It makes the team here at GSS feel positively web-ancient, but today sees the return of our very-long-running series Volcano Week!

Now in its fifth year¹ Volcano Week² is devoted to sights created by the process of molten rock, mud, hot ash and/or gases escaping from craters, lava fields, cracks, fissures, openings or ruptures in the Earth’s (or any other planet’s) surface or crust.

Um, where was I?

Volcanoes. A week of them. You get the picture.

In the meantime, refresh your memory with our volcano posts from previous years:

• 1st annual Volcano Day (2005)
• 2nd annual Volcano Day (2006)
• Volcano Week 3 (2008)
• All our volcano posts

You can also browse Wikipedia’s exhaustive lists of volcano locations (we’re still accepting suggestions for posts later in the week!), or finally, try these Google Earth layers, one of which shows current volcanic activity.

Despite having again failed to post the world’s largest desert we feel the second annual GSS Desert Week has been a resounding success! The places we visited were:

• UTA Flight 772 Memorial
• Desert Dome
• The Osoyoos Desert
• Wadi Rum
• Death Valley
• Shiprocked on the Highway to Hell

We also had loads of other great desert-themed sights sent in by readers (thanks everyone), but we already had more posts than we needed! Rest assured that we’ll keep these in reserve for next year, and may even post a few during the coming months.

So we’re back to our regular schedule later today, but in the meantime, why not have a think about what locations you might like to see included in the upcoming Volcano Week 4?

Following on from the resounding success¹ of 2008’s first annual Google Sightseeing Desert Week, this week we’re running with the theme all over again, astoundingly, exactly a year since last time!

We’ve got a plethora of desert-related posts planned for the week, but if there’s a desert-related sight that you think we should be including make sure to let us know.

You might remember that a few weeks ago we solicited applications for some new writers to join the team here at Google Sightseeing. Well, we were absolutely overwhelmed by the response, but we’re finally ready to announce the names of the successful applicants!

We would have loved to have accepted everyone who applied, but sadly we had to choose just a handful. However we did end up taking on more people than expected – and now in a bit of very fortuitous timing, we’re celebrating our fourth birthday by introducing four new writers!

So, in alphabetical no particular order, the first of our new writers is Kevin Batdorf:

“Originally from St. Petersburg, Florida, I am currently living in Tokyo, Japan where I’m a full time student. I have been reading Google Sightseeing for about a year now, but have been using Google Maps ever since it was launched. I love to travel and learn about new places, but it’s always fun to check here for the stuff you don’t normally find. I’m excited to join the team and I look forward to reading your comments and discussing all the interesting posts with you all.”

Next up, Evan Brammer is a Geography teacher at an international school near Jakarta, Indonesia:

“My love for all things geo was planted as a seed early in my life. I began doing worldwide sightseeing when I was twelve years old and moved from small town America to a US Army base in Germany. Since then I have spent many years travelling and living throughout the world. I am married and have two lovely boys. My toddler’s favourite pastime is when I put Google Earth up on our Touchsmart and let him stand on the table and spin the world. Maybe we’ll let him randomly choose our next destination.”

Alex Steinberger works for a Geographic Information System consultancy in Los Angeles, CA.

“I am employed at a GIS-services consultancy that specialises in 3D city models. I spend at least 8 hours a day working with Google Earth and Maps and have turned into somewhat of a Google Geo-Addict. When my eyes are not glued to a spinning virtual globe, I enjoy hiking, camping, and above all, skiing.”

Finally, Rob Kingston is a newspaper subeditor from Hampshire, England, working mostly on travel and property pieces:

“I have always been fascinated by travelling and exploring – whether in the real world or, the next best thing, poring over maps – so of course I am a huge Google Earth and Maps fan. The only problem is that when I have to use them to look something up for work, I often end up getting distracted!”

We’ve got a post from each of our new writers lined up for the rest of the week, so we hope you enjoy them. Thanks again to everyone who sent us an application or wrote a sample post, it really was heart-warming to see how many people would have liked to write for the site.

Now, on with the sightseeing!

Unbelievable, but today is the 4th anniversary of the launch of Google Sightseeing! We shan’t bore you with a potted history – instead we’re revisiting a couple of sights from this day in 2005 to see how things have changed.

Back in 2005, Google Maps’ satellite imagery was barely 24 hours old, and restricted to North America, when we linked to our very first sight – this Mickey Mouse-shaped lake at Disney World, Florida. Interestingly, other than a change in the projection of the images¹ (which stopped everything looking squished), the imagery here hasn’t been updated since then.

In a poor reflection on our imaginations back in 2005, the second sight we posted was even more stereotypically “American”. We think we’ve come a long way since we posted The Hollywood sign, as the entire post simply consisted of the words:

Only just legible, but very cool, the Hollywood sign. Now I don’t need to go there to see it.

The imagery may have been updated since then² (and we’ve gotten a lot more wordy), but the sign never really changes much. However, thanks to Google Street View, we can now get an even better view from the ground.³

Google Sightseeing has come a long way since 2005, and we’re very much looking forward to improving and expanding the site even further in the future. Later this week we’ll be announcing the results of our recruitment drive from a few weeks ago, so there’s going to be lots of new Google Sightseeing to be done over the next four years.

Thanks for reading.