Building up the world virtually
Google is not the only one building up the earth virtually. This is one of the
places where calculus and geometry is currently made to gold.
Google has relied at first heavily from help from the public to get
the buildings ready but increasingly also uses technology.
The Swedish company C3 Technologies has other algorithms which allow
to use Light Detection And Ranging. LIDAR
uses ultraviolet, visible, or near infrared light to image objects.
To the left we see an example witha Nokia plugin. The buildings clearly are
not always that well crafted. The google buildup of Cambridge near Harvard is
much better (video right).