We started working with the USGS in 2009 to make this historic archive of earth imagery available online. Using Google Earth Engine technology, we sifted through 2,068,467 images—a total of 909 terabytes of data—to find the highest-quality pixels (e.g., those without clouds), for every year since 1984 and for every spot on Earth. We then compiled these into enormous planetary images, 1.78 terapixels each, one for each year.

The changes on our planet are stunning. A glacier has almost vanished, a new city has been created and the Amazon rainforest has been decimated. Our capability as humans to destroy our planet and re-create it is astonishing. The whole project makes you realize that in order to understand something important and profound, you have to look at it over a period of time.

Check it out on Google’s Timelapse website.

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I can’t climb up to the windows I’ve tried a couple of times… a bunch of sites are blocked, like Skype, Google Earth etc. but I’m going to keep trying, a lot of other sites seem to work… whoever is doing this seems to be one step ahead of everything I try..

Relax, there’s no reason to call the cops. Perasso is a fictional character, part of a new interactive movie called The Inside Experience that was launched by Intel and Toshiba to promote the laptop used in the film. The 20-something is played by Emmy Rossum, who previously appeared in movies like Phantom of the Opera and The Day After Tomorrow, and the show is directed by D.J. Caruso of Disturbia fame.

Both companies started brainstorming about ways to combine a branded movie with social networks back in Janaury, I was told during a phone conversation with Intel’s OEM partner marketing director Ryan Baker today. The idea really started to take on a life of its own once Caruso got involved, who Baker credited for bringing a lot of Hollywood folks on board. Filming started in early June, and now it’s up to the online community to take the film to its final conclusion.

Perasso has already started to post a bunch of clues on her Facebook page, including various receipts from take-out restaurants and furniture stores. Users have eagerly begun to go over those clues to locate Perasso and help her to find a way out of her captivity. The pace and order in which these pieces of the puzzle are solved directly influence what kind of videos get posted next. “The clues have an impact on how the film plays out,” said Baker.

This also means that we won’t know for some time how long this movie actually is, and when it will end. Baker said that the team estimates viewers to solve the entire puzzle by mid August, but admitted: “We are not exactly sure.”

The Inside Experience is in many ways similar to alternate reality games, which have been used to promote shows like Lost by blurring the line between reality and fiction. However, the movie doesn’t even pretend to be the real deal. Part of this obviously has to do with liability: You don’t even want to pretend for a second that an abduction could be real. However, Baker also said that this was more about exploring new ways of storytelling: “We had always conceived of this as a fictional story line.”

There are a few things that I find interesting about The Inside Experience: First of all, it obviously seems to capture the imagination of its audience. The trailer to the movie was seen 1.75 million times before it even launched, and the publishing of Perasso’s first video even briefly took the movie’s website offline. Also intriguing is that Intel is willing to go rather dark with its old “Intel Inside” tagline. Sure, the laptop is Perasso’s most powerful tool, but she’s also held inside, against her will. Exploring this double meaning is pretty ingenious.

And finally, there’s the promise that we will eventually be able to see The Inside Experience as a complete movie, with edits and story line depending on all the social inputs that are gathered while the mystery unfolds. The movie’s audience also takes part in its completion, or in other words: We’re all inside, even if we don’t know it yet.

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I’ve already taken the new Google Earth version for a spin on the Acer Iconia Tab A500 tablet I’m reviewing and I can easily see myself wasting the day away by navigating around the planet. The application is well designed, makes excellent use of the tablet hardware and is just downright fun. In my limited testing time so far, I can safely say Google successfully brought the desktop experience of Google Earth to mobile tablets – yet another activity that tablets will steal away from traditional computing devices.

The 3-D building view is most impressive: I’m very familiar with Philadelphia, which is the nearest city to me, and it feels like I’m right there in Center City when using this app. With the new pop-ups, it’s easy to see information about landmarks or view user-contributed photos from Panoramio. The 3-D rendering isn’t quite as fast as you might find on the desktop version — depending on the specs of your desktop, of course — but it’s certainly not a painful experience either. All Honeycomb tablets to this point use dual-core processors with advanced graphics, which is an enabler here.

If you have a Honeycomb tablet, Google Earth is well worth the free download, even if you aren’t into maps or navigation. The software shows off how good a tablet-optimized application can be for Honeycomb, and there’s been a shortage of such examples. Besides, even though I know Philadelphia really well, I’m already learning new things about some of the old landmarks thanks to Google Earth.

