Finally, I can talk about the exciting project that has been keeping me up late and in the office early.

Introducing: The South African Tourism layer in Google Earth (downloadable here).

About 8 months ago Rob came bouncing over to my desk, as he does, with a rather cheeky (read scary) look in his eye. The words which were “Tim, I know you have project management experience but do you know anything about Google Earth?” Needless to say I was moderately concerned and responded something along the lines of “I know what it is but have no idea how it works”. This began my exploration of the elements required to make a Google Earth layer, and the trials and tribulations that followed.

Ok, maybe I should go back a step – what is Google Earth?

“Google Earth maps the earth by the superimposition of images obtained from satellite imagery, aerial photography and GIS 3D globe.” (Wikipedia.org/googleearth)

Alternatively, Google Earth is “A really cool program by Google, it allows you to explore the world from your PC” (define: Google earth).

More importantly, Google Earth is a trend setting system which looks to take all the Geo-location data which is currently being kept by Google, and applying it to a 3D model of the earth. For example, if you zoom into Cape Town and search for something, then items from that area will appear but items from other cities won’t.

“If you build it they will come”, is a philosophy which Google seems to have embraced in the absolute. Philipp Hirtz of Google Zurich was very proud to tell me this morning that there have been 350 million unique Google Earth activations (an increase of roughly 70% since January 2008). It’s clear that the market Google Earth attracts like what they see and need the system which is provided.

This fresh approach to browsing content provides a much higher level of engagement and overall utility for users – thus providing for higher conversion rates and the ability to really close the loop. With the layer we have developed we are making the most of this. We’ve provided Google Earth content which is fully Geo-located, has full content write-ups, links to virtual tours (nicely done VirtualAfrica), links and contact details allowing users to engage with their destinations while having the necessary resources to explore further, make the booking or plan their itinerary.

We have also included a number of other firsts and have used Google Earth a little differently in some instances.