David Kennedy from the University scanned 1,240 square kilometres from his office, getting a birds-eye view and found 1,977 potential sites including 1.082 pendants, ancient tear-drop staped tombs made of stone.

Kennedy says he chose Google Earth because it is difficult to fly over Saudi Arabia.  He passed the information on the sites to a colleague who could then visit thew sites to photograph them.  “Just from Google Earth it’s impossible to know whether we have found a Bedouin structure that was made 150 years ago, or 10,000 years ago.”

Google Earth has allowed many people to explore, not just our own planet, but also our moon and closest neighbour, Mars.  The field of armchair archaeology has blossomed in the five years since Google Earth first appeared.

In 2008, researchers from Melbourne Australia found 463 potential sites in the Registan desert in Afghanistan using the same Google software.

The attack was dreamt up by security expert Sam Kamkar who demonstrated at the Black Hat hackers conference a website exploiting common shortcomings in a router to reveal it’s real-world location.

He tricked the router into believing the request for it’s ID information was coming from the connected PC, not from the Internet.  He then used the revealed MAC address with a geo-location feature in Firefox to interrogate the database Google gathered when it made its Street View photographs.

The data, which was controversially gathered, linked the MAC addresses of routers to GPS co-ordinates.  “This is geo-location gone terrible,” said Mr Kamkar during his presentation. “Privacy is dead people. I’m sorry.”

Mikko Hyponnen, senior researcher at F Secure called the demonstration “very interesting” adding that such a technique could be used for “stalking or targeted attacks against an individual”.

“The fact that databases like Google Streetview’s Mac-to-Location database or the Skyhook database can be used in these attacks just underlines how much responsibility companies that collect such data have to safeguard it correctly.” said Mr Hypponen

In 2005, Mr Kamkar created a work that helped him gain more than 1 million MySpace friends in a single day.

In this article I will show you how to install and use the handy pyTrainer sports logging tool.

Features

pyTrainer has a number of helpful features:

• Graphing.
• GPX imports.
• Supports Garmin GPX files.
• Supports Google Earth kml *.files.
• Supports dumps directly from Garmin GPS device.
• Add/remove sports.
• Export as common separated lists.
• Publish results to WordPress.

Installation

The installation of this tool is quite simple. All you need to do is open up your Add/Remove Software tool and do the following:

1. Search for the term “pytrainer”  (no quotes).
2. Mark pyTrainer for installation
3. Click Apply to install.

That’s it. You can also install from source. To do this follow these steps:

1. Download the latest source package from the download page.
2. Open up a terminal window and change to the directory containing the downloaded file.
3. Issue the command tar xvfz pytrainer-XXX.tar.gz (Where XXX is the release number).
4. Change into the newly created directory with the command cd pytrainer-XXX (Where XXX is the release number).
5. Issue the command sudo python setup.py install (If you are using a distribution that doesn’t use sudo then change to the root users and issue the same command minus sudo).
6. Issue the command pytrainer -i.

Once installed you will find pyTrainer in the Start > Office menu. Click on that to start up the application.

Usage

Figure 1

When you start up pyTrainer you will be welcomed by a very user-friendly and clean interface (see Figure 1). This main window offers you a quick calendar with which to jump to each day’s exercise. If you didn’t exercise on the day you are looking at your calendar, nothing will show in the bottom left window.

One of the first things you will want to do is to open up the preferences window and then select whether you use Metric or US customary units. Open preferences by clicking Edit > Preferences. Once open select the measurement system you use, click OK, and then close pyTrainer. I have discovered that the change in units of measurement will not take place until you close and re-open the tool.

With your measurements correct, now you want to go back to the Preferences window and add/remove to the Sports list and enter your details in the Athlete tab. Once you have done that you can fill in a few other bits of information such as Maximum heart rate (220 minus your age) . Fill out all of that information and you are ready to begin adding exercise information.

To add a workout just click File > New and then fill in all of the required information. Over time you will start to see your graphs start to fill out and become much more useful.

Final thoughts

We only really touched the surface of this outstanding training application. In upcoming articles I will show you how to further extend the usage of this tool by including Google earth file imports as well as adding waypoints and more. If you are a serious athlete you know how important it is to track your training. Give this tool a try and you might find you become reliant on it’s information as well as it’s ease of use.

In this article I will walk you through the installation of Google Earth for your Linux machine. Once complete, you’ll be zooming around the globe with ease.

Minimum requirements

As always, you should check to make sure your machine meets (or exceeds preferably) the minimum requirements for installation. The minimum requirements are:

• Kernel: 2.4 or later
• glibc: 2.3.2 w/ NPTL or later
• XFree86-4.0 or x.org R6.7 or later
• CPU: Pentium 3, 500Mhz
• System Memory (RAM): 256MB
• Hard Disk: 400MB free space
• Network Speed: 128 Kbits/sec
• Graphics Card: 3D-capable with 16MB of VRAM – Screen: 1024×768, “16-bit High Color” screen

The recommended requirements are:

• Kernel 2.6 or later
• glibc 2.3.5 w/ NPTL or later
• x.org R6.7 or later
• System Memory (RAM): 512MB
• Hard Disk: 2GB free space
• Network Speed: 768 Kbits/sec
• Graphics Card: 3D-capable with 32MB of VRAM
• Screen: 1280×1024, 32 bit color

If your machine meets these, let’s move on.

