Google Earth

Utah's Great Salt Lake covers some 1,700 square miles, making it one of the largest such bodies of salt water around. Have you ever wondered exactly where, relative to other parts of that vast and peculiar lake, artist Robert Smithson built his landmark environmental sculpture "The Spiral Jetty" in 1970? With just a few clicks of your mouse, Google Earth would be happy to show you, thanks to a newly launched project in conjunction with a sprawling exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art's Little Tokyo warehouse space.

Google has just added its 49th and 50th country to its popular Street View feature, enabling Web browsers to check out locations like the Hungarian Parliament building , the European country's Chain bridge or the largest medicinal bath in Europe, the Széchenyi thermal bath . Street View, available with Google Maps, gives users 360-degree views of millions of locations around the globe, now including those in Hungary and Lesotho....

Dick Cheney may not have lived in an undisclosed location while he was vice president, but it was all but impossible to see it on Google Earth. Once obscured by pixilation, Google Earth's aerial image of the vice presidential residence on the grounds of the U.S. Naval Observatory in Washington is now nearly as clear as its view of the White House.

The Associated Press' main Twitter account was taken over Tuesday by hackers who sent out a fake tweet saying two explosions had gone off at the White House, injuring President Obama. Within minutes, the real AP used other accounts at its disposal to tweet that the attack message was bogus and Twitter shut down the @AP account. "The (at)AP twitter account has been hacked," the news service warned. "A tweet about an attack at the White House is false. We will advise on acct. status," the news agency tweeted from its @APStylebook account.  PHOTOS: The top smartphones of 2013 Twitter also suspended the news agency's @AP_Mobile account to prevent more false news from spreading.

Planning, traveling and sharing a vacation with apps that have geography at their heart is no longer just a futuristic idea. Dated guidebooks, tattered maps and finding a place to eat may have been part of the travel headache in times past, but new technology and mobile applications have eliminated many of those hurdles. Here are three of my favorite online and mobile applications to help you plan, enjoy and share your vacation without getting lost or guessing whether the hotel you hope to stay in is close to the ocean.

I discovered an incredible new travel tool while I was having a tooth crowned recently. My L.A. dentist and I were waiting for my gums to numb when he turned on his computer and asked, "Have you seen this?" He clicked on an icon and up came Google Earth, which gives you a list of sites to visit for information on a topic and also displays almost any location on the planet in 3-D. Google Earth accesses maps, satellite imagery and aerial photography taken in the last three years.

I AM SOARING over North Korea, looking down on a denuded landscape and zooming in to hover over missile batteries, nuclear sites, huge palaces and prison camps. It's a cyber tour, courtesy of Google Earth. I once visited North Korea as a reporter, yet this virtual view is far more revealing than anything I was permitted to see. Has the Hermit Kingdom finally met its match?

When Google Earth added historical maps of Japan to its online collection last year, the search giant didn't expect a backlash. The finely detailed woodblock prints have been around for centuries, they were already posted on another website, and a historical map of Tokyo put up in 2006 hadn't caused any problems. But Google failed to judge how its offering would be received, as it has often done in Japan. The company is now facing inquiries from the Justice Ministry and angry accusations of prejudice because its maps detailed the locations of former low-caste communities.

The gig: Perhaps more than any other person, Marissa Mayer influences how the world experiences the Web. As Google Inc.'s champion of innovation and design, she has had her hand in nearly every product the Internet search giant has rolled out. Basically, nothing gets out the door without her approval, including such popular services as Gmail and Google Earth. Her latest job at the company: vice president of consumer products. One of her responsibilities is to run Google's geographic and local services effort, the red-hot market focused on delivering information and advertising to people based on where they are. Mayer also recently got a promotion to Google's operating committee, the elite group that sets the company's strategic direction.

Google finally put the world's oceans on the map. During a splashy presentation Monday at the California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco, the Internet giant unveiled a feature in its Google Earth program that will allow users to swim through undersea canyons as deep as the Mariana Trench and encounter creatures like a critically endangered, prehistoric fish called the coelacanth.

Google said the latest version of Google Earth will allow users to navigate their way through the 3-D map using hand gestures, giving a strong vote of confidence for Leap Motion's technology. As seen in the video above, users can control Google Earth 7.1 using Leap Motion's "motion-sensor" control, which works like Microsoft's Kinect device for the Xbox 360. Leap Motion is set to begin selling it in stores next month. The San Francisco company last year unveiled the technology in a series of YouTube videos that drew rave reviews.

