Help me fold this map up...

June 29, 2005 8:06 AM

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.)
posted by rzklkng (20 comments total)

We are Google. Resistance is futile.
posted by keswick at 8:27 AM on June 29, 2005

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?
posted by Armitage Shanks at 8:27 AM on June 29, 2005

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)
posted by nkyad at 8:36 AM on June 29, 2005

Google Earth? More like Google USA. As far as continental Europe (and the rest of the world) goes, all this is utterly useless.
posted by Harry at 9:01 AM on June 29, 2005

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.
posted by SomeOneElse at 9:16 AM on June 29, 2005

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.
posted by SirOmega at 9:19 AM on June 29, 2005

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.
posted by rzklkng at 9:36 AM on June 29, 2005

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!
posted by Goofyy at 9:36 AM on June 29, 2005

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
posted by Mach5 at 9:37 AM on June 29, 2005

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.
posted by davy at 10:02 AM on June 29, 2005

This needs a linux version. Windows bites.
posted by clevershark at 10:17 AM on June 29, 2005

Is this the same Google Earth we talked about yesterday, or a new one?
posted by mr.marx at 10:18 AM on June 29, 2005

No version for Mac OS X? I'm flagging this post as Microsoft NewsFilter.
posted by Rothko at 11:06 AM on June 29, 2005

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?
posted by danb at 1:09 PM on June 29, 2005

I swear this is straight outta Snow Crash...
posted by LordSludge at 1:24 PM on June 29, 2005

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.
posted by sdrawkcab at 2:09 PM on June 29, 2005

I'd like to see some type of airport finder and flight tracker...

and a BK Lounge locator....
posted by dawdle at 2:39 PM on June 29, 2005

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
posted by zardoz at 6:08 PM on June 29, 2005

zardoz, they've temporarilty disabled activations for new users of the free software.

There's a post about it on the Keyhole BBS here.
posted by amarynth at 8:45 PM on June 29, 2005

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.
posted by Dag Maggot at 10:24 PM on June 29, 2005