new jersey geographer

Today, Ogle Earth has posted an excellent article on images from Google Earth that have gone missing. The imagery is of an area in Pakistan. Apparently Dianne Feinstein commented that the US military has been using a base in Pakistan for the staging and deployment of unmanned drones. This comment precipitated a chain reaction of reissued statements and denials. The images in question showed aircraft similar to those of the Predator drones. This image has since been removed from Google Earth and DigitalGlobe.

Ogle Earth sums up the issue quite well:

Did both Google and DigitalGlobe separately receive a request from a government (presumably the US, but possibly Pakistan) to remove this imagery from public scrutiny, and comply, or is there a contractual obligation/legal obligation on the part of Google to remove imagery from Google Earth if DigitalGlobe removes it from its product list? Did DigitalGlobe make a mistake in publishing the 2006 imagery available in the first place, considering that the US military has “shutter control” of the satellite’s cameras? Or perhaps (and I’m merely speculating), since the Predator drone operations are run by the CIA and not the US military, were shutter control orders somehow not properly relayed via the usual channels?

I’d love to find out exactly why the images were pulled. Once they’ve made the rounds, it’s almost pointless to remove them. Haven’t we learned from the Streisand Effect?

Before Google Earth 5 had come out, I had commented to a few people that the dates for the aerial photos (which used to be displayed in the bottom center of the screen) were way off for New Jersey. The date was reported as 2004, but it was clearly 2007 imagery.

Well, this little problem is now a bigger issue. In browsing the area around Rowan University (where considerable development has occurred in stages between 2002 and 2008), I noticed several places where the “2004″ imagery shows a further progression of development than the (actual) 2006 photography. I’ve prepared a KMZ file with annotated points, highlighting places where the development that is visible in the “2004″ aerials had not yet occurred in 2004.

Considering I had noticed this discrepancy throughtout the State before Google allowed you to transition through the older imagery, I took a look at another location in the State where development is occuring, Newark. Google Earth has 11 different sets of photography available for Newark. The very big problem is that the default imagery is pre-Prudential Center. This is even reflected in Google Maps. The default images in both Maps and Earth is now the “December 30, 2002″ images. Many of the buildings that are in Street View for Newark are not to be found on the aerial photography. The 2002 data is the second-oldest data available, but it’s now the default.

This seems like a pretty big mixup for Google to make. We’ve gone from posting imagery within the same day to reverting back to a 4 to 6 year lag.

Find another place in the State (or elsewhere) where the dates are obviously wrong? Let me know in the comments.

Digital Urban has a writeup of one of the newest, perhaps most exciting feature to be added to Google Earth. Historic aerial photography! For many places around the globe, you now have access to previous aerial photography, as far back as 1950 in some places. I’ll have to take a look into what Google has for New Jersey; are the 1930s aerial photographs available in Google Earth?

A Google Street View car hit a deer while imaging a road in upstate New York. You can still see the deer in the driveway in this Street View. The Register has the pictures of the incident. The pictures have already been removed by Google – considering the driver stopped and notified police, why were they even posted to begin with?

In my previous post, I mentioned the Central Railroad of New Jersey. The Blue Comet is likely the most memorable service from that fallen flag. Running from the Communipaw Terminal in Jersey City, across southern Newark Bay into Elizabeth, then down the Raritan Bay shore and the coast to Whiting, and then on to Winslow Junction, the Blue Comet provided quick, reliable service to Atlantic City. The line was legendary and any one that grew up in South Jersey with even a passing interest in rail has heard of the line. It’s often lauded by rail fans as an example of the Golden Age of Rail – dining car service, long (but comfortable) trips spent relaxing in style. It’s a sign of what we had and lost.

I’m sure someone will point out that the Aces Train is not the Blue Comet, likely dismissing it as a pale imitation. Aces does have a lounge car and cars different from the rest of NJ Transit’s rolling stock. It does manage to go through three states (NY, PA and NJ) but its route is surprisingly only 10 miles longer than that of the Blue Comet. Aces Train makes it all the way to New York Penn, while the Blue Comet required an initial ferry trip. The Blue Comet also made a new extra stops (Elizabeth, Shrewsbury, Whiting and more) than the one-stop-at-Newark Aces.

If rail fans want to see the golden age of rail return, they need to get out and embrace this line, whether they actually patronize the line or not. The introduction of services like Aces (run by public corps like NJ Transit and Amtrak, no less) are a sign that recreational rail patronage, once again, is a real possibility.

The Blue Comet and Aces Train in Google Earth

A Mac OS X version of the Google Earth browser plugin was released yesterday. It’s available for both Intel and PowerPC Macintoshes.