Tuesday, May 26, 2009

Map The Fallen


Sorry for the lack of posting lately, but work's been hell. So even this past three-day weekend I mostly ignored the computer, except to goof off on Twitter.

It would have been nice to have stumbled across this before Memorial Day as it would have made a good post for yesterday, but better late than never.

Google employee Sean Askay embarked on a Google Earth project to map the fallen servicemen and women from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. To be honest, when I first saw this my initial thought was that it might be an anti-war propaganda thing. But that definitely does NOT appear to be the case. If Mr. Askay has an agenda besides his stated one of simply honoring the fallen, it's not at all apparent.

The project is a Google Earth map overlay which represents the home of record (not always the same as hometown) of a service member and the location of their death. Clicking on one of the icons brings up information about the fallen soldier and in most cases a link to their obituary.

I haven't lost any friends or acquaintances in Iraq or Afghanistan, but I did find out that an old classmate of mine lost a son. Whether you've lost a friend or relative there or not, it's worth checking out.

A few pointers since some in the comments at the site seemed to have difficulty figuring it out...make sure you have Google Earth 5.0 or later installed, then just click on the download link at the top right of the page. It worked fine for me, but some folks in the comments say they had issues, probably related to having an older version of Google Earth.

1 comment:

Ayrdale said...

Good post.

Lest we forget.