Today we’re introducing the latest version of Google Earth, our interactive digital atlas. Now you can explore your childhood home, visit distant lands or scope out your next vacation spot with even more realistic tools.
In Google Earth 6, we’re taking realism in the virtual globe to the next level with two new features: a truly integrated Street View experience and 3D trees. We’ve also made it even easier to browse historical imagery. Over the next several days on our LatLong blog, we’ll be digging deeper into these great new features, but here’s an overview to whet your appetite.
When Google Earth was first introduced, people were wowed by the ability to virtually fly from outer space right down to the roof of their house. While flying over rooftops gives you a super-human view of our world, the ground level is where we experience our daily lives. We took our first baby steps toward bringing the Google Earth experience to street level with our implementation of Street View in Google Earth in 2008, which enabled flying into Street View panoramas. In Google Earth 6, the Street View experience is now fully integrated, so you can journey from outer space right to your doorstep in one seamless flight.
Now, you’ll notice that Pegman is docked right alongside the navigation controls—an ever-present travel companion ready whenever you want to get your feet on the street and take a virtual walk around. Just pick up Pegman and drop him wherever you see a highlighted blue road to fly right down to the ground. Once there, you can use the navigation controls or your mouse to look around. And unlike our earlier Street View layer, you can now move seamlessly from one location to another as if you’re walking down the street by using the scroll-wheel on your mouse or the arrow keys on your keyboard. If you want to visit somewhere farther away, simply click the “exit” button and you’ll immediately return to an aerial view where you can easily fly to your next destination.
Drag and drop Pegman to enter Street View. The blue lines indicate where Street View imagery is available.
3D trees
I think we can all agree that our planet without trees would be a pretty desolate place. Besides the ever-important task of providing us with the oxygen we breathe, trees are an integral part of the landscape around us. In Google Earth, while we and our users have been busy populating the globe with many thousands of 3D building models, trees have been rather hard to come by. All that is changing with Google Earth 6, which includes beautifully detailed, 3D models for dozens of species of trees, from the Japanese Maple to the East African Cordia to my personal favorite, the cacao tree. While we’ve just gotten started planting trees in Google Earth, we already have more than 80 million trees in places such as Athens, Berlin, Chicago, New York City, San Francisco and Tokyo. Through our Google Earth Outreach program, we’ve also been working with organizations including the Green Belt Movement in Africa, the Amazon Conservation Team in Brazil andCONABIO in Mexico to model our planet’s threatened forests.
To enjoy these leafy additions to Google Earth, make sure you turn on the 3D buildings layer on the left side panel. As a starting point, try a search for “Palace of Fine Arts San Francisco.” Once you arrive at your destination, click the zoom slider. You’ll then be taken down to the ground where you can use our new ground-level navigation to walk among the trees.
Easy-to-use historical imagery
One of the features people told us they liked best in Google Earth 5 was the availability of historical imagery, which enables you to visually go back in time to see such things as Warsaw in 1935, London in 1945, and Port-au-Prince Haiti before and after the devastating earthquake of January 2010. But it wasn’t always obvious when historical imagery was available for a particular place, making this feature one of Google Earth’s lesser-known gems.
So with this new version, we’ve made it very easy to discover historical imagery. When you fly to an area where historical imagery is available, the date of the oldest imagery will appear in the status bar at the bottom of the screen. If you click on this date, you’ll instantly be taken back in time to view imagery from that time period. You can then browse through all the historical imagery available for that location, or simply close the time control and return to the default view.
To download Google Earth 6, or to see videos of our newest features, visit http://earth.google.com.
2. Fed up with ICANN, Pirate Bay cofounder floats P2P DNS system
Peter Sunde of Pirate Bay fame has had it with ICANN. Now that the US government is ordering the Internet governance body to remove domain names of copyright infringers from the global DNS, Sunde has sounded a call to arms to create a new Domain Name System to help pirates remain masters of their domain. The new DNS would forego a centralized root—too attractive a target for meddling governments—and use peer-to-peer technology instead.
3. Wikileaks moves to Amazon's cloud to evade massive DDoS
Controversial information disclosure site Wikileaks reportedly faced an intense distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack this morning. The site was temporarily disrupted by the onslaught, but is functioning again after migrating its services to Amazon's cloud.
