One Man's Blog » Virtual Earth

Google + Holocaust Museum on Darfur Genocide

John P. — Wed, 11 Apr 2007 07:23:25 +0000

Google has teamed up with the Holocaust Museum to create a complete interactive map that can be viewed in Google Earth which shows the ongoing slaughter and torture of millions of people in Darfur. You’d have to be living under a rock not to know this was going on, but it seems the “civilized world” is willing to turn a blind eye to Africa.

Anyway, if you don’t yet have Google Earth you can get it here. Once you have it, here is the interactive map which includes photos, videos and testimony.

Here’s how they describe it:

Witness the destruction for yourself. Using coordinates provided by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Google acquired high-resolution imagery over the region of Darfur and Eastern Chad. Now you can witness the destruction in Darfur via Google Earth. Zoom down and see what a burned village looks like from above, the vast tent cities of people displaced from their homes, and photographs on the ground of refugees struggling to survive. Read eyewitness testimony of atrocities in attacked villages. Visualize what genocide looks like today in Darfur.

You can also see the full post over at the Holocaust Museum.

Excellent Google Earth Demo Videos

John P. — Sat, 07 Apr 2007 06:07:36 +0000

I’m a big fan of Google Earth because frankly it lets you do things that no other software has ever allowed before. That, and the fact that it’s completely FREE! (Thanks Google!)

Google Earth will allow you to plan trips, see the planet from a satelite view, and generally waste time. It is also required for some of the posts on my blog which offer a virtual tour of famous places.

Here are a few quick videos that demonstrate exactly why you should download and install this free software if you haven’t already!

Google Earth Flyover of New York

Critters

More Critters

Fires Raging on Earth

Big Things

The Universcale Puts Everything in Perspective

John P. — Wed, 04 Apr 2007 06:45:52 +0000

There is a very, very cool interactive demo that Nikon is presenting over on their site called the Universcale.

Let’s see, how can I describe it… well, it’s kind of like this video which I previously posted that shows how the size of our planets relate to other objects in the universe, except that the Universcale is interactive and also goes the other way all the way down to subatomic particles.

It really has to be seen to be understood, and it is well worth seeing.

Props to Webware for the find.

Iguazu Falls in Brazil, Largest Waterfall on Earth

John P. — Mon, 12 Mar 2007 08:13:39 +0000

The Iguazu Falls are the largest, most impressive falls on the planet. With 275 individual cascades they’ve been described as, “an ocean pouring into an abyss”.

The waterfall system consists of about 270 falls along 2.7 kilometres (1.67 miles) of the Iguazu River. Some of the individual falls are up to 82 metres (269 feet) in height, though the majority are about 64 metres (210 feet).

The Garganta del Diablo or Devil’s Throat (Garganta do Diabo in Portuguese), a U-shaped 150-metre-wide and 700-metre-long (490 by 2300 feet) cliff, is the most impressive of all, and marks the border between Argentina and Brazil.

Take a look at the video below, but also be sure to catch this amazing 360 degree Virtual Panorama

If you already have Google Earth installed, follow this link to explore the Iguazu Falls now. If you don’t yet have Google Earth, you can get the Free Google Pack here.

Time Lapse Panama Canal Crossing Video

John P. — Thu, 08 Mar 2007 06:31:24 +0000

Here is a time-lapse journey through the Panama Canal from the Pacific to Atlantic Ocean on board a cruise ship. The video comes courtesy of CruiseJournals.com.

If you have Google Earth installed follow this link to open and explore the Panama Canal. If you don’t have it yet get the Google Pack. It’s free and highly entertaining.

Celestia Free Space Simulation and Exploration

John P. — Thu, 01 Mar 2007 07:21:22 +0000

I recently came across a very cool program along the lines of Google Earth, except this program lets you fly around and explore all manner of objects and places in outer space.

Here is a demo video I created from the built in demonstration mode within Celestia. I highly recommend that everyone download and try out Celestia.

Google Sunrise and Sunset Mapping

John P. — Tue, 20 Feb 2007 06:06:21 +0000

I’ve come across a couple of sites which serve to provide real-time updates about which parts of the planet are currently dark, and when exactly sunrise is going to occur.

