Google has put a fun little Easter egg into Google Maps
StreetView. The little StreetView man has been replaced by a little green leprechaun, sitting on a clover. When you drag him around, he’s trailed by a rainbow.
It’s a few days early, but it’s a fun little change. Thanks to Googling Google for the link.
Google has just released
a version of Google Sky that can be viewed in your browser, very similar to Google Maps.
The interface is very similar to Google Maps, but with some sky-based changes. The main change is that the tools which are normally “Map”, “Satellite” and “Terrain” have now become “Backyard Astronomy”, “Infrared”, “Microwave” and “Historical”. I think they’re pretty self-explanatory.
Enough talk — go check it out! Here are some screens if you just want a quick peek:
Updates — A few other sites have more detailed reviews of this product:
It’ll be a hard road (if not impossible) for MapQuest to try to catch up to Google, Yahoo and Microsoft in the maps race, but they’re doing their best.
I guess I should say what I mean by “catch up”. In terms of usage, they still have a remarkable lead. In January they still had just over 50% of US visits, with Google in second place at 22%. Given how crappy their system has been when compared to the others, those are some staggering numbers. Branding goes a long way…
Despite the great numbers, Google is quickly gaining ground. MapQuest knows they have to do something or they’ll be dead before too long. As part of that, they’ve just released “MapQuest Platform
“. It sounds pretty slick:
All in all, it’s a very nice upgrade. However, it still falls far short of the power of any other other three platforms. As a developer, I have absolutely no interest in using them for building a mashup, as Google already handles it far better and I’m already more familiar with their tools.
That being said, MapQuest has to do something
, and this is certainly a move in the right direction.
Robert Scoble has admitted that a demo of Microsoft’s World Wide Telescope a few weeks ago made him cry.
A snippet:
You drag around the sky. There’s Mars. There’s the big dipper. There’s Beetlejuice. Etc. It’s just like the star party you probably attended in college.
But it has one difference between any telescope you’ve ever looked at.
You can zoom. Zoom. Zoom. Zoom.
We picked a point of light inside the big dipper. Zoom. Zoom. Zoom. Zoom. Holy shit, it’s two galaxies colliding. It looked like a star. Zoom. Zoom. Zoom.
Now the magic happened.
Curtis Wong said: “let’s switch to a different telescope and see what these two galaxies colliding are spitting out.”
He clicked a button and we saw a completely different view of the same colliding galaxies. This time we weren’t looking at visible light, but at something else. I think it might have been infrared, or maybe a look at radiation being kicked out. He had about 10 of the world’s telescopes to look at. I forget all the names, but that detail is in the video coming on Monday.
for more information. He says a video is coming on Monday, so we’ll be sure to post that when we see it.
The 10 millionth file download on Google Earth Hacks is coming soon, and they’re giving away a few SpaceNavigators
to celebrate.
Guess the exact date/time of the 10 millionth download and you can win.
Details about the contest can be found here, and here is where you can enter to win.
Microsoft just doesn’t play around. They’re back with another absolutely massive update, this one totaling around 27TB! I love the amount of 3D they continue to push out. It’s slightly lower quality than Google Earth, but the sheer volume of it more than compensates.
Much of the new imagery is for cities that have new 3D data. This makes sense. 3D buildings tend to look way out of place when they’re on top of low-res imagery.
The good stuff:
New 3D Cities
Ortho Aerial Imagery
Also, Japan now has level 19 tiles — it previously only went to 18.
Oblique Aerial Imaery
Satellite Imagery
Insanely awesome.
Google Earth Hacks has just unveiled YourMap and I think it’ll be a great tool for smaller churches to use. In a nutshell, it’s a simple tool to embed a Google Map on your page. Some details:
Check out their demo page, or just try it yourself. When you submit your details, it shows a demo right on their page so you know what it would look like on your site.
Reading Time: < 1 minuteGolf Nation, one of the largest golf course directories around, has added Virtual Earth maps to supplement their already existing Google Maps.
On any of their course pages (here is an example), you can choose between viewing each course in Google maps or in Virtual Earth (look immediately below the small Google Map on that page).
This obviously isn’t a huge story, but it goes to show the ever-expanding growth of Virtual Earth onto Google’s territory. 8,000 new pages with Virtual Earth content is quite a lot.
Reading Time: < 1 minute(via Spatially Adjusted) Here is a slick video showing a person flying through Virtual Earth using the Wii Remote (with a Nunchuk).
The movement is strikingly smooth. He’s moving multiple directions at once (something you can’t do with the Sandio mouse
), and it almost looks on par with the Space Navigator.
I have a Wii, so I wonder how on earth you can set something like this up…
Reading Time: < 1 minuteFrank Taylor at the Google Earth Blog has compiled a list of the 25 best Google Earth stories of the year. It’s quite a good list, covering everything from Steve Fossett to the flight sim
to Darfur.
Check it out. Agree with the list?