Tag: Google Earth

Google Earth gets the imagery it needs from multiple sources including aircraft and satellites. Google recently started adding images to its collection from other sources including less expensive balloons and kites. The new images Google Earth is using come from people like you and me using cheap systems for local aerial photography.

I remember back when Google Earth first launched. I thought it would be cool to see the planet right from my desktop and immediately went to find my house. The area where I live was so blocky and cut together from so many individual photos that it was impossible to make out any detail.

I have never understood the need for rugs in a home; it’s like carpet for your carpet. Since hard floors are cold and never clean if you have pets or kids, I get why you might want a rug in that instance, though.

The steampunk “Electromagnetic Geospacial Globe and Remote View with Obligatory Goggles” doesn’t just look cool, I like what creator John Knight is trying to do – making the ol’ globe more useful. RFID tags attached to the surface of the globe allow Knight to control Google Earth on an iPad and provide a more detailed view of a chosen area.

If you happen to enjoy fiddling around with Google Maps and other similar tools, you might be interested in the homebrew app WiiEarth. Just as with Google Earth, you can zoom around the world, checking out various locations, but now you can do it all while sprawled out on the sofa (and without a hot laptop perched on your lap). WiiEarth has been around for some time, but the latest release added some nice tweaks, including a speed boost.

I haven’t come across too many hacks involving the Wii Fit Balance Board yet, but they are starting to emerge. In this recent demo, the board has been configured to control 3D movement in a game of World of Warcraft 3. A couple of guys from DFKI (the German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence) took a Balance Board and connected it to a regular old laptop PC.