Now Google Earth with Features Rome Reborn 2.0

How did people live thousands of years ago? The University of Virginia’s Institute for Advanced Technology in the Humanities asked this exact same question. As a result, they decided to digitally rebuild the revolutionary city of Rome during the peak of its development (around A.D. 320 - the time of Constantine The Great). They figured this would be the best way to try and understand how humans lived so long ago.

The very first version of the Rome Reborn product went under construction 10 years ago, and finally the task had finished at last year. Included in it were 250 highly detailed structures, and a total of over 7,000 structures in all. They used a 1:250 scale model of Rome that took forty years to create (from 1933 to 1973). This smaller scale Rome was actually constructed out of Plaster of Paris. Using laser scanners they scanned the Plaster of Paris model and created the virtual model. The original use of this model was to be utilized in a theater at UCLA. Since last year the Rome Reborn Project has seen many faces, it’s most recent being Rome Reborn 2.0 which improved the detail significantly. Google had joined in and offered to include Rome Reborn in Google Earth.

With Rome Reborn in Google Earth, it’s the equivalent of a virtual time machine, which can be used to study the history of Rome and other great cities of the world. If you currently have Google Earth, you can enjoy touring ancient Rome. You can also go in them, and enter areas like the Colosseum and even the Roman Senate. With more time, more information will be added researches believe. They also hope that by pioneering this research into the past - other researchers will catch some inspiration and create 3D models of other forgotten cities.

Does Chrome Frame have a target audience?

Google launched Chrome Frame last week. It’s a browser plug in for Microsoft’s Internet Explorer browser that, if the website you’re visiting prefers so, turns it into Chrome. At first glance, this looked to me like a great solution and a well-deserved slap in the face for Internet Explorer, but then it hit me. Nobody will use this.

Recent versions of IE aren’t so bad. They’re slow, look a little silly and are still not as safe as the alternatives, but they render most pages OK enough. The real issue to us developers is the continued market share of IE6. If you’d add up all the money spent supporting IE6 in new, innovative web projects I’m sure you could save the economy of a small 3rd world country.

However IE6’s current user base is made up out of two types of users. Corporate employees who are not allowed to install or modify the software on their company computer, and people who don’t give a damn. If you care even a little and are allowed to upgrade your browser you have a better browser, if only for the tabs. Neither of these two groups will be likely to install Chrome Frame. Sad as it is, Frame offers no real solution to what is a very real problem.