The Space Shuttle in Google Earth

 

The space shuttle Atlantis is currently in flight on the program’s final voyage after launching from Cape Canaveral a few days ago, and NASA is providing some excellent tools to help track the shuttle in space.

Fist, they’ve provided a replay of the STS-135 ascent, including quite a lot of data about the shuttle as it lifted off.

 

shuttle-ascent.jpg 

Even better, they’ve also provided a live tracking file that updates every few seconds so you can follow the exact location of the shuttle.

 

shuttle-live.jpg 

While this is the end of the shuttle program, NASA has a variety of missions planned for the next six months, including unmanned journeys to Jupiter and Mars. Hopefully they’ll provide this kind of data for those flights as well.

On a side note, I was made aware of this by Rob Mayeda on Google+. While Google Earth Blog isn’t yet allowed to create a profile over there (only humans for now), I share Google Earth-related material fairly often and I’d love to connect with you on there. If you need an invitation to access Google+, you can request one from this site.

3D Building now appearing in London, Paris, Barcelona, and more

Since early 2007, Google Maps has made maps more lifelike by showing 3D building outlines when zoomed into cities. If you’re planning to walk down a street, you should know whether to expect low buildings, skyscrapers, or some cool architecture! Then the release of Google Maps 5.0 for Android ushered in the next-generation of mobile maps where you can rotate, tilt, and zoom in and out of 3D maps on a mobile device.

Now, 3D buildings are available in London, Paris, Barcelona, Stockholm, Singapore, Lisbon, Boulder, and 11 major cities in South Africa. These buildings will appear in both Google Maps and Google Maps for mobile.

 
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Ellis Park Stadium in Johannesburg, South Africa

3D buildings in London and Barcelona
Enjoy the new buildings from Boulder to Bloemfontein!

Small Business Influencer Awards

 

I was recently honored to have been nominated for the 2011 Small Business Influencer award in the guru category. It is an effort by Smallbiztrends.com to recognize those “organizations and people who have made a significant impact on the North American small business market”.  The awards will identify the Top 100 influencers and are decided 40% by a popular vote and 60% by the judges. In the popular voting you can vote for a candidate once every 24 hours.

Whenever I receive this sort of nomination an internal dialog always takes place that goes something like… “ooh, cool… I would like to win ah but I can’t win, oh this is just a popularity contest but there are others more deserving than I … “. By the time the internal chatter has ceased the contest is over and I place 75th or so.

In this contest, since a voter can vote once a day for a given individual, a contestant needs a very large family, a very involved mother, a great bot network or a very supportive industry. I don’t posses a large family, a living mother nor a bot network but do feel that option four (industry support) holds lots of potential.

And this time I have decided to be more proactive, more assertive and more involved and not let my internal dialog slow me down… so I am suggesting that as an industry we get together and we Vote early, Vote often and Vote for ….. Lisa Barone.

Why pimp for Lisa Barone and not myself you ask? Well besides the fact that she has an Italian last name and HAS to have a larger family and active parents, I really think that she deserves the support of our industry for her tireless reporting of industry events, her relentless and smb focused writing and her voice. An opinionated, funny, off beat voice that is a voice of reason and straight talk in an industry that has its share of the opposite. She has done us all a favor and I think it is time to pay her back.

So Vote early, Vote often and Vote for ….. Lisa Barone. Not once but every day for the next 22…spread the word.