Installation

You will need to download the binary installation file from the Google Earth download page. Once you have that on your hard drive (let’s assume it was downloaded to ~/Downloads) it’s time to get to work. The first steps are:

1. Open a terminal window.
2. Change to the ~/Downloads directory.
3. Issue the command chmod u+x GoogleEarthLinux.bin to give the file executable permissions.
4. Issue the command sudo ./GoogleEarthLinux.bin to start the installation process.

NOTE: If you are not on a machine that uses sudo then remove sudo from the command in line four above and, instead, su to the root user for installation.

Figure 1

After you issue the command for installation the GUI install window will appear (see Figure 1). In this window you need to configure the

Install path: This is where you want the package to be installed.

Symbolic link: Do you want to create a global executable in /usr/local/bin (You want to do this, otherwise the executable for the application will not be global).

Binary path: Where do you want the symbolic link to be placed.

The defaults, in most cases, should work fine, so click the Begin Install button which will start the installation. The installation should only take a few seconds and you will be ready to go. Upon completion of installation the installer will allow you to start the program by clicking the Start button. If you don’t want to run it then you can always use the command googleearth to start Google Earth.

Final thoughts

In my experience Google Earth on Linux runs as well as it does on any other platform. And, as you can see, the installation is nearly as simple. Do enjoy your Google Earth experience.

Many users have expressed privacy concerns as Google Street View photos often show people, buildings and cars in the photos that are taken. Faces are automatically blurred but it often is possible to identify a person regardless of that. Identification of individuals on Street View pictures seems to the the main privacy concern in most cases.

Google Street View is not available in all countries. Users who open Google Maps for instance can find out if it is available by zooming in beyond the highest zooming level or by dragging and dropping a yellow pegman icon into a location on a map.

Many Google Maps and Google Earth users do not know that it is possible to report inappropriate Street View content to Google. This can be done by clicking on the little Report a Problem link in the lower left corner of a Google Street View image.

This opens a new webpage with options to report privacy concerns, inappropriate content or other. A click on privacy concerns shows options to report a face, house or car / license plate to Google to have it removed from Street View.

It is necessary to describe the problem, add an email address and to center the image in the right angle so that the inappropriate content is shown on it.

The page offers no information on how long it takes for Google to process the request and if it ensures that the inappropriate view will be removed from the service.

The Strange Sights Google Earth Plugin is a collection of interesting sights that users spotted in Google Earth. Sights are divided into categories like “Only from the sky” with sights that can only be seen from the sky or “Virtual Sightseeings” that lead you directly to the Victoria Falls and Mount Everest. They also got a crop circle category for those that are interested in the occult.

Users who would like to give this a try need Google Earth and the Strange Sights plugin.

The plugin can be loaded from the File > Open menu and is available in the left bar afterwards. A click on one of the sights loads it directly in Google Earth.

I obviously had to download had to download Google Earth to test this application but after that everything went on smoothly. Users have four options which are all accessible from the main page. The first is to load an hourly snapshot of all active flights (over the United States) into Google Earth, the second to load the latest flight incidents into the software, the third to view the live inbound traffic of a selected airport and the last to track a specific flight of an airline that is available.

I do not have that much experience with Google Earth but was not it possible to get into some sort of 3D mode in there ?

If you have not done so download Google Earth (link below) and install it on your system. Press CTRL + ALT + A after starting Google Earth for the first time to enter the flight simulator. You get to chose between two planes, the F-16 and the SR22 and several airports as your start position.

Joysticks are supported as well and it is easier to fly and more fun if you use one. After that Google Earth loads the airport and you can fly the plane using a mixture of keyboard shortcuts and the joystick or keyboard and mouse.

It takes a while until you get all keyboard shortcuts right. The most important ones are Page Up and Down to increase and decrease thrust, G for the landing gear and Space to pause the flight sim.

Read More:
Google Earth

The software is still called Google Earth but offers a button that takes you to the sky where you can zoom into stars and galaxies, display additional information such as constellations. Images from the Hubble space telescope are visible and enriched with further explanations of what you are actually seeing when looking at them.

Take a look at the video below to see a short demonstration of some of the features of Google Earth Sky.. They should probably think about a new name for this one.

download: Google Earth

Only a few digital cameras support that the geolocation is automatically added to the Exif data of the picture, but don’t worry if your camera can’t do it automatically. Panorado Flyer makes it easy to edit the data and add the geolocation to the image. This is done by using Google Images to find the location that the image was taken and adding the coordinates found using the context menu.

I think that this is an excellent way to spice up those boring “we are back from holidays, take a look at all the pictures that we have taken” kind of events. This tool would be even nicer if it would be possible to create automatic slideshows showing the images and Google Earth locations and burn those information on a DVD to view on tv.

Carl added Wiimote support to Glove (Glove Programmable Input Emulator) Pie which makes it possible to use the Wiimote and the Nunchuck to control applications in Windows. You need to have bluetooth enabled to be able to communicate with the Wiimote and Nunchuck though. Just download and start the Glove Pie software. After that you could add scripts to support the devices.

I found a forum post that had some good examples for scripts that you could use to use the buttons of the Wii devices for example.

Up = Wiimote.Up
Down = Wiimote.Down
Left = Wiimote.Left
Right = Wiimote.Right
A = Wiimote.A
B = Wiimote.B
One = Wiimote.One
Two = Wiimote.Two
Home = Wiimote.Home
Minus = Wiimote.Minus
Equals = Wiimote.Plus

Some scripts for the Glove Pie can be found at Joseph Coulstons website. The two scripts that he offers make it possible to use the Wiimote with Google Earth and one script to display the battery level of the Wiimote.

It is quite possible that we will soon witness some games that work specifically with the Wiimote connected to your computer.