Google Street View Takes You on a Panoramic Tour of the Grand Canyon

in Google, Photography, Travel | February 5th, 2013

canyon SV_trekker_1_large

With Google’s Street View we can amble through New York City’s High Line Park, around the Nation­al Muse­um of Iraq in Bagh­dad, and down the cob­bled streets of Ouro Pre­to, Brazil. Now we can also take a vir­tu­al hike along the rim of the Grand Canyon, fol­low­ing Google’s cam­eras along the his­toric Bright Angel trail from its start at the south rim all the way down the Black Bridge over the Col­orado Riv­er and on to the Phan­tom Ranch camp­ing area.

It’s a per­fect way to check out the ter­rain before tak­ing off for an Ari­zona vaca­tion.

Unlike views in Google’s ear­li­er Street View maps, the Grand Canyon pho­tos are tak­en along rocky, nar­row trails where no car, snow mobile, or motor­bike could ever go. So how did Google col­lect all of the nec­es­sary images?

The Grand Canyon project is the first to uti­lize Trekker, a back­pack-mount­ed cam­era appa­ra­tus worn by a hik­er that takes a pic­ture every 2.5 sec­onds. Trekker weighs 40 pounds and is oper­at­ed by an Android phone held by the hik­er. It has 15 cam­eras point­ed in dif­fer­ent angles that can be com­bined to cre­ate panoram­ic views.

Fol­low the South Kaibab Trail to Skele­ton Point for majes­tic 360-degree views of the misty blue Canyon. It took three days to cap­ture the main trails of the Canyon’s south rim. Two teams hiked down the Bright Angel Trail, camped at Phan­tom Ranch and hiked out the next day along the South Kaibab Trail. Anoth­er team stayed at the top, col­lect­ing images from the rim and from Mete­or Crater out­side the park.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Reef View: Google Gives Us Stun­ning Under­wa­ter Shots of Great Coral Reefs

Google Presents an Inter­ac­tive Visu­al­iza­tion of 100,000 Stars

Google Art Project Expands, Bring­ing 30,000 Works of Art from 151 Muse­ums to the Web

Kate Rix writes about dig­i­tal media and edu­ca­tion. Read more of her work at .

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Trains and the Brits Who Love Them: Monty Python’s Michael Palin on Great Railway Journeys

in Television, Travel | January 10th, 2013

What is it with Britons and trains, any­way? Hard­ly just the title of col­lec­tion of Irvine Welsh’s sto­ries of hero­in and degra­da­tion, the term “trainspot­ting” actu­al­ly refers to a real, and fer­vent­ly pur­sued hob­by; trainspot­ters exist, just as do bird­watch­ers and sports fans. In terms of obses­sion with the design and oper­a­tional minu­ti­ae of their own trains, Britain falls sec­ond only to the even more dense­ly rail-laden Japan. But we Amer­i­cans, pos­sessed of a train sys­tem few would call robust, can’t quite bring our­selves to believe it. Per­haps we just need to hear it from the mouth of Michael Palin, writer, come­di­an, tele­vi­sion host, Python — and avowed trainspot­ter. Most of Pal­in’s fans know him first through his char­ac­ters in the Fly­ing Cir­cus: the shop­keep­er, Lui­gi Ver­cot­ti, Ken Shab­by, and the most mem­o­rable Gum­bys, to name but a few. But some of us know him best as the cen­tral trav­el­er of the globe-span­ning tele­vi­sion doc­u­men­taries in which he’s starred since 1989. Around the World in Eighty Days, Pole to Pole, Full Cir­cle, Michael Pal­in’s Hem­ing­way Adven­ture, Sahara, Himalaya, New Europe, and now Brazil with Michael Palin. Here we have a man who knows how best to get from point A to point Z, and all in between.

