Ogle Earth

links for 2009-07-03

stefan.geens@gmail.com — Sat, 04 Jul 2009 03:09:58 +0000

Barco | Barco Events | On tour this year... A 360° experience

U2 concert tour's transformable 360-degree giant LED screen:

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links for 2009-06-30

stefan.geens@gmail.com — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 03:10:46 +0000

ASTER GDEM

NASA's Aster global DEM website appears overloaded, so download the DEM from Japan's site:
BBC NEWS | Science & Environment | Most complete Earth map published

BBC: NASA and Japan release 99% complete global DEM for free use

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links for 2009-06-28

stefan.geens@gmail.com — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 03:07:44 +0000

Google Earth for Robot Planning, Operations and Visualization | Robotic Recon

How NASA uses Google Earth to track robot recon in Arizona. It's practice for lunar exploration
New Inscribed Properties - UNESCO World Heritage Centre

2009's newly inscribed properties in UNESCO's World Heritage List

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links for 2009-06-27

stefan.geens@gmail.com — Sun, 28 Jun 2009 03:04:24 +0000

Mozambique agrees to protect lost rainforest of Mount Mabu | Environment | guardian.co.uk

Mozambique agrees to protect Mount Mabu rainforest (first found with Google Earth)

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Amnesty International documents Sri Lanka war aftermath with Google Earth

stefan.geens@gmail.com — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 08:42:48 +0000

Fresh satellite imagery can be a compelling tool for mobilizing public opinion, by allowing public scrutiny of regions difficult to access due to war, natural disaster or government policy. Most recently in Gaza, but also in Zimbabwe, Darfur and Burma, we have been able to see the large scale effects of humanitarian- and human rights crises from space. The US Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM), UNOSAT and the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) have been at the forefront of such initiatives.

Now, Amnesty International has teamed up with the AAAS to highlight the humanitarian crisis in Sri Lanka, as civilians face the brunt of the end-game in a decades-long civil war. The result is an elaborate KML network link with satellite imagery overlays, analysis and georeferenced photos, produced by AI USA's Science for Human Rights project:

AAAS's involvement comes from their own Science and Human Rights Program, which has already produced a report based on DigitalGlobe imagery it commissioned of Sri Lanka's coastal "safe zones" in May 2009. Another recent DigitalGlobe image shows Menik Farm, a burgeoning inland camp for internally displaced persons (IDPs) built by the Sri Lankan government. Both images are included as superoverlays in the Google Earth file.

On top of this context, Amnesty International USA has added a series of georeferenced photographs taken from a low-level flight over the "safe zones" where Tamil Rebels had held their last stand, using civilians as human shields as they were shelled by government forces. Overlaid on the imagery commissioned by AAAS, it makes for a compelling tour of the surprisingly compact region.

Because I helped create the KML for Amnesty International's georeferenced photos (using Google Outreach's ever-useful Spreadsheet Mapper) I've spent a good deal of time in the area recently. Here are some of the surprises:

There is a remarkable shipwreck on the coast, not visible in Google Earth's base DigitalGlobe imagery from 2005, but definitely there on AAAS's overlay. It is also clearly visible in some of the flyover photos:

Also remarkable is how easy it is to cross-reference the landmarks on Google Earth with those in the fly-over photos:

Finally, Menik Farm. Google Earth's base imagery here is the default 15-meter resolution kind, and it doesn't at all prepare you for the massive city that has sprung up here virtually overnight, as the overlay clearly shows. Note too, to the East, a rather beautiful set of geometrical patterns containing what I presume are pre-existing farming settlements, though they seemingly were carved out of forested area.

Clearly, this Google Earth file adds an accessible sense of scope to the crisis. It's great that Amnesty International is embracing virtual globes as a communications tool. Their post announcing the layer should be up soon. (Posted now with permission).

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links for 2009-06-20

stefan.geens@gmail.com — Sun, 21 Jun 2009 03:10:32 +0000

Google LatLong: Imagery update for Tehran

Google Imagery update for Tehran: Not exactly useful, but a nice gesture
Digital Urban: FullView Panoramic Camera: Google Tech Talk

Digital Urban: FullView Panoramic Camera: Google Tech Talk

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links for 2009-06-17

stefan.geens@gmail.com — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 03:06:07 +0000

Walking the Censorship Tightrope with Google's Marissa Mayer - O'Reilly Radar

Mayer: "Requests from govts re take-downs that have justification of safety or security, we generally will comply with."
Secret Canadian mission maps volatile Afghan landscape

Extreme high resolution imagery of Afghanistan, but for military use only just now. Can we get a look when it's outdated?

