The Google LatLong Blog has posted a few links with resources to help people with the aftermath of the bridge collapse.
Here are a bunch of maps with photos, news articles, meeting point locations, contact information for nearby hospitals and prayer service schedules.
Here is information about road closures and detours.
They also suggest searching Google maps for terms such as “35W Detour” for more information.
This is pretty slick — Google Maps will now give you multiple estimated times for trips that you plan (in “a limited set of metropolitan areas”).
Their example has someone traveling from Berkeley to Half Moon Bay
, which is “about 59 minutes”. However, the directions also say that it could take “up to 1 hour 50 minutes in traffic”. This allows you to look at multiple routes to determine which would be best if you had to travel during rush hour.
Obviously, this can’t account for accidents that might slow things down further, but it’s a neat addition. Combine this with the new click-and-drag directions, and you can quickly find the best route during heavy traffic times.
The Google LatLong blog has a full write-up with some nice screenshots.
According to a post on geothought, Microsoft’s Virtual Earth will be supporting KML in September or October of this year.
The implications of this are huge, but it appears there isn’t a solid source on it yet. The author (Peter Batty) heard it in a “vendor spotlight” presentation at the GeoWeb conference in Vancouver, but no other reporting on this has emerged yet.
If you’ve seen anything else to support this claim, please leave a comment and let us know.
A couple new API tips were posted today on some Virtual Earth related blogs.
First, the Virtual Earth / Live Maps Blog explains how to display their slick new hill shaded tiles using the VE API. I’ve already mentioned how good looking I thought these tiles are, so it’s nice to see an easy way to use them in the API.
The other is an article from Via Virtual Earth about how to customize your own mini-map inside of the VE API. While it’s not possible to really customize the default mini-map, the article explains how to create your own mini-map and customize it any way you want. It’s a bit cumbersome, but the article explains it in a very detailed step-by-step manner. Well worth the read if you’re developing any applications using VE.
Courtesy of Google Blogoscoped
someone made about a fictional anniversary. It comes with the warning that “some viewers may find this video disturbing”. That warning is solely based on the storyline, as there isn’t any profanity or disturbing images.
It obviously stretches the truth in a number of places, but if nothing else, it’s a unique short story. Check it out
.
As reported by the Google Earth Blog, the winners of the “Build Your Campus in 3D”
are now available in Google Earth. Check them out in Google Earth, or watch the video that gives a brief tour of each campus.
As announced on the Google Lat Long blog, today Google revealed the winners of their “Build Your Campus in 3D Competition“. They are:
The winners get to fly out to Mountain View in August for a 3-day visit and workshop. Fun prize!
Even better, Google says that nearly 4,000 buildings were modeled and submitted for this contest. That will certainly give their 3D content a boost when all of that is pushed into Google Earth.
The Virtual Earth / Live Maps blog just pointed out how great Niagara Falls looks in Virtual Earth. I have to admit, it’s quite stunning. I thought I’d go a step further and compare it to the same shot in Google Earth.
As you’ll see, there is no comparison. I have to imagine that Microsoft has done a bit of hand-tweaking to make the falls look so good, while Google obviously has not. If they wanted, Microsoft could tweak little areas all over the world to create fake examples of how much better their product is. That being said, this isn’t even close. Virtual Earths imagery looks better, the altitude mesh is much more precise, and they have 3D buildings all around the area.
Here are the two programs side by side (click thumbnails for full-size images):
| Niagara Falls in Virtual Earth (view in VE)  |
Niagara Falls in Google Earth (view in GE)  |
Stefan at Ogle Earth
point out a fascinating article about what really makes Google Earth tick. It’s written by Avi Bar-Ze’ev, who helped develop Google Earth back when it was still known as Keyhole. It’s a very tech-heavy article about how you go from having terabytes worth of imagery to then rendering it all on a 3D globe. Good stuff.
John Gardiner at Using Google Earth points out a new tutorial on Google’s site that explains how to batch import addresses into Google Earth. I don’t have a set of data that needs to be done, but it looks quite slick nonetheless.