From the monthly archives:

September 2007

New imagery for Virtual Earth

September 27, 2007

Microsoft continues to impress me with the pace of their imagery updates, all of which contain piles of data (10TB this time, according to their blog).
To go with the list of new/updated cities in 3D that we posted a few days ago, here is a list of cities with updated imagery.
New / Updated Oblique Imagery [...]

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The Swastika building is getting a face-lift

September 26, 2007

(found via Natural Search Blog)
One of the first odd finds that we posted on Google Earth Hacks back in mid-2005 was a building in California that was shaped like a Swastika.  Since that time, it’s been downloaded from GEH over 8,000 times.  The same image on Flickr has been viewed over 16,000 times.
Chris Smith at [...]

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More about StreetView privacy

September 24, 2007

Google has just put up a post on their LatLong blog with some of their thoughts about privacy expectations in StreetView.
It’s kind of a rambling post (paragraph break, anyone?) and there’s nothing too exciting in there, but here are some snippets:

“…we designed a simple process for anyone to contact us and have their image removed.” [...]

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A bunch of new 3D cities in Virtual Earth

September 24, 2007

Yesterday, Microsoft added 3D data to a bunch of cities.  They include:

Arizona

Phoenix
Tucson
Tempe
Mesa
Avondale
Gilbert
Peoria
Glendate

Augusta, GA
Denver, CO
Nashville, TN
Chicago, IL
Fort Worth, TX
Coral Springs, FL
Edmonton (Canada)

Chicago, in particular, is quite impressive.  Enlarge the screenshot at the top, check out a great video of it, or go see it for yourself!

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3D Red Bull Air Races

September 21, 2007

Google Earth Blog has a great post about some 3D models showing the Red Bull Air Races using time-lapse animations.
They were created by Joey Wade over at the Keyhole BBS.  A great suggestion from the post is to use the flight sim mode and try it yourself.  I’ve not tried yet, but it can’t be [...]

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GPS for the iPhone — sort of

September 21, 2007

Gizmondo has a nice write-up about a GPS-like add-on for the iPhone from Navizon.  Using cell tower data, along with any local wifi that it can find, the software calculates your location to within a few hundred feet.  While it’s not as accurate as real GPS, it provides a nice starting point for driving directions [...]

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Some new layers in Google Earth

September 19, 2007

A few new layers have been added to Google Earth today:

Preview — A quick look at some of the other layers available
Gigapan Photos — High res panoramic photos

The update layers include:

UNEP
AIA Blueprint for America
North American Ferry Lines
Google Earth Comunity

Google Earth Blog has more information about these changes.
Update: The Google LatLong Blog has a nice write-up [...]

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Google Transit improvements

September 18, 2007

As posted on the Google LatLong blog, some nice enhancements have been made to Google Transit over the last few weeks, including coverage for:

Buses and light rail in Dallas, Texas
The Las Vegas Monorail
Humboldt County, CA
Thousand Oaks, CA
Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART)

As well as new transit stop icons in Google Maps for a bunch of cities [...]

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Digital Globe launching first of two new satellites today

September 18, 2007

As reported on the Google Earth Blog, Digital Globe is launching a new satellite today, named WorldView I.  A similar satellite, WorldView II, will be launching late next year.
Digital Globe is a leading provider of imagery for Google Earth/Maps, so this is a great thing for those products.
It will be a while before we see [...]

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Google Earth update

September 17, 2007

Google Earth has just been updated to version 4.2.0198 (download here), but it’s taken a few steps to get there.
On September 14, Google released version 4.2.0196.  The big thing in this release was the support for the SpaceNavigator in “sky mode”, which is a great addition.  However, later that day Google pulled the new release [...]

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