Google Earth gives you the moon.

If you don't have Google Earth by now, what's wrong with you?
This is one of the best free applications on the internet. In a nutshell, GE shows you the earth in all her glory, natural and manmade - with a fun and intuitive interface.















So, why does the picture show a big crater? Because besides the Earth, GE also will show you the stars, Mars, and the Moon. Did I mention this is all free?

Not to be confused with Google Maps, Google Earth is an installed application available for download. The basic version is free, with the option to pay for the Pro version. But the free version is so good I have only rarely been tempted to pay.

I can't begin to cover all the things that GE can do - you will have to be amazed for yourself. Suffice it to say that if it can be related to a location, you can see it in GE. Besides the fantastic aerial views of the ENTIRE PLANET, there are zillions of overlays that you can download, such as real-time traffic and weather. There are overlays showing details of current events like wars and natural disasters. There are even "sightseeing" tours that will bounce you from one beautiful/ancient/weird landmark to the next. (And as for the bouncing...call me immature, but it still thrills me.)

Google has sucked up an astounding amount of data and sprayed it down in such a fun, intuitive format that I frequently find myself browsing the planet, studying an aerial view of a famous landmark, clicking a user-uploaded panoramic photo of the area, to clicking a link to the restaurant I saw in the photo, to ... Anyway it feels a lot more active than watching TV.

And if you are into making your own adventures, you can easily import waypoints and routes from a GPS. Why not make a Revit or Sketchup model of your house and drop it right into the map to see how that new addition would look in the landscape?

Enough jibber-jabber. Go get Google Earth and get lost.
http://earth.google.com/moon/index.html

Reality: Annotated Edition

while I wasn't looking, the whole concept of augmented reality suddenly got real. Not too long ago, having useful data superimposed on your view was something requiring bulky hardware to deliver dubious results. Ultranerds stumbled around MIT campus with headsets and battery packs.

Then GPS got cheap and small, and wireless bandwidth opened up. Google made huge geographical datasets freely available. Then the chocolate inevitably ended up in the peanut butter when smart phones with GPS and compasses arrived. So now your phone knows where it is and which way it's facing, and it can look up the locations of things in that view. It doesn't recognize the Statue of Liberty but it knows it should be right ... there!

So far it looks like only the iPhone 3GS and Google's Android phones will be able to get the chocolate in the peanut butter. However any device with GPS, a magnetometer and web access could do it, theoretically.

Acrossair's application finds the subway stations around you and the distances to them. Hold the phone up and you will see the stations overlaid on the image. They say this is coming as soon as Apple approves it:http://www.acrossair.com/apps_newyorknearestsubway.htm

Layar is an augmented reality application for Android (Google' mobile OS) phones. Here's a demo showing real estate data overlaid on the camera image. http://layar.com/

A Swedish firm with the awesome name The Astonishing Tribe (TAT) wants to take it further. This is using face recognition to put data around peoples' faces: http://www.tat.se/site/showroom/latest_design.html

TAT would pull a bit of second life (remember that?) into first life by adding face recognition. They're calling this a "Concept", so don't expect to see it too soon, but it sounds doable: an iPhone can broadcast its location and ID so your friends can locate you. Set up a separate public profile that anyone can see. Then the chocolate and peanut butter thing happens on your friends' phones, and suddenly your Facebook status is floating over your head.

One last thought: Forget about getting un-lost in the city for now. I can't wait to see what games people make with this!

Indian Pipes on a wet morning.

Here in the Northeast, it has been raining for three weeks. It is supposed to clear up just in time for the 4th of July, but until then it seems like Spring refuses to end.

Coming in out of the rain is supposed to be a sign of intelligence, but if like me you are undeterred, a rainy hike can be a great chance to see the woods in a different way.

Up in the Middlesex Fells reservation, just north of Boston, the wet weather is encouraging lots of decay, and the Indian Pipe plants (Monotropa uniflora,right) are springing up everywhere.

I had known since cub scouts that despite their ghostly white color they are not fungi but true vascular plants lacking chlorophyll, but after doing a little research I find they are even more interesting than that.

Indian Pipes are parasitic plants that use decaying plant matter for their nutrients. But here is where it gets interesting- they can't get the nutrients directly. Instead they tap into the mycelia of a Russula fungus.

Emetic Russulas are common woodland mushrooms with a pale red cap and white flesh. They tend to be found near Beech and Pine trees, because they have a relationship with those trees. They tap into the tree roots and send nutrients to the tree in return for sugars. The Indian Pipe imitates the roots of the tree, allowing it to steal some nutrients from both the tree and the fungus.*

So the next time you see some Indian Pipes near a shady path,remember the unseen network below your feet.

http://ecolibrary.cs.brandeis.edu/display.php?id=Indian_Pipe_parasitic_plant_Massachusetts_DP136

* Keep in mind that a mushroom is only the reproductive part of a fungus. The fungus itself is a much larger underground network of fine tendrils called mycelia.