KFC, a popular fast food chicken joint, decided to do a giant version of their iconic Colonel Sanders logo, built exactly where they knew Google Earth’s satellites would be going overhead. As you can see in the video above, they assembled the 325-foot tall banner in the Nevada desert last year, and you can view it now with this KMZ link in Google Earth.
(via SELand)
Google Earth added a new layer, which shows you live weather conditions over the globe. You get to see cloud cover (which makes the virtual globe a lot more realistic) plus radar and conditions and forecasts layers, all available now under the Weather folder in your Layers control. There’s also an animated layer of the last 24 hours of cloud data and last 6 hours of radar data that you can get by plugging in the KML files I just linked to.
One cool thing: When you are on the ground, or at least zoomed below the cloud layer, when you look up you’ll see the clouds above you, not straight out into space. That’s really realistic, and I love it. You should just turn on the cloud layer all the time for a better Google Earth experience.
Chris Pirillo did a video of the weather feature:
They’ve also re-organized the layers control to make it easier to navigate. Now, most everything is organizaed into folders and sub-folders, so you can activate everything in a category or drill down to get most specific.
Google is going to announce today a partnership with Multiverse Network, maker of virtual world platforms (like Second Life), that will let anyone create a virtual 3D environment using Google Earth terrain and Google SketchUp 3D models. Using the technology, you could grab an area from Google Earth, like the Grand Canyon, and populate it with your favorite landmarks, tossing in the Statue of Liberty, Eiffel Tower and Wrigley Field, creating a unique 3D world quickly and more easily than ever before.
The article also discusses SceneCaster, a new feature that allows the creation of 3D “scenes” in SketchUp that can be uploaded to the 3D Warehouse and embedded in blogs, Facebook pages or shared to Flickr. The article is not clear of the exact implementation of the Multiverse 3D virtual world product, or even if it will be free (though it appears it will), but it does say that each virtual world can have up to 1,000 users running around, which should make it fun to use as soon as we get our hands on it.
(via Ogle Earth)
In recent weeks, there had been rumors Google was prepping a Second Life competitor and that Niniane Wang was leading the project
The Navy is embarking on a $600,000 alteration of meaningless barracks facility near San Diego, changing the look of the 40-year old building so it no longer resembles a swastika. Because of the availability and popularity of Google Maps, Google Earth, and other satelite maps services, people noticed the shape of the building, which matches the logo of the Nazi party, causing a mini and constly uproar that otherwise would never have happened.
The Navy said officials noted the buildings’ shape after the groundbreaking in 1967 but decided against changing it at the time because it wasn’t obvious from the ground. Aerial photos made available on such services as Windows Live and Google Earth in recent years have since revealed the buildings’ shape to a wide audience.
On the one hand, the building’s shape is unusual but efficient, and not that big a deal, and they could have just ignored it. On the other hand, if we can get the swastika building changed, perhaps we can start cleaning up all the buildings left behind by the Freemasons before their strange architecture begins confusing our Thetan masters.
USA Today has a fascinating article about how some police in Wisconsin used Google Earth to locate some pot a marijuana farmer was growing. Mostly, they just used Earth to find the location of some GPS coordinates the pot farmer was locating, but it makes you wonder if Earth can be used to eventually locate drugs all over the globe so the peddlers of those drugs can be found and their crops destroyed. Google Drugs Search? Maybe.
A cool thing was found in the newest version of Google Earth (the one that comes with all the new space features). If you click on the planet and press CTRL+ALT+A, you get to start up a flight simulator and fly around the globe. While moving around Google Earth has always been fun, hopping in the cockpit of an F16 or SR22 prop plane can be a completely different kind of exciting.
Controlling the plane is by no means easy. If you don’t have a joystick or gamepad, you may not be able to do it at all. Pressing a key to turn is very sensitive, and for the most part sends the plane spinning out of control. You can either work on leveling the plane or work on heading to a destination, not both. In other words, find a gamepad and just do it that way.
If you need help, consult this list of keyboard controls. Spacebar pauses (very important), G retracts the landing gear. Stick to turning with the rudder, not the ailerons, by using SHIFT+the arrow keys. You can also try left-clicking and using mouse controls. I managed to get my speed up to 840 miles per hour and my altitude as high as 41,300 feet. How high can you get it?
Here’s a video showing off the flight sim:
I’m not sure if I really understand what it does, but Unype is an application that links up Skype and Google Earth. I think it lets you browse the world with a Skype buddy, and there’s also a Facebook/Google Maps application. Check it out and let me know what you think
(via Andy Beal)
Google Earth added a really cool feature, turning the satellite camera around and looking to the stars. You’ll need to install the latest version of Google Earth, which has a button on the toolbar to activate the new feature. The button will switch you to the view of the sky above your current location, so you can see the sky above your home (though probably without the environmental and light pollution that normally gets in the way.