But before all of those shows came Pal­in’s first episode of the BBC’s Great Rail­way Jour­neys, a long-run­ning series whose very exis­tence speaks to the vital­i­ty of Britain’s train-relat­ed enthu­si­asm. 1980’s “Con­fes­sions of a Trainspot­ter”, view­able at the top of this post, fol­lows Palin as he makes his glee­ful way from Lon­don to Kyle of Lochalsh in north­west­ern Scot­land on a series of trains fast and slow, long and short, old and new. This estab­lished him as a tele­vi­sion trav­el­er; four­teen years lat­er, he returned to the pro­gram for “Der­ry to Ker­ry”, where he traced his roots along “that best-kept of all trans­port secrets, the Irish rail­way line.” “Is it just us who are like this?” Palin asks. “The British, I mean. Are there any trainspot­ters in Sici­ly? Do Bel­gians go misty-eyed with the thought of see­ing the 12:16 to Antwerp? Do Swedes save up all year for a Has­sel­blad to pho­to­graph a Stock­holm to Gothen­burg coal train crest­ing a 1‑in-57 gra­di­ent?” Per­haps the most defin­i­tive answer comes from a fel­low rail fan he meets mere min­utes lat­er. Palin asks the man if he has always loved trains. “Very near­ly,” he replies. “There was a short peri­od when I became inter­est­ed in girls. Even­tu­al­ly, I got mar­ried and went back to rail­ways.”

Relat­ed con­tent:

Amer­i­ca Needs More Palin … Michael Palin, That Is

An Epic Jour­ney on the Trans-Siber­ian Rail­road

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on lit­er­a­ture, film, cities, Asia, and aes­thet­ics. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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Al Jazeera Travel Show Explores World Cities Through Their Street Food

in Television, Travel | August 13th, 2012

The Japan­ese have a word for it: kuidaore, “to eat one­self bank­rupt.” This has risen to some com­bi­na­tion of tra­di­tion and aspi­ra­tion in Osa­ka, Japan’s sec­ond-largest city, a for­mer mer­chant enclave once referred to as the coun­try’s “kitchen.” You can see exact­ly what emp­ties Osakan bank accounts on Al Jazeera Eng­lish’s series Street Food. Its episode on the city (part one, part two), embed­ded above, seeks out the stands that most effi­cient­ly cater to the cit­i­zen­ry’s char­ac­ter­is­tic busy­ness, the source of the fresh­est sushi around, the bar­be­cue coun­ters of Kore­atown, the poi­so­nous­ly-liv­ered fugu fish, the ide­al­ly con­tro­ver­sial dish that is whale meat, and a range of food writ­ers and crit­ics to lay down some culi­nary insight. The pro­gram fin­ish­es its jour­ney with one vis­it to a culi­nary acad­e­my and anoth­er to the poor­er side of this Japan­ese metrop­o­lis. Being a Japa­neese metrop­o­lis with more pover­ty than most but also one a greater love of eat­ing than most, Osa­ka has pro­duced street food even among its street peo­ple.

There you have the basic form of a Street Food broad­cast, each of which takes on a dif­fer­ent world city, all of which oper­ate under the the­o­ry that the best path into a cul­ture runs through its alleys most dense with comestible com­merce. In the episode just above (part one, part two), Mon­tre­al’s meet­ing of Eng­lish and French sen­si­bil­i­ties, a slight­ly uneasy coex­is­tence in the best of times, turns into an all-out ide­o­log­i­cal con­flict on the sub­ject of how to eat. One par­tic­u­lar­ly impor­tant skir­mish occurs over pou­tine, the French fry, cheese curd, and gravy dish essen­tial to any inves­ti­ga­tion of Mon­tre­al cui­sine. In the episode below (part one, part two), we see the ele­ments of Span­ish and Andean eat­ing final­ly con­verg­ing on the streets of Lima — aid­ed, in a big way, by fla­vors brought in by the Peru’s many immi­grants from Asian. Admit­ted­ly, the con­ver­gence isn’t com­plete, not will it be until Limeños not of native descent come to enjoy the city’s most pop­u­lar item of street food, with 65 mil­lion eat­en every year: the guinea pig.

