Wednesday, October 18, 2006

It's a plane!

I've just happened upon a corner of the blogosphere I didn't know existed: blogs dedicated to exploring Google Earth. This may sound like a region inhospitable to those without a comp. sci. degree to keep them warm, but I was surprised at how readable some of these sites are. Ogle Earth, for instance, has a great post about how archaelogists are using Google Earth to find dig sites in France dating back to the Iron Age.

Other dispatches from Google Earth bloggers are slightly quirkier, but interesting nonetheless. It seems several folks in the Google Earth Community have devised a new hobby, a sort-of trainspotting for the Google age. The sattelites that provide the photography that Google Earth displays have had to take a lot of pictures of a lot of Earth, and naturally they've occasionally taken those pictures while trains and planes have been passing through.

Finding the coordinates of these trains and planes has become a passion for some, particularly the planes. See, e.g., the post on Google Earth Blog, noting the discovery of a fully restored Lancaster bomber (apparently a mainstay of the WWII-era RAF) cruising around England. According to the post, a Google Community member discovered the plane when doing what everyone does when they first test drive Google Earth -- type in their home address. Most of us, however, don't find something like this when we do:

Google Earth Blog has a pointer to a list of all the planes the Community has thus far found flying the friendly skies of Google Earth. If nothing else, you've got to check out the KC-135 refueling the C-5 Galaxy over Northern California. So much cooler than that probably sounds.

Posted by John Swansburg at 05:49 PM

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