When looking at the sky, you can activate various layers and zoom in on them as you would if you, too, had a mega-billion dollar space telescope. Layers include constellations (which maps them out for you), “backyard astronomy”, the Hubble showcase (which overlays better images from Hubble in some areas with bubbles for more info), the moon and the planets (which has a time slider so you can actually see them orbiting over a three month period), a user’s guide to the galaxy (what, no Hitchhiker’s Guide?), and the life of a star.
This video shows it in action:
There’s so much more to Sky than what meets the eye. After you download the new Google Earth, check out our Google Earth Gallery for fascinating examples of natural phenomena, Asteroids, or just take a tour of the sky. Since people across the world all share the same sky, we’re happy to announce we’ll be making Sky available in 13 languages.
UPDATE: Here’s another video Google made, featuring Sally Ride, the first American female astronaut, talking about the new feature:
Google Earth has a new layer for Google Book Search. Turn on the layer and there will be placemarks all over the globe related to Book Search results for that area. Click on the placemark and you’ll see a snippet from the book and links to find out more. In Google’s example, a placemark will be found in Detroit for “The Writings of Thomas Jefferson”, linking to a part of the book where he discusses Detroit.
Things I learned today: You can type a blog post with your eyes closed while you are napping. Just make sure to spell check afterwards.
Google uploaded this video to their YouTube account showing how game designer Matt Harding has been using Google Earth to show where’s he been around the world (dancing, apparently):
Google Earth’s website has a section about Matt’s travels, where you can download a KMZ file and check it out in Google Earth yourself. To see all of Matt’s awful dancing, check out his website.
Catching up: I had a crazy week, with me and my wife going on a short wedding anniversary vacation, one of my best friends getting married, and my aunt and her family moving forever to another continent. There’s a lot of stuff filling up the queue, so we’re going to go through it double time
Google Acquires Aerial Image Firm, ImageAmerica
Google bought another company, this time ImageAmerica, an aerial imagery company. ImageAmerica provided the high-res imagery of New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina, and can be used to provide high quality imagery of any area in a hurry, an excellent boon for Google Earth/Maps. They’ve got a “Beech Starship” aircraft that can get into an area quickly, get high, fly fast and with great stability, and get great images for Google to use.
Google Maps Now Shows Popular Searches
Google Maps has a new feature that shows the popular searches for a particular area. Search for a city, town, state, or whatever, and you’ll find out what people are searching for in that area. For example, I know that in my area, people are looking for:
While popular searches in Manhattan are:
YouTube Antipiracy Tool Coming This September
Google is expected to finally release YouTube’s antipiracy system this September, 10 months after buying the company, and many months after getting sued by Viacom and watching competitors take similar major measures at stopping the widespread uploading of copyrighted material. The technology will fingerprint videos so it can recognize when a previously deemed infringing video is uploaded again, and will allow copyright holders to embed a digital fingerprint in videos so the system will never let them be uploaded.
This couldn’t come a moment too soon. Google Video, which shares some of the same infrastructure as YouTube (when watching YouTube videos, I’ve seen them streaming from video.google.com) and presumably will share the same antipiracy system, is a hotbed of piracy. My wife and I have gotten some movies still in theaters from Google Video, something we normally never bother with, because it’s too damn easy to find.
Google Using Community To Grow Indian Maps
Google has decided that the best way to get good maps of India is to ask the locals for help. They’ve sent out GPS kits to some Indians, asking for their assistance in creating more accurate maps of the area, comparing the multiple data points for verification. The program has done 50 cities, complete with driving directions, using the GPS and special software that allows users to literally draw the roads on top of the satellite imagery.
DoubleClick Running Illegal AdWords Ads
Looks like future Google unit DoubleClick has been running some AdWords campaigns that break the terms of service. DoubleClick is running ads on Google search targeted to the term “AdBrite”, a competing web advertising company, actually using the competitor’s trademarked term in the ad copy. While Google has been embroiled in lawsuits protecting the advertiser’s right to target trademarked terms, it clearly bans the use of those terms in the ad itself. Someone should tell DoubleClick.
