New Tutorial: Marking Locations

Yet another new video tutorial. Please post any feedback you have:

Hiding Text Descriptions

From a fellow Googler: you can hide the text description of a placemark in the Places pane in Google Earth by using the <Snippet> element of KML. Read more in the KML documentation.

This <Snippet> element allows you to control how many lines of the text in a placemark description box is displayed in the Places pane. The default value is two lines. You can increase this by using this syntax:

<Snippet maxLines="X">

or you can hide all the text by using this syntax:

<Snippet></Snippet>

Note this tag must be inserted inside the element of your KML file:

<Placemark>
<name>Moby Arena</name>
<Snippet></Snippet>
<description>Moby Arena

http://csurams.cstv.com/facilities/csu-facilities.html</description>

New Tutorial: Searching in Google Earth

Here is our latest video tutorial. Please post any feedback you have:

One to Remember: Pressing the Scroll Wheel

Somehow I managed to let the first anniversary of this blog pass by without some kind of acknowledgment. But to make up for this, here is a re-run post from October of last year.

This tip is one that always fascinates users who have not heard of this functionality:

Perhaps the most overlooked method of navigating in Google Earth is the technique of rotating the view by holding down the middle mouse button or depressible mouse wheel.

Give it a try. First, navigate to a favorite location in Google Earth. Press down the middle mouse button or wheel and move the mouse. Moving up and down tilts the view, whereas moving left or right rotates the view. Cool, eh?

This represents a very useful way to adjust your perspective of a location. In fact, this is how I always view an area once I have located it.

Fun with Weather

In case you have not noticed, Google Earth offers a new Weather layer that allows you to see cloud formations, radar depiction of precipitation, current conditions and even forecasts. To view all this, in the Layers panel, check Weather.

If you turn on the Clouds sub folder, navigate to ground level and tilt up, you can get a very cool realistic depiction of the sky (see image). Of course, this works best in a location where there is current cloud cover.

Learn more about using layers and navigating.

Search Tips

You can remove the history/autofill of your search terms at anytime by clicking Edit > Clear Search History.

Once you have searched for a place or business, you can edit your search results. This is handy if you want to save or edit search results for another purpose. For example, if you wanted to create a list of cafes in your town, you could navigate to your town and search for "cafe". In the search results, right click (CTRL click on the Mac) on any entry and choose Properties to add your own details. You can then save these search results to My Places by dragging it to the Places panel or right clicking the search results and choosing Save to My Places.

Learn more about searching in Google Earth.

New Tutorial: Navigating in Google Earth

With help with my fellow Googlers, I've created the following video tutorial. Please check it out and let me know if you have any questions:

A Virtual Vacation

One of the most fulfilling things about working on a widely-used product is seeing what users do with it. A colleague of mine created this amazing account of his multi-night hiking adventure in the Sierra Nevada. He used a number of tools to document this trip, including Google Earth, topographic software, a digital camera, several GPS devices and a solar panel device. Us geeks really know how to get away from it all ;-)

The result of these toys and his diligent tracking is the incredible presentation on this web page. I like how he used Google Earth to visually depict the difficulty of certain legs of his trip. And of course, the photography of the adventure is very inspiring. I am already planning a similar trip in the High Sierra next summer.