New Japanese 3D cities available in Google Earth

Today, we’re happy to announce that three more Japanese cities are viewable in 3D in Google Earth: Yokohama, Sendai and Saitama.

Sun rising over Yokohama.

You can now tour photo-realistic, 3D buildings in these cities without leaving your house—or climbing aboard a shinkansen.

If you’d like to extend your virtual stay in Japan, you can take a tour of Tokyo, Kobe, Osaka or Kyoto, which are also available in Google Earth’s 3D Buildings layer.

We want to thank the many users who modeled and contributed 3D buildings for these Japanese cities. If you’re interested in creating buildings for your town—or for any town—we have several easy-to-use tools to get you started.

With Google Building Maker, you can create and contribute a building in as little as 10 minutes. In Japan, Building Maker is available for the following cities: Fukuoka, Hiroshima, Kobe, Kyoto, Nagoya, Osaka, Saitama, Sapporo, Sendai, Tokyo and Yokohama. And if you’d like to refine your building bring it into Google SketchUp for fine-tuning.

Happy modeling!

Five Great Fusion Tables + Maps Examples

WikiEDdata – Mapping Poverty in Washington School Districts


The most powerful maps allow users to quickly understand the significance of large amounts of data. Using Fusion Tables, polygons representing school districts and poverty levels are rendered and colored based on their assigned values in the tables.

Clicking on a district polygon will bring up an infowindow containing a poverty line data chart, dynamically generated through the Google Chart API.

Reporting Road Potholes in Spain


Fusion Tables makes crowdsourcing easy. Using Fusion Tables, Otrobache.com allows Madrid citizens to log on and report the location of potholes. The newly reported potholes appear on the map in real time (as soon as the map is refreshed).

The Telegraph – UK Charities Map


Fusion Tables is a great way to store and quickly render large amounts of data. The Telegraph used Fusion Tables to catalog and map literally tens of thousands of charities throughout the UK.

Analyzing Concealed Handgun Licenses in San Antonio


From San Antonio Express-News, “The Texas Tribune analyzed a Department of Public Safety database that tracks concealed handgun licenses in Texas. The Tribune’s analysis found that the number of gun permits in an area often correlates with income and political beliefs.”

Fusion Tables is used here to overlay the data with boundaries and view possible correlations. The implementation also makes use of Gradient styling. Gradients allows developers to specify a color ramp and a number range; features will be displayed in the color appropriate for where they belong in the range. Much like the built-in Intensity map visualization, but now you can change the colors and use your own boundaries!

Boris Bikes on Fusion Tables


Using geometry styling controls in Fusion tables, this implementation is a live visualization of London Cycle Hire Rank availability using data from the Boris Bikes API.

HTC Trophy ще се появи в началото на 2011 от Verizon

Преди няколко дни, в интернет се появи документ, според който служителите на Microsoft ще могат да се запишат за HTC Trophy, чиято поява се очаква от оператора Verizon в началото на следващата година. Както знаете, мобилното устройство работи с операционна система Windows Phone 7. Според данните, служителите на редмъндската компания ще могат да закупят смартфона за 199.99 щатски долара.

От Engadget съобщиха за въпросния документ, изтекъл от Verizon. В него са били дадени точните характеристики на устройството. Устройството е било предвидено за 2009 година, но както изглежда, то ще се появи в началото на 2011 година.

HTC Trophy ще бъде управляван от новата мобилна ОС Windows Phone 7, като ще бъде оборудван и с 3.8-инчов сензорен екран с WVGA резолюция, 5-мегапикселова камера с автофокус и светкавица, 512 MB оперативна памет, 16 GB свободно пространство, 802.11 b/g/n Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 2.1, сензор за движение, светлинен сензор, компас, 3.5 мм букса за слушалки и други.

Предполага се, че HTC Trophy няма да се продава единствено на територията на САЩ. Повече информация за това се очаква в следващите няколко дни.