Catching up: I had a crazy week, with me and my wife going on a short wedding anniversary vacation, one of my best friends getting married, and my aunt and her family moving forever to another continent. There’s a lot of stuff filling up the queue, so we’re going to go through it double time
Google Reader Adds Popout For Video & Audio
Google Reader added a smart thing to its media preview, which lets you listen to enclosed audio files or watch embedded video without downloading the file by playing it in a Google Flash player. Since you might want to keep reading your Google Reader while listening to a podcast, you can now hit up a “Popout” link to keep the Flash player going in a new window while you do your business back in Reader. It works for enclosures with podcasts, video, supposedly even YouTube videos.
Google Earth Adds NASA, Night Layers
Ionut Alex reports that Google Earth now has three new layers, courtesy of NASA. Possibly the most interesting is one that shows the Earth at night, letting you see the intensity of light produced by major cities. Also, there are now layers that show photos of the Earth taken by astronauts, and satellite imagery of major geographic phenomena, like the Indian tsunami. Just open up Google Earth to check them out.
Google Personalizing Your Ads
Google has started doing a smart thing, personalizing ads based on your recent behavior. That means that when you run a search, Google will see how it relates to your immediate recent searches, and if it finds a connection, it will present ads based on that. That means Google is usingsome intelligence and providing a unique set of ads on Google search based on your activity, different ads than anyone else would see. Pretty cool.
Google Kills Click-To-Call Feature
Google has stopped offering the click-to-call feature in Google Maps, which would let you click in the search results to initiate a call to a local business. The feature, which involves you clicking on a button in any Maps search result, then entering your phone number, was rife with abuse, as pranksters used it to have local businesses called by their unsuspecting friends (nothing forced you to enter your real personal number), and the phone bill costs to Google probably outweighed any usefulness.
See If You Can Beat The Googol Conglomerate
Google ran a big puzzle competition all over its campus recently, and puzzlemaster Wei-Hwa Huang has posted the puzzles for you to solve. These are meant to be damn hard and solved by teams of very smart people, so be prepared for some tough work if you take this on. They’ve tried to recreate the conditions of the original competition as best as possible, but hacking the JavaScript will spoil it for you, and the original competitors couldn’t do that, so play fair.
I’m in Atlantic City with my wife, celebrating our one-year wedding anniversary, so here’s a post featuring a bunch of items I should have blogged weeks ago.
Google News Launches Image View
Google News launched a very cool image view, letting you track the news visually by looking at a page of images taken from the latest news stories. You see a block of twenty-five images, with headlines next to them, and an arrow to scroll through the list of headlines (you can navigate the list with your keyboard, even). A very cool way of browsing news stories, and a good alternative to the sea of text that is the regular Google News.
Philipp has a lot of detail and criticism of the initial release.
First YouTube Video Used In Court Decision
For the first time (of undoubtably many to come), a judge has cited a YouTube video in rendering his decision. The case is a strange one, with the judge so annoyed at perennial copyright abuser Leo Stoller, that in supporting Major League Baseball Hall-of-Famer George Brett, he invited participants in the trial to check out a complicated incident in Brett’s career.
As background, Evans included a description of what baseball fans remember as Brett’s famous Pine Tar Incident in a 1983 game against the New York Yankees over whether the bat was legal to be used. Brett’s home run was nullified by an umpire, the Yankees won, but on appeal to the American League his team got a second try and eventually beat the Yankees 5-4.
Evans wrote: “Baseball, like our legal system, has appellate review…It ended after 12 minutes when Royals’ closer Dan Quisenberry shut the door on the Yankees in their half of the ninth to seal the win. The whole colorful episode is preserved, in all its glory, on YouTube, at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Cu1WXylkto (last visited June 6, 2007). See also Retrosheet Boxscore, Kansas City Royals 5, New York Yankees 4, at http://www.retrosheet.org/boxesetc/1983/B07240NYA1983.htm (last visited June 6, 2007).”
Ironically, Major League Baseball had the video removed by filing a copyright claim.
From Google Earth to Google Solar System
GEarthBlog points out a mod for Google Earth that turns the Earth into the Sun and adds scale 3D models of all the planets in the solar system, though not in their proper places. Watch this video to see it in action:
Google Docs Adds Readability Statistics
One of my favorite features I always turn on in Microsoft Word is to always show the readability statistics, which analyzes your document and tells you a bunch of things, like what grade level you write at (I’m not a third grader!). Now, Google Docs enjoys the same fun and useful feature, with maybe a little more depth. Click the Word Count button, and you get your Flesch Reading Ease, Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level, and Automated Readability Index scores. Then, you can spend hours criticizing your education!
