When Sir Isaac Newton wrote, "If I have seen farther than others it is because I have stood on the shoulders of giants" he was being generous, but he was also being truthful. Advancement is most often an incremental process with one advance inspiring and providing a foundation for the next. So it is with the Google Earth Community. While millions of places remain undiscoverd, a few thousand places on our world have alreaady been located, highlighted with a placemark, and described here on the BBS. Which places, you may ask? Well, there is a secret to that and I would like to share it with you.

If you are new to Google Earth you may not yet know that built-in are many interesting data layers that can be displayed on the Google Earth globe. You will already be familiar with Roads, 3D Terrain, and Borders, three of the layers that have their own button in the Google Earth navigation panel. These are just a few of the layers. The others are available in the "Layers" panel on the left side of the Google Earth screen . Why not start Google Earth and have a look now.

The first few entries are user created community layers; then begins a long list of georeferenced data: populated places, geographic features, railroads, waterways, earthquake data, volcanoes, airports, and many more. In fact, the list is so long that you need to scroll down to see all of it. Here is what the top of the list looks like:


Layers tab, at the top, with GOOGLE EARTH COMMUNITY BBS layers enabled

Did you notice that there is an extra data layer enabled in the example above? This is the Google Earth Community BBS layer, and to enable it, just click the checkbox next to Google Earth Community. What does this do? It causes special symbols to be shown in Google Earth everywhere there has been a Google Earth Community post with an attachment!


Las Vegas with several potentially interesting buildings in view


Same view, but this time with the Google Earth Community layer enabled

Each of the information icons in the bottom image is a placemark taken from a Google Earth Community posting. Right clicking on one of these icons--for example, the Tokyo Waterpark BBS icon--offers several options, most notably a snippet from the post itself and a hyperlink to the BBS post. Clicking on the link causes the associated Google Earth Community page to be opened. Neat!

Keeping the Google Earth Community BBS layer enabled is helpful. It lets you know how to learn more about the earth than would be possible just by looking at the Google Earth image and it lets you know what places have already been described in prior posts. Before you make a post, be sure to enable this layer to see if the location you plan to describe has already been placemarked.

You might still want to make a placemark or a post--to describe new events there, tell of your own experiences, or to correct a prior post's commentary--but this way you know which post to reply to so that the discussion is organized and future visitors will not overlook your comments.

Now that you know how to enable the Google Earth Community data layer and thereby stand on the shoulders of giants, you have earned your wings and are ready to fly the world and make new posts about new discoveries and make new replies about existing discoveries.

If you fly to Las Vegas, enable the Google Earth Community layer, and then right click on the Tokyo Waterpark, you may be surprised by what you see. To learn why, see the next tip on posting to the Community.

P.S. The data layers you scrolled past are interesting too, but you already knew that if you read the documentation! Here is a little-known tip. Examine the Digital Globe ("DG") layers. Enable the low cloud-cover layer in each year, and you will see the locations where high-resolution Google Earth data is likely to be available soon.