First, DaylightMap.com shows the pattern of night and day on a Google map, for any area of the Earth, for any date and time. It also allows you to select up to ten locations on the map; in addition to seeing at a glance whether it’s daytime there, you can show their local time, sunrise and sunset times, and length of day.

Secondly is the Sunrise and Sunset tracker. This app doesn’t have quite the same sophistication, and fewer options, but I kind of perfer the simpler interface.

Have fun!

650 Foot Long Horse Earth Sculpture

John P. — Mon, 12 Feb 2007 06:22:51 +0000

Over in the UK there is a 650 foot long earth sculpture of a running horse called Sultan the Pit Pony. It’s an amazing piece of work, and it’s perfect for viewing three dimensionally in Google Earth.

If you don’t yet have it installed, use my Google Pack link to get it, then just follow this link to open Sultan in Google Earth.

Near Ystrad Mynach in south Wales, we find a fantastic 200 metre long earth-sculpture of Sultan the Pit Pony.

This is the UKâ€™s largest figurative earth sculpture, and although Iâ€™m not sure thereâ€™s actually much competition for that particular title, Sultan sure is impressive. I particularly like the way his ear sticks right up in the air!

Sultan definitely looks a lot more like a Stallion than a Pit Pony, and as it turns out, this work (by landscape sculptor Mick Petts) was actually named Sultan by the locals – after a famous Pit Pony that used to work in the old colliery.

Thereâ€™s more info on Sultan at the Caerphilly County Borough Council website.

This tip was courtesy of Google Sightseeing.

Real Time Flight Tracking in Google Earth

John P. — Fri, 02 Feb 2007 07:20:16 +0000

FBOWeb.com has created a very cool real-time flight tracking feature for Google Earth. Obviously, in order to try this out you’re going to need Google Earth (if you don’t yet have it, you can learn about and download it here.)

Essentially, FBOWeb’s servers update the status of all the aircraft coming into the following airports (they are constantly adding new ones, so check their site if you’re reading this more than a few weeks after publishing):

A couple of hints… If you start clicking on these and load them all into Google Earth at once you’ll bog down your machine quite bad. Instead, load them one at a time and before you view the next uncheck the current one in your Places sidebar to deactivate it.

Also, when you are viewing them, make sure and zoom in pretty close to the airport and then change your viewing angle so you are seeing the planes from a 3D vantage point as opposed to just looking straight down.

Have fun!

F***ing Signs Now Theft-Proof

John P. — Fri, 19 Jan 2007 07:59:56 +0000

This just in from Annanova.com…

The Austrian town of F***ing has erected theft-proof road signs embedded in concrete blocks.

Officials acted because they were fed up with English-speaking tourists stealing them as souvenirs.

After the last ‘Welcome to F***ing’ sign was stolen, Mayor Siegfried Hauppl ordered brand new theft-proof road signs.

They are bolted and welded to steel posts embedded in concrete in the ground and the mayor added: “It would take all night to steal one.”

F***ing always attracts a lot of attention in the summer months, with tourists driving up from nearby Salzburg to pose for pictures in front of the F***ing signs.

But Mayor Hauppl said that while the money tourists spent in the area was welcome, locals were fed up with having to replace the signs.

And yes, there is really a city of Fucking, Austria. If you’ve got Google Earth installed you can click here to see where it is. If you don’t yet have Google Earth, go here and get it first.

Golden Colorado, the Coors Brewery and Red Rocks

John P. — Tue, 15 Aug 2006 06:13:07 +0000

Colorado’s first capital, Golden, is surrounded by mountains and high rock buttes. Main street is lined with shops and restaurants, and the world’s largest single brewing site, Coors Brewery, was founded here in 1873. It is a beautiful little town, surrounded by some of the most stunningly rugged scenery I’ve ever visited.

My little tour of Golden started with the free Coors Brewery tour. You can actually learn quite a bit from that link, but the tour will offer a 40 minute romp through a live brewery / bottling plant. So even if you know how beer is made, it’s something else to be in the largest facility of it’s kind in the world.