When Silicon Valley wizard John Hanke developed Google Earth a little more than a decade ago, he put advanced, interactive mapping technology in the hands of consumers. It was a major breakthrough, but Hanke has moved on since then. As director of Google's Niantic Labs, he masterminded Field Trip, an app that provides real-time, location-based information about shops, buildings and services. It's available for smartphones and tablets. When used used in conjunction with Google Glass, expected to be released by the end of the year, the Field Trip app will be accessible to by voice-activated, futuristic spectacles, thereby freeing users' hands.

Planning, traveling and sharing a vacation with apps that have geography at their heart is no longer just a futuristic idea. Dated guidebooks, tattered maps and finding a place to eat may have been part of the travel headache in times past, but new technology and mobile applications have eliminated many of those hurdles. Here are three of my favorite online and mobile applications to help you plan, enjoy and share your vacation without getting lost or guessing whether the hotel you hope to stay in is close to the ocean.

NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory may be most famous for sending Curiosity to Mars and Voyager  to the edge of the solar system, but some of its coolest technology is being used right here on Earth. For the last month, a manned C-20A aircraft owned by NASA has been flying a powerful imaging radar system built and managed by JPL over the Americas to collect data on glacier activity, map the coastal mangroves in Latin America, study tiny changes in the Earth's surface caused by the movement of magna beneath active volcanoes, help scientists and government agencies figure out how to improve the levees in New Orleans and the Mississippi Delta, and look for evidence of a 2,000-year-old lost civilization in the Peruvian desert.  The radar's unweildy name is the Uninhabited Aerial Vehicle Synthetic Aperture Radar, but it goes by UAVSAR.

Google unveiled its new maps of North Korea on Monday, beginning to fill what was once a blank expanse on its digital maps with streets, subway stops and even the locations of infamous North Korean prison camps. The crowdsourced maps were created by volunteer “citizen cartographers” who share and check geographical information, using a system that allows anyone to add and update data, Google said Monday. They bring more information about the isolated country onto the widely used website, landing Kim Il Sung Square and Bukchang Gulag on the same platform routinely used to check driving directions in Los Angeles or peruse street views in Houston.

Google Earth's 3D imagery is now available for the iDevices. Or at least some of them. If you have an iPad 2, an iPhone 4S or the latest iPod touch, then you can enjoy swooping virtually through detailed 3D landscapes, like the one of downtown Los Angeles pictured above. Android users have been able to use this feature since late June, but the 3D maps were just made available to Apple users on Thursday. To create the maps, Google uses chartered planes that snap aerial images of every street and structure in major cities from different angles, The Times reported in early June.  So far, about a dozen cities have received the Google Earth 3D map treatment, including Boulder, Colo.; Boston; Charlotte, N.C.; Los Angeles; Portland, Ore.; the San Francisco Bay Area; and Santa Cruz.

When Silicon Valley wizard John Hanke developed Google Earth a little more than a decade ago, he put advanced, interactive mapping technology in the hands of consumers. It was a major breakthrough, but Hanke has moved on since then. As director of Google's Niantic Labs, he masterminded Field Trip, an app that provides real-time, location-based information about shops, buildings and services. It's available for smartphones and tablets. When used used in conjunction with Google Glass, expected to be released by the end of the year, the Field Trip app will be accessible to by voice-activated, futuristic spectacles, thereby freeing users' hands.

ANDRE Mueller is a virtual explorer of virgin territory. One morning, off the southwest coast of Iceland, the 25-year-old German physics student noticed a wispy line -- a wrinkle, almost -- in the elaborate patchwork of satellite imagery that makes up Google Earth. He zoomed in for a closer look. It was smoke. At the end of the trail, he discovered what appeared to be three boats.

Yahoo has named Marissa Mayer, a longtime Google executive, as its new CEO. The beleaguered search giant announced that it had appointed Mayer president, CEO and a board member effective Tuesday. She becomes the company's fifth chief executive in as many years. “The appointment of Ms. Mayer, a leading consumer Internet executive, signals a renewed focus on product innovation to drive user experience and advertising revenue,” Sunnyvale, Calif.-based Yahoo said in a statement.

COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. -- Barb Palmer's college-age kids knew Wednesday night that their home in Shadow Canyon was gone. They figured it out by counting the smoldering foundations on their block on Google Earth. They didn't break it to their mother until Thursday morning, hoping to let her finally sleep. Sleep is in short supply for the tens of thousands who have been evacuated and await news. “My son and I were sitting on the couch and he said, “Mom, our house did burn,” Palmer said Thursday, her voice wavering.