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How to Use Google Moon to View Photo Stories of the Apollo Moon Landings
After completing my post on how to use Google to view the surface of the planet Mars, a reader commented that if you enjoy Google Mars, you will surely enjoy Google Moon. I have used Google Moon on occasion and I find it to be a neat tool.
Google Moon offers a variety of different tools that allow you to learn more about the surface of the moon. It also has many pictures that you can view to make the moon come to life! (Not really, but a living moon could be pretty fun… really… think about it.)
When you first go to Google Moon, you will notice that it opens up to the following page:
Google Moon centers around providing a rich, illustrative experience to its end users. As you can see, it has Moon photos for all of the Apollo missions that have successfully landed on the moon.
If you click on the Zoom in in the Apollo 11 speech bubble, you can see the Apollo 11 landing area in more detail.
As you can see there are 18 photos that you can view. Just click on any of the red pointers, or any of the photos at the bottom of the screen. I clicked on the American Flag photo (the 7th from the left) because it looked pretty interesting.
Upon clicking on a marker, you can view the photo and zoom in or move it around with your mouse. I zoomed in on the flag.
If you want to explore other Apollo missions, all you have to do is click on the Apollo Series link in the bottom left hand corner. I then selected Apollo 17, as you can see below.
From here you can view photos of the Apollo 17 mission, or go back and choose another mission.
If you have any questions about using Google Moon to view photos of the Apollo space missions, just leave a comment and I’ll get back to you as soon as possible. Thanks for reading!
How to Use Google Maps to View a World Map of Recent Earthquakes
Google has created a number of so-called “Map Mashups” where they merge their maps with other significant data. In this case, they have merged a world map with data on where recent earthquakes have happened as well as their strength on the Richter scale.
How Do I View the Earthquake Map?
The map of recent earthquakes can be viewed by clicking here. Here is what you will see:
As you can see, this map tells you the strength of the earthquakes and when they occurred. It doesn’t show scales that were under a magnitude four because those simply aren’t as exciting.
Yellow earthquakes occurred in the past week, orange in the past day, and if you’re lucky enough to be viewing right after one has occurred, you will see a red dot for earthquakes that have happened in the last hour. Have fun!
Another Way To Access This Data
You can also access this map as well as many other maps that Google has made available (some of which we will feature in the future) by going to the Google Maps Directory.
Here is a screen shot of the Google Maps Directory:
From here, you can choose any one of the four categories on the left hand side of the screen to browse the different maps.
I have found it easier to just search for a certain map that I’m looking for in the search box at the top of the screen.
If you have any questions about these enhanced Google Maps, just leave your words below.
How to Use Google Yellowpages to Find Any Local Business
Category: Google Maps, Google Phonebook · Comment on this Article
Last month, I wrote about using Google as Your Whitepages phonebook. Today, I am going to describe how you can use Google as your Yellowpages as well.
Although Google seems to be an abstract company, they know about businesses that are just around the corner to where you live! All you have to do is think of a business category and then type in your location. You can use just a zip code, or a city and state.
For example, when my wife and I moved to Pittsburgh, we wanted to find out about the local pizzerias. All I had to do was type pizza, 15216 into a Google search box. Here’s what I got:
As you can see, Google shows me a map of my local area and then shows me where each pizzeria is located. This is nice, as I can quickly see which ones are closest to where I live. Google also lists the website and phone number of each establishment.
At the bottom of this page is a link that says More results near Pennsylvania 15216 >> If I click on this, I am taken to a more in-depth page of my results.
Here is what that in-depth page looks like:
This page gives you more information about some of the pizzerias. You will notice that Google now offers to give you driving directions to any one of these pizza kitchens.
You’ll also notice that for some of the businesses, Google displays reviews that other internet users have written. For example, on the last business a reviewer says she “saw a lady drop a tomatoe on the floor and pick it up and put it in someones salad.” I’ll be sure to avoid that place — especially if a tomatoe is a cross between a toe and a tomato. That doesn’t sound good at all.
At the very top of this page, you’ll find that Google has opened up a little Find businesses tab for you that you can use to find most any business. If you would like to access a Google Find businesses page for yourself without going through a standard Google search box, click here.
To show the power of the Google Yellowpages, let’s try searching for a medical profession in a remote area of the USA. We’ll try dentists in Provo, Utah. Here’s what we get:
This page looks similar to the previous one. I performed one more search just to demonstrate the power and versatility of Google’s Yellowpages.
You may notice that once you get through a few pages of results that they aren’t really relevant to what you searched for. This seems to happen on all searches. After all, you’ll notice that Google found 1,843 dentists in Provo…
Go ahead and try searching in your own city!
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