagery around the city. For now, the only venue in 3D is the "Iceberg Skating Palace", seen here:

Check it all out for yourself by reading their full blog post, or grab this KML file to fly around and see the venues in Google Earth.

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For those of you that like to dig deep into Google Earth, a new book from the Geological Society of America might be something you'll want to check out. The book is called Google Earth and Virtual Visualizations in Geoscience Education and Research, and it covers a wide variety of facets around Google Earth.

It includes content from a variety of writers that we've featured on Google Earth Blog over the years including Richard Treves, John Bailey, Mano Marks and Valery Hronusov. You can read the full table of contents to get a better feel for the content available in the book. The GSA describes it as follows:

GSA Special Paper 492 consists of 35 papers that collectively synthesize the development and current uses of Google Earth and associated visualization media in geoscience education and research. Chapters focus on Google Earth and related tools, such as SketchUp, Google Fusion Tables, GigaPan, and LiDAR. Many of these papers include digital media that illustrate and highlight important themes of the texts. This volume is intended to document the state of the art for geoscience applications of geobrowsers, such as Google Earth, along with providing provocative examples of where this technology is headed in the future.

If you're interested in learning more about the book or to purchase a copy, head over to the GSA Bookstore site.

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This is the home where the Workaholics tv show films at.

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