The awe of the devastation of the Japan earthquake and tsunami has been the subject of many searches over the past week. Many searchers are also looking for imagery of the areas of Japan affected.
Google has been working with their satellite imagery provider, GeoEye, to obtain new images of the areas most affected. Some of the images have been made available on the Google LatLong blog.
Yahoo also has also created their own compilation of before and after images of Japan.
Google has created an interactive set of animations they’re calling the U.S. Presidents Showcase that uses Google Earth to help celebrate President’s Day. Google LatLong announced the “visually fun and interactive” feature this morning.
The animations are broken in to seven segments, covering U.S. Presidential history from George Washington in 1789 through present day. The animations show the birthplace of each U.S. President, in the order of their tenure.
For those of us who remember having to memorize the order of presidents in elementary school, we sure could have used this tool to make it easier. The animations pause with pop-ups of information about each president that call out an numerical icon indicating birthplace and which number president.
According to the Official Google Blog, Google Earth played a role in the discovery of a new hominid fossil in the Cradle of Humankind World Heritage Site in South Africa. “The discovery is one of the most significant palaeoanthropological discoveries in recent times, revealing at least two partial hominid skeletons in remarkable condition, dating to between 1.78 and 1.95 million years,” Michael Jones, Chief Technology Advocate at Google, says in a post.
Image via CrunchBase
So, how did all this come about?
Catching up on a week of new stuff from the GOOG.
Google and DISH Network may be teaming up for a TV search.
AdWords released a new feature for advertising on the Google Content Network that filters out below-the-fold inventory.
Google Webmaster Tools now offers Fetch as Googlebot Mobile and the ability for page owners to claim their Sidewiki entry.
Google Public Data Explorer is a new Labs application.
Google Maps served up three updates:
- A new imagery update was released for Maps and Earth. It includes new imagery for areas affected by the Chile earthquake.
So many Google updates. So little time.
It was another overachieving week for Google. In addition to launching their own quasi-social network and acquiring Aardvark, they were busy pushing out a bunch of updates to existing products and sharing new data. And yes, even Buzz has received its first round of updates.
Without further ado….
AdWords is now offering up Bid Ideas in the Opportunities Tab. Bid ideas are based on bid simulator data.
Google AdSense explains how they treat keywords from referral search engines as content on publisher websites in order to serve up relevant ads.
The Google Boulder office has been working hard on developing models of venues for the upcoming Winter Olympics in Vancouver this February. Now, you get to see the fruits of their labor.
Previously, only 8 out of the 9 venues were released. Now, those 8 have been updated with high resolution imagery, plus the ninth venue, bobsledding, has been added to the mix.
You can view them via the “3D Buildings” layer in Google Earth or by visiting the collection in the online 3D Warehouse.
The Google Maps team has been working hard with partner GeoEye to push out an updated imagery of Haiti. The update includes imagery taken at 10:27 am EST on Wednesday, January 13 – approximately 15 hours after the earthquake hit.
You can download the KML file to view in Google Earth and the layer is available for viewing in Google Maps as well.
The imagery is primarily for Port-Au-Prince. Google says they’ll add more imagery, but you only need to download the file once.
Here’s what the imagery looks like in Google Earth:
Recently, Google launched Place Pages, where you can find a bunch of info on a local business on single page. You can find these pages when you search on Google Maps.
So, it’s not that far of a stretch that Place Pages are now being added to Google Earth. If you’re not familiar, Google Earth is a 3D version of Google Maps. You download it onto your computer to use it.
In Google Earth, Place Pages appear directly in the window, so as not to disrupt your virtual traipsing.
Image via Google LatLong blog
This was one of those weeks where Google unleashed a google of updates. Try as we might, sometimes we just run out of time at the end of the week. So, occasionally, we have to compile a list of the leftovers at the end of the week. Here’s what we haven’t yet covered that you’ll still want to know:
Google Retail told us that consumers are increasingly shopping online on the weekends – yes, even during the holidays (avoiding the crowds?). They also unveiled hot holiday searches and Cyber Monday’s hot search trends.
This was one of those weeks where Google unleashed a google of updates. Try as we might, sometimes we just run out of time at the end of the week. So, occasionally, we have to compile a list of the leftovers at the end of the week. Here’s what we haven’t yet covered that you’ll still want to know:
Google Retail told us that consumers are increasingly shopping online on the weekends – yes, even during the holidays (avoiding the crowds?). They also unveiled hot holiday searches and Cyber Monday’s hot search trends.
