Rob’s Personal Aggregator

I’m a big fan of traveling and being outdoors. As a software engineer on Google Earth, I rarely go outside without bringing a GPS so that I can plot my adventures in Google Earth. That’s why I’m excited to tell you about the new features in Google Earth 5.2 that make it easier than ever to relive your journey.

In earlier versions of Google Earth you could see your GPS tracks as lines or points on the map. That has worked pretty well, but I’ve always had a nagging feeling that we could do much better, creating animations that show exactly how you move around the world.

With Google Earth 5.2, you can now import existing GPS data as a new kind of “track.” With a track, you can move the time-slider to animate time and retrace your journey. Google Earth will draw an icon so that it is properly positioned for the given time that you are viewing. As you move through time, the icon will animate along your path. You can also select a window of time which will highlight the corresponding section of your trip.

In Google Earth 5.0, we introduced Tours: cinematic, narrated flights around Google Earth. With one click you can make a tour based on your track, which will fly you along your journey from a bird’s-eye view. You can play back the tour like a video and share it with friends.

The best way to explain the power of the new track feature is just to show you some examples. I’ve always had a passion for flight, and earlier this year I decided to take flying lessons. I took a GPS along with me, and imported my tracks into Google Earth. Next, I found a model of a Cessna from the Google 3D Warehouse. Finally, I created tours of those tracks to move the camera along the path of my flights. Voilà!

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In addition, a powerful aspect of the new track feature is the ability to show multiple tracks at the same time. If you load multiple tracks into Google Earth that take place in the same period of time, then you can use the timeslider to animate all the tracks simultaneously. For example, if you have GPS tracks for several people in a race, you can use Google Earth to reply the event.

Importing your own tracks

Importing GPS tracks is simple in Google Earth. Just connect your GPS device to your computer and choose “GPS” from the “tools” menu. Alternately, you can download your GPS data from your handheld unit onto your computer as a .gpx, .nmea or .log file and then drag it into Google Earth or open it from the file menu. The GPS data will convert into a KML track and display in the 3D view. If you move the time-slider, you should see your icon move through time.

Making a tour of your track

It’s easy to create a tour of your track. Simply highlight your track in the left-panel, and click on the “Create Tour” button which looks like this:Google Earth will fly you along your track, and move the time-slider to animate your object.

Elevation profiles

While I was obsessed with animation, another engineer on the team, John Rohlf, was interested in visualizing the elevation gains of his hikes and ski trips. He wrote the elevation profile feature, which will graph the elevation of any line or track in Google Earth. For tracks, you can also use the elevation profile to graph speed or any other data that your GPS device records, such as heart rate, cadence, temperature, etc. To see the elevation profile of any line or track, right-click on it in the left-hand panel and select “View Elevation Profile.”

The profile-view will pop up in the bottom of the window. If you move your mouse around the graph, a big red arrow in the 3D view will show you the corresponding point in 3D. You can also view other graphs by clicking on the names of the other data types. If you select just a portion of the elevation profile, you can get statistics for just that section, such as the average grade of a climb. Try it out! You can see how high you hiked, or how fast you drove… just be careful. We won’t pay your speeding tickets.

Example tracks
Here are some examples to get you started:
Biking on Twin Peaks in San Francisco
Peter’s bike to work ride
Dan’s flight

For more information
For more advanced track usage, including instructions on how to incorporate 3D models into your KML, see the KML reference guide.

Download Google Earth 5.2 today at http://earth.google.com.

Posted by Dan Barcay, Software Engineer, Google Earth

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It is estimated that at least 6 million gallons of oil have leaked into the Gulf of Mexico since the Deepwater Horizon explosion a month ago. Cleanup efforts are underway, but the oil has spread extensively around the Gulf and along the southern U.S. coastline. Oil has begun washing up on the beaches of Louisiana and the delicate wetlands along the Mississippi River, and can spread to Florida and throughout the Gulf as weather conditions change. This sequence of images, coming from NASA’s MODIS satellites, illustrates the movement and growth of the oil slick over the past few weeks:

The last image, taken earlier this week (on May 17), shows the coastal areas currently at risk from the spreading oil, and can help those working on the wide range of relief efforts.

You can view this and other MODIS imagery in Google Earth by downloading this KML. You can also view additional imagery and find other resources and news at our oil spill crisis response page.

