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Google Earth in The Economist

The Economist published an article this week about the emerging architecture of geoweb and  Google Earth. It says that downloaded 250m times since 2005, "Google Earth is turning into a map of historical significance".
The article also mentions the combination of virtual maps with other sources of data in mash-ups. (According to Google, its maps are used in more than 4m of mash-ups)

Here is the list of mash-ups mentioned :

- housingmaps.com : san francisco apartment listings from craiglist.
- platial.com : free mash-up tools for bloggers (also called "autobiogeography")
- zillow.com : to create maps of home prices in America
- gasbuddy.com : petrol prices for USA and Canada
-exploreourpla.net : global warming and climat change
-heywhatsthat.com : diagram of mountain peaks

It's also said that the incorporation of satellite-positioning technology into mobile phones ans cars could open the floodgates. That was already demonstrated by Socialight, a mobile location aware application that allows you to take notes about places you go by in the street so that when your friends go around the same place get notifications on their cellphones about your notes.

So that's why the head of GE adds : Taken further, the map becomes a portal on to life itselfs. And the only thing that can hold it back, is the rate at which society can adapt.

technorati tags: Google Earth mash up Nasa neogeography geobrowser

Pict'Earth - UAV Aerial Photography Solutions

The french company Pict'Earth is a platform dedicated to live update and share of very high definition images on Google Earth. The french Pict'Earth has now a new office in the USA with a new website:  PictEarthUSA.com. You can see below a video shot with the "cyclope" : very cool video showing a guy launching a small unmanned remote control aerial vehicle with a digital camera used to capture images and then show the images in Google Earth. You can also have a look to their gallery of photos, here.

technorati tags: Google Earth Pict'Earth tracking navigation GPS

Google's Street Level new feature

Today at Where 2.0, Google announced its new Street View feature. Included in Google Maps, it comes as a visualization option next to Map/Satellite/Hybrid.  Street View provides a street level immersive photography within the maps. Try it in San Francisco, where lots of roads are already covered ! Here is a video :

welcome to Google "Geo" Blog

A new Google blog has hit the blogosphere: The Google Lat Long Blog ! The tagline says "News and notes by the Google Earth and Maps team"  : it will keep us up to date on new developments in Earth , Maps, Local and related API's. Click here to read the blog's inaugural post by John Hanke, GE and Maps director.

technorati tags: Google Earth Google Maps geoweb

Google Earth 4.1 (beta) released !

Great news for MAC users : With the release of Google Earth 4.1 (beta) a lot of Mac users can use the SpaceNavigator with Google Earth on the Mac ! You are not familiar with SpaceNavigator ?  It's a 3D Mouse device which lets you control Google Earth...like you never did before: Here is the video demonstration of gearthblog. And for technical details, click here.

ps. I would like to dedicate this post to a MAC lover, who bought the SpaceNavigator in december without knowing that it wasn't working on GE and who is soo happy now :-)

technorati tags: Google Earth SpaceNavigator MAC

3D Layer of American Architecture in Google Earth

technorati tags: Google Earth 

First Round in Google Earth

Google released the French presidential Election results -1st round- in Google Earth, have you seen it ? Francophone version of GE shows detailed results of the first round, but Ogle Earth reports that the layer isn't available in other language versions of Google Earth.

See Renalid, our friend-french cartography blog- for more info and screenshots.

technorati tags: Google Earth french presidential elections ogle earth renalid

Google Maps shows buildings in 2.5 D view.

Have you noticed the new feature in the US Google Maps ? Google has added detailed building outlines to some metropolitan areas:  the map view shows now pencil outlines of buildings !  The building outlines give a nice added context to the map view by providing a simplified 3D representation of buildings.

It's really cool that Google Maps continue adding features to Google Maps, which bring it closer to Google Earth.   

You can see gearthblog for more info.

technorati tags: Google Maps Google Earth mapping 3D buildings 

GE videos

You can always find Google Earth videos on YouTube but if you want to watch something cool, have a look to  mkbarth's videos ! He must be a great fan of GE :-)

ps. Interested in making GE videos ? The free version of GE doesn't record so use the freeware CamStudio to capture it. It grabs any part of the screen that you want and creates an avi. Then run it through Windows Movie Maker to edit and add sound. That's all !

technorati tags: Google Earth YouTube 

Google Earth Advertising

It is not a secret that virtual mapping tools like Google Earth and Microsoft's Virtual Earth turn out to be a big boon for the advertising industry. CNNMoney talks about it in this article, discussing how Google Earth can be successfully used for advertising. Recently, Google developped an online multimedia advertising campaign for Saturn's new car : The Aura. On the website of Saturn, you can see screenshots from Google Earth showing 22 Saturn dealer locations. (See the video below) Yes, as it's said in The New York Times : Google is not just for text advertisements anymore. New technologies, new marketing !

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ps. For all details and examples of other ad campaigns done with Google Earth, see gearthblog.

technorati tags: Google Earth Virtual Earth advertising Google Saturn The Aura