Category: Google

Google stuff.

Google Earth for Mac, developers wanted…

Or so it seems. Google wants a Senior Macintosh Developer – Mountain View and/or a Macintosh Developer – Mountain View. I suggest any Mac-developer have a go and bring us… Google Earth for Mac. 🙂

You may be very familiar with some of our desktop products including Google Earth, Google Desktop, Picasa, and Google Talk., the description says. Well, GTalk I can connect to with iChat for now. Picasa? iPhoto comes with the system. Google Desktop? There is a thing called Spotlight & Dashboard that come with Tiger already. So that leaves one much desired piece of software left… If I may trust my stats, it is the most requested item today. Though you may want to inquire with the Zeitgeist people upon application. 😉 (Found on Is Google Gearing Up for a Mac Software Assault?)

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Google Earth for Mac, alternatives

It seems a lot of Mac owners, like me, are anticipating the arrival of the Google Earth client for Mac. Alas… it is nowhere in sight. 🙁 But do not despair. Actually, there are alternatives available, here’s three I can think of. ‘Virtual PC for Mac‘, ‘Remote Desktop Client for Mac‘ and ‘Google Maps‘.

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Google Earth: Impact Structures Goodness

Impact KML Downloads:

Impact IconA few of you noticed that I’ve released some more impact structures/craters for your enjoyment in Google Earth. For those who don’t… I’ve released all 172 impact structures on earth, nicely categorised by continent or, if you want, just the top 25. Take your pick from the box on the right.

So what do you get? An overview of all the confirmed impact structures on this planet’s surface, including a description (with link to Wikipedia) and an indicator of the estimated size.

How to enjoy?

  1. Download Google Earth and install.
  2. Click on a ‘view’ of your choice. (box on the right)
  3. Wait a little for GE to show the craters and then select details from the newfound impact structures folder.

Feedback is welcome and be sure to keep an eye on the Google Earth page here.

Google Earth for Mac

What’s keeping you (Google) guys?

I know, 5% of an audience isn’t much of an audience to reckon with. And I could just whip out my Dell to play with GE. But as mentioned at launch:

Apple Macintosh computers are not supported at this time (but we are working on it).

I know 1,5 months isn’t a lot of time, but is there any sight of an alpha or preview or ‘proof of concept’? It’s just that I am becoming a little impatient. 🙂 (I also know that it’s Googles practice to be silent untill beta-release :-()

I’m becoming even more impatient seeing a new release of Google Earth (for Win) every other week:

There is a new installer available as of Saturday night, Sept 17th. It will be made available via check-for-updates on Monday:

GoogleEarth-0616.exe (works for both Plus and Free)

GoogleEarthPro-0616.exe

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Feedback is appreciated
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(Lifted from the Keyhole Community)

BTW: I think I’ve blogged Google quite enough already. Time to spend some time on Microsoft or Adobe/Macromedia… Or maybe Yahoo’s GMail killer.

Update (12/9/05 23:45 GMT+1): This post is officially obsolete. As of today there’s definite proof Google is working on a Mac OS X version. The non-public beta version has been circling the internet pretty much all day. See Google Earth for Mac OS X around the corner…

Commercial ads inside Google Earth

Here’s something I noticed lately. Advertisement through placemarks.
I saw a few of these placemarks passing by on Googleearthhacks.com. What struck me was that they are blatant commercial placemarks. Whether they were put together by GE enthousiasts or not.

A few examples:

Although their info is on a board (GEH), the same info is not included in the placemark itself. A missed opportunity if you ask me.

Anyway. I’m not saying this is bad perse. Maybe someone travelling around asia needs a place to sleep or somebody wants to dive off a dam. Who knows. But this makes me wonder what else you could do to use GE to ones commercial advantage. Please don’t let it be spam.

Google Blog Search fixes referral keywords

During the first ’24 hours’ of live beta, Google’s Blog Search was a nightmare for keyword tracking. Some of you noticed some weird referers showing up in their counter-tools. All this was caused by the redirects from the search results from Blog Search. This meant that anyone entering your site was leaving a referal from the redirect from Blog Search (are you following me still?)

Simply put. Most statistical packages are keen to intercept the referring (‘How did you get here’) page. Especially the search parameters of Google that come with it. Google’s Blog Search simply masked its existence by replacing the keywords (?q=my+search) with the destination (?q=https://www.thinklemon.com/). Throwing off your tracker.

See the rumblings.
But as promised by Blogger Buzz the redirect would be gone. And eventually it did. 🙂

Google Blogsearch & Webfeeds

At first look there are no orange XML/RSS chicklets in Google Blogsearch. But if you look at the bottom of the page just above the pagination there’s this line where you can subscribe to either an Atom or RSS feed for the search results.

E.g.: “Thinklemon” search results in Atom and “Thinklemon” search results in RSS.

This is great stuff for some ‘egosurfing‘. 🙂 But I have to give it to MSN Search. As a search engine they were there first.
If it weren’t for Firefox’s Live Bookmarks I would just have missed this option.

Update: It seems that the feeds are ordered by relevance per default. You’ll need to sort your results on date first (top right) and then subscribe to get a feed ordered on post date.

Google Blogsearch

Google launched a dedicated blog search engine today.
You can read the FAQ here.

It seems that Google also uses the engine for their free Blogger weblog service. Which makes me wonder how they will sift out the splogs, as Blogger is/was not willing to take down spam/autogenerated/offensive weblogs.

Of course it’s beta. Need I mention?

[Via The RSS Weblog]

Google Earth: Impact Structures Top 25 (was 10)

And here it is! My first public experiment with Google Earth.

Vredefort Impact StructureSome time ago I stumbled upon the Earth Impact Database. A table with all 172 confirmed impact structures on earth’s surface. Putting one and two together I figured it would be nice to see those impact structures visualised inside GE. I also figured it to be a nice side-project to learn PHP, KML and XML on the way. After some trial and error, some code-borrowing, testing and hacking I present you:
A top 25 of the largest confirmed impact structures on earth.

If you were impressed by the dinosaur extermination power of the Chicxulub crater off the Yucatan peninsula in Mexico. Wait till you see the Sudbury and Vredefort ‘dents’. 😉


Download the impact structures top 25 kmz (Google Earth required). Or click the picture to see what you’re missing.

Continue reading “Google Earth: Impact Structures Top 25 (was 10)”

Katrina + CNN + Google Earth

Makes for some interesting first.

I’ve been following the Katrina aftermath this week and today, watching CNN, I noticed something familiar. One reporter used Google Earth, live, in his report of what happened to downtown New Orleans. Highlighting, zooming in, several parts of the stricken city to discuss what has happened. In the mean time swapping between GE & current footage.

Amidst the human tragedy that’s still going on, this was one of the things that struck me.

(Sorry, no screenshots.)

Update: Google Earth Hacks has a special page with all the ‘Hurricane Katrina and Flooding’ placemarks. There’s also a forum discussing all the material that’s available in GE.

We will attempt to keep these files updated with the latest aerial photos showing the flooded areas of New Orleans, to help residents of the area to stay informed.

Update 2: Via the Google Blog I found these additional links. 1. The special Katrina page at earth.google.com with overlays for GE. Some instructions here. 2. For people without GE there’s this special Katrina Google Maps page. (Originating article.)
Furthermore there are the Flickr Katrina & New Orleans tags showing related pictures.