Google Earth: Tracking the Hurtigruten along the coast of Norway

 

In what’s becoming quite a popular event, the cruise liner Hurtigruten has been live broadcasting its position as it travels along the coast of Norway. The cruise line has been operating for well over 100 years, and this event has been apparently drawing large crowds at its stops, and is becoming quite the event in Norway.

The site itself is very well built. You can follow of a map of the journey, view various live cameras from the ship, and even view a live 3D model of the ship’s location: just click on the 3D tab in the lower right, then click the resulting image to see the ship in 3D.

 

hutigruten.jpg 

As pointed out by Google Maps Mania, you can click the red icons on the map to view a replay of that section of the journey. The scenery in Norway is stunning, and this is a great way to view it all.

There are also other elements that can be added to the map, such as Flickr photos, archived video, and the location of other boats in the area. Some of the photographs in there are simply amazing, as shown here:

hurtigruten-flickr.jpg 

To see it for yourself, simply head over to their site and you’ll be streaming the live feed almost immediately.

(via GMM and Ogle Earth)

Watching the Lunar Eclipse

We’re always fascinated by the unique wonders of space and the world—what can we say, it’s the geek in us! Naturally, when we learned that part of the world will be treated to a rare 100-minute long total lunar eclipse starting at 11:20am PDT today, we were both excited and disappointed that this rare occasion wouldn’t be visible from our Mountain View campus like last year’s eclipse. We suspect we aren’t alone, so you’ll be glad to know that we’ve worked with Slooh Space Camera to let you experience the spectacle wherever you are in the world, in real time.


Slooh will host a live mission interface using Google App Engine that lets anyone not lucky enough to live in certain areas (South America, Europe, Africa, Asia and Australia) take part in this rare astronomical event. It’s equipped with audio narrations from real-life astronomers so you can hear a firsthand, expert account of the event. You can also watch the live stream on the Google YouTube Channel or from the Sky layer in Google Earth (download this kml), while exploring the fascinating world that exists in our galaxy. Finally, those of you on the go can download the Slooh Space Camera Android app to view the images right on your phone.

If you’re fortunate enough to be able to view this event in the sky, we hope you’ll get the chance to step outside and indulge in the spectacle. For everyone else, we hope our moon madness helps brighten your day.

The Geo Teachers Institute

For years, Google’s geo products have been identified as a powerful learning toolkit that can help students conceptualize, visualize, share, and communicate information about the world around them.

This fall, we will host two Google Geo Teachers Institutes: September 23 and 24, 2011 in Washington DC at National Geographic Headquarters and September 26 and 27, 2011 at the University of Southern Maine Lewiston-Auburn College in Lewiston, Maine.

This event is a free professional development experience designed to help educators get the most from Google’s geo products and technologies. The Geo Teachers Institute is an intensive, two-day event where participants get hands-on experience using Google Earth, Google Maps, and Google SketchUp, including a focus on features like Ocean, Mars, Moon and Sky in Google Earth.

Attendees will learn about innovative instructional strategies and receive resources to share with colleagues. The Google Geo Education team hopes this event will empower educators to bring the world’s geographic information to students in a compelling, fresh, and fun way.

If you are interested, please complete this application. You will be notified if you are selected by August 15, 2011. Even if you can’t make it to this event, we have many online resources available for Google Earth and SketchUp and encourage you to check them out.