geekosystem

Good news, shut-ins! It's now even easier to kind of see the world from your computer. Google Earth has added over 100,000 places in more than 200 countries to their Tour Guide feature. The Google Earth Tour Guide combines animated flybys of places, interesting facts pulled from Wikipedia, and even user-generated Panoramio images to get a better look. Why not kill a little time pretending to explore the globe? You might learn something.

Electron microscopes are amazing tools for getting detailed closeups of the things inside a cell that make it go, but when it comes to putting those things in the context of a whole organism, they're not such a great tool. A team at the University of Leden in the Netherlands is helping microscope users focus on the bigger picture. They've created a nearly complete atlas of a zebrafish embryo that researchers can navigate by zooming in and out through various levels of detail -- just like Google Earth, except with the inside of a baby fish.

Apple may be planning to drop Google as the default iOS map program, opting for an in-house app with 3D-map capabilities, but now Google is bringing 3D action to the table, too. Starting today, Google is beginning to roll out full 3D maps of metropolitan areas for Google Earth mobile, and plans to render every area with a combined population of 300 million by the end of the year.

Back in 2009, Google blew some minds by showing off Liquid Galaxy and displaying Google Earth on an impressive 8-screen conglomeration. Of course, now it's 2011, so what does that mean? It means a 48-screen display. Yeah. As if that weren't enough, they're going to be taking the tech open source, so all you crazy 64-screen-owning lunatics can try your hand at one-upping the record, if you're into that sort of thing.

After becoming interested in the uniform planning of Las Vegas, designer David Hanauer got the idea to design Persian rugs using aerial images of cities as prints for the rugs' patterns. Living in an age where one can obtain aerial views of cities fairly easily, Hanauer decided to do just that, and get his top-down views using Google Earth. Once Hanauer finds a view he likes, he replicates the view four times and places them around a central point in order to create what looks like an abstract pattern, then prints the patterns on polyester using colorfast dyes. Head on past the break to see some more of Hanauer's sneakily modern Persian rugs.

Artist Clement Valla, who you may remember from his line-tracing project, has a nifty series which consists of bridges zoomed in upon in Google Earth just so, revealing surreal, bendy, glitch-infused landscapes. A few of the coolest below:

There's been a Star of David on the roof of the headquarters for Iran Air, Iran's nationalized airline, since before 1979, when the building was constructed by Israeli engineers. But it was only this week that the Iranian government got an unwanted early Hannukah present after an Iranian spotted the Jewish symbol while browsing Google Earth. They are reportedly not very happy about this.

Say goodbye to online weather sites with their silly numbers and prehistoric .gif images of rainclouds; starting with Google Earth 5.2, you will now be able to see rain or snow patterns as they happen in real time!

Though the weather has been available through Google Earth since 2007, the cloud images were often several hours behind. Now, "the latest version projects images of rain and snow over the areas with those weather patterns as it's actually happening."

Last night there was a bomb scare in Times Square, New York, that was less a scare than an actual, you know, bomb. The "amateurish" car bomb was an SUV carrying three canisters of propane, ten gallons of gasoline, and some fireworks. While it's a bit beyond our purview to cover the event itself (we'll leave it to Mediaite), we did notice something funky on CNN. Weekend CNN Newsroom anchor Don Lemon was alarmed that he was unable to get a clear picture of the Times Square area on Google Earth. After using blurred footage from Google Earth as an illustration of the tight security around the area, he asked his guest, Tom Fuentes, former FBI Assistant Director of International Relations, what this might mean. His guest's answer was not exactly... well. Informed.

Add another item to the list of ways in which Google is becoming absolutely necessary to everyday life, which will inevitably lead to some sort of Skynet-type apocalypse when Buzz goes sentient and deletes all of our Docs. Remember everyone! DO NOT SCORCH THE SKY. They will find an alternate energy source.

The sequence of events began with a 1-ton abandoned 1986 Four Winns 190 Horizon in an empty lot in Santa Clara County, California.