To top Time's "top ten", try the Community

Time.com just posted a great list of top ten Google Earth finds. If it's got you hungry for more, the best place to find out about the weirdest, coolest things to see is always the Google Earth Community. I've been checking out the "Huge and Unique" forum, where users have posted hundreds of placemarks that you can download and view in Google Earth.

And it's easy too. If you're new to the community, look for attachments in the threads that interest you. Clicking on them will open a placemark, set of placemarks, or overlay right in Google Earth, and you'll see it in the Places panel. With finds like World's Biggest Sculpture and Faces in Google Earth, thanks to other users I'm well on my way to creating my own personal top ten.

Think something's missing? Check your layers!

On the Google Earth Help Forum, we frequently get questions from users who aren't seeing something in Google Earth that they think they should be. Often, this problem has a simple cause: a particular layer is turned off.

Layers hold the key to most of the content you see in Google Earth and, since there are so many, its not always easy to remember which layers to toggle on or off to get the information that you want. Looking for the name of a street? Make sure you've turned on the Roads layer. Can't dive under the ocean? Chances are, it's because your Terrain layer is turned off. Sometimes, the layer you need isn't quite intuitive: If you're having trouble viewing the Titanic, it's probably because you need to turn on your 3D Buildings layer.

So, when it seems like there's something missing, the Layers menu can hold the solution. And while you're at it, why not check out a layer that you haven't seen yet? The wealth of information that's available might surprise you.

Navigating Underwater in Google Earth

With the new Ocean layer, there's now so much more of the Earth to explore. But navigating underwater, and dipping above and below the ocean's surface, can take a bit of getting used to.

Diving underwater from the regular "top-down" view might seem a little disorienting. It's best to tilt your view first, so your view is almost parallel to the ocean's surface. This will give you the clearest view of the ocean floor terrain once you're underwater, and give you a better sense of how deep you're going .

There are three ways to tilt your view in Google Earth:

• If your mouse has a middle button, hold it down and move the mouse forward or backward.
• If your mouse has a scroll wheel, press the shift key and scroll.
• Hold down the shift key and your left mouse button while moving your mouse.

Note that crosshairs will appear wherever you click your mouse, and your view will tilt from this point.

Once your view is almost parallel to the ocean, keep zooming in until you are below the surface (note that you don't want to be completely parallel to the ocean's surface, otherwise you'll just fly over it without ever going underneath). When you're under the surface, you can "swim" around the same way that you'd navigate if you weren't underwater. Be sure to tilt your view upward to check out the ocean's surface from below.

To come above water again, click anywhere on the ocean's surface, like in the image below. Tilting your view upward from that point will allow you to come up for air.



For more information about navigating in Google Earth, check out this section of the Google Earth User Guide.

Saving images with Google Earth for iPhone

Stefan Geens, whose blog Ogle Earth is full of cool and inspiring Google Earth tricks, has a great tip for using Google Earth for iPhone. To maneuver between views quickly, you can save Google Earth imagery by taking iPhone screenshots.

To do this, make sure the Google Earth view you wish to save is visible on your iPhone screen. Press your phone's on/off button while holding down the home button -- the screen will briefly flash, and an image of your screen will be saved and placed in your camera roll.

This trick allows you to flick between different Google Earth views in your camera roll without having to start-up Google Earth on your phone, or wait for different imagery to load.

Can I Take My House Out of Google Earth?

While it’s pretty cool to see your home in Google Earth (GE), some folks ask Google if they can take images of their home out of GE. The answer?

It depends.

Almost every GE newbie opens GE, finds the ‘fly to’ box and searches for their house (or maybe grandma’s house). If Google has their location available, they’ll most likely see the top of their house nestled amongst familiar community landmarks.

Now, with Google’s Street View layer, you can often even swoop down onto the street and have a look around your neighborhood. For some people this enhancement can raise concerns, and so there is a ‘report a concern’ or ‘report an inappropriate image’ link at the bottom of most street view images so you can let Google know if something’s not quite right.

Why isn’t this available for all of the Google Earth imagery? The explanation comes from looking at the sources of each type of imagery. Google partners with third-party data providers all over the world to be able to bring you the satellite and aerial images you see in most of Google Earth. Google doesn’t control satellites nor take these pictures themselves.

On the other hand, when it comes to Street View images, Google has literally sent out a fleet of cars to take images of more and more communities. Thus, Google has more flexibility in what it can put in or take out of the street view images. So if there’s an image that violates the Google Earth or Google Maps privacy policy, there’s a good chance it can be removed.

If you’d simply like to have your house, car, etc. not show up anywhere in Google Earth that may be a little more of a challenge. The images included in Google Earth are images that you’d be able to see by flying over someone’s house, and are in general, publically available. Moreover, Google doesn’t alter the content of images that we receive from third-party sources—Google won’t manually extract an image from what you see.

If you’d like to still pursue getting an image taken out of the satellite imagery, your best bet is to directly contact the data provider that has taken the image and let them know that there’s a problem. The data provider is listed on the copyright line in the Google Earth images (at the bottom center of the Google Earth image).

Next time you’re checking out your favorite places, take in all the possibilities, turn on the Street View layer.

What About Real Time Imagery?

The most common question that the Google Earth team receives is "is the imagery in real time?" The simple answer is "no." The better answer is why it can't be.

A common misconception is that Google collects and owns this imagery. In actuality, we acquire this imagery from many different data providers, including TeleAtlas. These companies are the ones that own the satellites, collect the imagery, and offer it to the world. For Google Earth, we take the best imagery we can find from these providers and we piece it together on the 3D globe. As you can imagine, this entire process of getting a satellite into space, having it take pictures, getting those pictures back to Earth, reviewed, and placed into Google Earth can take some time. We want to make sure that we're providing you with quality imagery, so we do a lot of checking on the data.

Additionally, you'll find that we may have new imagery in some areas, and older imagery in areas right next to it. We do this because this older image is of a higher resolution or better quality than the newer image we have available. We're working on making the process better, and we've teamed up with GeoEye to get imagery from their new Geo-Eye 1 satellite, which will be taking high-resolution photographs of large portions of the Earth's surface.

Will this lead to real-time imagery? Probably not any time in the near future. To do that, we'd need hundreds, if not thousands of satellites all running 24 hours a day to capture imagery. What if you need more recent imagery than what's available in Google Earth? If that's the case, we recommend that you zoom in on the area you're interested in, and look at the copyright information displayed in the bottom of the Google Earth window. You can then contact the data provider listed by visiting their website and see if they have more recent imagery available.

Check Out the User Groups

The Earth Help Group is a valuable resource for you to search for Earth related answers provided by other users, to post a question you need assistance with, or to discuss your support questions.

In addition to other users, there are two kinds of experts in the these groups that can help you. Earth Rangers are Google employees and can be identified by the badge. Earth Experts are volunteers who share their considerable product knowledge with other Groups users. Both are terrific resources and really know their stuff.

Not sure how to begin? Please look at other resources displayed in the Welcome Message before you post!