3pointD.com

But a few visions of Ground Zero in Google Earth.

Back in March of this year Google lit up the blogosphere (including here at 3pointD.com and over at OGLE Earth) with the purchase of @Last Software, makers of the SketchUp 3D modeler. Their strategy was to utilize SketchUp as a free and easy means to expand the base 3D content available in the Google Earth viewer, create a website called the 3D Warehouse as a storage area for user submitted models, and provide a 3D Warehouse Network Link to glue all of the parts together.

Six months later, Phil Collinson’s World Trade Center (Under Attack) is one of the top ten most popular models in the 3D Warehouse. In fact, the 3D Warehouse Network Link presents Google Earth users the option to view no less than 43 additional structures for the WTC site, ranging from the original twin towers, the new Freedom Tower, several amateur design proposals, an over-sized aerosol can, the twin towers under attack by a giant cow…well, you get the idea. (more…)

As Alex Steffen at the World Changing blog points out, “we can’t build what we can’t imagine.” The city of Berlin, hoping to help build a better future for itself, is now in the process of catalyzing some imagination in a series of events looking at “the future of urban spaces in [the] world.”

As futuring goes, this seems like a great way to go about things, especially the series of citywide “experiment days” involved in the ExperimentCity project. This got me thinking about whether there couldn’t be a way to do a similar thing in virtual worlds. (more…)

Nat at O’Reilly posts a link to this animated map of a day’s traffic on Google. [Via CNet.] While it’s not live (though Google apparently has a live view at the Googleplex), it’s interesting to see that Google pretty much never sleeps in any particular time zone. For some nice live traffic-tracking apps (though not as 3pointD), check out the Digg Labs site.