All episodes of Al Jazeera Eng­lish’s Street Food on YouTube:

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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Versailles 3D, Created by Google, Gives You an Impressive Tour of Louis XIV’s Famous Palace

in Architecture, Google, History, Travel | August 1st, 2012

With 3D scale mod­els, music, and video, Google’s Ver­sailles 3D brings the best of 21st cen­tu­ry web arts to 18th cen­tu­ry art his­to­ry. The palace was built by Louis XIV, the “Sun King,” who exem­pli­fied all of the author­i­tar­i­an excess­es of the French monar­chy. For­tu­nate­ly for pos­ter­i­ty, he was also a patron of the arts, to whom we owe much of the work of Moliere, Racine and painters such as Charles Le Brun. And then there is his archi­tec­tur­al lega­cy, the palace of Ver­sailles, which start­ed out as a hum­ble hunt­ing lodge, built by his father Louis XIII in 1624. In the next sev­er­al decades, father, then son, com­mis­sioned the elab­o­rate set of build­ings that con­sti­tute Europe’s largest chateau and the seat of French gov­ern­ment from Louis XIV’s ascen­sion until the Rev­o­lu­tion of 1789. If you’re think­ing of vis­it­ing, the offi­cial chateau de Ver­sailles web­site has slideshows of grounds and gal­leries, a bou­tique, and some worth­while inter­ac­tive fea­tures. But Google, as usu­al, has tried to out­do its com­pe­ti­tion, this time by part­ner­ing with it. In con­nec­tion with the Ver­sailles cura­tors, The Google Cul­tur­al Insti­tute has cre­at­ed a mul­ti­me­dia almost-sub­sti­tute for a real life excur­sion to the gar­gan­tu­an and endur­ing sym­bol of Ancien Regime France.

The next video is a pre­view of a “Google Chrome Exper­i­ment” called “Chaos to Per­fec­tion,” an “inter­ac­tive stroll around the palace,” accom­pa­nied by an orig­i­nal sound­track from French band Phoenix. (The “exper­i­ment” itself is some­what slow load­ing, and requires the Chrome brows­er).

Final­ly, the engi­neers at Google (and part­ners Aloest, Wes­t­im­ages, le Fab­Shop and Les 84) give us a look behind the scenes of Ver­sailles 3D. Won­der how they cre­at­ed the elab­o­rate 3D scale mod­els of the palace grounds and build­ings? Well, the video below pro­vides a bar­rage of back­stage glimpses of the process, along with scenes from the open­ing of the Palace His­to­ry Gallery on June 14th.

And, of course, there will be mobile apps, Google promis­es, “soon.”

Josh Jones is a doc­tor­al can­di­date in Eng­lish at Ford­ham Uni­ver­si­ty and a co-founder and for­mer man­ag­ing edi­tor of Guer­ni­ca / A Mag­a­zine of Arts and Pol­i­tics.

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Venice in a Day: From Daybreak to Sunset in Timelapse

in Travel | April 30th, 2012

It’s not the first time­lapse video of Venice, and it cer­tain­ly won’t be the last. You can bank on that. But what dis­tin­guish­es this clip from the oth­ers is its con­tin­u­al focus on the canals that make Venice, Venice. Gives this video three min­utes and it will give you a full day in the life of Venet­ian water­ways. And when you’re done, don’t miss How Venice Works, an impres­sive 18 minute video that explains the com­plex inner-work­ings of the city made up of 124 islands, 183 canals, 438 bridges and the rest. How it all hangs togeth­er is pret­ty amaz­ing.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Ernest Hem­ing­way Reads “In Harry’s Bar in Venice”

It’s 5:46 A.M. and Paris Is Under Water

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Tour the Amazon with Google Street View; No Passport Needed

in Google, Travel | March 22nd, 2012

Google Street View launched in 2007, giv­ing web users the abil­i­ty to tour neigh­bor­hoods with a series of 360° panoram­ic maps. The tech­nol­o­gy seemed pret­ty straight­for­ward … until peo­ple real­ized that it was­n’t. Since ‘07, techies have fig­ured out some cool and unex­pect­ed uses for the soft­ware, and Google began using it to offer vir­tu­al tours of famous his­tor­i­cal sites (Pom­peii, Stone­henge and Ver­sailles) and then inter­na­tion­al muse­ums, rang­ing from the MoMA and Met in New York City, to the Uffizi Gallery in Flo­rence, and the Van Gogh Muse­um in Ams­ter­dam. (More on that here.) And now they’re push­ing the lim­its of the tech­nol­o­gy just a bit fur­ther.