Gadget Lets You Skin Your iGoogle
Not satisfied with the options for customizing the look of your iGoogle personalized homepage? This Gadget gives you a bunch more skinning options, including a built-in searchable directory of skins, a skin creator, and a way to submit your own skin to the directory. When it’s all said and done, you can wind up with a pretty cool look, like in the screenshot above.
Adobe Labs has released a plugin for Photoshop CS3 Extended that lets you work with Google’s 3D warehouse, its repository of 3D models for Google Earth created in Google Sketchup. The plugin, available for both Macs and PCs, lets you search the 3D Warehouse from within Photoshop. Find the model you want, load it into Photoshop, and you will be able to rotate it within Photoshop and edit all of its textures. I imagine this would make it real easy to take photos of a building and get those photos to work exactly right as textures on your building, and that’s just groovy.
Google picked up yet another company last week, this time Panoramio, a website that links photos with where they were taken. Panoramio’s integration with Google Earth is what caught the eye of Google, with their layer of photos taken all over the world available as a default layer in the software since the beginning of the year.
Google also acquired PeakStream, which helps companies develop software for modern superfast processors, like multi-core processors and GPUs. While financial terms were not disclosed, the company did need to satisfy $17 million in funding, so presumably Google paid an amount somewhat higher than that.
Wild Sanctuary has added the audio layer for Google Earth that was promised a month ago, and you can get it right over here. Not only that, but the layer is available for Google Maps as well! The sounds play in Google Maps via the embedded Google Video player, and you can use it here.
Ionut Alex embedded the map in his blog, which was very cool, so I had to do it myself:
If you don’t like soothing nature noises, then ladies and gents, I present the sounds of New York City. 
Very cool mix of sounds, although the absence of cars and annoying noises detracts from the realism. I guess they are only modeling natural sounds, from the land and the animals/people.
Is this useful? For educational use, certainly. For fun? Maybe, too. And the nature sounds, if you can set them on a loop, can be perfect for just atmosphere, or even going to sleep to. Definitely a better experience than I expected a month ago.
Google said this weekend that it had made a deal with Stanford to license sensor technology from a robot car. The tech, from DARPA Grand Challenge winning “Stanley”, is to be used by Google to better map out cities and their structures for Google Earth (and hopefully Google Maps), as Google hopes to catch up to Microsoft’s Windows Live Maps.
Microsoft’s pulled ahead in this battle with significantly better technology, and while no one’s noticed yet, they eventually will, unless Google finds a way to catch them. Google’s 3D modeling technology, in the form of SketchUp, while technically very good, does not scale to rendering entire cities, and that’s why Google’s kicking it into high gear, hoping to use the sensor technology to move faster. Google aims to use the same tech that allowed the robot car to map out its own environment for Google Earth to map out the whole planet.
Can it work? They sure hope so.
One question: Does Google have any plans to take on Windows Live Maps in the browser? If they are finally acknowledging the competitive threat posed by Live Maps, shouldn’t they also acknowledge that Live Maps has an advantage by being browser-based, whereas Google Earth is software? Shouldn’t real competition be Google Maps having the same capabilities as Windows Live Maps? And isn’t it ironic that Microsoft is using a browser-based solution, while Google is using a software-based one?
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California-based Wild Sanctuary says it has created software that can add ambient sound to Google Earth. They’ve collected 3,500 hours of sounds from all over the world, and director Bernie Krause has spent 40 years collecting more than 40,000 animal sounds, all of which they plan to present as a plugin for Google Earth at Where 2.0 on May 29 in San Jose as an add-on for Google Earth.
Before I say anything else, the worst quote of the week:
Its director, Bernie Krause said: “A picture tells a thousand words, but a sound tells a thousand pictures.”
Does it?
Anyway, its an amazing collection and undertaking, but do you really want all these sounds assaulting you while you’re using Google Earth? I mean, it’s not like you’re hearing live audio, so is there really an advantage of hearing a traffic jam when looking for directions in Manhattan, or even something cooler like the sounds of Niagra Falls? It is definitely one of those things I’d like to check out, but I’m hesitant to call it actually useful.
This comes via Slashdot, where the comments are incredible:
Now when my relatives use Google Earth to find my house, they’ll get to listen to me on the can.
When I zoomed in over Microsoft’s HQ in Redmond, Washington, I heard the sound of chairs being broken. I’m sure if I zoom in over the White House, monkey sounds will fill my speakers.
Now I can finally know what a tree sounds like when it falls and no one is around.
Did they include *fap*fap*fap*fap*?!
It’s no “Smell-O-Vision” but I guess it will do.
I completely agree though that this will be great for educational purposes, though, that kids will have a fun time with it and learn something in the process.
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