Google Blows Up Earth

The Google Earth and Maps teams must have been on the verge of bursting into data stream rivers until they finally popped this morning, unloading a mess of new functionality onto the world. We had to mask our digital footprint with wading boots to fish out the most relevant to our readers: Google Maps for Enterprise.

Google Earth increases the global coverage by a factor of four, now covering over 20 percent of the Earth's landmass. That translates to about a third of the Earth's population, or 2 billion people in 200 countries, that can officially say, "I can see my house from here." And they can see it better too, as the resolution has been increased from 15 meters per pixel to about 70 cm per pixel, and 10 cm per pixel in some countries. The imagery, provided through a partnership with Digital Globe will be accessible in Google Maps soon. The Google Earth team has extended its new functionalities, including the addition of textured buildings in 3D, to Windows, Mac, and for the first time, Linux operating systems; available now in French, Italian, German and Spanish. The 3D capabilities mesh well with Google SketchUp to add realism to the "collectively-authored 3D world SketchUp users are creating." In response to the Maps API developer requests, the company has also added street-level geocoding for the US, Canada, Japan, France, Italy, Germany and Spain. The addition of geocoding will be especially useful in creating Google Maps mash-ups. Finally, Google Maps will enable the display of Keyhole Markup Language (KML), the file format used by Google Earth and other applications to share geographic information. This will enable data created in the Earth program to be viewed in a web browser as a simple mash-up. Google says KML requires "no computer programming expertise." | document.write("Email Murdok here.") Drag this to your Bookmarks. Add to document.write("Del.icio.us") Yahoo My Web