Jordan Berkowitz

{Something Existing} + {Special Sauce} = {Innovation}

As I’ve mentioned before, invention scares the crap out of me. Some people do very well in situations that are devoid of constraint or necessary objective. I’m not one of those people. I find that I thrive when I’m taking something existing and searching for what I’ll call special sauce to create something interesting.

Case in point, recently Google released the source for a project dubbed Liquid Galaxy. Liquid Galaxy consists of “eight 55-inch LCD screens showing Google Earth in a unified, surround view.” With the source provided by Google you can create your own setup with as few as 2 screens. I absolutely love that Google released this into the wild because it’s a perfect platform, i.e. something existing, for improvisation.

A quick look through the Google Earth API documentation reveals a variety of ways to augment the traditional Google Earth experience. What follows is far from an exhaustive list, but gives you an idea of the different ways to work with the system.

• Balloons - Balloons are information windows displayed in the Google Earth Plugin, optionally associated with a feature.
• Layers & Controls - Layers contain additional information that is draped over the base Google Earth imagery layer. Navigation controls allow the user to pan, tilt, and zoom using controls superimposed on the viewport
• Touring - The Google Earth Plugin can play tours authored in KML, allowing viewers to interact with the Earth environment while viewing scripted, controlled tours.

This is the point at which I start to get excited and ask some questions:

• What data sources become more valuable when integrated into geolocated environment?
• What experiences can be accentuated by an immersive experience like this?
• Is this tool meant to be used in informational, educational, entertaining, and/or utilitarian executions?
• What can be done before or after interacting with this setup that will enrich the experience?
• Given that it can work with applications other than Google Earth, what else would benefit from this immersive environment?

I’m hoping that I’ll be able to get one of these setup at my office soon, if only to serve as a platform for answering some of the questions above. I also hope that things like Liquid Galaxy will help people to understand that some of the greatest things happen with technology when you share your work and ask the world to do remarkable things with it. If we all spent our time trying to create something new, tons of opportunities would be missed to make existing things better.