Google Earth, Google Maps, and
Street View
By Edwin Partovi
and Katerina Efimova
Fall, 2008
"... It is amazing demo and a great example
of how much power computers and the
internet have put into the hands of average
people. You may not use Google Earth every
day, but it's worth fooling around with just
because it's cool."
Walt Mossberg,
The Wall Street Journal
• Google Earth displays satellite images of
varying resolution of the Earth's surface,
allowing users to visually see things like
houses and cars from a bird's eye view.
Google Street View
Global Positioning System
• GPS was developed by the US
Department of Defense to
provide navigation services for
the military.
• It has since become an integral
asset in various industries and
applications, such as for
recreation, surveying, and
vehicle tracking.
• GPS employs 24 spacecrafts in
24,000 km orbit to triangulate
positions on earth to a
potential accuracy of 20 m.
NASA’s “Satellite Tracking”
• NASA has implemented a series of programs
that allow users to locate satellites, including
the Hubble Space Telescope, the International
Space Station, and space shuttles.
• Users can also predict landing tracks for recent
or upcoming shuttle flights.
Comparisons with Mapquest, Ask
Maps, Windows Live Local, and Yahoo!
Maps
• As of 2006, Google Earth is not the most
popular service, with about 20 million unique
visitors as opposed to Yahoo’s roughly 46
million.
• Google Maps excels in the services of view,
zoom, user interface and features (including
multi-point directions, live traffic information,
and cell phone service), but Yahoo! is a close
second.
False-Color
• A false-color image is an image
that depicts a subject in colors
that differ from those the human
eye would perceive in reality,
referred to as true-color.
• For example, a photographic
negative depicts the
complementary colors of its
subject, but the image itself is
obvious.
• In much the same way, digital
image processing, used by Google
Maps, depicts ultraviolet and
infrared radiation and altitude
with visible colors.
QuickBird
• QuickBird is a high-resolution commercial
earth observation satellite, owned by
DigitalGlobe and launched in 2001.
• It collects the second highest resolution
imagery of earth, but boasts the largest image
size and the greatest on-board capacity.
• QuickBird is the image digital supplier for
Google Maps, providing the backdrop for such
mapping aplications.
GlobeXplorer
• GlobeXplorer is an online special data
company that compiles and distributes aerial
photos, satellite imagery, and map data from
their online spatial archives.
• It has been credited as the first company to
establish a business around compiling and
distributing online aerial and satellite imagery.
• It provides these images to mapping services
such as Google Maps.
Google Maps for Mobile & GPS
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iPhone/iPod Touch
Windows Mobile
Nokia/Symbian (S60 3rd edition only)
Symbian OS (UIQ v3)
BlackBerry
Phones with Java-Platform (MIDP 2.0 and up),
for example the Sony Ericsson K800i
• Palm OS (Centro and newer)
Map mash-ups & Geotagging
Google Maps API
fin