MetaFilter posts tagged with googleearth

The Bay Bridge is now closed

gingerbeer — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 20:51:06 -0800

The San Francisco Bay Bridge has been shut down for the weekend to allow workers to roll a section of the old bridge away, and roll in a temporary section, while they build the new permanent bridge. Download the video here showing how they'll do it. Web cams let you keep an eye on the whole thing. BART is running 24 hours, which inspired at least one pajama party on the BART trains. Everyone's gearing up for all sorts of transportation confusion, despite months of warnings and efforts to redirect people. Hopefully, everyone headed for Burning Man has already left the city. All of this work is to build a replacement for the Eastern span of the Bay Bridge, the section damaged in the 1989 earthquake. Yes, it has taken 20 years to replace it. The whole thing is being filmed by National Geographic, for a show on "unprecedented construction feats." Google Earth will show you what the finished product will look like (turn 3D Buildings on). Previously, with much of the history behind the construction.

Google Earth Typography

parudox — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 20:26:25 -0800

The alphabet in satellite imagery of Slavonia. [via]

mapping snoops annotate North Korea

nickyskye — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 22:51:49 -0800

North Korea has a reputation as one of the most secretive, authoritarian, repressive countries in the world. But that doesn't stop Curtis Melvin, a PhD student at George Mason University, from trying to shine some light into the country's dark corners l His North Korea Economy Watch site, which includes The most authoritative map of North Korea on Google Earth l Gulags, Nukes and a Water Slide: Citizen Spies Lift North Korea's Veil.

Hacking the Sky

Upton O'Good — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 14:46:44 -0800

Hacking the Sky: Robert Simpson writes astronomy tools for use with Google Earth, Google Sky, and Twitter.

An Interactive Map of the Night Sky

netbros — Tue, 17 Feb 2009 21:20:34 -0800

Star Viewer ― merging Google Earth (Sky) with Hubblecast videos to learn more about what you're seeing in the night sky. Alternatively, if you have Google Earth 4.3 or above you can watch these videos in Google Earth (Sky). Virtual Tourism has its own layer in the Sky section of Google Earth that includes most of the videos on this page. The layer can be found under the 'Education Center' folder. Hubblecast also now have a layer of videos in Google Earth. Alternatively you can download this kml of the videos. The checkboxes at the top of the page will turn on a number of layers. The 'Sat' checkbox will turn on the locations of satellites orbiting the Earth. The 'Hubble' checkbox will turn on the current position of Hubble. The 'Constellations' checkbox will turn on the constellations.

Art by the square centimeter

beagle — Wed, 14 Jan 2009 05:38:08 -0800

Google Earth moves to square centimeter resolution, when it comes to art at Madrid's Prado Museum. Zoom in on 14-gigapixel images (about 1400 times the detail of a standard 10-gigapixel camera) of some of the museum's masterpieces, via Google Earth or Google Maps (start here). It's like putting your nose right up to the painting. Some details at Google Blog. Be sure to watch the how-it-was-done video.

On a Clear Day, I Can See Mumbai but Not Dick Cheney's House

terranova — Fri, 19 Dec 2008 00:13:51 -0800

What a month for Google Earth. Its breathtaking updated 3D New York City skyline features textured photos of hundreds of buildings. It has doubled its US coverage and expanded Street View imagery by 22 times. But it also became the subject of a failed legal petition in India demanding it blur sensitive areas in the country. Supposedly, it had agreed to do this nearly two years before the Mumbai attack. Despite the bad timing, an Indian rival plans to sharpen the competition. Google Maps and Earth allegedly blur sensitive sites and a few questionably sensitive landmarks. However, as yet undeterred by security and privacy controversy, Google is adding GeoEye's satellite imagery to Google Earth next month.

Cows as compasses

Knappster — Mon, 25 Aug 2008 22:03:19 -0800

Using images from Google Earth, scientists have determined that grazing cattle and deer align themselves with the Earth's magnetic field.

World Where's Waldo

majikstreet — Wed, 16 Apr 2008 15:30:28 -0800

NPR article on World Where's Waldo Link to the website A Canadian woman made a giant waldo and put it on top of her house and is waiting for the google earth satellites to pick him up.

Another step into the metaverse

mullingitover — Wed, 09 Apr 2008 15:42:05 -0800

Building on the ideas of Microsoft's Photosynth, flickr's geotagging, and Google's Panoramio, Viewfinder aims to organize photographs spatially in 3D worlds such as Google Earth. See it in action.

What Did We Call This Place When?

mmahaffie — Thu, 03 Apr 2008 18:23:24 -0800

Native Names Projects by the Coeur d'Alene Tribe GIS Program and the Hawaii Board on Geographic Names are adding audio pronunciation guides to geospatial place-name datasets in several on-line mapping formats. Both groups have small grants from the Federal Geographic Data Committee. The Hawaii folks have already been adding diacritical marks to USGS maps to guide pronunciation. The Coeur d'Alene staff have posted traditional names and links to audio files on a flash-based map site, the National Map site and (most usefully, I think) via Google Earth (KMZ).

