G007gle Earth
Within the space of an hour, not one but two blogworthy devices hit Ogle Earth's radar screen: Small surreptitious GPS tracking devices whose output you can easily view in Google Earth.
First up is the WorldTracker SMS. It can send news of its whereabouts as an SMS to your mobile phone, or if you make use of the company's website tracking service (for a yearly fee), you can watch it live in Google Earth, just as you always imagined the FBI did it. Pretty hefty price, though, at $600 + subscriptions. (Via Gear Live.)
A cheaper option is the TrackStick, basically a 1GB USB memory stick with built-in GPS tracking. You can find out where it's been just by plugging it into your computer, apparently, and you can then access the GPS data, including in Google Earth's KML format. $300 and no additional fees, but no live tracking either. And you better hope the kids you're trying to track don't find it.
(Note: I haven't used either of these, and can't vouch for them. I am merely noting the sudden prevalence of Google Earth-friendly spying gadgets.)
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Cheaper tracking option: Accutracking.com offers a $100 GPS cell phone that will relay its position back to their web site in real time. It's $6/month for cell phone data service, but Accutracking itself is free for non-commercial use. They let you download the data in CSV; it should be easy to convert to KML.
Posted by: Amit Patel at 6:55 UTC, January 26, 2006
This is almost made for hooking into a personal area network, although it'd make more sense if it just made a Bluetooth connection to your existing cellphone. After all, everyone is going to be carrying a cell phone anyway. Still really nice though, and it got me thinking about ubiquitous computing, PANs and Google Earth. Pity about the price tag really...
Posted by: Alasdair Allan at 13:24 UTC, January 29, 2006
hey I have A question for every1 Does google earth have a setting u can change where u can see what is actually happening right now and now 5 or 6 years ago. I just recently Downloaded it Zooomed in near my house and loan and behold there is my house but wheres the walmart the put in a few miles away that they built in like 2001? So if any1 knows can u email me back thanks Daniel....jamesdf@Wt.net
Posted by: Daniel at 3:54 UTC, March 10, 2006
No there isn't, Daniel. Every1 will tell you data is on average a year or two old.
Posted by: Stefan Geens at 7:02 UTC, March 10, 2006
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