Google Earth: Creating Interactive Photo Galleries
Discussion
5 replies
Posted by Pablo Yanez on March 9, 2006 at 11:24 PM
Saw the earlier post and though folks might be interested in my little experiment
I have been kicking this idea around for a long time, and finally got around to doing it....
I have set up a PBase gallery which will allow you to view my photos in an interactive way using Google Earth. I think this approach has tons of potential for enhancing how people interact with all sorts of media, photography included, in which spatial relationships are important. This approach is valid for all types of photography, but may be most easily applied to landscape, travel or other types of photography where a sense of "place" or geographic location is important. Furthermore I think this mix of technologies has the potential for providing an amazing educational tool.
I would be very grateful if you could provide me with any feedback.
Thanks
Posted by Scott Bacon on March 10, 2006 at 9:08 AM
Excellent idea. Since I already had Google Earth installed, it was very easy to download your file and browse the images from a geographic perspective - very cool.
Posted by Carl Donohue on March 10, 2006 at 2:14 PM
Hey folks,
Does anyone know if it's legal to use images saved from Google Earth to a website - I read their support pages, and it indicated "yes" for personal wesbites, but for commercial sites, it was kinda vague. I emailed them and got a
"We are unable to personally respond to all suggestions and problems
reported. We do, however, appreciate the feedback and will use it to
continually improve Google Earth and the Help Center." response.
I want to use a couple of images I saved for my Treks website, so folks can see where we'll be/been.
Thanks.
Cheers
Carl
Posted by Pablo Yanez on March 10, 2006 at 8:38 PM
Carl,
Not really sure with any certainty about usage of their images -- I do know you can't strip their logos or alter the jpgs from GE. I think I have seen businesses with GE images online, but I don't know if this has been on the up and up or not or through some agreement between both parties.
Please post here if you find out - I for one would like to know.
They're not really "Google Earth" images. Much of the data is USGS aerial photography and satellite-based imagery. I work at the USGS EROS Data Center, the Nation's repository for government (non-classified) remote-sensing data. Yes, there are definitely a number of businesses using USGS data, including Google Earth.
As for the capabilities of Google Earth...well, let's just say the USGS web pages themselves are definitely playing catch-up to Google!! Very, very impressive stuff. In fact, one of my projects at work is mapping land cover change in the United States. We use satellite imagery and aerial photography to help us do historical mapping back to 1972. The capabilities of Google Earth are so great that we often find ourselves using Google Earth to reference aerial photography!! The same for the spatial referencing that Pablo refers to. It's very nice to use your own spatially referenced data in Google Earth.
Posted by Pablo Yanez on March 12, 2006 at 12:34 PM
Terry,
Thanks for posting. Yep, I understand that the images are not created by Google, but rather that these were taken from different sources including EROS (USGS), SPOT, or others depending on availability and resoultion needed -- and I think one of the MAJOR flaws in GE is the lack of image information including source, resolution, and DATA. But then again, for a free program...
By coincidence (maybe not), I am a geolologist. When I first fired up GE last year, I was in utter shock!! To have reasonable imagery for the ENTIRE world that would drape over 3D data, on your personal computer -- all for free -- I literally almost fainted.
I remembered back to the late 80s when I was working on my master's thesis and was desperate to get some satellite images of the field areas I was considering working on (centeral Mexico, and northern Chile among others). Getting the images was next to impossible -- first it required VERY expensive hardware to view and the coverage available for purchase (LANDSAT tapes) was VERY expensive. If I remember correctly the decission had been made under the Reagan administration to privatize the imagery that had previously been more in the "private domain" before. I think this may have been the birth of EROS (Terry please correct me if I'm wrong - it's been a while). This marked the start of a fairly long period when this type of imagery was just not easily available to "common folk" or even institutions without deep pockets. Over the last couple of years this has fortunately been reverted, (oddly) by the efforts of both Microsoft (via TerraServer) and not much more successfully by Google (Earth). Ironically (IMHO) the great products they have come up with, have been to a large degree the result of political/bureaucratic binds that government had imposed on the USGS, NASA and other from making similar offering much earlier.
