Juzer Burhani

I agree with Google Maps Mania on this — I’m quite disappointed that it’s not built on top of Google Earth.  However, it’s certainly a unique creation.  Google has just launched Lively.

It’s essentially Second Life, but with a million different worlds.  You create a “room”, then embed it on your site.  People can hop into your room and play around.  It’s certainly an interesting idea.

Below is a video with a bit more info, and here are a list of the most popular rooms so far, or go check out GEH Island.

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Lively Map



It has long been rumoured that Google were going to release their own virtual world built on top of Google Earth. On Tuesday Google did release their own Virtual World, called Lively. Unfortunately Lively is a stand alone product and doesn't utilise the 3D terrain and 3D buildings of Google Earth.



However there is no reason why you can't embed Lively into Google Maps. Lively allows users to build their own virtual worlds or 'rooms' and then to embed the rooms into their own websites using an iframe. So I have quickly thrown together this map to show how it is possible to embed a Lively room on Google Maps.



This actually could be a useful application. It may just happen that schools, clubs and other organisations start building their own virtual rooms with Lively based on a real world location. Google Maps seems as good a way as any to navigate and find these virtual rooms.



To play in any of the 'rooms' I have embedded on the map you will need to install the Lively plug-in (Windows only) and have or create a Google account.



If anyone wants to develop this as an idea feel free to cut and paste the code for the map.

This post by Greg Sterling this AM is a good reminder to tell you about one of my favorite features on Live Maps – Distance and Area calculations. If you ever wanted to know how far it is between 2 cities or what the area of the surface of a given lake is, Live Maps drawing tools make it really easy.
Even without drawing you can calculate directions to get the approximate drive time and distance between any 2 points by right clicking and choosing ‘Drive From…’ and ‘Drive to…’. Live maps has intercity vector map data for just about everywhere on Earth, including places it doesn’t have detailed city streets for.

But you can tailor the trail by using the Collections –> Open Your Collections  menu to draw your own lines or shapes. Whether it is a simple 2 point line or a complex closed polygon, Live Maps will show you the distance and area/perimeter respectively. Here is Greg’s ‘Crow Flies’ distance from Haifa to Sfat. 

And here is a Polygon drawn around the nearby Sea of Galilee showing that it is 63.33 Square Miles. If you sign in with your Live ID you can save your drawings in the cloud making them easy to share with others without the need for really long URL’s.

Enkin is a new hand-held navigation concept being developed by two German 'computational visualists'. It combines GPS, orientation sensors, and what looks like Google Maps and Google Earth.

In essence Enkin seems to take placemarks that you have created in Google Maps and overlays them on top of a live video feed of the same location.

It looks absolutely amazing. Just watch the video to see what I mean.

This brief mail came to me this AM from Vincent Tao who leads many of Microsoft's mapping and GIS initiatives in China -

CCTV (China Central Television) is the largest Chinese Broadcasting Company who owns the exclusive Olympics broadcasting rights for China. We just released the first version of VE integrated with CCTV Olympics site for ‘Euro Soccer Game 2008’. For the next phase, VE will be integrated with CCTV for the Olympics events.

via Virtual Earth / Live Maps

To go with the new “version 2″ 3D data for Miami, Microsoft has updated Vienna and Seattle. In addition to that, they’ve added a ton of new imagery.

I normally like to list all of the updated areas, but it’s simply too much. You can view it all on this page.

The total amount of new imagery is reported to be around 69.2TB, which is amazing! However, I don’t know how that number is computed. Is that raw imagery? Compressed? Anyone know how that figure is derived?

In any case, it looks to be another awesome update.

A couple of weeks ago I was commenting to our imagery team that the area around Mt Rushmore would be a great addition to our Birds Eye library; its one of the most recognizable landmarks in the US, but because of its remote location i guessed that only a small percent of folks had visited in person to see it and explore the area. now just a couple of weeks later I see it pop up in Birds Eye. I didn't realize i had that kind of influence with the imagery team :-)

The West view is pretty amazing. South is OK too, for seeing some of the behind the scenes goop on the mountain.

via Virtual Earth / Live Maps