I Am The Eye In The Sky

Bora Horza Gobuchul — Thu, 13 Mar 2008 20:17:02 -0800

Discoveries made using satellite imagery, particularly via Google Earth, have made headlines in the blue and green before. Increasingly high-resolution photos, combined with obsessive interest, have lead inevitably to the next step: interpretation and analysis of spots on the Earth's surface for which information is restricted, censored, or classified, such as the preparedness of military defenses in North Korea and Iran, or the viability of Saudi Arabia's next big oil play. Of course, not all mapping is benevolent.

Civil War and/or Aerial Reconnaissance Nerds Only

marxchivist — Wed, 06 Feb 2008 09:43:34 -0800

The of Battlefields and Bibliophiles blog has a fun quiz. Check your knowledge of American Civil War battlefields by guessing which battleground is featured in the Google Earth images. Answers here. I think I know more than the average doofus about this sort of thing, but the only ones I got right were #1, 3 and 4. I got close on number 6. The same blog featured a Hilarious! post on Black Confederates last month. Also, I recently ran across this thoughtful Civil War blog, done by a sixteen year-old girl.

beautiful ways to span a gap or a river

nickyskye — Fri, 05 Oct 2007 10:01:34 -0800

Construction of the World's Highest Bridge, Millau Viaduct in France, which is slightly higher than the Eiffel Tower. It is now included in a list of Google Earth extremes. World's most interesting bridges. Gallery of beautiful world bridges. Le viaduc de Millau, in French. Previously. Images of pretty images of bridges from around the world (no captions). Types of bridge construction basics.

This Thread Has Been Pre-Godwin'd For Your Convenience.

brain_drain — Wed, 26 Sep 2007 10:24:51 -0800

An Unfortunate View From the Sky. The U.S. Navy has decided to spend as much as $600,000 for landscaping and architectural modifications to obscure the fact that one its building complexes looks like a swastika from the air.

Google Maps and Earth Lights

philomathoholic — Thu, 30 Aug 2007 21:20:06 -0800

We've seen that one picture of earth at night. And we all know what Google Earth is. But someone has put the two together. Be sure to check out the map overlays, including the dusk map.

Huge And Unique

jonson — Fri, 10 Aug 2007 18:54:53 -0800

Because everyone loves a good superlative, the Google Earth Community's "Huge and Unique" page lists the world's tallest, deepest, longest, widest & general all-around most of everything there is. With pictures! Found via.

The odd, the unusual, the unbelievable

Blazecock Pileon — Fri, 27 Jul 2007 07:08:34 -0800

Fighter jets, overturned tractor trailers, WW II bombers, cars parked on walls, and more of The Strangest Sights in Google Earth

Got the whole world in your hands

blahblahblah — Thu, 10 May 2007 07:10:24 -0800

Have you played with Google Earth recently? You can track flights live and in 3-D, or watch an animation of global cloud cover over the last 10 days, or simply make Google Earth prettier using NASA images. Google Earth isn't limited to the current, you can also enable historical maps from the 1700s, and view an animation that will show you what will happen in the future to New York and San Francisco if the sea levels rise. Google Earth can also shed light on previous MeFi discussions, from the wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald (and, indeed many other ship wrecks) to the discussion over America's top 150 buildings, now in all of their 3-D glory.

No, not hand protection for Objectivists.

brundlefly — Sat, 21 Apr 2007 14:04:04 -0800

Atlas Gloves: A DIY hand gesture interface for Google Earth.

How to Create an Aerial Panorama from Google Earth

nthdegx — Sat, 09 Sep 2006 07:09:08 -0800

How to Create an Aerial Panorama from Google Earth. The Digitally Distributed Environments blog, and others following their tutorial, have created Google Earth panoramas of Belgium, Moscow, Paris, New York, London and the Sydney Olympic Site. They also note Panogames, who use a similar process to create panoramas from videogame worlds. This follows their Frank Lloyd Wright architectural/videogame walkthrough demo using the Half Life 2 engine [mefi thread] following which they appear hard at work formalising a clear method for importing CAD models into Half Life 2 for architectural visualisations.

Maybe the Chinese just enjoy having scale models

Drunken_munky — Sun, 20 Aug 2006 12:56:29 -0800

Google mislays Tibet. Tech news site The Register uses Google Earth to do a virtual flyover of ~~Tibet~~ Tibet Autonomous Region. They see lots of neat stuff, including railways, bridges, and the (former) Northwest Nuclear Weapons Research & Design Academy. Among other things.

Samarra, Iraq

grahamwell — Fri, 24 Feb 2006 05:04:46 -0800

Samarra is in the news. The modern city is small, but built on the colossal ruins of the capital of the Abbasid Caliphate. Google Earth reveals amazing details of the ancient city, one of the largest archaeological sites in the world.

2006 Google Earth Census

divabat — Fri, 17 Feb 2006 06:09:28 -0800

Seen anyone on Google Earth lately?

GeoVlogging

crunchland — Sat, 27 Aug 2005 22:51:49 -0800

The Mirror World ...a virtual tour through Seattle, WA, augmented with clips from Google Earth/Maps. [note: Quicktime]