Google have used the service themselves to tell stories, both of tragedies as they happen and US soldiers fighting abroad. Now its opening up those tools to the public, allowing users to build what they’re calling “Tours” through Google Earth. Tour Builder was released in honour of Veterans Day and it allows users to create narratives tied to points on a map.
It is extremely easy to build such a “˜tour‘. You simply drop a marker on the map, add text to tell the story in that part of the world, add photos or videos to further narrate, and there you go. You then move to the next marker and repeat the process. As you piece together your tale, dropping pins, you can pull the viewer down into Street View or fly to a particular angle on a 3D landmark.
While the release of Tour Builder was inspired by Google’s work on projects like Map The Fallen, it obviously has much broader application. Families for depict a holiday in more vivid ways than your average slideshows and there are even plans to use it in education, i.e. in history lessons about wars and natural disasters.
Source: Google