Yes­ter­day Google announced that Street View will let you expe­ri­ence the beau­ty and diver­si­ty of the Ama­zon basin. Once you enter Street View’s Ama­zon tour, you can:

Take a vir­tu­al boat ride down the main sec­tion of the Rio Negro, and float up into the small­er trib­u­taries where the for­est is flood­ed. Stroll along the paths of Tumbi­ra, the largest com­mu­ni­ty in the Reserve, or vis­it some of the oth­er com­mu­ni­ties who invit­ed us to share their lives and cul­tures. Enjoy a hike along an Ama­zon for­est trail and see where Brazil nuts are har­vest­ed. You can even see a for­est crit­ter if you look hard enough!

The video above explains how the project got start­ed and how the images were gath­ered, while also offer­ing a quick demo of the online expe­ri­ence. You can start your voy­age to the Ama­zon here, or head to Google’s blog to learn more about this project cre­at­ed in part­ner­ship with the Ama­zonas Sus­tain­able Foun­da­tion (FAS).

Note: Are you a writer inter­est­ed in edu­ca­tion­al tech­nol­o­gy and open edu­ca­tion­al resources? And, do you want to write for Open Cul­ture? Then drop us a line.

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Pan Am’s 1960s and 70s Travel Films: Visit 11 Places, in 7 Languages

in Travel | March 2nd, 2012

ABC’s peri­od dra­ma Pan Am may have come to an end two weeks ago, but if you look hard enough, you can still find a few Pan Amer­i­can World Air­ways-inspired media. Back in the six­ties and sev­en­ties, at the height of the long hey­day that would cement its place in the lore of Cold War Amer­i­can cul­ture, the air­line com­mis­sioned New Hori­zons, a series of ten- to fif­teen-minute doc­u­men­taries on their var­i­ous exot­ic des­ti­na­tions. Eleven of these short sub­jects have sur­faced on YouTube, so you, too, can feel the mid­cen­tu­ry aspi­ra­tional thrill of motor­ing across the rolling Irish coun­try­side in a pow­der-blue Austin-Healey, han­dling crea­tures snatched fresh from the sea floor by a Fijan div­er, or gaz­ing upon Syd­ney’s impos­ing new mod­ernist apart­ment com­plex­es.

Maybe I’ve made these sound like glo­ri­fied com­mer­cials pitched toward new­ly afflu­ent Amer­i­cans in need of a charm­ing cor­ner of the Earth to loaf their two weeks away. But in that era of sto­ical­ly author­i­ta­tive voiceovers, eth­no­mu­si­co­log­i­cal­ly-spiced orches­tral scores, and col­ors vivid­ly sat­u­rat­ed enough to approach fan­ta­sy, weren’t com­mer­cials some­times glo­ri­ous? And as even this small archive reveals, the New Hori­zons films had audi­ences well out­side the Unit­ed States, the Anglos­phere, and even the West. The pro­duc­tion com­pa­ny Pan Am engaged to make these, a cer­tain Movi­etonews, Inc., assem­bled the footage and audio in such a sep­a­rate way as to allow for both easy nar­ra­tion and easy trans­la­tion into oth­er lan­guages.

Forty or fifty years on, this gives us the oppor­tu­ni­ty to enjoy such simul­ta­ne­ous­ly cross-tem­po­ral and cross-cul­tur­al expe­ri­ences as New York in Ital­ian, Hawaii in Por­tuguese, Amer­i­ca’s nation­al parks in Japan­ese, and the Philip­pines in Ger­man. If you hap­pen to get as excit­ed about mid­cen­tu­ry adver­tis­ing, doc­u­men­tary film, lan­guage-learn­ing, and mul­ti-nation­al media as I do, these New Hori­zons will make for rich Fri­day view­ing indeed.

Com­plete list of New Hori­zons films: Fiji and New Cale­do­nia (Eng­lish), Ire­land (Eng­lish), Thai­land (Eng­lish), India (French), Japan (Ger­man), Philip­pines (Ger­man), New York (Ital­ian), Amer­i­ca’s nation­al parks (Japan­ese), Pak­istan (Japan­ese), Hawaii (Por­tuguese), Aus­tralia and New Zealand (Span­ish),

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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