(If you have the free Google Earth installed you can view the brewery.)

Now, I toured the old Heineken brewery in Amsterdam last year which I would say was a slightly better tour and experience, but that was not a working factory, and you had to pay $10 Euros per person to do it. I’m not wishing to take anything away from this tour. The tour guide was extremely knowledgeable, they give you a lot of free beer and you get to see something you’ll probably only do once in a lifetime.

As always, there are a few little things to be aware of that the old travel books don’t exactly disclose.

First, everyone quotes this as a 40 minute tour. Well, the actual tour probably only takes 40 minutes, but you should also know that you have to first park in a remote lot, board a shuttle, wait for the shuttle to fill up, then drive to the factory. This whole process will cost at least 15-20 minutes each way.
Next, after arriving at the brewery, they hand out little beer bottle labels which signify the particular tour to which you’ve been assigned. When I was there, I was part of the third tour group to be sent while I was waiting. This cost at least another 20 minutes or so.
Finally, after taking the tour you get to go to the “bar” where you get to sample several free beers. Depending on how long you personally want to stay here, this could conceivably take a while.

So, the 40 minutes they quote is a serious underestimation of this event which will doubtless take at a minimum 2 hours or more. Still, I’d say it was worth doing, and it is something that the entire family can do together. (They serve coke to people under 21). Learning how the beer is created from all of the natural ingredients is kind of a mini science lesson, and there is no more appropriate place to learn it.

After taking the brewery tour, I decided to check out the Red Rocks Amphitheater, less than 15 minutes away. I really didn’t know what to expect, but I was totally blown away by what I found!

(If you have the free Google Earth installed you can view Red Rocks.)

I’m no geologist, but it doesn’t take one to know that this place is special. These are the largest, reddest rocks jutting out of the ground that I’ve seen anywhere. They were a breathtaking site to behold, and I highly recommend this short diversion to anyone.

Now, there were quite a few other things to do in and around Golden, but my time was running very short as I was on my way to the airport for a flight about 2 hours after I finished looking at Red Rocks. Also of note is Buffalo Bill’s grave and museum, the Colorado Railroad Museum and finally the downtown and surrounding areas of Golden.

Although I only spent part of one day exploring Golden, I spent the remainder of this long weekend in the Denver area. You can also read Weekend in Denver – Part 1, Part 2, or peruse the other places I visited during this extended weekend in the Denver area: Boulder Colorado, and Colorado Springs and Pikeâ€™s Peak.

While in Denver I stayed at the Hilton Garden Inn Denver South Meridian. You can read my review.

Free Google Pack Makes Life That Much Better

John P. — Wed, 02 Aug 2006 18:02:00 +0000

Google offers a great little download which I highly recommend. It includes several of Google’s best freeware offerings and, most importantly, an automated service to keep them all up to date.

Select the following link to download the package:

The Google Pack will automatically install Picasa, Google Earth, Google Desktop, Google Pack Screensaver, and the Toolbar for Internet Explorer as well as the Firefox Web Browser. It also gives the option of installing some other 3rd party software.

Here is why you would want each of the things offered in the Google Pack:

Picasa is one of the easiest programs you can use to manage your digital photo album. It gives even rank amateurs plenty of power to manipulate, edit and print images.
Google Earth will allow you to plan trips, see the planet from a satellite view, and generally waste time. It is also required for some of the posts on my blog which offer a virtual tour of famous places.
Google Desktop will allow you to have a nice sidebar that keeps all your favorite plugins up to date with things like weather, stocks, news, etc.
Google Pack Screensaver will turn your photo collection into your screensaver.
The Toolbar for Internet Explorer will add features including a Google search, form filler and pop-up blocking to your IE.
The Firefox Web browser is a very useful secondary browser even if you want to keep using IE. If you encounter a site that isn’t working properly in Internet Explorer open up Firefox and see if it works. Many people prefer to use Firefox permanently because it seems to be more secure and offers many useful plugins.

And for your amusement, here is an example of what Google Earth can do. Find more videos like this here.