Sea floor now better rendered...

in Google Earth according to this recent announcement.  Higher resolution bathymetric surveys have now been incorporated in the image server, showing seamounts, trenches and other features in greater detail than ever before.  Take a look, look takers.

Google upgrades Earth...

with significantly better rendering, doing away with the patchwork quilt resulting from imagery from different sources.  More here: Google Releases Pretty Earth.

Today's Google doodle...

celebrates Nicolas Steno's 374th birthday, depicting rock strata with embedded fossils.  Here's a screen grab in case you miss it today (click to enlarge):

Learn more about Steno's Laws of Stratigraphy, useful principles applied in relative dating when the absolute age of strata are not known.

For a company that pledges...

"do no evil" this seems highly suspicious: Google Wi-Fi Data Collection Discussed by 30 Attorneys General.

If you have a home network with an unsecured wireless router then you are terribly vulnerable to such intrusions. Wise up! Lock it down!

"Ice Age Floods" layer...

created by former EWU student Ron Hall for Google Earth can be found here. Once you import the .kmz file into GE you can turn on/off or adjust the opacity of glacial lakes, the channeled scablands, glacial ice and significant landmarks.

Great job, Ron.

Commercial jet caught in flight...

over the red rock desert in southern Utah and frozen in aerial images on Google Earth (click to enlarge). I was perusing imagery in an area northwest of Moab, planning field work for the coming spring, and this caught my eye. One can clearly see the aircraft and its contrail, as well as their respective shadows on the ground.

Apparently I'm not the first to spot various aircraft in flight in GE.

Oh yeah, that's the Slick Rock Member of the Entrada Sandstone and the overlying members of the Morrison Formation in outcrop, and some modern eolian dunes.

Cornucopia of Google Earth...

geology layers and datasets can be found at SDSU's Department of Geological Sciences. Follow the link and you will find a wide variety of .kmz files that can be downloaded and imported into Google Earth to enable geologic map overlays for a wide variety of locations, themes and topics.

Warning: many of these files are huge and you'll need a high bandwidth Internet connection.

Google Mars...

is too cool for school. Here's a screen shot (click to enlarge) of the Olympus Mons region of Mars showing the reference frames for all of the satellite imagery available at this location which, by the way, is the largest volcano in the solar system. The new iteration of Google Earth 5.0 includes this Mars viewer, and this is just the tip of the proverbial iceberg as to its capabilities.

Guess what I'll be exploring the next several weeks?

Google Earth 5.0 (beta)...

has been released. Here's the link.

Cool content: access to all Mars imagery. More: Google Ocean

Warning: don't download and use this nifty program unless you have a high-bandwidth connection to the net.