GeoEye-1 satellite takes its first photos for Google

by Scott Carmichael on

The photo you see above, is the first shot taken by the new GeoEye-1 satellite. The image is of the university campus in Kutztown, PA. The reason this is so interesting? GeoEye has sold all the rights of their commercial images taken on this new satellite, to Google.

Google laid down some serious cash to get sole access to these images, and I’m sure we’ll be seeing the results of this contract pretty soon in Google Maps and Earth.

The satellite can photograph objects in a resolution higher than anything available to civilian users, and the photographs will be so clear that you’ll be able to identify objects as small as 41 centimeters across.

I’ve always found satellite image sites to be a fantastic way of seeing the world from above, but as these things get closer and closer, I’m sure we’ll think twice before stepping out on the balcony for some naked sunbathing.

Create high resolution maps of all your trips with Flightmap

by Scott Carmichael on

It’s raining outside, so this morning was the perfect opportunity to sit down, browse through all my boarding pass stubs and enter them in a new application I’m testing.

Flightmap is a flight logging program that keeps track of every flight you have taken. You can log the flight number, aircraft type, airline and geeky things like the aircraft registration number and your seat number. Frequent fliers can even keep track of their award and status miles.

The application has an internal database that calculates the distance between all airports in the world, and naturally, it can also convert airport names into airport codes.

Once you have entered all your flights, you can view a summary that displays your most frequently flown routes, the longest and shortest flights you’ve ever taken as well as your most popular airline.

The best part of Flightmap is the ability to generate high resolution maps of your flights. In fact, Flightmap can generate stunning maps up to 32 megapixels large, which is great if you want to print them as a poster. If the built in map colors don’t interest you, then you can even export your flight history as a Google “KML” file, which can be imported into Google Earth (which is totally useless, but oh so cool looking).

Once you have created a map, it is fairly easy to save the image file and set it as your new desktop background so you can show all your colleagues what a well traveled individual you are.

Flightmap is a very slick, easy to use application and the interface is nice and clean. You can view a guided tour of Flightmap here. The application costs 19.90 EUR ($30) but a try before you buy version is available on their site, albeit with several limitations; maps are “defaced” and you can only export your first 10 flights.

All in all, it’s been great to finally have a nice place to save my flights. There are some other services with similar features, but this is the first one I’ve come across that is not web-based (which means it’s easy to take along with you). Now if you don’t mind, I’ve got some more flights to enter!

Why pay to travel when you have Google Earth?

by Jerry Guo on

A quirky media dust-up this week brought a lot of attention to one mom ‘n pop website: Google Sightseeing. Their motto is “why bother seeing the world for real?”. What they’ve done is managed to collect a huge database of sights that you can actually see from Google Earth.

But one sight you won’t be seeing (or at least in anything more than a super blurry blob) is the world’s largest palm tree, whose discovery was announced this week. The scientists had claimed it “can even be seen in Google Earth.” That turns out to be a bit of a stretch.

There are, however, plenty of things you can see from Google Earth. You can, for instance, be a virtual tourist and zip around Easter Island, the abandoned city of San Zhi, and the site of the world’s largest fingerprint.

Google and YouTube Take Video Watching to Different Level

by Abha Malpani on

Since online monopolizing giant Google bought YouTube last year, it’s not surprising to see them incorporate YouTube into their Google Earth program.

I’m yet undecided as to my privacy concerns when it comes to Google Earth, since I love zooming and peering into friend’s homes, hotel rooms, offices and other random spots — (yeah, and you don’t? — admit it!). I think the ability to be able to see related YouTube videos of the spot you are nosing into is a welcome application, although not particularly necessary; I guess the need of another press release was in order.

I was going to add — who would get onto Google Earth to watch YouTube videos? But then, why wouldn’t you? — specially if they are readily available and accessible from Google Earth. Who will upload, connect and tag these videos to Google Earth? The same crazy people who make them — we are all attention seeking maniacs who will put in extra effort to link where ever we can and be seen where ever we can.

There is a spanking-ly funny video on YouTube that gives a perfect example of what we have already gotten ourselves into with Google Earth, now difference is that videos will be more geographically connected and sorted.

Google now Tracks Flights

by Grant Martin on

In this week’s creepy chapter of Big Brother Watching You, Google has just started supporting searches for airplanes. Not carriers websites or airplane photos, airplanes currently up in the sky.

I suppose the technology has been around for a while; flightaware has semi-accurate flight routes if you ever want to see how you got from point A to B. It’s just that Google has now made checking the location of your boss over the Atlantic easier than checking your email.

All you have to do is search by the carrier and the number. In the above photo, I typed NW49 into Google and it gave me three options: Expedia, Travelocity and FBOweb as tracking agents. FBOweb supports tracking over Google Earth, which is pretty neat if you have it installed, but for the bulk of you who just want to know when you have to pick up your friend at the airport, the others should do just fine.

Happy stalking!