The Daily Render

A Digital Scrapbook for the Past, Present, and Future

DC Area Farmers Markets
|| 12/26/2005 || 11:00 pm || Comments Off on DC Area Farmers Markets || ||

This evening I made the first layer for an ongoing mapping project I’ve tasked myself to, “SUSTAINABLE DC MAP”

If you have Google Earth, cut & paste this link as new network connection, and zoom into DC.

If you don’t have Google Earth, you can see two screen shots I took, here & here.

I have going to have a planting party this spring… details tba

Remember, January 5th, 7pm, UDC & me :)

Related Google Earth Entries:

Found Geospatial Art
|| 11/7/2005 || 12:19 am || Comments Off on Found Geospatial Art || ||

Today I devoted myself to the task of geocoding all of my Washington, DC renderings into Google Earth. Many many hours later, I’ve made it just over halfway through the task. I will be putting the layer on-line shortly…

As I was adding layers, there were two renderings that I decided to have a little cartographic fun with. When I got to Boxes of Jefferson, I decided to tilt the image 45 degrees and enlarge it to the size of Washington, DC. About two hours later when I got to DC Stencil, I decided to modify it to extenuate the lettering by removing the black background and turning it into a .png file (to preserve the transparency). I enlarged it as well to the size of a giant “you are here” sign. About an hour later I was going through the layers to see if there were any errors, I stumbled on the image below….

Star Series – BETA
|| 10/30/2005 || 11:46 am || Comments Off on Star Series – BETA || ||

Beta release of the Star Series Image Overlay KML file for Google Earth.
Click here to download the zipped up KML file

Instructions:
Unzip the file, drag starseries.kml file to your desktop, and double click on it to lauch Google Earth

Once loaded into Google Earth, the layer will download the maps from the Star Series hosted on my website. On the Places Panel the folder titled “Star Series” will be placed. Clicking on the triangle next to the folder you can expand and collapse the contents of the folder. By clicking on the “Send Comment” link, the blog entry in which the map is referenced will load up in the Google Earth web browser allowing you to leave a comment on my blog. By adjusting the transparency of the map overlay, you can find the area on the ground which was as a guide.

The Alpha release will have icons instead of overlays to facilitate the navigation of my maps. Within each icon will be a link for the overlay of the map.

Known Issues:
Due to large size of the maps, Google Earth might slow down considerably after they are loaded.
Google Earth’s browser is based off of Internet Explorer and my website does not show up as how I’d like it to.

Please provide me with feedback!

Confluence Project meets Google Earth
|| 10/13/2005 || 8:24 am || 2 Comments Rendered || ||

After being so impressed by the kind words and excellent recap of my first confluence, I decided on a whim late Thursday night (early this morning) to respond to Joseph’s generosity by geocoding his 86 different confluences using Google Earth.

Already listed on the Confluence website was Joseph’s previous confluences, so all I had to was manually cut & paste each confluence into Google’s search bar and the program would take me to the location. This proved to be somewhat more time consuming because there is a bug in Google Earth which does not allow the ASCII code for degreeÂ° to be used when searching. This forced me to paste the coordinates, then go into the search box and delete the degree character.

After being flown to the confluence, I clicked on the icon to add a placemark and within the placemark I cut pasted the confluence URL, the date Jospeh visited, and the location’s approximate location. This way when someone clicks on the placemark, they are given the option of viewing Joseph’s pictures and remarks. With Google Earth’s embedded web browser this hyperlinking works excellently because you can see the on-the-ground photos alongside the overhead aerial & satellite imagery. This works very similar to my “E St. Risk Analysis” flash animation I made at GWU.

My favorite aspect of this little Google Earth project is the ability of this to be used for learning and pedagogical development. Essentially, I’ve wanted to make a learning tool for the program since Google Earth came out, but there hasn’t been an opportunity yet for me to do so. What I’ve created is a fun, inquiry driven, learning module for Google Earth which teaches the basics of thinking spatially about latitudes and longitudes.

Directions: Load the layer I made (link below) in Google Earth and go to the menu, click on View –> Lat/Long Grid, you can see how his travels lineup perfectly with the latitudes and longitudes on the surface of the earth. You can the go one step further by clicking on embedded Confluence URLs to see the temporal aspects of his visit and how they relate to the time when the aerial & satellite image was taken.

