In 2007, we wrapped up the year with a bulleted list of our various accomplishments from this year. In 2008, a few LIs and a UL just won't do. So we're celebrating the year in typical New Years fashion: fireworks, baby. Watch the show below, and click any headline it leaves behind to read the relevant blog post. If it went too fast for you or you just can't get enough of it, then you can watch again by clicking the button below the map. Happy New Years, all!
P.S. Five bucks if you can find a way to name-drop the Google Geo APIs in your midnight toast (or New Years' post?) and send me proof.
For the second year in a row, Google partnered with NORAD to provide an online map-based interface for tracking Santa's Dec. 24th sleigh ride across the world. Last year, the map was powered with the JavaScript Maps API. As the programmer for this year's map, I made the decision to use the Maps API for Flash instead. Why? I desperately wanted a glittery "comet trail" to follow Santa's path, and those kinds of effects are easier to pull off in Flash. (One might argue that decisions shouldn't be based on glitter, but one could counter that by pointing out the entire 1970s decade was based on glitter).
While converting the map over to Flash, I wrote code that may be helpful to other Flex developers out there. Instead of just open-sourcing the Santa Tracker map code* and forcing you to sort through it all, I've created standalone demos and descriptions for each of the features:
* Okay, yeah, I open-sourced the whole code as well, mostly because I've developed an unhealthy dependence on Google Code's nifty subversion repositories and issue trackers. Finding the NORAD repository is left as an exercise to the reader.
Starting today, over 15,000 geoscientists and educators will gather at the Moscone Center in San Francisco for the Fall Meeting of the American Geophysical Union. Following on from previous years, we are convening a special session on Virtual Globes. This year’s session is titled “Visualizing Scientific Data Using KML and Virtual Globes,” and will take place all day on Thursday 18th December.
There will be over 60 talks, posters and demonstrations from researchers, educators and developers. The session has been organized in collaboration with Google, and they will have plenty of experts on hand at their exhibitor booth to help with KML problems and answer your Google Geo questions. Anyone is welcome to stop by and register for the conference for a day, so if you're in the Bay area, please check it out! The week starts off tonight with Michael Jones, Google’s Chief Technology Advocate, giving the Frontiers of Geophysics Lecture. His talk, “The Spread of Scientific Knowledge from the Royal Society to Google Earth and Beyond” will be held at 6:30pm PST. The lecture will also be broadcast as a live webcast.
A long time ago, at a conference not too far away, Google launched the Google Earth Browser Plugin, with the Google Earth API. At the time, we promised that we would bring it to the Mac, and now we have.
Today, we're excited to announce the release of the Google Earth Browser Plugin for Mac OS X 10.4+ (PowerPC and Intel). The Mac plugin is supported on Safari 3.1+ and Firefox 3.0+. The download link should now be available to all users from any Earth API-powered site. We also released a game, Puzzler, in honor of the new Mac plugin. It is, of course, playable on a PC as well. And as usual, it's open source, so you're free to adopt the code.
In addition to the Mac release, we've also upgraded the Windows version of the plugin. See the release notes for more details.
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