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links for 2009-06-14

stefan.geens@gmail.com — Mon, 15 Jun 2009 03:07:04 +0000

Google says no to censoring content, editorial selection- Internet -Infotech-The Economic Times

Reading between the lines of this Indian press story, Google continues to not censor Google Earth imagery of India

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links for 2009-06-12

stefan.geens@gmail.com — Sat, 13 Jun 2009 03:04:14 +0000

Rude roof on Google Earth | The Sun |News

The Sun: Rude roof on Google Earth (here it is on Google Maps: http://bit.ly/1Pet8) Article:

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links for 2009-06-09

stefan.geens@gmail.com — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 03:07:57 +0000

OpenGeoData » Blog Archive » Augmenting photos - with OSM!

OpenGeoData: "Augmenting photos - with OSM!" Cool proof of concept! Agmented reality is closer than we think

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links for 2009-06-08

stefan.geens@gmail.com — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 03:04:16 +0000

Chasing After Crude in China? Just Log On - WSJ.com

WSJ article: "Chasing After Crude in China? Just Log On" and use Google Earth to track refining capacity

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Reverse geocode in iPhoto '09 using AppleScript

stefan.geens@gmail.com — Mon, 08 Jun 2009 09:35:40 +0000

Adam Burt writes in with some news that will be of interest to Mac users who like to script their workflows:

I guess you might have seen this, with this week's update of iPhoto to 8.0.3? Apple have added latitude, longitude, altitude and reverse geocode capabilities within the photo properties of the scripting dictionary of iPhoto.

I've cooked up a couple of scripts you can try out using iPhoto and Google Earth. All you have to do is select a photo that has a location associated with it, be it a GPS related date or one you have chosen from within iPhoto, then run the script.

This script shows you where the photo was taken...

This script will link to the selected photo within your iPhoto library and display it along with its location as well within Google Earth...

To reverse geocode an image without Lat & Long data:

tell application "iPhoto"
    set myImage to the selection
    tell myImage
        set altitude of item 1 of myImage to 23 -- In meters.
        set longitude of item 1 of myImage to 0.003976
        set latitude of item 1 of myImage to 51.397592
        reverse geocode of item 1 of myImage
    end tell
end tell
To reverse geocode an image with Lat & Long data:

tell application "iPhoto"
    set myImage to the selection
    tell myImage to reverse geocode of item 1 of myImage
end tell
Cheers,

Adam

In search of Britain's newly discovered 6000 year-old tombs

stefan.geens@gmail.com — Sun, 07 Jun 2009 16:05:19 +0000

Via Vincent Brown's always-relevant archaeological Twitter alerts I learned about what is being termed one of Britain's most exciting archaeological find in years: Two 6000 year-old tombs have been discovered not far from Stonehenge, near the village of Damerham.

So far, only the local media has the scoop. From the June 4 article in the Southern Daily Echo we learn that:

The tombs were discovered after staff from English Heritage studied aerial photographs of farmland in the Damerham area and saw signs of buried archaeological sites.

There's even more info in the June 5 article:

The tombs, thought to be among the oldest ever found in the UK, are already helping to reveal how we may have worked the land – more than a thousand years before even Stonehenge was heaved into place.

If aerial photos helped flag the plot for further research, what might Google Earth show? Is there enough information online to find the exact location of the tombs? It proved to be a challenge impossible to resist.

Googling "Damerham" led me to the village's wikipedia page (!), which in turn led me to the Damerham Archaeology Project website, which turns out to be the very same project being reported on in the Southern Daily Echo.

The project website seems to have been last updated during the 2008 summer season, before the import of the find became clear. But it does sport the aerial imagery that first alerted the archaeologists to the location, so it was just a matter of matching the view in the image with that in Google Earth.

It didn't take long. Damerham is a small village, and field shapes in the area are distinctive, so finding the exact location was easy. I've marked the spots in this KML file.

Aerial shot (from the Damerham Archaeology Project):

Google Earth view:

It is interesting to compare the aerial photos on the website to those in Google Earth. Clearly, the aerial photo was taken in a season when the fields show off the cropmarks at their fullest. The current Google Earth view shows off one circle pretty clearly, and hints at the oblong mound flanked by two ditches referred to on the website.

But turn on the historical timeline, and you get more imagery of the fields. Strangely, the current view in Google Earth of the fields is not the most recent — it's from 2002, or even 2000 (as those two years clearly use the same source imagery). But move to the imagery taken during 2005 and you'll find a much clearer view: The mound and ditches are clearly there, and there is another circular cropmark visible near the big one, as this false-color version makes clear (lower right):

The other features, however, are fully hidden by the crops. Clearly, there is an advantage to commissioning your own aerial imagery intead of relying on Google Earth:-)

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links for 2009-06-06

stefan.geens@gmail.com — Sun, 07 Jun 2009 03:05:27 +0000

Bing Maps World Tour

Bing Maps update tour: Full screen option very nice, UI less so (try pressing the play triangle) And can I have metadata?

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links for 2009-06-02

stefan.geens@gmail.com — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 03:06:32 +0000

Geographic Travels with Catholicgauze!: Atlas of True Borders: Now in Google Maps

Atlas of True Borders: Google map of de facto independent states and sovereign bases

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