New satellite-Visual literacy with Google Earth


Most real problems have a geographic factor. Google Earth is a superb application for educators and problem solvers, one that is constantly improving. One problem has been the display of fuzzy to high quality images from satellite images that might be up to several years old, depending on whether you were rural or in a fast growing high population area. The San Francisco bridge image on the left is an example of the high quality to which Google is soon switching (click image for larger photo) for all its images. The company GeoEye launches the GeoEye-1 on Sept 4, 2008, just days away. According to Google's Hurowitz, it "has the highest ground resolution color imagery available in the commercial marketplace and will produce high-quality imagery with a very accurate geolocation." At highest quality, a twenty-two inch (.41 meter) area in black and white or 1.65 meters in color will make up 1 pixel. In one click it can capture great quality of an area the size of the state of New Mexico. Further, it could produce these high quality maps of the entire United States every 30 days.

It will be almost two months after launch before the new images begin to flow into Google's databases, then another month or so to complete the set of overlapping maps for the U.S. This means the end of the semester will be a good time to re-visit the satellite image of your school or other locations. Could be fun to screen capture the best resolution now, then again to compare at the end of November.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Habermas as Blogging Philosophy

Image
Audio FAQ It is hard to match the socializing and harmonizing potential of sharing a meal with someone. What is there about the clink of silverware and dishes that stimulates conversation and a little problem-solving. Are blog sites just a weak substitute for good mealtime conversation? Unless videoconference pricing drop off a cliff, it is hard to imagine replacing blog sites any time soon with doing a videoconference lunch with multiple points around the globe. Now there's something to look forward to. A meal seems such a perfect image for communicative action theory. Given global social customs, one could conjecture that brains and stomachs take particular pleasure in doing their digesting together. Habermas's Communicative Action Theory (1984) provides a deeper perspective from which to examine the nova-like explosion of blogging. Who would have known there was such an additional pent-up life-force needing further social discourse? What was so limiting about phones, email,
Read more

Innovations in Image Composition

It's fascinating to watch the doubling of pixels for camera resolution for the same price, making it almost worth while to buy a new camera every year. The innovation curve for image making continues to shoot upward. Keep an eye out for new developments in image creation and comment away with news of the latest changes.
Read more

3D Leaps Forward

We work and play in a three dimensional world. We jump into 2 dimensional space for our textual and photographic information and most of our compositions. Creating in 3D used to mean sculpting rock, clay and other media. In digital environments, it also meant significant costs for software and hardware to create 3D images. A pair of programs have changed the cost to computer users, Google Earth and SketchUp. See samples of Google Earth at www.gearthblog.com/blog/archives/2006/03/expecting_lots.html . See video tutorials of SketchUp at http://sketchup.google.com/tutorials.html
Read more