Install Earth

You like the earth?  You like video games?  PERFECT, you qualify!

The people at Google Earth Hacks have developed a video game that uses Google Earth and is FREE!  Its called “GEMMO” and it’s a MMPORG (massively multiplayer online) game for Google Earth.  All that’s required is that you have Google Earth ver. 4.2 or higher, and are on a Windows machine.  To download Gemmo, just click the Gemmo link above and register (free) to the site.  Then you can get your own copy.

I haven’t actually tried this game yet as I just just found out about it TODAY.  Apparently you can fight nasty monsters, collect gold and find and collect crystals which are hidden in various cities of earth.   You can win battes, increase points and shop for powerful weapons.  Wheee!

If you’ve already tried GEMMO, let me know what you think.  And if you haven’t tried it but are going to right this instant…hollar back afterward and let me know how it went.   And I’ll be doing the same…

Technorati Tags: gemmo, google earth, google earth hacks, mmporg

I was just checking out a neat interface called “Flash Earth” today. It was built by Paul Neave in Flash. With it, you can view the earth from 7 different mapping applications including Ask, Yahoo maps, Google Earth, NASA and OpenLayers. It doesn’t have the bells and whistles that Google Earth has in its full form, and it isn’t meant to necessarily, it’s meant to be a zoomable mashup of 7 different mapping programs.  And it’s interesting to compare the different programs. It’s especially nice after years of reading blog posts which are pro microsoft, or pro yahoo or anti this or that, each giving its own opinion of whose imagery is better, etc. With this little simple interface, you can see for yourself.

It’s more of a novelty item than a vital tool like Google Earth, in my opinion. For me, Google Earth allows me to print maps, make trip routes, email locations and maps to people or myself, find restaurants and points of interest wherever I go, etc. It’s much more important to me to have THOSE features than to just see where my house is on a map. But if that’s all you need, and also if you want to compare the different 3D mapping sources, then check out “Flash Earth”.  It really is a fun tool and it will finally end the arguments of whose imagery is better.  Because those were REALLY annoying.

Technorati Tags: neave.com, paul neave, google earth mashups, flash earth

As Ive mentioned Im always on the hunt for great new and interesting uses for Google Earth. Sometimes I find articles about how people have used Google Earth to locate people or things. And sometimes I find people who have ventured into the more technical side of things, using Google Earth technology as a programmer for their own purposes.

And that is just what I found today! A website called Enobytes, which is a blog about everything you could possibly want to know about wine, has taken the Google Earth api and incorporated it into their own site for the purpose of helping you, the wine enthusiast, locate amazing vineyards all over the world!

You can access this information from enobytes if you have Google Earth downloaded on to your computer. Check out their site for all the details and all kinds of good info about wine, charts, maps, articles, all kinds of good stuff!

Technorati Tags: wine, enobytes, enobytes.com, google earth

I’m always looking for articles people write explaining how they’ve used Google Earth for some interesting or unique purpose that I hadn’t considered, or maybe one I had considered, but hadn’t found much evidence of.

Specifically I’ve wondered about Google Earth’s use in rescue missions…fire fighting, avalanches, whatever.  I assumed it would be a really helpful tool for this, and as it turns out I found an article just today!

On March 1st, a man in Delaware was on some sort of goose hunting trip, in a boat, when high winds capsized his boat and he was left stranded in a marsh.  Fortunately, his cell phone wasn’t soaked and he was able to call 911.  From that point the rescue team used Google Earth to locate the man very rapidly.  The entire article can be found here.

This was a very exciting article to me, because it’s such a positive article that clearly shows at least one government organizations’ awareness of the value of this technology in the quest for saving lives.  So much of this technology is passed off as amusing entertainment.  But there are always ways to implement technology to make the planet a better place.  Big props to the Delaware Fish and Wildlife officials who saved this man’s life, and the entire team who located the man using the most advanced tools they could find.

Technorati Tags: delaware division of fish and wildlife, wboc

A few years ago a website called Blackle.com was born. This was a website which was created to look and function just like Google’s search home page, but in black so as to use less energy than the official white Google home page. And this site was not made by Google. Further it was intended to show the wastefulness of Google to the world, by displaying how much energy is saved by doing your searches via Blackle.com instead.

Well, here’s an example which shows a kinder, gentler, possibly greener side to Google. Just for balance’s sake.

There is a website called I Love Mountains. If you go to this site you can input your zip code and find out how much you rely on coal mining derived from the removal of mountain tops in your zone. Using Google Earth’s API, I Love Mountains shows you your city, your city’s power utility company, and from where its coal is derived…all on a Google Earth map. Neat, huh?

Google Earth has endorsed the “I Love Mountains” site, and their National Memorial for the Mountains is actually included as part of the Google Earth software now. The Memorial appears in Google Earth as a field of nearly 500 American flags across the entire Appalachian Mountain range. Each flag represents a mountain which is has had its top removed for the purposes of mining the coal inside.

If you want more information on mining and mountain tops, check out the ilovemountains.org link above.

Technorati Tags: ilovemountains.org, i love mountains, coal mining, blackle, blackle.com

All of us have use Google Earth at home, for fun or to find things, make maps, email directions, etc.  But it’s an amazing educational tool with huge potential for learning in the subjects of history, geography, literature and science.  And probably other subjects I haven’t even thought of.

Honestly, with the links I’m going to give you on this post, you could really come up with some interesting and fun class lessons for a long, long time.  We live in a visual age.  Students do better and understanding happens quicker with visuals.  This isn’t news.  So why not use the greatest tool there is for information on the globe, maps, the world and what’s on it…Google Earth?

Adelia Barber, Doctoral Student at UC Santa Cruz, used Google Earth as an experiment with a class of Intro Biology students, and she posted the specifics of this here on the Google LatLong blog.

The Google Earth Blog also posted a ton of links and information about the many and various uses for Google Earth in the education system.  So now all you have to do is help get it out there in the schools!  If you’re a student or a teacher or anyone who has the opportunity to help make this happen, do it.

Sure would beat a lot of the classes I had to endure when I was in school!

Technorati Tags: google earth, google earth blog, google latlong blog, adelia barber