The beloved Green Living website has published some excellent information regarding how using Google Earth, Google PowerMeter, and Google SketchUp among others are becoming useful tools in fighting to keep the Earth green.
Google in combined efforts with Canada will give 10,000 home access to a powerful new tool for managing their home energy use with Google PowerMeter. As I previously wrote about this Google Tool, it’s web-based application that displays a time-series graph showing how much power they have used and when. For obvious reasons this information will make sure you don’t over use your home’s energy by running the dryer when your family sits down for TV while the dishwasher is running. In addition you can see where your problem appliances are taking up too much energy and need to be replaced. These all great things that will save you money and keep your house green.
The Green Living article also talks about other free software that has been developed using Google Earth to aid in keeping the world green. Some tools simulate the advanced global warming and show what will happen when sea levels rise over time. Download Google Earth free and install these programs to see for yourself, it’s fascinating. One program lets you adopt land for lost or loved ones. Using Google Maps one man identified environmental destruction of the Alberta Tar Sands (picture shown in this blog). Finally Google SkethUp allows ambitious hobbyists and non-profits to visualize Models of Green Energy Projects.
The day when Curtis Melvin, a PhD student at George Mason University, decided to start the “North Korea Uncovered” project is now marked in history; April 4 2007. Two years since it has became the definitive reference for the country’s economic and geographic secrets, thanks to an army of amateur spies.
Mr. Martin described the project like this – “This Google Earth project offers an extensive mapping of North Korea’s economic, cultural, political, and military infrastructures. Through the topic menu, users of this program have easy access to geographical information on North Korea’s agriculture projects, aviation facilities, communications, hospitals, hotels, energy infrastructure, financial services, leisure destinations, manufacturing facilities, markets, mines, religious locations, restaurants, schools, and transportation infrastructure. In addition to locations of economic interest, this map also displays anti-aircraft locations, the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) and Northern Line Limit Line (NLL), incarceration facilities, political monuments, political residencies, military bases, and nuclear facilities.”
As you can tell from the granularity displayed, the earth satellite map project really includes everything you can imagine in a city, from military buildings and communication towers, agricultural and poultry farms, nuclear power plants, including not so secret anymore North Korean prison camps. We can even divulge into the surroundings viewing the problematic poverty; signs that Kim Jong-il, the country’s leader, continues making history as one of notable evil dictators.
You might wonder how did Curtis get all this information. Martin used his own personal trips to the country along with a network of curious amateur spies who have been visiting the country over these two years. Truly courageous and amazing work.
Check out the new dashboard video and introduction from the Google Team.
Did you know that online maps and local listings drive online searchers to your business, but they don’t always end up visiting your website. Most web analytics in the world cannot track these activites. Google Maps and Google Earth is making it easy with their release of a new dashboard for their Local Business Center. The dashboard assists local businesses understand how Googlers are interacting with their local listings in Google Maps. whether they like pictures, reviews, directions, or anything else related to your establishment.
The value added includes impressions that will tell users how many times the business listing appeared as a result in a search of Google.com search or Google Maps during a given period. Also actions will show the number of times searchers interacted with a listing. An example being the number of driving directions requests. Top search queries show which keywords drove searchers to a business listing and this is huge if your business has a blog; now you know what to write about. They will also display zip codes from where driving directions were requested from.
If you use Google Mail, get ready to undergo an extreme e-mail makeover social networking style. Yesterday, I read word that Google is set to release their closest version of Facebook. Google’s own blog explains the ideas behind Google Wave:
You create a wave and add people to it. Everyone on your wave can use richly formatted text, photos, gadgets, and even feeds from other sources on the web. They can insert a reply or edit the wave directly. It’s concurrent rich-text editing, where you see on your screen nearly instantly what your fellow collaborators are typing in your wave. That means Google Wave is just as well suited for quick messages as for persistent content – it allows for both collaboration and communication. You can also use “playback” to rewind the wave and see how it evolved.
This multi-layered media format in the user interface provides users with the tools for media collabration and full editing controls to each participant. Google Wave’s Primary features include natural language tools extending control technology which provides real-time collaboration. Wave also has server based models provide contextual suggestions and spelling correction which is nice to have. Google Wave APIs can embed waves in other sites or add live social gadgets.
So if you are a fan of Google’s other free software services or tools such as Analytics, Google Earth, Google Reader, and Google News you can welcome the Wave with open arms. No with Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, and other such social networking website, one must decide who to keep informed about what and when. No official launch date has been released, but you can sign up for the wave at wave.google.com. Let’s start getting social …virtually!
This has been quite a week for Google, especially with the announcement of Google Wave at the Google I/O Conference. Not to be ignored, Google Earth has been quietly rolling out some spectacular features, not to mention business listings. Just yesterday, Google Earth added 3D tours of buildings, bridges, baseball stadiums and more. So now you can say you haven’t seen the new Yankee Stadium!
The tours are fly over and into views of famous buildings, land mark bridges, popular museums, and your favorite sports stadiums from around the world. You can even fly over 3 dimensionally casltes all over the world! Most of which were built by Google SketchUp users who model buildings from Google Earth.
To play a tour, you need to activate the 3d Buildings feautre in your Google Earth. Click the Start Tour here link in the Places panel in Google Earth. Make sure you have download the latest version of Google Earth to enjoy this wonderful free software edition.
The Green Living article also talks about other free software that has been developed using Google Earth to aid in keeping the world green. Some tools simulate the advanced global warming and show what will happen when sea levels rise over time. Download Google Earth free and install these programs to see for yourself, it’s fascinating. One program lets you adopt land for lost or loved ones. Using Google Maps one man identified environmental destruction of the Alberta Tar Sands (picture shown in this blog). Finally Google SkethUp allows ambitious hobbyists and non-profits to visualize Models of Green Energy Projects.
