The official Google Earth plugin is one free download that makes all sorts of cool stuff possible in your browser. There's
a full screen version of the program (complete with underwater views and 3D buildings) which can be searched by entering queries at the end of the URL. There's
a framed version with support for layers, historical imagery, day/night cycles, and the Google Sky starmap.
Less useful but more fun are Google's collection of "experiments" demonstrating the possibilities of the Earth API, including
a "Geo Whiz" geography quiz,
an antipode locater,
a 3D first-person view of San Francisco,
a virtual route-follower, and
MONSTER MILKTRUCK!, a crazy fun driving simulator that lets you careen a virtual milk truck through the Googleplex campus, ricochet off the Himalayas, or explore any other place you care to name.
Lots more can be found in the
Google Earth Gallery -- highlights include
a look at mountaintop removal mining,
a real-time flight tracker,
a guide to trails and outdoor recreation,
a 360 panorama catalog,
geotagged Panoramio photos,
and the comprehensive crowdsourced
Google Earth Community Layer.
And while it's too large to view online, don't miss loading
the Metafilter user location map into a desktop version of Google Earth!
[more inside]
posted by Rhaomi
on Jun 9, 2011 -
15 comments
Fifteen years ago this week, programmer
Ron Britvich launched version 1.0 of
Active Worlds. Started as an autonomous project of
Worlds, Inc. (a spinoff of educational gamesmaker
Knowledge Adventure), Active Worlds was one of the first and most ambitious attempts to create a 3D virtual community on the web.
Built on the architecture of Britvich's
Worlds Chat beta, Active Worlds
debuted in the form of
Alphaworld, a sunny green infinite plane open to
public building. In its opening years Alphaworld experienced
a land rush of construction, resulting in
an anarchic starfish sprawl larger than the state of California. A sister company, Circle of Fire, was soon founded to craft
additional themed hubs, and once individual ownership of worlds became possible the AW community spawned a veritable universe of
hundreds of worlds.
Although
the company has seen its
ups and downs since those heady times and its fortunes have slowly dwindled, the
Active Worlds platform survives to
this day. Look inside for a simple guide on how to log in to the (free) service, rundowns of the best worlds, links to essays analyzing the program's legacy, and other content summing up
its venerable community.
[more inside]
posted by Rhaomi
on Jul 4, 2010 -
18 comments
Toy Story 3 hits theaters today, and it's already winning
universal acclaim as an enchanting and heartbreaking wonderwork, employing
understated 3D and a
"real-time" perspective that
deftly capitalizes on the nostalgia and can't-go-home-again angst of a generation that grew up with the series.
It has a strong pedigree, with 11-year-old predecessor
Toy Story 2 the rare sequel to equal its forebear, 1995's
Toy Story (itself the first CGI feature in history).
And it joins a lofty stable of films: over the last 15 years, Pixar has put out an unbroken chain of
ten commercial and critical successes that have grossed over $5 billion worldwide and collected
24 Academy Awards (including the
second-ever Best Picture nom for animation with
Up), a legacy that
rivals some of the greatest franchises in film history.
But there's rumbling on the horizon. Although the studio has been
hailed for its originality (of the 50 top-grossing movies in history, only nine were original stories -- and
five of them were by Pixar), two of their upcoming projects are
sequels, both of them based some of their least-acclaimed films (
Cars 2 in 2011 and
Monsters, Inc. 2 in 2012). And while 2012 will also bring
The Bear and the Bow Brave, the first Pixar flick to feature a female protagonist
[previously], fellow newcomer
Newt has been
canceled. With
WALL-E/Up/Toy Story 3 guru Andrew Stanton focusing on
his 2012 adaptation of
John Carter of Mars and with
forays into live-action already in development,
does this mark the end of the golden age of Pixar? Or is this latest entry lasting proof that even the toughest case of sequelitis can be raised to the level of masterpiece?
[more inside]
posted by Rhaomi
on Jun 18, 2010 -
227 comments
