Eideard

If you were to come up with a list of places you’re unlikely to stumble across Google’s Street View trike snapping 360 degree panoramics, the banks of the Amazon would surely be pretty close to the top. Yet that’s precisely where the search behemoth’s imaging team is currently focusing its attention. Starting off with a 50 km stretch of the Rio Negro River, the team plans to document life in some our world’s most remote and richly biodiverse regions – visiting local communities, going inside village buildings and floating up and down the waterways to offer virtual visitors a unique insight into the wonders of the Amazon.

Often described as the lungs of the planet, the lush Amazon rainforest has been disappearing at a frighteningly rapid rate at the hands of mankind. Now thanks to Google, much of this immensely important region of the world is about to be saved – albeit digitally. Accepting an invite from the locals, Google’s Brazil and U.S. Street View teams have joined members of the Google Earth Outreach program to share their image collection expertise with non-profit conservation organization Amazonas Sustainable Foundation (FAS).

While in the area, the now-familiar Street View will be seen trundling down the narrow dirt paths that join villages and will capture images of the river, surrounding forests and adjacent river communities. Building interiors will also host an image capture tripod to give us all a sense of what it’s like to live and work in such communities. The teams will also mount the vehicle on a boat and record all-around views of the great river as it floats gently downstream, which will then be stitched together to produce 360 degree panoramas.

On completion of the project, Google will leave behind some technical equipment to allow FAS members to continue their work, and give them the means to share their way of life with the rest of the world.

Rock on!

A group of 15 men, women and children stuck for three days on an uninhabited Pacific island formed the “SOS” symbol by linking hands to help signal rescuers, the U.S. Coast Guard said…

The group from Chuuk in the Federated States of Micronesia was believed heading to a festival in Ruo Island when they got stranded about 8 miles from Ruo, though it’s not clear how. Another vessel leaving Ruo saw the group’s 28-foot skiff marooned and overturned, the Coast Guard said in a statement.

The area is about 1,000 miles northeast of Papua New Guinea.

The Coast Guard was alerted to the missing vessel on Tuesday. Fishermen and commercial ships in the area helped in the search. The group ranged in age from four to 59 years old, and included six children.

“As far as we know, they are all OK, they had enough food and water” given to them by other boats, Fredrickson said. It’s not yet known if there were more than 15 people on the vessel.

The Coast Guard was planning to pick up the group on Saturday morning.

Good thing it was only a few days. I’ve known some fearless Pacific island folk – but, that’s what can land them in trouble.

Just like my forebears from the Hebrides, you think there’s nowhere you can’t get to in a boat, regardless of size, regardless of weather.

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Daylife/AP Photo used by permission

There was US Interior Secretary Ken Salazar, the man deciding the fate of the controversial wind farm, sitting on the bridge of a Coast Guard vessel and peering out across the Sound with binoculars a few hours after meeting with Native Americans opposed to the Cape Wind project.

“Very meaningful,’’ said Salazar about his visit that included a private sunrise meeting with the Mashpee Wampanoag tribe on a Cape Cod beach, and a later discussion with the Aquinnah Wampanoag tribe on Martha’s Vineyard…

Salazar announced no conclusions yesterday about the advisability of locating the wind farm in the scenic Sound, but his visit to the Wampanoag and the area underscores just how high-stakes the Cape Wind farm has become to the Obama administration, which is hoping to accelerate renewable energy efforts and show the world it is serious about fighting manmade climate change. If completed, the project’s developers say it will supply, on average, the equivalent of 75 percent of the energy needs of Cape Cod and the Islands…

Salazar’s visit appeared to ease the Wampanoag tribes’ longstanding complaint that the federal government never took them seriously when they said the wind farm would interfere with their spiritual sun greetings and be built on ancestral grounds that were dry land thousands of years ago…

Speaking to the reporters, Salazar reiterated that a final decision on Cape Wind would be made by April.

He said he was not “holding my breath for a consensus’’ among Native Americans and the project’s developer…

I don’t think it matters to the future of energy and environmental costs whether or not the folks concerned about their view are Native American priests or Kennedy-level brahmins of Massachusetts politics. They’re standing in the way of clean energy for the whole region strictly on selfishness.