Wikileaks recently published thousands of confidential diplomatic cables that were sent between the US State Department and embassies around the world. The leaked documents shed light on US intelligence gathering efforts and reveal sensitive information pertaining to US foreign relations. The disclosure of the cables has proved embarrassing for the US and a number of other governments.
It's possible that the DDoS against Wikileaks was orchestrated by a government in effort to retaliate against the leak and disrupt access to the documents. Prominent figures in the US government, including a congressman, are calling for an extreme response to the leak, arguing that Wikileaks should be treated as a terrorist organization. The group is clearly facing considerable pressure and close scrutiny as a result of the leak.
Wikileaks says that the DDoS was pummeling its servers at 10 gigabits per second, forcing its Swedish hosting provider to discontinue operation of the site. In order to continue operating smoothly, Wikileaks moved its site to Amazon's elastic cloud computing infrastructure. This will allow it to scale better in the face of massive DDoS attacks.
4. Attachmate says openSUSE lives, UNIX copyrights not sold to MS
A lot of unanswered questions lingered after Attachmate announcedthat it has negotiated an agreement to acquire Linux vendor Novell earlier this month. The company has since issued official statements to clear up several notable points of concern. Attachmate intends to continue developing the SUSE platform and will support the community-driven openSUSE project. The company has also confirmed that it has retained the UNIX copyrights, the intellectual property at the heart of the SCO dispute.
Although some of Novell's business decisions proved unpopular among Linux enthusiasts, the company made a strong effort to foster an independent community around its platform. Novell formed the openSUSE project in 2005 with the aim of making SUSE development more inclusive. The effort has evolved considerably over the past few years, attracting a modest number of contributors. After the adoption of a more open governance model in 2008, openSUSE has gradually gained greater autonomy from Novell, while still working closely with the company.
5. Leveraging Linux for Supercomputing
High-performance computing applications such as numerical simulation -- whether for forecasting, mechanical and structure simulation, or computational chemistry -- require a large number of CPUs for processing. To meet these needs, customers must buy a large-scale system that enables parallel processing so that the simulation can be completed in the shortest possible time. Such solutions are available in two forms: scale-up and scale-out.
6. Wikileaks Spill: Catalyst for New, More Open Style of Governing?
Despite talk of dire consequences for U.S. foreign policy and military intelligence, online publisher Wikileaks Sunday began releasing more than 250,000 leaked cables between 274 worldwide embassies and the U.S. State Department. Wikileaks founder Julian Assange calls the leaked cables "the largest set of confidential documents ever to be released into the public domain" on the organization's website. Designed to "give people around the world an unprecedented insight into the U.S. Government's foreign activities," the cables date from 1966 thru 2010.
7. The 233-Line Kernel Patch and the (Even Easier) Alternatives
Ingenuity has always been a hallmark of the Linux world, but sometimes the community really outdoes itself. Take the 233-line patch to the Linux kernel's scheduler that was recently created by developer Mike Galbraith, for example. With the ability to reduce the average latency of the desktop by as much as 60 times under heavy loads, the patch even drew kudos from Linus himself, who said it enables group scheduling to go "from 'useful for some specific server loads' to 'that's a killer feature.'" One could hardly ask for praise much higher than that.
6. Wikileaks Spill: Catalyst for New, More Open Style of Governing?
Despite talk of dire consequences for U.S. foreign policy and military intelligence, online publisher Wikileaks Sunday began releasing more than 250,000 leaked cables between 274 worldwide embassies and the U.S. State Department. Wikileaks founder Julian Assange calls the leaked cables "the largest set of confidential documents ever to be released into the public domain" on the organization's website. Designed to "give people around the world an unprecedented insight into the U.S. Government's foreign activities," the cables date from 1966 thru 2010.
7. The 233-Line Kernel Patch and the (Even Easier) Alternatives
Ingenuity has always been a hallmark of the Linux world, but sometimes the community really outdoes itself. Take the 233-line patch to the Linux kernel's scheduler that was recently created by developer Mike Galbraith, for example. With the ability to reduce the average latency of the desktop by as much as 60 times under heavy loads, the patch even drew kudos from Linus himself, who said it enables group scheduling to go "from 'useful for some specific server loads' to 'that's a killer feature.'" One could hardly ask for praise much higher than that.
No comments:
Post a Comment