What's New in Google Earth?
Each
month we highlight the newest additions to Google Earth content. If you
haven't been subscribing to Sightseer for long, check the forum for previous editions.
New! We are excited to report that at the Google I/O developer conference, on May 28th in San Franciso, we released a new version of Google Earth in the form of a plugin which can be installed in your web browser. This interface will enable developers to bring KML content and exciting new applications to your favorite web sites, or allow existing Google Maps mashups to add the power of Google Earth's 3D to their maps. The initial release of the Google Earth plugin is limited to Windows (supported browsers currently include Firefox 2.x, IE6, and IE7), but expect it to eventually run on the other major platforms which already run with Google Earth. Try out this little sample game we developed with the new plugin: Monster Milktruck.
New and Updated Layers
-
 Google News - On May 20th, we enabled a layer in Google Earth showing spatially located news from 4500 news sources of Google News. Look for the layer called Google News under the Gallery
layer folder and check the box next to it. Each story is represented by
a Google News icon on the globe. Clicking on the news icon opens up the
news story's snippet, along with links to learn more about the event.
Click on the headline to see the full story from its news web site.
Currently only available in the English version of Google Earth. More details.
- Panoramio Reaches 5 Million - Our Panoramio photo web site recently celebrated
5 million geo-tagged photos available for viewing in our mapping tools.
For over a year now Google Earth has had a regularly updated built-in Panoramio layer found under the Geographic Web layer. We have now added the Panoramio layer to Google Maps
as well. With either Google Earth or Maps, as you zoom in, more photos
are presented giving you new perspectives for places you've never
visited before.
- More Rumsey Maps - The Rumsey Historical Maps layer found under the Gallery layer folder now contains 120 maps from David Rumsey's collection
of 17,000+ maps. The original 16 historical maps, launched in November
of 2006, have been augmented by adding many more maps of cities,
regions, countries, continents, and even globes. Zoom in to see the
placemarks, click ona placemark to see a thumbnail and description of
the map. Click on the thumbnail to load the map as an overlay in Google
Earth and view in detail by zooming closer. Highlights of the
new maps include a 1792 Celestial Globe (also in Google Sky); the first
accurate survey of Yosemite Valley, California, from 1883; and new maps of
Los Angeles, San Francisco, Seattle, New York, Washington DC, Denver,
Chicago, Moscow, St. Petersburg, Calcutta, Lima, Paris, Madrid, Rome,
Beijing, Tokyo, Kyoto, and more - all from times ranging from the 18th
to the 20th centuries, You can also view the layer in Google Maps.
- Street View Manhattan
- On May 13th we updated Street View imagery for New York City. New
York was one of the first cities we released for Street View. With the
release of Google Earth 4.3, you can now turn on the Street View layer and zoom in to see Street View images in 3D. Read more details about the new imagery.
New and Updated Imagery
 On
May 13th we released more imagery for Google Earth. Significant new
satellite imagery was added to the countries of Ecuador, Peru, Senegal,
Nigeria, Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, India, Iran, Bangladesh, Thailand,
Vietnam, Malaysia, The Philippines and the Isle of Man. There were also
many cities updated in the US, Europe, Africa, Australia, and Asia.
Terrain was also updated in a few places like Puerto Rico where the Arecibo Observatory is located. See the complete list of places updated.
Geo Education
Last month, in honor of National Teacher Day, we introduced a new Geo Education
web page to help educators learn how they can use Google Earth, Maps,
and other tools for many educational topics. Lesson plans and concepts
are available from a variety of sources.
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which illustrates their future temperature modeling, showing an
animation of temperature change over the next hundred years and its
impact to particular parts of the world. Once you open the file you
will first see an image overlay of the Earth which indicates
temperature change over time from 1999 and forecasted through 2099. Use
the time slider to watch the changes over time. Also in the file are
placemarks with accounts from people around the world speaking about
how climate change has affected them, as well as information from the
Met Office about possible effects as temperatures continue to rise.
