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Sounds Bring Google Earth to Life

Posted by Zonk on from the just-avoid-the-howler-monkey-jungle dept.

Strudelkugel writes "The BBC is reporting that a Californian company has created software that can layer relevant recorded sounds over locations in Google Earth. The firm, Wild Sanctuary, has thousands of hours of recordings from all over the world. Company director Dr. Krause has spent over 40 years collecting sounds from natural and man-made habitats. '... his recordings include more than 15,000 animal noises, and sounds from a huge array of habitats, including cities, deserts, mountains and the marine environment. It is the largest library in existence of natural sound, he said. He said the idea would be to zoom-in on a particular area and then have the option to listen to the accompanying sound.'"

4 of 84 comments (clear)

  1. SWEET!!!!!!!!!! by Rooked_One · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Now I can finally know what a tree sounds like when it falls and no one is around.

  2. World Soundscape Project by gobbo · · Score: 2, Interesting

    This sounds like a natural fit with the original vision of the World Soundscape Project, especially since these are ambient field recordings. Too bad they ran short of funding and the momentum faded, I think they would have taken it somewhere like this. I like the fact that they're hoping to showcase changing soundscapes over time. It would be great if the GE community can contribute. If this stuff interests you, check out the literature on acoustic ecology.

    --
    Damn those pesky terrorists
  3. Been done before kinda but still a good idea by Stevecrox · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I remember when I was younger microsoft released an encylopedia for kids, when ever you looked up an animal the noise it made would play (there was a button to make it replay.) It was something that did keep me entertained for hours, just going through all the different entries.

    Someone else has mentioned Wikipedia, would this not be a great extension to that? Primary school teachers could access certain pages/places and play appropirate sounds. Since it seems the type of kids encylopedia cdrom that I played with as a child has been replaced by wikipedia, wouldn't it be great if wikipedia took on the two great things about those?

    Encarta and "Encylopedia for kids" (by Microsoft) would often have short video sequences or sound clips to go with the articles. It was one of the best ways to gain an understanding of a process at times. Sure some pages might be quite dodgey if it was implimented but the wildlife,manufacturing,car/motorcycle history,science and engineering pages could be significantly enhanced by this sort of feature.

    I'm aware of wikimedia, but why hasn't the main wikipedia design be altered to do these things already?

  4. Re:do you hear that? by garcia · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I could see it being used for a virtual tour of a park, college campus, or business complex. Plot out a route and then follow it along with pictures and sound.

    Seems pretty useful to me. I wish that more public entities would publish their SHP boundaries in KML/KMZ so I wouldn't have to convert them myself.

    It could become a real useful tool for the web.