As a geologist, it has been somewhat sad for me to see the USGS not get the credit it deserves in this revolution (I don't use the term lightly). On the other hand, it is great to see that their they are now starting to offer much better access to not only imagery but also elevation data through the data-packed but interface-poor seamless server (http://seamless.usgs.gov).
Since I'm not currently working as a geologist, to a large degree I'm out of touch with other publicly available data resources - Terry could you post any recommendationes here?
Discussion
5 repliesSaw the earlier post and though folks might be interested in my little experiment
I have been kicking this idea around for a long time, and finally got around to doing it....
I have set up a PBase gallery which will allow you to view my photos in an interactive way using Google Earth. I think this approach has tons of potential for enhancing how people interact with all sorts of media, photography included, in which spatial relationships are important. This approach is valid for all types of photography, but may be most easily applied to landscape, travel or other types of photography where a sense of "place" or geographic location is important. Furthermore I think this mix of technologies has the potential for providing an amazing educational tool.
You can visit the site by:
Clicking Here
I would be very grateful if you could provide me with any feedback.
Thanks
Does anyone know if it's legal to use images saved from Google Earth to a website - I read their support pages, and it indicated "yes" for personal wesbites, but for commercial sites, it was kinda vague. I emailed them and got a
"We are unable to personally respond to all suggestions and problems
reported. We do, however, appreciate the feedback and will use it to
continually improve Google Earth and the Help Center." response.
I want to use a couple of images I saved for my Treks website, so folks can see where we'll be/been.
Thanks.
Cheers
Carl
Not really sure with any certainty about usage of their images -- I do know you can't strip their logos or alter the jpgs from GE. I think I have seen businesses with GE images online, but I don't know if this has been on the up and up or not or through some agreement between both parties.
Please post here if you find out - I for one would like to know.
Thanks
As for the capabilities of Google Earth...well, let's just say the USGS web pages themselves are definitely playing catch-up to Google!! Very, very impressive stuff. In fact, one of my projects at work is mapping land cover change in the United States. We use satellite imagery and aerial photography to help us do historical mapping back to 1972. The capabilities of Google Earth are so great that we often find ourselves using Google Earth to reference aerial photography!! The same for the spatial referencing that Pablo refers to. It's very nice to use your own spatially referenced data in Google Earth.
Thanks for posting. Yep, I understand that the images are not created by Google, but rather that these were taken from different sources including EROS (USGS), SPOT, or others depending on availability and resoultion needed -- and I think one of the MAJOR flaws in GE is the lack of image information including source, resolution, and DATA. But then again, for a free program...
By coincidence (maybe not), I am a geolologist. When I first fired up GE last year, I was in utter shock!! To have reasonable imagery for the ENTIRE world that would drape over 3D data, on your personal computer -- all for free -- I literally almost fainted.
I remembered back to the late 80s when I was working on my master's thesis and was desperate to get some satellite images of the field areas I was considering working on (centeral Mexico, and northern Chile among others). Getting the images was next to impossible -- first it required VERY expensive hardware to view and the coverage available for purchase (LANDSAT tapes) was VERY expensive. If I remember correctly the decission had been made under the Reagan administration to privatize the imagery that had previously been more in the "private domain" before. I think this may have been the birth of EROS (Terry please correct me if I'm wrong - it's been a while). This marked the start of a fairly long period when this type of imagery was just not easily available to "common folk" or even institutions without deep pockets. Over the last couple of years this has fortunately been reverted, (oddly) by the efforts of both Microsoft (via TerraServer) and not much more successfully by Google (Earth). Ironically (IMHO) the great products they have come up with, have been to a large degree the result of political/bureaucratic binds that government had imposed on the USGS, NASA and other from making similar offering much earlier.
As a geologist, it has been somewhat sad for me to see the USGS not get the credit it deserves in this revolution (I don't use the term lightly). On the other hand, it is great to see that their they are now starting to offer much better access to not only imagery but also elevation data through the data-packed but interface-poor seamless server (http://seamless.usgs.gov).
Since I'm not currently working as a geologist, to a large degree I'm out of touch with other publicly available data resources - Terry could you post any recommendationes here?
Pablo