Google Goodness

Yes I know I've been kind of down on Google of late, obiviously that's a mostly unpopular opinion - the stock market clearly loves them - but as I've said before, apart from search their most successful products were all acquired. Exhibit A in this category is clearly Google Earth. Google Earth was a great product called Keyhole (key-what?) before they acquired it. Google added an open API, spiffed up the user interface, made it free - the rest was history. I fully expect Google Earth to eventually become the alternate front end to web browsing. I also expect Google to start selling virtual advertising on Google Earth any time soon - they have the virtual real estate, why not use it.

But one of the amazing things that has come out of Google Earth and its APIs is that the imaginative minds of the world have been unleashed. The most recent manifestation of this that I have discovered is fboweb.com. These guys have made it possible to track the location of commercial airline flights in the USA in real time. So now you can see the location of the planes in 3D and even pull up a display off all the flights inbound to the congested airport of your choice.

Finally I discovered you can also get FAA sectional chart overlays and 3-dimensional representations of restricted and class B/C airspace. For anyone at all interested in aviation that is very cool. Google was the enabler, Keyhole was the creator and the power - well that was to the people.