If you have Google Earth installed on your PC, click save target as, and download the layer “JKconfluences.kml” Then open it up in Google Earth and have fun!

I’d love feedback!

Change in DC imagery in Google’s servers
|| 8/17/2005 || 6:35 pm || Comments Off on Change in DC imagery in Google’s servers || ||

After finding out about Google Earth’s change to Baghdad, Iraq, I discovered that they also changed the imagery for Washington, DC. Notice the new diamond mosaic of DC.

: Screen Shot :

: Analysis :

Continue Reading:

+ MORE

Baghdad Imagery change in Google Earth
|| 8/16/2005 || 6:02 pm || Comments Off on Baghdad Imagery change in Google Earth || ||

I heard about this news last week…
Via NBC

Troops Worried About Popular Google Feature
Soldiers Worry About Insurgents Using Information

POSTED: 9:48 pm PDT August 11, 2005
UPDATED: 9:58 pm PDT August 11, 2005

SAN DIEGO — A popular new feature on Google’s Web site has troops in Iraq upset, NBC 7/39 reported on Thursday.

The “Google Earth Program” has satellite maps from around the globe, where people can zoom in on their houses — or a military base in Iraq.

The pictures are a year old, but troops say many things have not changed, such as aircraft that are in the same locations.

The program can show people the latitude and longitude of any spot. Troops said they fear insurgents can use all of the information to aim mortar rounds.

A local retired Marine said he does see some risk in the site.

“Clever and devious people can come up with any number of ways to use this and keep themselves out of harm’s way while doing significant damage to U.S. forces or any of the coalition,” said retired Lt. Col. Thomas Richards.

Google said the images are all publicly available; the program just puts them in one place.

Last night I decided to do some “research” and found that Google has actually changed their imagery in Baghdad, Iraq. I know this because when Google Earth came out I visited Baghdad and it had the same Digital Globe imagery that I downloaded to make some of my Baghdad renderings with. Look at the imagery below. Notice at big hole around downtown Baghdad? That contains the Greenzone as well as most of the important buildings in the Iraqi government.

It looks like Google has taken some heat and put in some older imagery… I don’t know for sure if it’s older or not, but I’ll have to check. If I remember correctly, I downloaded some pre-illegal-invasion imagery from Digital Globe, but I’ll have to check…

Related Censorship Entries:

Related Google Earth Entries:

Google Earth review
|| 7/14/2005 || 5:34 pm || Comments Off on Google Earth review || ||

Above is a screen shot of downtown DC with nearly all the default layers turned on. I call it “Google’s DC TMI,” which basically means, Too Much Information! I feel it geographically represents the cacophony of information that Google offers.

So on to the review of Google Earth…

+ MORE

Google Earth is here!
|| 6/30/2005 || 8:11 am || 1 Comment Rendered || ||

Google Earth is now available.

I just downloaded it and installed it, and I must say- WOW-

I still like NASA’s World Wind, but Google Earth has some features that are blowing me out of the water right now. I need to play with it a bit more to really find out it’s strengths and weaknesses. I’ll write up a full review of it shortly…

Nonetheless, I can’t wait to see how MSN’s “Virtual Earth” compares!

View Google’s press release here.

===/===Update======
The day that this was posted, I had my entry linked on DCist which spawned a visitor from the Google HQ visit my website, and now this page is listed in the results of when my name is searched. This frustrates me quite a bit because my website has a robots.txt file that requests that the content of my website not be cached & cataloged on Google, Yahoo, and MSN (along with every other search website). I have requested that this entry be taken off of Google’s database, but at the time of this updated (July 19, 2005) this entry is still listed, and I am very annoyed.

I will update this again when the content has been removed…or if it still hasn’t at a later date…

I still need to write my review of the Google Earth!
===/===

The Daily Render By

A Digital Scrapbook for the Past, Present, and Future.

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Nikolas Schiller is a second-class American citizen living in America's last colony, Washington, DC. This blog is my on-line repository of what I have created or found on-line since May of 2004. If you have any questions or comments, please contact: