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Google Earth: New Imagery Updates

The winter and holiday seasons are quickly approaching but that hasn’t stopped the Google Earth and Maps Imagery Team from updating aerial and satellite imagery throughout the globe. Today, we’d like to share several interesting features identified in this latest release.

The first example shown below is part of an aerial image acquired this past September of the ski slopes in Breckenridge, Colorado. The slopes have already accumulated several inches of snow over the past few weeks and although it’s still very early in the ski season, a third of all ski lifts are now open! If you can’t make it to the mountains quite yet, be sure to experience the next best thing with Street View imagery from some of the most popular ski destinations.

Perspective view of ski slopes in Breckenridge, Colorado

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania is full of iconic landmarks from American history. The aerial image shown below, which was acquired this past October, shows some of the most well known buildings along the east bank of the Schuylkill River. At the bottom left of the image are the fifteen structures comprising Boathouse Row, and the upper right shows the Fairmount Water Works and the Philadelphia Museum of Art. In the far right corner of the image are the stone steps made famous in the Rocky movies.

Boathouse Row, Fairmount Water Works and the Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

“X” marks the spot in the satellite image below of part of Miramar, Argentina. Of course, the feature is comprised of roads that lead to the town’s central sculpture, Monumento al Gral Alvarado, and the four parks comprising the central plaza.

Miramar, Argentina

As we close in on the Christmas season, it seems appropriate to feature several well known churches that have been updated with new imagery. The first example, shown below, is aerial imagery of the Basilica of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary, in Gdańsk, Poland. The structure is considered one of the largest Brick Gothic buildings ever constructed, and has sufficient space to hold 25,000 people!

Basilica of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Gdańsk, Poland

This next example shows updated aerial imagery of Burgos, Spain. In the upper left, is the Burgos Castle, overlooking the Burgos Cathedral in the lower right. This cathedral is famous for its vast size and unique French Gothic architecture.

Burgos, Spain

Finally, below is an updated image of the Calvary Baptist Church of Hi Vista, California, perhaps one of the more notable churches of late. This church was of course used famously in the Kill Bill Vol. I movie as the site of near demise for the heroine, “The Bride.”

Calvary Baptist Church, Hi Vista, California

If you’d like to receive an email notification when the Google Earth and Maps Imagery team updates your favorite site(s), we’ve got just the tool: The Follow Your World application!

These are only a few examples of the types of features that can be seen and discovered in our latest batch of published imagery. Happy exploring!

High resolution aerial updates:
USA: Alamosa, CO; Albany, NY; Altoona, PA; Atlanta, GA; Bartlesville, OK; Bishop, CA; Boise City, OK; Clarksville, TN; Clayton, NM; Edwards, CA; Erie, PA; Georgetown, SC; Great Bend, KS; Guymon, OK; Hot Springs, AR; Lamar, CO; Lawton, OK; Llano, TX; McAlester, OK; Merced, CA; Oklahoma City, OK; Palmdale, CA; Philadelphia, PA; Redding, CA; Roseburg, OR; Scranton, PA; Springfield, MO; Texarkana, TX; Twin Falls, ID; Vail, CO

Poland: Bielsko-Biala, Lubaczowski, Malborski, Mazowieckie, Mielecki, Wolowski, Wolczyn,

