Digital Earth Blog

The first big update under the name “Bing Maps” (formerly “Live Maps” / “Virtual Earth”) and it’s a big one.  They’ve added a ton of new imagery, but they’re showing it in a new way.  Rather than posting a giant list of updated cities/countries, they’ve released a Bing Maps World Tour that walks you through the update.  It sounds like kind of a strange way to show the updates, but it works quite well.

It takes you to a view of the entire planet with blue dots on the updated areas (see image on right).  You can choose to have it fly you to each area automatically, or just browse around yourself.

You can get more info from the Bing Maps blog, or see the list below for a normal list of updated countries.

Google has just released a new feature for StreetView that looks pretty simple, but it actually quite complex and intuitive.  When viewing anything in StreetView, you’ll notice your is in the shape of an oval or a rectangle.  When it’s an oval, you can double-click to quickly move to that location. When it’s a rectangle (usually on building facades), you can double-click to be taken to the best view of that area.

Google was able to accomplish this using some slick methods, as explained on the Lat Long Blog:

We have been able to accomplish this by making a compact representation of the building facade and road geometry for all the Street View panoramas using laser point clouds and differences between consecutive pictures.

For more info, check out the Google Earth Blog, watch this short video below, or go try it for yourself.

As you’ve likely heard, Microsoft has unveiled it’s new Bing search engine.  As part of that rebranding process, other Microsoft applications are getting renamed.  Of particular interest to us are the new names for their mapping products.

Live Search Maps will now be simply called “Bing Maps”, and the Virtual Earth platform will now be known as “Bing Maps for Enterprise”.  Much more about this can be found on Chris Pendleton’s blog or by watching the video below.

According to the Google Earth Blog, there has been another imagery update for Google Earth.  The full list of updated areas is still coming in, but so far they’ve found updates in Scotland, Brazel, USA, Englad, Norway and Spain.

Keep an eye on the GEB post for more updates.

This could be pretty cool.  Microsoft’s remarkable Photosynth software now is playing nicely with Virtual Earth.  From their press release:

Photosynth software analyzes digital photographs and generates a 3-D model by “stitching” the photos together. These models, or “synths,” can now be viewed using Silverlight technology across multiple platforms. Virtual Earth brings together features, functionality and content that help consumers, businesses, citizens and governments bring location to life. It helps businesses and governments share location-based information, build better connections with consumers or citizens, and helps organizations make better operational decisions. With the integration of Photosynth into Virtual Earth customers will be able to create detailed 3-D views of anything from places to products and from hotels to homes.

Greg Sterling has some good ideas on how companies could best use this, covering ideas such as real estate  and retail stores.

Another imagery update for Virtual Earth.  They’ve still not released any new 3D “version 2″ cities (WHY??), but they keep pushing new imagery out at a good pace.

This update covers “only” 9TB of data, but they brag that it covers over 1 million square kilometers of Earth.  That sounds nice, but I wonder how it compares to previous releases and typical Google Earth releases?  I have no idea.  I have a feeling that it’s a pretty low number, but it sounds good because we have no scale to measure it against.

In any case, it’s still a very nice update and covers more than 65 countries.  You can get the full details on VE Evangelist’s blog.

I was wondering if Google would be adding their “ocean” features to other bodies of water, and it turns out they are!  You can now dive into the five Great Lakes just as you can with the oceans.

From the LatLong Blog:

Users will be able to explore features such as the canyons and shoals in eastern Lake Superior, the Lake Michigan mid-lake reef complex, and the old river channel, now underwater, that once connected Lakes Michigan and Huron at the Straits of Mackinac.

In addition, the NOAA Great Lakes Environmental Research Laboratory has created a narrated Google Earth tour which you can download here (KML) or view directly in your browser.

Google has just pushed out an imagery update, though the extent of it is still unknown.  According to Google Earth Blog, the following areas have been updated:

• United States – Broad coverage in in about a dozen states that used to have low-res imagery.
• India – Re-colorized, so it looks much better from way up high.
• France – Near Chateauroux.
• Spain – Along the north coast.
• Sweden – The entire country, it seems.
• Morocco – “lots” of it.

Frank will be posting more updates as they’re available, so keep an eye on his post.  If you see any other updated areas, leave us a comment and we’ll add it to the list.

This certainly makes StreetView even better — full screen mode!  When viewing anything in StreetView, simply click the small grey icon in the upper-right corner (next to the “x”) and it will go full screen.

There’s really not much else to say but go look at it yourself.  Go check out the Golden Gate Bridge, the Eiffel Tower (thanks GMM) or the World’s Largest Alligator.

If you’re looking for more great sights (or you want to share some you’ve found), check out the Google Earth Hacks StreetView gallery, Google Sightseeing, or StreetView Fun.

There’s some confused people in Broughton, a Buckinghamshire village.  According to the Timesonline casino:

So when the Google Street View car trundled towards Broughton with a 360-degree camera on its roof, villagers sprang into action. Forming a human chain to stop it, they harangued the driver about the “invasion of privacy”, adding that the images that Google planned to put online could be used by burglars.

Their main concern seemed to be that this would help to facilitate crime in the area.  They’ve had three burglaries in the past six weeks and they’re concerned that this could lead to more.  I’m thinking that if they already have a high crime rate in the area, stopping Google from getting imagery should be a little lower on their list of concerns.

A commenter on Digg made a good point that I’m sure will be lost on these villagers:

I hope everyone’s bank account is FDIC insured because I’m sure the street car has caught a lot of banks on camera and now they’re all like 20 times more likely to get robbed.

For the record, the car was on public roads and was completely legal.  It’s not like the couple that sued Google for taking pictures of their house on a private road (which backfired badly anyhow).  Google had every legal right to do what they were doing.  That being said, I think the driver did the right thing by turning around to avoid making the situation worse.

I’d really like to see these images show up on StreetView, with a mob of (blurred-out, I suppose) faces around the car.  I’m sure they won’t post it, but it’d sure be funny to see!  I wonder if Google will go back and try to capture this area again, or if they’ll just move on to other areas?