Googlified

In June 28, 2005, Google launched Google Earth. Two and a half years later, this “satellite imagery-based mapping” software is now available in 13 different languages and has been downloaded for over 350 million times, according to the Google LatLong Blog.

In a related news, Google today launched a new SketchUp contest called the “Google 2008 International Model Your Campus Competition“. As the name of the contest suggests, the contest requires you to model your college campus. Winners of the contest will receive “an Apple iPod Touch, a Nintendo Wii Console, and a Google t-shirt and hat” as prize.

Yo, a Wii and an iPod Touch, what are you waiting for?

Arizona State University is running a survey asking whether its students would like to test-drive and provide feedback for an “exciting project” by “a major internet company”. Some of the questions kinda revealed that company to be Google (”Do you have a Gmail account?” and “Are you willing to sign a [NDA]?” - a common practice of Google) and this project is likely to be a 3D social network, like Second Life, as many speculated.

I don’t know, it sounds a little creepy to me.

[screenshots by it5five, via Google Blogoscoped]

Winners of the North America edition of the Build Your Campus in 3D competition just announced not so long ago, now there’s a similar competition going on in Australasia (Australia and New Zeland).

To enter the competition, you must be a college or university student in Australia or New Zealand, and you must be at least 18 years old. You can take on the project yourself or enlist the help of your classmates, and to do your best possible work, we suggest that you have a faculty advisor. The deadline for entries is October 31st, 2007.

The prize would be … “a 1 day trip to Google’s Australian headquarters to participate in a workshop with a 3D modeling expert from Google.”

There you have it. Sketch on! :)

I don’t spend a lot of my time creating models with SketchUp, but if you do, you might find Google SketchUp’s ModelVision interesting. It lets you view the models in the Sketchup 3D Warehouse in the way Flickrvision and Twittervision works. You can choose to view the ones that are most recent, highest rated, or most popular.

Looks like it’s not all the hard to create a *-vision, maybe I will make a Googlifivision tomorrow, stay tune. :)

[via GEarthBlog]

Google SketchUp Evangelist Aidan Chopra recently finished his first book, “Google SketchUp for Dummies” and it’s now available for sale online or at one of your nearby bookstores.

You can download the first chapter of the book in PDF format here (legally, not Harry Potter lol).

At the beginning of the year, Google announced the “Build Your Campus” competition that’s opened for college students in North America to build their own campus. Google’s LatLong Blog today announced the winners of this contest.

• University of Minnesota - Department of Architecture
  
• Purdue University - Departments of Computer Graphics Technology and Education
  
• Concordia University, Loyola Campus - Department of Civil Engineering
  
• Stanford University - Department of Architectural Design
  
• Indiana University Purdue University Fort Wayne (IPFW) - Departments of Engineering and Computer Science
  
• Franklin W. Olin College of Engineering - Department of Engineering
  
• Dartmouth College - Departments of Computer Science and Digital Art

The winning prize is a free 3-day visit to Googleplex. :)

Google Earth Blog reports that Google Maps has a huge high resolution imagery update from the data that were out for Google Earth on June 2nd.

New high resolution:

• Canada: Whistler, BC; Waterloo & Toronto, Ontario; Nanaimo, BC; Fort Saskatchewan
• AB England: Base 50cm coverage of nearly entire country
• Avon Germany: Cities/Regions of Greifswald, Trier, Köln, Stuttgart, Bonn, Oldenburg, Rostock, Saarbrücken, Hamburg, Hannover, and Ritterhude
• Austria: Villach region
• France: Cities of Caen, Dijon, Metz, St Etienne, Toulouse and Rouen
• Spain: Valencia Andorra
• US: Imperial County (CA); Yellowstone National Park (WY); Galveston/Houston (TX); Peterborough (NH); Cheyenne (WY); Burke, Wake, and Cabarrus Counties (NC); Racine and Kenosha Counties (WI); Washington, DC; St Paul (MN); and the State of Alabama
• Japan: City/Regions of Kochi, Asahikawa, Koriyama, Miyazaki, Nagano, Utsunomiya, Akita, and Toyama
• Large Digital Globe (60cm) update includes areas in Sudan, expanded Africa, Australia, Mexico coverage and smaller areas of coverage in Asia, Polynesia, South America, Canada, Europe, Middle East plus some interesting islands in Antarctica and Greenland.

Updated Imagery:

Americas: Bogotá, Columbia; Mission Viejo (CA, US); Hillsborough County (FL, US) EU: Dublin, Ireland Middle East/Africa: Beirut, Lebanon and Tripoli, Libya Asia: Hong Kong and Manila, Philippine

That’s one huge update indeed. :)

On a related note, the Adobe Labs released a Photoshop CS3 Plug-in for Google 3D Warehouse.

SketchUp now has its own blog! The new blog is aimed to provide SketchUp users more up-to-date information than their traditional monthly email newsletter, SketchUpdate. It will include pictures, videos, and links to interesting models in the 3D Warehouse, and other things that the readers might be interested in. Also, notes from developer, case studies, tips and tricks from trainers will also be shared through the blog.

Note: Comments are allowed in the SketchUpdate Blog.