Sunday, December 24, 2006

More on Geology and Google Earth







Read the whole story.

Thursday, December 21, 2006

Santa Live

If you have not checked out the Google Earth Santa Tracker, you are missing out on a bunch of fun. You can find toys around the world by solving puzzles about our world. And starting on Christmas Eve, you can track Santa live as he navigates the globe delivering his tidings to well behaving little ones everywhere.

My kids love this feature and it fires them up even more for Christmas morning (as if they needed any help with this).

Learn more and download the Santa Tracker.

Tuesday, December 19, 2006

Geology in Google Earth



Compelling examples of such geological and environmental implementations include:




Sunday, December 17, 2006

Setting a Home View

  1. Create a new placemark or open an existing one.
  4. Rename the placemark "default".

Wednesday, December 13, 2006

Editing Wikipedia Layer Content

As the Wikipedia layer in Google Earth has caused much excitement, I thought it would be useful to explain more how you can customize this content:

How do I get my Wikipedia article to show up in the Google Earth Geographic Web layer?

You must geotag the article. The simplest way to do this to use one of the "{{coor title d[ms]}}" or "{{coor at d[ms]}}" templates on Wikipedia. These templates can be used anywhere within the article text.

For example, if the article for San Francisco, California contained the following markup anywhere within the article text:

"{{coor title dm|37|46|N|122|26|W}}"

Google recognizes this location and includes the article the next time we publish the layer.

Additionally, Google supports references to the "{{coor d[ms]}}" or {{coor title d[ms]}} or {{coor at d[ms]}} templates within an Infobox template, so long as it is keyed by either "coordinates" or "coords" keywords. For an example of such a template, see the Infobox_CityIT template and an example of its use in the Sorrento, Italy article.

I just read an article in Wikipedia. It has geocoordinates in the text, but I do not see it in the Google Earth Geographic Web layer. Why not?

There are several reasons why this may be happening. For instance, this article may have been altered after Google processed the Wikipedia articles. Additionally, it could be that the coordinates are not posted in a way that Google Earth supports (see previous question).

How can I obtain coordinates for a location in Google Earth?

You can move the cursor over any location on the earth in the 3D viewer and see the coordinates for the location in the status bar at the bottom of the 3D viewer. Learn how to change the latitude/longitude display.

You can also create a placemark for a location and view the coordinates for the location in the New Placemark dialog box.

I will post more about Wikipedia and Google Earth soon. Several of us are working on a FAQ that we hope to share soon.

Monday, December 11, 2006

Wikipedia in Google Earth




Wednesday, December 06, 2006

Your Horizon

A friend recently asked me if Google Earth could help him determine which mountains he sees as he looks out of his window. He lives in Cool, California on the western slope of the Sierra Nevada. As he looks east, he sees some prominent peaks on the crest of the Sierra near Lake Tahoe.

The traditional method of identifying these mountains would be to obtain a compass heading for the direction you are looking in and mark a map with a line from your vantage point heading in this same direction. But in Google Earth, I suggested a different technique for my friend.

First, I put a placemark at the location of his house. Next, I made sure that the terrain layer was on. Using the navigation controls, I rotated and tilted the view so that it was looking directly east (the direction of the peaks my friend sees from his house) from close to ground level. I found that the peaks were difficult to pick out, so I exaggerated the terrain to 2.0 so I could see the peaks more clearly.

Having picked out the peaks, I then navigated from my friend's house to the highest peak on the horizon. In the Layers panel, I checked both Alternative Place Names and Geographical Features. This last step displayed the name of the peaks, which answered my friend's original question (click the image in this blog post).

Using the Measuring tool, I was even able to determine the distance between my friend's house and these peaks.

Monday, December 04, 2006

Fancy Placemarks



According to the KML tutorial: