Team Vision Virtual launches 3dHawaii.com

Partnering with CyberCity 3D, Team Vision Virtual has released 3DHawaii.com, a comprehensive travel portal to show everything you need to know if you're planning a trip to Hawaii. The site makes extensive use of the Google Earth Plug-in, and showcases some of the stunning 3D buildings that we've come to expect from CyberCity 3D.

From their press release:

Potential travelers who visit 3DHawaii.com can now explore the most comprehensive selection of hotels, resorts, restaurants, shopping centers, beaches, parks and visitor attractions available on the web, many in a 3D environment, to help them anticipate and plan their vacations and business trips to Hawaii. 3DHawaii.comintroduces travelers to the many wonders Hawaii has to offer, in a captivating and engaging way. After exploring the options, travelers can make reservations using links on the site. Travelers will find aggressive rates for both lodging and activities. For hotels, travelers book directly with the property. For activities, travelers will book through MC&A, Team Vision Virtual's local wholesale partner.

"Hawaii's legendary landscapes come to life for travelers at 3DHawaii.com. We have invested in and published hundreds of high quality 3D buildings on Google Earth, which is going to drive a substantial amount of new web visitor traffic to our destination and our partners," said Craig Carapelho, CEO, Team Vision Virtual. Hotels, activities, shopping centers, historic landmarks and other venues featured will help solidify the decision-making process for prospective visitors, allowing them to actually 'experience' all of our state's destinations in 3D. It's the next best thing to actually being here. For hotels and venues that choose to participate in 3D Hawaii, they now have a new way of showcasing their property and an additional connection to the booking process."

It's an excellent use of the Google Earth Plug-in. Bruce Polderman, the Product Manager for Google Earth agrees: "We're impressed with 3DHawaii's implementation of the Google Earth plugin, And think its visitors will appreciate this innovative approach to vacation planning."

It doesn't stop here. Hawaii3D is just the first in a series of 10 markets planned in the next 18 months by Team Vision Virtual. Given the usefulness of the Google Earth Plugin for this type of project, along with the rapidly expanding install base of Plugin users, I expect we'll see a lot more sites like this come along in the next few years.

Friday Fun with Google Maps

Bing Recommends Google Maps

If you do a Bing search for 'maps' its top recommendation is Google Maps. Bing Maps has made huge strides in the last couple of years but obviously still needs to try a little harder to truly impress Microsoft.

Wolf Geoglyph

This picture of a wolf was created with a bicycle and a GPS unit.

The wolf also just happens to be the logo of G4, the site hosting this map track. G4 allows anyone to save their GPS tracks, keep a record of their favourite places, store their geotagged photos and manage their geospatial data. Or you could just create your own geoglyph.

If you think that is impressive then check out this map of Warwick University created by walking 238 miles around the campus with a GPS unit. Now that is impressive.

Synchronised Car Crashes

"You turn left and I'll turn right and let's see if we can hit the signs at the same time."

Imagery Update - Week of July 12

Hot off the heels of early July's imagery update, we've got another batch of new images ready for people to dive into this summer. Have fun exploring the world from Queens, NY to the Queen Hatshepsut's temple in Egypt.

Queens, New York

Queen Hatshepsut's temple in Egypt

High Resolution Aerial Updates:

USA: Salt Lake City, Fort Worth, Abilene, Cleveland, New Jersey, and the New York boroughs of Staten Island, Brooklyn, Queens, and the Bronx

New Zealand: Otaki

Countries receiving High Resolution Satellite Updates:

Mexico, Cuba, Honduras, Jamaica, Haiti, Dominican Republic, Venezuela, Colombia, Peru, Brazil, Chile, Uruguay, Argentina, Norway, Morocco, Algeria, Libya, Egypt, Nigeria, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Mozambique, Russia, Iran, Uzbekistan, Pakistan, India, Nepal, Bangladesh, China, Vietnam, The Philippines, and Australia

Countries receiving Medium Resolution Satellite Updates:

Brazil, Sweden, Ethiopia, Tanzania, Tajikistan, and Laos

For a complete picture of where we updated imagery, download this KML for viewing in Google Earth.

Connecting Garmin Connect to Google Maps

Garmin Connect - Explore

Garmin Connect is a free web service that allows Garmin customers to store, view and share activities and locations recorded by Garmin fitness and recreational devices.

Following an activity, Garmin users can upload their tracked location data to Garmin Connect. Users can personalize and categorize each activity. Garmin Connect then calculates measurements, such as time, distance, speed, and heart rate and displays the resulting information using Google Maps, charts, illustrations and reports.

Using the Garmin Connect Explore map users can search for uploaded tracks by location and by name, type or by other keyword. If you click on any of the map markers you can view the track on the map. If you select the 'view details' link you can view the detailed telemetry data for an individual track.

Climate Change Impact Using Google Earth

The Google Earth KML shows how the world would be affected by a global average temperature increase of 4 Degrees Celsius is an awareness in climate science.

Using Google Earth this illustrates rising levels of sea water and reduction in crop yields in different parts of the globe if temperatures are not stemmed by reducing greenhouse gases.

The launch of the map by the Foreign Office (FCO) and theDepartment of Energy and Climate Change (Decc) comes in the wake of the "climategate" row over emails stolen from the University of East Anglia's Climatic Research Unit and the sustained attack it prompted on scientific research into man-made global warming.

On 14th July, the FCO and DECC launched an interactive map showing some of the possible impacts of a global temperature rise of 4 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial times. It underlines why the UK Government and other countries believe we must keep global warming to 2 degrees Celsius. The map includes videos from the contributing scientists, led by the Met Office Hadley Centre, talking about their research. It also includes examples of what the FCO and British Council are doing to build understanding globally of the urgent need for all countries to accelerate the transition to a low carbon economy.

http://www.fco.gov.uk/en/global-issues/climate-change/priorities/science/

Government chief scientist Professor John Beddington said there was"no doubt there is a problem in public confidence in climate change".

Between November last year and February this year, the number of people who thought climate change was not happening had increased and the number who thought it was man-made had fallen.

The map, which will be updated as new data becomes available, features videos of scientists talking about the research behind the potential impacts of climate change and information about work undertaken by the Foreign Office and British Council.

Climate change minister Greg Barker said politicians had a responsibility to help make it easy for people to take action on climate changes.

And he said: "A lot of this is about the tone - there was a slight sense the climate community, and politicians are a large part of that, got what was coming to it.

"It was being a little too preachy, had a little bit of a high moral tone."

He said people did not need to deal in absolutes to make a strong case for action on climate change and it was in the UK's long-term interest to lead the way on the move to a low carbon economy.

Ed Parsons from Google said: "This is a great example of the benefits of using the latest web technology to visualise scientific information and promote better understanding of the potential impacts of climate change."

The online map is available, for people who have Google Earth installed, at: http://www.fco.gov.uk/google-earth-4degrees.kml

Source:

http://www.fco.gov.uk/en/global-issues/climate-change/priorities/science/

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/environment/climatechange/7891165/Interactive-climate-map-from-Google-shows-future-impact-of-climate-change.html

Labels: Change, Climate, Google Earth, Human Impact, KML, Map