Mapping Ancient Civilization, in a Matter of Days using LiDAR!

From Science News in the NYTimesNYTimes covers lidar! The husband-and-wife team of Arlen F. Chase and Diane Z. Chase used lidar sensors to penetrate the jungle cover to get 3-D images of the site of ancient Caracol, in Belize, one of the great cities of the Maya lowlands. See article.

Georeferenced historic photos in Yosemite

I saw this guy present his project about revisiting sites of historic  photography in Yosemite (1980's and 1910's,1920's).  Obviously, it reminded me of our own VTM project.

Google and LiDAR

wondering how google earth creates the 3D buildings? LiDAR, of course!

NUS Library: 3D Interactive Map

GIS at its most... creative? Definitely at a micro-scale. Pretty cool project where they have esentially "georeferenced" books within a library by their call numbers.  The shelfs are referenced to an existent CAD model within a GoogleEarth/GIS framework.  The bottom line: lookup a book within the library and this model will take you to the correct shelf on the correct floor, GoogleEarth style.  They also have links like "Laptop Charging Station," "Quite Reading Zone," etc.

Google map driving simulator

 This is a really neat google-earth API -- as in, it uses Google Earth (not Google Maps) capabilities in a web page instead of the stand-alone application. This API is particularly cool because it combine satellite imagery (Google) with ma (Google), with Street view (Google), with oblique aerial photography (Microsoft) all in one view. Anyway, you have to look at it see how cool it is. Notes: 1) A very quick installation of google-earth plugin may be necessary. 2) Click "Create!" button, then "Start," and then just watch. :)

Earth, observed

Great RS imagery.  Earth, observed: a photo essay by The Big Picture from Boston Chronicle.

Source of Sudden Oak Death?

We found it? Featured in SF Chronicle, this article describes Garbelotto's recent pub. Front page.

ArcExplorer

Check out ArcExplorer - the website, a flash version of the application, and a downloadable version. It's similar to GoogleEarth but allows you to also view data themes overlayed on the map (e.g. the census data, etc.). Looks like there are a few problems too -- like the projection is clearly bias towards USA so if you zoom in on Europe the countries look squished. Anyway, it has potentials... OH, it's FREE. (surprise surprise!)

Spotted Owl in the news.

Spotted Owl in the news. I noticed this on the front page of the NYTimes webpage. (SNAMP)

Cool weather links

Come on, you know you love checking the weather.. admit it. here is a nice, late night, intimate dinner conversation starter. Awesome interactive maps that change as you move your cursor over various links (e.g. wind direction, temperature, etc.) If you love graphs (and who doesn't!?) this site will rock your boat, because honestly, who needs those cutsie little pictures with dark cloudies and the sun, or the so not scientific location descriptors (e.g."Berkeley, CA")?? (not me!) if it's going to be cloudy, i wan't to know "HOW CLOUDY?". and please, it's "37.86N -122.26W," not "Berkeley." (see attached picture for more details) ;)