When you first start using Google Earth, the first things you might checkout are your home, office building (or school) and other interesting building in your part of the world. If you use Google Earth frequently, what may become apparent with time is the aerial and satellite images may be stale, featuring landmarks and points of interest as they were when the image was first taken. The challenge with Google Earth is having digital images that are current with the activity in the particular neighborhood that you are viewing.

There is a project underway at the Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri to address this exact issue. Undertaken by PhD student, Austin Abrams, his vision is to utilize the digital information from the one thousand or so global live webcam feeds that are available through AMOS (Archive of Many Outdoor Scenes) and replace the imagery found on Google Maps. The result would be real time data for select areas of interest.

Abrams’ browser based application is called Live3D and this is a collaborative process whereby users can participate by associating a webcam feed to points on Google Maps. The end result of the project at this time will be still images that refresh for points of interest, but who knows, perhaps down the road, we’ll also have video.

It’s a cool project worthy of attention that can spawn other developments, but because this does use real time video feeds, there will also be the concern over information privacy.

Via: Zedomax