Tuesday I fled from unseasonably blurred San Francisco and head to the south to the warm clime of San Jose , to attend O’Reilly ’s Where 2.0 conference , which covers “ the future tense of mapping and local lookup . ”
On Monday Google released the latest version of Google Earth and SketchUp , and so attendees were anxious to hear from the search giant .
John Hankeof Google was here to show off some of the late features in Google Earth . At last year ’s league , Google show off Google Earth and read that Mac user would have to wait . This year , Hanke enounce that he ’d lately switched back to using a Mac , and that Google Earth “ yell ” on a MacBook .
As a geek and someone who loves maps ( my bath is plastered in three map of different Continent ) , I love seeing the novel feature in programs that advertize the terminal point of digital mapping , and Google is at the forefront of this motion .
Hanke showed off some of Google Earth ’s principal raw features , which include update satellite data and much more item for places in the world that did n’t have close - up information before . He said that Google Earth now cover 20 percent of the surface of the Earth , covering a third of the universe of the worldly concern .
Some areas that Hanke mention specifically that had improve were the entire Baja California peninsula , the Nile River drainage area , and others . in high spirits - resolve data makes each of the images significantly richer , in many case down to the sub - cadence resolution level .
One not bad affair about Google Earth is that Google has been able to create a powerful program that ’s get its own ecosystem . Many of the orca applications of Google Earth , including mash - ups and other hacks , have been created by average users . Hanke pointed out that one of his preferent applications of Google Earth is by the famed anthropologist , Jane Goodall , who is using the program in an approaching briefing with the President of Tanzania to explicate how certain primate habitats are in danger .
Presenting alongside Hanke wasBrad Schell , the founder of AtLast — the companionship that created the 3 - 500 molding program SketchUp , which was grow by Google in March 2006 .
Schell march how SketchUp can desegregate with Google Earth to create 3 - D representations of structure within the mapping programme . Over the row of a 10 minute presentation , Schell sketch out a building in downtown San Francisco , imported a photograph of the building ’s façade , and then lend tallness to his initial floor plan . By the end of the intro , he had created a 3 - D exemplar of the building , along with an plus that included particular types of window , a revolving threshold and an arch .
By the goal of the presentment , I was wowed with the bold ability and simplicity of Google Earth and SketchUp . The function eccentric person in me was in three - dimensional heaven . There ’s no question what my next step will be : I ’m downloading SketchUp and building a 3 - five hundred model of my house .