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Earth Day may have just passed, but the Google Earth team loves it too much to let it go. So we’ve found our own special way to celebrate Earth Day (a little late) by making an announcement that we’ve been working toward for a long time: Earth view in Google Maps.

When we first launched Google Earth back in 2005, it revolutionized the world of digital mapping. In the years since, Earth has been getting faster and lighter while adding large amounts of imagery, more ambitious features and an ever-expanding roster of platforms, including support for Mac, Linux, iPhone, Android and even the 2011 Audi A8!

Web browsers haven’t exactly been standing still either. As their capacity to handle richer applications has steadily grown, our ability to bring Google Earth online has grown along with it. In 2008, we released the Google Earth Plugin to developers, and since then thousands of sites have used it to create many cool applications and even games. Now the time has come to take off the plugin’s online training wheels and roll it out on the main stage: Google Maps. So if you’re one of the hundreds of millions of people who use Maps worldwide, you can now explore the world in luxuriantly-detailed, data-rich 3D imagery and terrain from Google Earth. If you’ve already downloaded the Google Earth Plugin, you should be able to see Earth view in Maps right away. Otherwise, you can just install the Plugin to enjoy a Maps experience that includes angled Earth views, 3D buildings, smooth panning and zooming and a great introductory showcase of places to visit and things to see.

Current Google Earth users, of course, will continue to enjoy the full power of the standalone application: KML editing, historical imagery, GPS tracks, tour-creation, Mars, Sky, flight simulator and so on. But for quick online access, the power of 3D will also be available at the click of a[n Earth] button. We’re thrilled to be able to bring this functionality to the web and we invite you to come share the moment with us.

Posted by Brian McClendon, VP of Engineering, Google Geo

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[From time to time we invite guests to blog about initiatives of interest, and are very pleased to have George Fertitta, Chief Executive Officer of NYC & Company join us here. – Ed.]

In January 2009, NYC & Company, the official marketing, tourism and partnership organization of New York City, launched nycgo.com and opened an information center that makes it easier for visitors and residents to explore all the vibrancy, excitement and diversity of New York City’s five boroughs.

Mirroring the integrated Google Maps on the website, our highly interactive Official NYC Information Center in Midtown Manhattan includes Google Maps–based Interactive Map Tables where you can plan your visit and a beautiful Video Wall featuring 3D imagery of New York City in Google Earth that lets you “fly” through your selected itinerary. Since we opened our doors, thousands of tourists have virtually explored New York in our center before venturing out on their own.

When Google let us know that they would be releasing new, high-quality 3D imagery of New York City, we were excited to help spread the word. The new imagery will be an amazing improvement to our already-stunning Video Wall and will help us to reach our goals in making New York City more accessible to visitors and residents alike. The detail at the street level, as you’ll see in the video below, makes it easier than ever to virtually experience our variety of cultural institutions, storefronts and residential and commercial buildings.

We invite you to come by the Information Center to see for yourself, or to power up Google Earth and explore the Big Apple from your desktop or phone.

George Fertitta, Chief Executive Officer of NYC & Company

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On March 19, we announced some changes to the Google Earth layers panel intended to make browsing easier (with more descriptive icons, including more than 40 different icons to indicate place types). We also made some changes to the way layers are organized, with the goal of making it easier to find and control our top three layers:

We made the recent changes as part of our continual attempt to streamline and simplify the browsing experience, particularly for casual (or brand new!) Google Earth users. But we know we also have a very loyal community of users who weren’t happy with the changes. One of the most common complaints was that we removed the ability to individually select certain layers (such as “Parks” or “Transportation”), which now appear in our default-on “Places of Interest” layer.

We’ve been listening, and today we released some changes to make these separate layers available again in Google Earth. You can now once again expand the “Labels” folder:
You can also find “Parks and Recreation Areas” under “More,” as well as specific place categories like schools or coffee shops in our new “Place Categories” folder:

Finally, we’re working to restore our separate “Transportation” layers in the near future, and appreciate your patience while we make the required changes.

We’d like to make some further changes in the future to streamline the Ocean, Gallery, and Global Awareness content in our Layers panel, but we realize that many of you have very specific interests and want to easily find the information you care most about. In the interest of making these changes as painless as possible, we invite you to make suggestions about how best to organize the Layers panel in Google Earth.

Posted by Matt Holden, Product Manager, Google Earth Team

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