Realius

If you care about “place” like we do at Realius, then you’ll love what is happening at the Where 2.0 conference. If you are tired of looking at rooftops on your satellite map, try the new Street View inside Google maps. Street View is brought you by the guys at Immersive Media. The coverage is limited, but you can see where it is going. With Street View, the neighborhood from the street level is just a click away.

Between all the maps, data, and 3D images, the one service that was simple and useful for the consumer is the integration of natural sound tracks into Google Maps or Google Earth. Referred to as the Wild Soundscape Project, My Sanctuary, has assembled:

… over 3,500 hours of wild soundscapes and nearly 15,000 species. The mission: To help connect people to the wild by preserving, presenting, and protecting the voice of the natural world.

The most moving Soundscape is a pair of recordings from Northern California. The recording compares the sounds of the landscape before and after selective logging. The images of the forest have not changed, but the soundscape tells the whole story.

If you want all the news from the Where 2.0 show, check out the O’Reilly Blog.