GEB

As people who have attended my quizzes may know, I am in love with Google. There is nothing else which has contributed more to quizzing than Google and Wikipedia (more about Wikipedia in some other post). Till now, I have conducted quizzes with rounds based on Google Maps, Google Trends and even Google Doodles. So this post is dedicated to Larry, Sergey, and to what was once called BackRub.

You must be wondering what GEB (see title) has got to do with this. Well, a bit of googling would tell you that Geb is the Egyptian God of Earth. Indeed, Geb means Earth. So the GEB series in my blog would deal with interesting things that I find while browsing Google Earth.

Ahmedabad once looked quite boring in Google Earth. The resolution was very low and one could say that this was Ahmedabad only because the search told you that this was Ahmedabad. But things changed sometime in 2006. The imagery updated and suddenly you could identify individual localities, roads and even buildings in Ahmedabad. Like a kid with a new toy, I spent hours on Google Earth, traveling through the roads I saw everyday, marking all the buildings and roads I knew, and some that I didn't. I uploaded all the placemarks I had collected to the Google Earth Community website so that the whole world could figure out the where's where of Ahmedabad. But I soon got bored with it. The imagery has not been updated again. And my dream of seeing Ahmedabad like I can see Las Vegas remain just that - a dream. But today I clicked on a checkbox called 'roads' today and...

... I discovered that Google had been working while I was sleeping! All roads in Ahmedabad are mapped. Along with their names! Did you know that what we lovingly call Judges Bungalow Road is not wholly inaccurate? Officially that road is called Nyay Marg (nyay in Hindi means justice, marg means road).

So, Google does it again. And I have an improved version of my old toy to play with.

What next O Mighty Google? Ahmedabad in 3D?