SketchUp: Models into real buildings

 

Over the years, we’ve talked quite a lot about SketchUp, Google’s amazing 3D modeling tool. Ultimately, though, many of these models are intended to become real buildings, so how well does the finished product match up to the original model? Google wants you to show them.

 

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As they recently posted, they’re encouraging you to send in your SketchUp stories; a SketchUp model accompanied by a photo of the finished product.

Memorial Day with Google Earth

 

On this Memorial Day, we offer you a few tools to help honor those who gave it all.

As we’ve done the last few years, we encourage you to check out Sean Askay’s Map the Fallen project. Using his KML file, you can learn about many of the people that have lost their lives in recent US military duty.

 

Map of the Fallen in Google Earth 

Another neat item to check out today is the US Medal of Honor collection that we first showed you in 2008. It was created by user ‘Up_The_Spurs’ from the Google Earth Community. You can download the KMZ and view the birthplaces, rank, organization, location of deed and citation for each winner.

 

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If you know of any other great Memorial Day resources for Google Earth, please leave a comment and let us know.

New Street View imagery in Japan

Last week we showed you some fresh imagery in Street View that had been captured using the “Street View Trike”, because the areas weren’t accessible by car. Today Google has released some more Trike-generated Street View imagery for various places in Japan.

As reported by Google Maps Mania (via the Google Japan Blog), the update includes places such as the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park, Itsukushima Shrine and the Mazda Zoom-Zoom Stadium.

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If you find any other areas updated today, please leave a comment and let us know.