Google Earth's New Photos Layer Sucks

As a professional researcher/writer I'm dismayed that Google Earth has banished Panoramio photos and replaced them with their new Photos Layer. Why? Oh let me count the ways.

Here's an image of downtown Kansas City, Missouri.

See all the little squares? Those indicate Panoramio photos. See the big circles? Well, those are the new Photos Layer images. Why did Google choose to use big circles? They clutter the map. And that fact that they act as a sort of thumbnail is, frankly, meaningless, because they suck at being thumbnails.

Here's another deficiency with new the Photos Layer:

Note that when you click on the Panoramio icon you get a title that tells you, in this case, that it's a piece of public art. Click on a Photos Layer circle and you get zero, zilch, nada, in the way of a descriptor. You have to open the image to see what it is. Why the extra step?

Here's another example - Ulithi Atoll in Yap State, Federated States of Micronesia.

There are 14 Panoramio photos, but only two Photos Layer. Sure, it's early in the Photos Layer roll-out, so more may come. But in the meantime my ability to go down and see what the islands look like - the houses, the beaches, the lagoon - is now gone.

That ability to see what a location looks like is really important to me. It's one thing to get a bird's eye view, but to see that place as a resident or visitor might - at eye level - helps me to develop a "sense of place," and to me, as a writer, that's priceless.

In their infinite wisdom the young coders at Google have seen fit to remove a valuable resource from Google Earth. Okay, maybe there was a technical reason. But that does not excuse the truly lousy replacement for Panoramio they put in place.

I welcome your comments on Photos Layer - maybe we can even get Google to listen.

If this post was helpful or interesting to you, please let me know. I’m always looking for ways to improve the blog.

Disclaimer: The descriptions of web pages are accurate as of the date of the post. Like everything else in this digital world of ours, they can change in the blink of an eye.

Trolling the Weeklies

Henry, Illinois is a small town on the banks of the Illinois River, about 3o miles north of Peoria. I've never set foot in the town, but I feel like I know everybody there. That's thanks to the Henry News-Republican, a weekly that's been published since 1857 right up to today.

I was working on a story about a U.S. submarine hero of World War II, who was born and raised in Henry. It was frustrating research because there didn't seem to be much about the fellow, other than the standard Navy press releases and a page in the Naval Academy yearbook. At some point I Googled "henry il newspaper" and up came a listing for the "Digital Archives of the Henry Public Library." I clicked on that and up came a page listing the News-Republican. It was searchable by names and dates, so off I went.

After a couple of weeks of trolling I had printed out  some 70 pages from issues beginning in 1901 and carrying up through 2012 (old fashioned, but easier to keep organized for old-school folks like me). There was lots of useful stuff about my subject, his family, his academic and naval career, and his relationship with Henry and its people.
In discovered that in 1974 the town held a memorial service for my submariner in conjunction with the annual Fourth of July Parade. Here's a list of hits I got with the keyword "Parade":

And here is the front page of the July 3, 1974 Henry News-Republican, featuring info about the holiday events:

You can see right away that the camera was set to get good reproduction on the type, not the photos.

I'd never heard of Advantage Preservation, so Googled them. Turns out they're a company specializing in microfilm and digital archiving of all sorts of records for industry, education, governments, and local entities, like the Henry Public Library. They have preserved and uploaded 238 newspapers across the country, all available for free. Here's a map of the locations they've recorded:

Click on any of the flags and it will tell you the name of the specific place. Not surprisingly, most of the sites are for public libraries and historical societies. BTW - the flags are not clickable links.

So here's yet another online digital source for researchers of all subjects. Get to it and have fun.

If this post was helpful or interesting to you, please let me know. I’m always looking for ways to improve the blog.

Disclaimer: The descriptions of web pages are accurate as of the date of the post. Like everything else in this digital world of ours, they can change in the blink of an eye.