My Google Map Blog

Is it a gruesome murder scene?  Or just a wet dock?  Despite sensational headlines from websites such as the Sun, it appears the “murder scene” in Almere is nothing more than wet cedar wood caused by a dog.

In fact, local resident Jacquelina Koenan is quite sure that is was her dog, a story which was verified by local police.  You can view the dock for yourself by using this KML file.

However, Google Earth has been used to assist in murder investigations over the years.  The best example came a few years ago after the disappearance of Jennifer Kesse.  While she still has yet to be found, there were some seemingly solid clues that came via Google Earth.

There was also the group effort that used Google Earth to try to track down the plane wreck of Steve Fossett in 2008.  You can read about that story here.  I think it’ll be a while before Google Earth is particularly useful in these kinds of situations, but as imagery quality and freshness continues to improve it’ll become an increasingly useful tool.

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As they often do the, folks at Google Sightseeing have a post that takes us on a tour around the world of a particular topic. Their choice this time? Ice Hockey.

Growing up in Michigan, I played quite a bit of hockey (most of it on the lake behind our house). The lake has many more houses around it now, though it’s almost certainly still a great place to play hockey for a few months each year. Despite a variety of historical images in Google, everything in that area was captured during warmer months (which tends to produce nicer looking imagery).

Now that I’m in Atlanta it’s a bit of a different story (even more so now that our NHL team the “Thrashers” moved to Winnipeg a few years ago), though hockey is still very popular around the world.

The story on Google Sightseeing includes various historical stadiums and other buildings around the world, including a handful of great murals in Street View like the one seen here:

I encourage you to check out their full post to learn more.  You can also found a few hockey resources over on Google Earth Hacks, such as this file of every NHL arena or a list of other hockey-related files.

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