Comments on: Help me fold this map up...

Help me fold this map up...

rzklkng — Wed, 29 Jun 2005 08:06:12 -0800

Google Earth: Zero Hour +1 If Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith was responsible for a productivity loss of $600 million (for people playing hooky), then the release of Google Earth has to be responsible for at least $100m. So the next question is...what's next? When you think about all the Google Maps hacks, from craigslist, to GasBuddy (offline), Chicago Crimestats and Transit Maps, London Traffic Cams, various sight seeing sites, NYC Subway Stops, plus integration with BlogWise, Terraserver, Host-IP (broken?), Yahoo Traffic, and the US Census, you might wonder what else could be integrated into gEarth?

Things I'm hoping for? How about integrating historical markers, daytrip resources, factory tours, social demographics (like Nationmaster), politics (fundraising, election results, registration, polling place location, election irregularities), mapped to do lists, real-time weather and traffic, things that aren't there anymore, custom atlas creation, IMDB movie location shoots, tighter integration with topographical maps, WiFi access Points, a News Attention Index, shipwrecks, Job Searches, and tighter integration with the USGS. As shown in the gEarth interface (left hand side, first one in "Layers"), their online community is already working on using, improving, and customizing gEarth's new features, including some updates (Caution, requires the integration of *.kml file, *.eta, or *.kmz files.)

By: keswick

keswick — Wed, 29 Jun 2005 08:27:26 -0800

We are Google. Resistance is futile.

By: Armitage Shanks

Armitage Shanks — Wed, 29 Jun 2005 08:27:38 -0800

Every time I try to install the free version, it claims to be Google Earth Plus and wants a login. Anyone else seen this? Leftover junk from an old version of Keyhole perhaps?

By: nkyad

nkyad — Wed, 29 Jun 2005 08:36:26 -0800

Armitage Shanks writes "Every time I try to install the free version, it claims to be Google Earth Plus and wants a login. Anyone else seen this? Leftover junk from an old version of Keyhole perhaps?" You have to create a (free) account to be able to download the maps in real-time from their servers. But after that it will let you continue without problem (there is still a paid version, but I don't know what it does)

By: Harry

Harry — Wed, 29 Jun 2005 09:01:13 -0800

Google Earth? More like Google USA. As far as continental Europe (and the rest of the world) goes, all this is utterly useless.

By: SomeOneElse

SomeOneElse — Wed, 29 Jun 2005 09:16:48 -0800

Paris came in pretty well, rock of Gibraltar, Everest, Tokyo, Pyonyang, Baghdad. (You can see the lines on the tennis courts in Baghdad). (Oddly enough the view of Jersusalem was incredibly bad). Seems more like Google Famous Places than Google USA. Nobody is taking nice pictures of my back yard here in Auburn AL. Sure NY is coming in well, but I couldn't see anything in the southeast away from the coast.

By: SirOmega

SirOmega — Wed, 29 Jun 2005 09:19:56 -0800

I will wholeheartedly agree with Google Earth being responsible for a loss of productivity. Granted, I work in a GIS department, and have already convinced my boss and his boss that we should get Google Earth Pro and the GIS Ingest plug-in to test it out (we're thinking about purchasing Google Maps Enterprise Edition), but just about everyone in our department was playing with Google Earth yesterday for some period of time.

By: rzklkng

rzklkng — Wed, 29 Jun 2005 09:36:22 -0800

Also, on the Google Earth site, they have a list of KMZ's you can add, including the Hoover Dam, the Golden Gate Bridge, and Bermuda.

By: Goofyy

Goofyy — Wed, 29 Jun 2005 09:36:54 -0800

Google what? I clicked on it, nothing came up but an error message, saying the Beta had been taken down. Vapor. Must be taking lessons from politicians. Or they ran out of bandwidth. LOL! Danger Will Robinson! Trademark damage! Google unreliable!

By: Mach5

Mach5 — Wed, 29 Jun 2005 09:37:47 -0800

hah, i totally lost 3 hours yesterday to it, and ill probably lose a few more when my cubemate with the 23" monitor and the geforce quadro fx running at 16x12 leaves. mmm

By: reflection

reflection — Wed, 29 Jun 2005 09:53:21 -0800

rzklkng sounds like a Lazy Bastard. Luckily for him, though, there's the Google Maps API (via Waxy)

By: davy

davy — Wed, 29 Jun 2005 10:02:06 -0800

So this "Google Earh" thing will only work if you download a client that runs only on Windows 200 or XP? Yeah, great innovation, Mr. Gates.

By: clevershark

clevershark — Wed, 29 Jun 2005 10:17:03 -0800

This needs a linux version. Windows bites.

By: mr.marx

mr.marx — Wed, 29 Jun 2005 10:18:39 -0800

Is this the same Google Earth we talked about yesterday, or a new one?

By: Rothko

Rothko — Wed, 29 Jun 2005 11:06:07 -0800

No version for Mac OS X? I'm flagging this post as Microsoft NewsFilter.

By: danb

danb — Wed, 29 Jun 2005 13:09:21 -0800

It says on the website that a Mac version is forthcoming. I have to wonder if Google doesn't just make cool stuff for the hell of it. I can see the business sense in a lot of their products -- selling ads alongside search results would be the obvious example -- but what's the point of this thing? Maybe there's a paid inclusion policy for places of business? Or is it just to steal traffic/users from the competition?

By: LordSludge

LordSludge — Wed, 29 Jun 2005 13:24:46 -0800

I swear this is straight outta Snow Crash...

By: sdrawkcab

sdrawkcab — Wed, 29 Jun 2005 14:09:23 -0800

For $20/year you can upload some personal data into the program, for example, GPS data, tracking where you've been. For $400 a year a company can use the software to map out clients, real estate listings, demographic information.... anything you can think of that fits the rough formula data+map=? So it's not totally for the hell of it.

By: dawdle

dawdle — Wed, 29 Jun 2005 14:39:15 -0800

I'd like to see some type of airport finder and flight tracker... and a BK Lounge locator....

By: zardoz

zardoz — Wed, 29 Jun 2005 18:08:54 -0800

It may just be my crappy computer, but I can't connect to the server when I start this up. I think it's Google, though, as when I go to their site it doesn't currently allow anymore downloads of the free version

By: amarynth

amarynth — Wed, 29 Jun 2005 20:45:08 -0800

zardoz, they've temporarilty disabled activations for new users of the free software. There's a post about it on the Keyhole BBS here.

By: Dag Maggot

Dag Maggot — Wed, 29 Jun 2005 22:24:22 -0800

LordSludge - I too was thinking Snowcrash. The only difference was that in Snowcrash, the Earth satellite images were real-time, so you could see the weather patterns moving, etc. Also the globe was accessible as a 3d object inside the virtual world.