Spain: Burgos

Switzerland: Horgen

Countries/regions receiving high resolution satellite updates:
Algeria, Argentina, Australia, Austria, Bangladesh, Belarus, Benin, Bhutan, Bolivia, Botswana, Brazil, Bulgaria, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Cameroon, Canada, Cape Verde, Central African Republic, Chad, Chile, China, Colombia, Comoros, Costa Rica, Croatia, Cuba, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Côte d’Ivoire, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Djibouti, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Egypt, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Finland, France, French Polynesia, Germany, Ghana, Greece, Greenland, Guatemala, Guinea, Haiti, Honduras, Hungary, India, Indonesia, Iran, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Jordan, Kazakhstan, Kenya, Kuwait, Lesotho, Libya, Madagascar, Malawi, Marshall Islands, Mexico, Mongolia, Morocco, Mozambique, Myanmar, Namibia, Nepal, New Zealand, Niger, Nigeria, North Korea, Oman, Pakistan, Papua New Guinea, Paraguay, Peru, Philippines, Poland, Portugal, Qatar, Republic of Korea, Romania, Russia, Rwanda, Saudi Arabia, Senegal, Serbia, Sierra Leone, Slovakia, Somalia, South Africa, Spain, Sri Lanka, Sudan, Svalbard, Swaziland, Sweden, Switzerland, Syria, Tajikistan, Tanzania, Thailand, Togo, Tunisia, Turkey, Uganda, Ukraine, United Arab Emirates, United Kingdom, United States, Uruguay, Uzbekistan, Venezuela, Vietnam, West Bank, Yemen, Zambia, Zimbabwe

These updates are now available in both Google Maps and Google Earth. For a complete picture of where we updated imagery, download this KML for viewing in Google Earth.

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The New Google Earth 6.2

We’re taking bird’s eye view to a whole new level with the latest version of Google Earth, released today. With Google Earth 6.2, we’re bringing you the most beautiful Google Earth yet, with more seamless imagery and a new search interface. Additionally, we’ve introduced a feature that enables you to share an image from within Google Earth, so you can now simply and easily share your virtual adventures with family and friends on Google+.

A seamless globe

The Google Earth globe is made from a mosaic of satellite and aerial photographs taken on different dates and under different lighting and weather conditions. Because of this variance, views of the Earth from high altitude can sometimes appear patchy.

Today, we’re introducing a new way of rendering imagery that smoothes out this quilt of images. The end result is a beautiful new Earth-viewing experience that preserves the unique textures of the world’s most defining geographic landscapes—without the quilt effect. This change is being made on both mobile and desktop versions of Google Earth. While this change will appear on all versions of Google Earth, the 6.2 release provides the best viewing experience for this new data.

Grand Canyon before and after

Sri Lanka before and after

Share your explorations with Google+

Google Earth is a great way to virtually explore the globe, whether revisiting old haunts or checking out a future vacation spot. With the Google Earth 6.2 update, we’ve added the option to share a screenshot of your current view in Google Earth through Google+. If you’ve already upgraded to Google+, you can share images of the places you’ve virtually traveled to with your Circles, such as family, friends or your local hiking club. To try this new feature, simply sign in to your Google Account in the upper right hand corner of Google Earth and click “Share.” Images of mountains, oceans, deserts, 3D cities, your favorite pizza shop on Street View—you can now experience all these amazing places around the world with people on Google+.

Search improvements

We’ve also made some updates to the search feature in Google Earth. Aside from streamlining the visual design of the search panel, we’ve enabled the same Autocomplete feature that’s available on Google Maps. We’ve also introduced search layers, which will show all the relevant search results (not just the top ten), so now, when looking for gelato in Milano, you can see all the tasty possibilities. Finally, we’ve added biking, transit and walking directions, so if you’re itching for a change of scenery or looking for a new route for your regular commute, you can now use Google Earth to generate and visualize all your options.

via: Google Lat Long blog

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Google Earth Imagery Update January

It’s a new year and what better way to usher it in than with new aerial and satellite imagery published by the Google Earth and Maps Imagery Team! In this post, we’ll explore several international features captured in this latest update.

Our first example is part of an aerial image acquired last August of the central park grounds, fountain, and wasserturm (water tower) of Mannheim, Germany. Mannheim is the city where Karl Benz built and tested the world’s first automobile.

Mannheim Water Tower, Mannheim, Germany

Our next aerial example, also acquired last August, shows the water parks of Linz, Austria, adjacent to the Danube River. The park makes up part of the “Kulturmeile” (“culture mile”) that includes museums and concert halls.