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1. Use fingerless gloves. Any style of fingerless gloves will obviously work, but the Etre Touchy gloves I added to my inexpensive gift guide look particularly good, and because they are only missing thumb and index fingertips, your hands will stay a little warmer than full fingerless gloves. If you don’t like the idea of having exposed fingertips at all, then maybe convertible glove mittens are the answer — to answer a call or check email you’d just need to flip back the mitten top.
2. Use a stylus. You can buy relatively inexpensive styluses to use with touchscreen devices. (Here’s one specifically for the iPhone, for example.) It’s important to use a stylus that won’t scratch the screen over time. If you don’t want to pay for a dedicated stylus or happen to lose yours, Lifehacker provides this clever trick: Use the negative (flat) end of an AAA battery. Because the end of the battery is smooth it won’t scratch your screen, and exhausted batteries work just as well as fresh ones — it works well, as you can see in the photo at the top of this post.
3. Use conductive gloves. You can buy gloves specifically made to work with touchscreen devices — these Dots Gloves have special conductive pads on the the tips of the thumb and three fingers, and aren’t overly expensive (ranging from $15 to $25 per pair — they appear to be popular as many sizes are currently sold out). There are also these PlayPoint gloves. However, if you don’t want to shell out for special gloves, you can also make your existing gloves work with touchscreens by sewing conductive thread into the fingertips, and it’s easy to do — there’s a tutorial on how to do it over on Instructibles.

Do you have any other workarounds for using gloves with touchscreen devices? Share them below!

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But why not buy an iPhone, or a Palm Pre, which I’d had my eye on for several months? The Pre seems to be a good phone, but it doesn’t yet have the apps that the iPhone does. And the monthly fees for Pre service are considerably higher than what I’m paying now. The iPhone’s monthly fees are even higher, and many folks I’ve talked to don’t find it to be a very good phone.

So, keeping my current phone and buying an iPod touch seemed like a good compromise. I can get good Wi-Fi coverage in most areas where I live, so I’ll be able to go online, even without the phone function.

Many of my WWD colleagues already have iPhones. Aliza has recently written about good apps for web workers. Dawn’s shared her favorites, too. But with the holidays coming up, here are some of my ideas for apps to put on that brand-new iPhone or iPod touch:

Communication

• eBuddy. A multi-service instant message client for MSN/Windows Live, AIM, Yahoo, Gtalk, ICQ, Facebook Chat and MySpace Chat. Supports multiple accounts on the same service. Versions for web, Android and other platforms also available. Free.
• Facebook. A well-designed way for Facebook users to keep up with their friends while on the road. The app has had its issues, but they are apparently fixed now. Free.
• Gist. Scott and I have both found Gist useful, and the Gist iPhone app does a pretty good job of presenting a lot of information in a small space. Free.
• LinkedIn. This app keeps LinkedIn users, er, “linked in” from their iPhones and iPod touches. The latest upgrade adds some nice features, including an inbox for LinkedIn messages. Free.
• Nimbuzz. You can use this app to make inexpensive international calls over Wi-Fi. The app also includes a chat function, but it’s pretty rudimentary compared to eBuddy. Free app; rates for calls vary.
• RingCentral. If you’re a RingCentral user, you can use this app to manage your phone messages and more. Free for RingCentral users.
• Tweetie. There are lots of Twitter apps, but so far, I like Tweetie the best. It has a clean interface, and supports multiple Twitter accounts. Thanks for the tip, Darrell! $2.99.
• Waveboard. Mobile access to Google Wave. Will hopes for better access soon; I imagine that this app will become more sophisticated as Wave does. $0.99.

File and Idea Management

• Dropbox. This app is another reason to love Dropbox, which many of us at WWD do. As one would expect from Dropbox, it just works. Free.
• Evernote. My colleagues at WWD like Evernote, too, and I’ve finally seen the light. It’s a great replacement for PhatNotes, which I used to use with various Palm products. (The Palm versions are apparently no longer available.) Free.

News

• Reeder. A very nice and elegant RSS reader that syncs with Google Reader. $0.99.

Just about every news source also has its own iPhone/iPod touch app these days. So far, I’ve been impressed with the ones from NPR and from some news outlets that have used the PodCurry platform.

Password Management

• 1Password. Manage and sync passwords. I’ve been playing with the brand-new version 3, and it’s good enough that I’ve moved from SplashID after many years. Use Dropbox with 1Password to make your password data available on multiple machines. $7.99.
• LastPass. Manage and sync passwords across multiple machines. The Firefox add-on for this service was included in WWD’s Add-Ons Collection. Apps for iPhones and other mobile devices available with premium membership, $12/year.

I’ve barely begun finding fun stuff, but I think I’m off to a good start with the Google Earth app, and TriPeaks Lite. I’m sure that I’ll find more, but I really need to get back to work now. Happy holidays!

What iPhone or iPod touch apps would you recommend for new users?

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It seems like there was a lot of news coming out of Google this week — here are some highlights:

I share Simon’s enthusiasm in the new Shared Folders feature for Google Docs. There is a reason this has been the most often-requested feature for Docs and I’m thrilled to see it introduced and implemented extremely well.

While not really a productivity app for most users, quite the opposite actually, Google Building Maker is an insanely addictive way to look at your city and contribute 3D building models to Google Earth. Be careful before you click, you could lose hours here.

