Google Earth Tag

What’s Happening In Google Maps

You have to admit, Google does an amazing job with Google Maps.  How Mapquest is still is business is beyond me.  Did you know they also now have Streetview?  Google has been and continues to be the leader in online maps and directions.  This week, the search engine rolled out some interesting features across it’s maps.

About a month ago, Google gave Map-goes an option to enable a few beta features.  Amoung those that make the list, a click and zoom tool which allows you to zoom into a certain area by creating a simple box with your mouse.  The feature it great esspecially if you want to zoom into a certain area faster.  Another feature Google released is known as Aerial Imagery.  It gives you  “rotatable, high-resolution overhead” images.  The downpart to this, is that it’s only avaliable in certain areas, but the good news is that the search engine giant plans on explaning that in the near future.  (more…)

Google Trike to Debut in UK

It’s no surprise that Google has made it its mission to map every part of the world in the most detail possible. Checking out Google Earth and its intensive and detailed satellite imagery will convince anyone of this mission. But Google has expanded its project to provide even more detailed and ground level images with its Street View application.

By driving a car with a camera mount through the world’s roads, Street View is a global mission to map the world’s roads. But it has become immediately apparent that this is problematic in certain parts of the world. While the USA has an abundance of wide streets and developed back roads, other parts of the world have notoriously narrow or non-car friendly streets. Just think of the constricted, cobblestone ways of Rome to get an idea of the issue at hand.

That’s why the Google Trike has made its debut. A bicycle mounted with recording equipment, this can gather the necessary footage even on the roughest terrain or narrowest road.

But the trike is also a way to win over reluctant regions such as the United Kingdom. After all, the UK has been notoriously opposed to Street View, especially after several well publicized incidents with the program. For one, the street level cameras caught the image of a naked child, and then a Street View car was actually stopped and harassed into leaving in a small UK village.
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Google Earth: Helping Us View Earth in a Whole New Way

Making its debut in the middle of 2005, Google Earth was an innovative virtual globe that allowed users to view satellite images of almost anywhere in the world. Seeing the roof of your house or your car in the driveway after zooming in from the earth as a whole was certainly a unique and exciting thrill, but after the initial appeal wore off, users began to draw a collective yawn.

Clambering for more exciting features, the latest version of Google Earth has finally arrived. Labeled Google Earth 5.0, the most prominent update is the addition of an ocean. While older versions of the program had a vague blue section that everyone accepted as the ocean, this new version features the ability to actually dip below the ocean surface. Users can now view the layout of the sea floor in 3D, and they can also view accompanying videos of ocean life, ocean expedition logs, and more.
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