Digital Earth Blog

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.

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?

Google has just released a major update to StreetView, covering large areas in the UK and the Netherlands.

Google Maps Mania has already found a bunch of great locations.  Check them out, and then add your other finds to the GEH StreetView database.

Sorry for being so quiet lately.  I’ve got a few big projects going on and I’ve been away from the Google Earth scene for a few days.  However, things have been very active and there’s quite a lot to see!

More Historical Imagery — Google has added more historical imagery to Google Earth.  This is an awesome new feature in Google Earth 5.0, and it’s great that they’re continuing to add more data to it.

A great lesson about Google Earth imagery — Like Frank, I often talk to people that assume Google Earth imagery is real-time, or at least close to it.  As you probably know, that’s far from accurate.  It takes quite a lot of work to get imagery into Google Earth, and this article does a great job of explaining it.

StreetView is coming to Ireland — According to Silicon Republic (via StreetViewFun), Google StreetView is coming to Ireland.

Big updates to Google Mars — Oddly enough, we can’t have live imagery here on earth but now we have it on Mars!

Google Announces Bridge Modeling Competition — This will only serve to make the 3D views in Google Earth even better.

Lots of good stuff.  Go check out those articles, then fire up your copy of Google Earth and dive in!

A new feature has arrived today for Google StreetView that allows you to browse Panoramio photos while in StreetView mode.  As of now, this feature is available in big cities such as New York, San Francisco, Rome, Tokyo, etc.

You don’t need to do anything special to get your photos in there.  These are taken from the same photoset as the main Panoramio photos.  Just send them your best shots and you might see them in StreetView!

Google has just announced the release fo the transit layer for 50 cities worldwide.  Google Transit has been around for a while, but this actually overlays the transit lines on the map.

As the Google LatLong blog says, using this in combination with hotels and/or restaurants can make life much easier when you’re visiting a city.

For more information, you can also visit Google Maps Mania.  The complete list of cities includes Belo Horizonte, Berlin, Bordeaux, Brasilia, Cairo, Capetown, Caracas, Chicago, Copenhagen, Dallas, Dortmund, Duisburg, Düsseldorf, Ekaterinburg, Essen, Frankfurt, Genoa, Guadalajara, Hamburg, Helsinki, Johannesburg, Kazan, Köln, Lille, Lisbon, London, Lyon, Madrid, Marseille, Medellin, Mexico City, Melbourne, Monterrey, Montreal, Munich, Naples, Nizhniy Novgorod, Oslo, Paris, Perth, Portland, Porto, Porto Alegre, Prague, Pretoria, Recife, Rennes, Rio de Janeiro, Samara, San Francisco, Santiago, Sao Paulo, Seattle, Strasbourg, Toulouse, Tunis, Vienna, Warsaw.

I downloaded Windows 7 on my laptop tonight (dual boot with XP) and started testing the various digital earth products.  So far, so good!

Google Earth went without a hitch.  It runs very well, too!

The Google Earth plug-in worked perfectly as well.

Google Maps worked, as did StreetView.

Virtual Earth installed flawlessly and worked briefly, then locked up the PC hard.

All in all, I’m quite pleased with how these programs are working with Windows 7.  I had intended to say “this works, that doesn’t, etc”, but everything works (for the most part).  I am very impressed with Windows 7 speed-wise, too.  It’s had a few hiccups (video card didn’t want to play nice), but these apps are FLYING on this old machine.

By the time it goes gold, I expect big things out of it.

Wow, Google is going nuts with StreetView lately.  Within the last month they’ve added support for the iPhone, revamped the web interface, introduced imagery for New Zealand, doubled the data in the US, and now they’ve brought out an updated client (version 2.3) of Google Maps Mobile for Nokia S60 (N95) and Windows Mobile phones.

In addition to StreetView, version 2.3 of GMM also brings walking directions, transit alerts, user reviews and a brand new interface.

Here is a short video of the changes, highlighted on a BlackBerry:

Google has announced today that they’re doubling the amount of StreetView imagery in the United States.  This includes places like:

• Memphis, TN
• Birmingham, AL
• Charleston, SC
• Places in Maine, West Virginia, North Dakota and South Dakota.

There’s not a complete list of updates, but it covers a LOT of areas in the US.  Check it out and post your best finds in the Google Earth Hacks StreetView Gallery.