Sun and water bathers, Linz, Austria

The satellite image below shows the medieval grounds and structures of one of the oldest castles in the world, the Citadel of Aleppo in Syria. The citadel sits on a large hill that has been in use since the 3rd millenium BC, and is outlined by perimeter walls and a foundation that reaches 50 meters in height.

Citadel of Aleppo, Syria

This next satellite image highlights a section of the Great Wall of China in Badaling, Yanqing County, China. This site is the most visited section of the wall, and hosted U.S. President Nixon and Vice Premier Li Xiannian during Nixon’s historic visit to China.

Section of the Great Wall of China in Badaling, Yanqing County, China

Lastly, shown below is a satellite image of the National Synchrotron Radiation Research Center, in Dong, Taiwan. Shown at bottom center is the partially built circular Taiwan Photon Source facility, due to be completed in 2013.

National Synchrotron Radiation Center, Dong, Taiwan

If you’d like to receive an email notification when the Google Earth and Maps Imagery team updates your favorite site(s), we’ve got just the tool: The Follow Your World application!

These are only a few examples of the types of features that can be seen and discovered in our latest batch of published imagery. Happy exploring!

High resolution aerial updates:
USA: Baton Rouge, LA; Brady, TX; Downieville, CA; East Bay, CA; El Paso, TX; Greenwood, MS; Greenwood, SC; Kingman AZ; Level Land, TX; Long View, TX; Lufkin, TX; Ozona, TX; Quincy, CA; Radium Springs, NM; San Angelo, TX

Austria: Innsbruck, Linz,
Germany: Augsburg, Mannheim

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LEO, the first business computer

Recently it was the 60th anniversary of LEO, the world’s first business computer—built by J.Lyons & Co, a leading British food manufacturer at the time that also ran a famous chain of tea shops.

Lyons management had long been keen to streamline their back-office operations. In 1947, two Lyons managers visited the U.S. to learn about the latest business processes, including whether the electronic computers they’d heard about during their wartime service, like ENIAC, might be useful. (At the time, the closer-to-home advances at Bletchley Park were still a well-kept military secret.)

They returned inspired by the possibilities and keen to build a machine of their own. After several years of development, LEO, a.k.a. Lyons Electronic Office, took on its first office job on November 17, 1951—weekly valuations for the bakery division, calculating margins on Lyon’s output of bread, cakes and pies.

Until LEO, computing in a work setting was treated like a specialist bit of kit on a factory production line. Each machine was dedicated to a single task. In essence, they were narrowly defined calculating machines. The vision for LEO, in contrast, was bravely broad. LEO was a single computer capable of handling a whole swathe of accounting and bookkeeping tasks, as well as producing daily management reports.

LEO was such a success that Lyons set up a commercial subsidiary to sell spare time on LEO to other businesses, including the Ford Motor Company, which used it to process the payroll for the thousands of workers at its U.K. plant. Later, Lyons also built entirely new LEOs and sold them to other blue-chip companies of the era. In total, more than 70 LEO’s were built, with the last remaining in service until the 1980’s (not bad for a computer that took up an entire room!).

Today we view IT as critical to any enterprise, but in the 1950s, this was by no means a given, as evidenced by a quote from a 1954 issue of The Economist: “There are those who do not believe in the desirability of introducing anything as esoteric as electronics into business routine.” Things certainly have changed, and in a sense, all modern day businesses owe a debt to the LEO team.

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Celebration Town

While Disney is famous for their theme-parks, did you know that they also built a town? Google Sightseeing takes us on a brief tour of Celebration, the town that Disney built in the mid-1990s.

The city was was designed around its downtown, to encourage walking rather than driving. The town has some very cute buildings it in, such as the post office seen below. However, Disney was careful to keep it generically cute, and not include any Disney-like features such as Mickey Mouse ears or Dumbo-shaped bushes.

Once complete, as planned, Disney sold the town to a property investment corporation. You can learn more about the city on their official website.

As they typically do, Google Sightseeing has created a KML file to showcase all of the locations found in their post. The city has sharp aerial imagery from 2010 and very comprehensive Street View imagery, making it a fun town to explore in Google Earth!