Friday, October 15, 2010

Watch News Videos on Google Maps

Mapeas

Mapeas lets you watch news videos from around the world directly from Google Maps. Using the map you can browse and watch video news by location. So, for example, if you want to watch news videos of the Chilean miners' rescue you can just zoom into Chile on the map, where there is a large cluster of news videos of the rescue.

The videos are categorised into Business, Entertainment, General, Science and Sport. You can view all categories on the map at one time or select to only show videos from one category.

To view a news video just roll-over a map marker and click on the video thumbnail.

Comets and robots

On October 20th, Comet Hartley 2 will swing by Earth, passing a scant 19 million kilometers overhead. If your 15" telescope is at the shop, it's too cold to star-gaze in your pajamas or you're just having a spate of cometophobia, don't fret, we've got your back.

We've teamed up with the great folks at Slooh.com to deliver a live stream of images straight from their user-controlled robotic telescope network into Sky in Google Earth. Our new Slooh layer features thousands of images taken by Slooh users, with new images being added every few minutes.

You can find this latest addition to Sky in Google Earth by clicking on the planets icon at the top of Google Earth to switch to Sky mode. Then, in the layers panel, open the Current Sky Events folder and click on the Slooh Space Camera layer.

Opening any of the icons in the Slooh layer displays a list of images that have been taken of that object, and clicking any of those will load the image into Sky.

Check out our new layer and see what’s “up,” or head over to slooh.com and try it for yourself. It’s fun and free to sign up. It’s even OK to show up in your pajamas

NASA captures amazing image of Hurricane Paula

A few days ago, Hurricane Paula was bearing down on Honduras and Mexico. While it caused some substantial flooding and destroyed some homes, it weakened rather quickly and is now a tropical storm near Cuba.

However, three days ago as the storm was battering the coast of Honduras, NASA's MODIS captured a stunning image of the hurricane.

hurricane-paula.jpg

Here is what NASA said about the image:

The Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA's Terra satellite captured this natural-color image of Hurricane Paula at 11:20 a.m. CDT (16:20 UTC) on October 12 while over the Caribbean Sea, just off the coasts of Mexico, Belize, and Honduras. Coiled around a distinct eye, the storm's most intense clouds spanned roughly 200 kilometers (125 miles).

From their Earth Observatory "Image of the day", you can download the image as a 6MB JPEG, or view it in Google Earth as an image overlay with this KMZ file.

The Image of the Day site showcases some amazing images. We've shown you some of them on here in the past, such as the Tempe Town Lake Drain and a cool series of images that showed the growth of Las Vegas from 1984-2009. I strongly suggest visiting the site from time to time to see what kind of great stuff they're putting out.

Styled Maps for Maps API for Flash

The Google Maps API for Flash now has Styled Maps. If you want to use the new feature download the Maps API for Flash SDK 1.20 or later, and refer to theStyled Maps section of the documentation.


ScribbleMaps has quickly added the option to style maps. So if you want to have a play with the new feature go to ScribbleMaps and click on the 'Style Map' option.

Via: Google Geo Developers Blog

Friday Fun with Google Maps

No Wi-Fi on Everest

After checking out the reviews of Mount Everest on Google Maps I have decided to cancel my planned ascent. Apparently there's no wi-fi and they don't have Starbucks!

Google Local reviews are usually a very good source of information for restaurants and shops. Just occasionally however when you crowdsource information in this way the results can be more hilarious than useful. Google Maps users have been having a little fun with the reviews for Mount Everest.

Penguin Pegman

One of the little Easter Eggs in the most recent Street View update on Google Maps was the penguin icon used to replace Pegman for the Antarctica imagery. It has taking a little while to track down the source of the icons - but here it is.

Big Foot Found on Street View

Google Sightseeing have found Sasquatch taking a dip just off the Trans-Canada Highway.