The Gmail team is always introducing new features in Labs, some useful, others not so much. The new Lab feature, “Got the wrong Bob?” looks to be one of the more useful ones. It attempts to determine if you’ve added the wrong folks to your distribution list based on your past emailing habits. With the auto-complete option it’s easy to accidentally choose the wrong person, this could be a life-saver to keep from sending things to the wrong people. Another handy new Gmail Labs feature, “Google Docs Preview,” lets you preview the contents of a Google document, spreadsheet or presentation right in your Gmail inbox.

I’ve been meaning to write about the Google Squared search functionality for a while now as I don’t think it’s getting near the attention it deserves. In essence, Squared attempts to present search results data in a more concise format — extracting common information from multiple sources for easy comparison in a tabular format. This week brought some major upgrades in both the amount of data returned and the ability to export it out for further analysis.

Since Google Wave invites began rolling out, Google Voice has seemingly been pushed down a notch as the product folks want access to. But if the demand is still there among your friends and family, you’ll soon be able to share the love by inviting them to Google Voice.

Which bit of Google news was most exciting for you this week?

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To check it out you need to download Google Earth and then go into the Google Earth Outreach layer (the above is just a screen shot). First thing we noticed: California will deliver almost half of the solar jobs in the U.S. by 2016. (Thank you, state Renewable Portfolio Standard and Solar Roofs Program!) Beyond Cali, sun-soaked states like Arizona, Nevada, and New Mexico make up the bulk of the remaining solar jobs. The rest of the states like Alaska, Kentucky, and North Carolina? . . . yeah, not so much. If you’re looking for a leg-up in the solar biz, head west.

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It’s a bird … it’s a plane … it’s a carbon-spotting satellite from NASA! The U.S. space agency’s first satellite to study atmospheric carbon dioxide is set to launch tomorrow morning, a potential boon for environmental watchdogs, as well as cleantech firms looking to pitch their pollution-cutting wares or sell carbon credits to the biggest emitters of CO2 on the planet.

But if you just can’t wait till the satellite starts beaming its info from space, you can already check out the current data on CO2 across the U.S. through a newly-released map for Google Earth. Researchers at Purdue University put up the map last week, which can show pollution from factories, power plants, roadways, and residential and commercial buildings by state, county or population. The Purdue team is aiming to eventually have emissions data at the street level, and they plan to expand the project, called Project Vulcan, to other countries, starting with Canada and Mexico.

The free, easy-to-use Google Earth map, and the more detailed information that will come from the satellite, could help put pressure on companies to cut down on their fossil-fueled emissions, especially if a cap-and-trade program is introduced by the Obama administration, as has been promised. Cleantech firms could use the colorful data to convince municipalities and utilities to invest more in renewable energy and energy efficiency to comply with any new emissions standards.

Instead of digging through charts and graphs, anybody around the world can use the Project Vulcan map to check out, in 3-D, where the most CO2 is being spewed. And in some cases you can even see which individual power plants are pumping out the most pollution in your area. The Vulcan map can show facilities that use continuous emissions monitoring systems that are reported under the EPA’s Acid Rain Program.

There’s no word on whether that map will end up getting fed more detailed information once NASA’s satellite starts its carbon spy mission, but the Purdue team already has a space agency connection —  Project Vulcan has received some funding, and images, from NASA — so it could end up on the inside track. The map currently gets its CO2 emissions data from the Environmental Protection Agency and the Department of Energy and culls population data from the Census Bureau. For now, Purdue said Project Vulcan will complement NASA’s Orbiting Carbon Observatory, the official name for the new spacecraft, which is expected to map the globe once every 16 days for at least two years.

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It’s an application running on Earthscape, a very cool “mirror world” technology that displays a 3-D, navigable globe, taken from satellite imagery and geotagged photos from users. (Featured on GigaOM last September.) With the Santa app, you can follow the airborne sled’s route across the world, and even better, zoom in to see photos that have been uploaded by Earthscape users at his various stops.

It was inspired, CEO Tom Churchill explained to me in an e-mail, by “the observation that we had users all over the world taking beautiful photos of their holiday festivities, and that this would be of interest to a wider audience — children, for example — if packaged the right way.” (As it happens, this demo video features Churchill’s 6-year-old daughter at the controls.) So, it’s also a clever way of showing kids how the rest of the world enjoys the holidays….or, at the very least, it’s something to keep them occupied while you wrap their presents.

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Wireless mic users and the National Association of Broadcasters have become increasingly vocal leading up the the FCC vote, claiming broadband service in that spectrum would cause undue interference to microphones and television channels. The FCC earlier this month issued a report downplaying those concerns (although not eliminating them entirely), and FCC chairman Kevin Martin seems eager to go ahead with some sort of nationwide broadband service in what’s called the white spaces.

If the FCC approves the proposal, opponents may still gain a slight victory if the devices operating in the spectrum aren’t allowed to be very “loud” when transmitting their signals. That would decrease the usefulness of such devices by requiring more infrastructure to offer a broadband service, but it would also reduce potential interference. With only a week left, Parton and crew are working 9 to 5 to halt wireless broadband.

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