IT NEWS

Let us kick off this new section with the Top 10 secrets of Google Earth! Don’t just zoom in on your back garden - discover 10 hidden secrets in the amazing Google Earth. To find out how to create your own virtual tours, search the stars, master the flight simulator, share your photos with the world and model your house in 3D, click on the title of each secret revealed HERE to open the entry in Google Earth. You can download the latest version of the Google Earth software here too.

1. THE SEVEN WONDERS OF THE WORLD

The seven new wonders of the world were named last summer and this KML file takes you on a virtual tour of all of them. Turn on the 3D Buildings layer in the bottom left of the Google Earth interface, and landmarks such as the Colosseum spring out of the ground, giving you a real sense of scale. Each of the wonders comes with a picture and text description of its history. It might be a myth that the Great Wall of China is the only manmade object you can see from the Moon, but it’s clearly visible in Google Earth.

2. FEEL THE EARTH MOVE

If a minor tremble knocks a plate off a mantelpiece in Birmingham it’s front-page news, but earthquakes are surprisingly common in the rest of the world. The US Geological Survey tracks earthquakes in real-time and exports the data to Google Earth, allowing you to see at-a-glance which parts of the planet are rumbling. Each entry provides details of the earthquake’s magnitude on the Richter Scale and links to the USGS website to get a wealth of detailed information in-screen.

3. NEIL ARMSTRONG’S BIOGRAPHY

Track the life of the first man on the moon, with

ADVERTISEMENT

this annotated guide to his extraordinary career. Each of the 69 placemarks provides detailed information and pictures from Armstrong’s childhood, right through to him receiving NASA’s Ambassador of Exploration Award in 2006. Did you know, for example, that his parents watched the moon landing from their house on Neil Armstrong Drive (mapped here) because where he grew up had already been named after him following his Gemini 8 exploits?

4. VISIT EVERY PREMIERSHIP GROUND

You don’t need to pay extortionate ticket prices to visit every football ground in the country - you can be the ultimate armchair fan and take a tour of every Premiership ground in about five minutes from this site. Arsenal’s Emirates Stadium is still full of rubble, and Fulham’s sponsor Pipex doesn’t miss a trick with its stadium-roof advertising (see no. 10). There’s links to every football league club stadium here as well.

5. OIL GUZZLERS REVEALED

Google Earth can present data in a way that makes even Excel 2007 look desperately plodding. Take this layer, for example, with each country rendered to a height proportional to its oil consumption. Heavy guzzlers are shown in red; light consumers are shown in green. Those jutting scarlet towers you can see emerging from the Atlantic are our friends in the US.

6. WEATHER WATCHING

You can keep an eye on tropical storms, cloud maps or even hurricanes with this impressive collection of real-time weather updates for Google Earth. The list of folders and subfolders contained within this KML fi le is a little bewildering at first, and you probably won’t want more than one layer selected at any time, but the depth of information available is staggering. The live animation of lightning strikes is, frankly, terrifying.

7. WATCH LONDON SKYSCRAPERS GROW

London’s skyline has changed dramatically over the past 50 years, and this eye-opening 3D animation illustrates exactly how. Lower the perspective to ground level, press play on the animation slider at the top of the screen and watch as landmarks such as the Gherkin and Tower 42 erupt from the ground.

8. TRACK FLIGHTS

Want to know why Al Gore is getting a little hot under

ADVERTISEMENT

the collar about global warming? Switch on this real-time fl ight tracker, which amazingly only shows fl ights leaving from fi ve US airports, yet still manages to almost fi ll the globe. It’s of little practical use, but it is an environmental wake-up call.

9. TOUR CORNISH NATURE SPOTS

The Cornwall Wildlife Trust has put together this guided tour of the county’s wildlife reserves. The highly detailed satellite photography across the UK allows you to hone in on the more spectacular sites, such as the Fal-Ruan Estuary and Tresayes. Well worth a virtual visit before an actual one.

10. GIANT ADVERTS

There’s no advertising in Google Earth - apart from the giant tarpaulins people lay down in the hope that Google’s satellites will snap them. US magazine Maxim attempted such a feat to celebrate its 100th issue, although it took nine people 15 hours to lay the 110ft print out in the Nevada Desert. They couldn’t hang around long enough for the Google satellites to arrive, though, so they took the aerial photo themselves

This entry was posted Thursday, November 29th, 2007 and was filed under Jungle News, Articles. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.