Google Earth on Earth Day

Earth Day in Google EarthOnce again it’s Earth Day. A time to sit back and think about our wonderful planet, and some of us will be out picking up some trash, or just enjoying nature.

While researching thoughts for this post, I had a chance to talk to David Levine from Geostellar for a few minutes yesterday. They’re doing some great work in developing systems to allow you to view the solar potential of any building on earth. They generate the data using LIDAR and other techniques, then export it for viewing in Google Earth and the Google Earth Plugin. Android and iOS apps are due out later this year. To get an idea of what they do, check out the video below.

For those of you stuck inside due to weather, work, or other reasons – perhaps you might want to spend the day exploring our wonderful planet through the power of Google Earth. Here are a few links of stories from Google Earth Blog (GEB) in the past year describing environmental related content available for viewing in Google Earth:

The Home Greenover Project — A neat way to show off eco-friendly homes.

Diving Deep with Richard Branson — A new expedition to explore the “last frontiers of our own planet” at the deepest parts of the ocean.

Visualizing the vast problem of marine debris — Exploring the issue of trash in the world’s oceans.

Flooding Google Earth — Visualizations of Earth if sea levels experience significant rises.

Predict how much solar power your house could generate — Based on your area, predict how much solar energy your home could generate.

The WaterAid Point Mapper, helping find fresh water — A great tool to help sub-Saharan organizations map rural water points.

Google Earth Engine, an amazing tool for scientists and researchers — Released at COP 16, this tool helps scientists analyze massive amounts of climate-related data.

Sea Ice Extent Animation updated for 2010 — An animation showing the changes in the size of the ice cap.

A climate change tour of cold places — NSIDC released this project to show the snowy and icy regions of the world covering sea ice, glaciers, ice shelves and permafrost.

Tour of the proposed Belo Monte Dam Complex — A great visualization of the high-debated proposed dam complex in the Amazon.

New weather features in Google Earth 5.2 — Some cool enhancements to the weather layer in Google Earth 5.2.

Interactive multi-layered Google Earth map of 4 degree temp rise — A map showing the potential impact of a 4 degree rise in global temperature.

Soil Moisture Animations — A worldwide map showing soil moisture levels, and important tool for people in a variety of fields.

Sessions updated for Google I/O 2011!

This post is by Monica Tran. Monica comes to Google by way of the Developer Marketing team, primarily focused on Google I/O and our international Developer Days. As it is written in To Kill a Mockingbird, “Thus you’ll come to know Monica whose head teemed with eccentric plans, strange longings, and quaint fancies.” – scottk

Monica Tran in typical attire

From our Last Call for Google I/O contest to I/O Extended viewing parties all over the world, we’re super duper extra excited to bring you even more surprises at Google I/O in 2011. Starting this week and counting down to May 10, we’ll be bringing you the latest on Way After Hours, the Developer Sandstorm, Android for Goodness Sake, I/O It’s Alive and a massive number of other things with cool names.

To kick off April, we’ve added NEW! sessions, covering web technologies of the future. We think this new lineup of speakers, tracks, and sessions will arm you with the tools you need to become tomorrow’s innovators and pioneers of the Internet revolution. Check out the Google I/O page and hit our guestbook to let us know what you think.

For those of you unable to join us in person on May 10 – 11, we will be harnessing the power of the interwebs to bring you real-time video footage of the keynotes and recorded videos of all sessions. Viva le web-volution!

Please pardon our dust–the site is currently under construction and you might find it acting up. We promise to get it fixed by tomorrow.