Google Building Maker: http://sketchup.google.com/3dwh/buildingmaker.html

Blog: http://google-latlong.blogspot.com/2009/10/introducing-google-building-maker.html

It runs entirely in browser, you need Google Earth plugin. It's incredibly easy (and fun) to create new buildings, I like the interface, it's very polished. You can create buildings in 50 cities, those cities have besides normal satellite imagery an airplane imagery (like bird view in Bing Maps) – so you don't see the building only from top but also from 4 sides.

Wheer the image come from? Same provider than Bing Maps?

My understanding was that Microsoft bought the exclusive rights to those birds-eye photos. I too am curious where they come from.

What I'm wondering now is: what do you get for doing 3D assets for Google?

I can't get this to work on my Mac...

You also get to help Google align their different birds eye views, crowdsourcing style.

After making some models I checked out the criteria for acceptance into the official buildings layer, some of these I expect to actually go 'wrong' quite often using this new 'building maker':

e.g. 'Models should not exhibit Z-fighting.', 'Models should be completely photo-textured.' (still tends to go wrong even with simple structures e.g. http://sketchup.google.com/3dwarehouse/details?mid=89f54a0bb07b05f928636fd547f474ae), 'Models should not include more than one discrete structure each.' (easy newbie mistake I nearly made)

Still overall its quite a neat interface for simple buildings, but for more complex one's they should add a few more basic building blocks.

Sorry for double post, but one small tip: ALWAYS check whether somebody didn't made a model yet. (I made this mistake already twice :/ , out of the four buildings I created)

Makes you wonder how many burglaries, robberies, and terrorist or military-style attacks will be planned on the basis of this "crowd-sourcing".

Googlers have never really demonstrated much moral foresight. Actually, they have never really demonstrated much of any kind of foresight. It's always been, "Here's a stupid concept – let's charge forward with it!"

Some of their stupid concepts have really transformed the way the world thinks – look at all the link spammers who plague social media sites. Good job, Google.

"Makes you wonder how many burglaries, robberies, and terrorist or military-style attacks will be planned on the basis of this crowd-sourcing."

No, it doesn't. Clearly (and perhaps thankfully) you don't know anything about burgling, robbing, terrorizing or fighting wars.

I will never understand this knee-jerk reaction, that making publicly-available information easier to find and to use is somehow "dangerous." That photography is dangerous. That learning is dangerous. That decisions made by large groups are inferior to decisions made by individuals, rather than merely different.

A knee-jerk mistrust of new technology is as bone-headed as assuming all new technology is beneficial and helpful. So is assuming that a technology is "stupid" merely because some profit-minded individuals will attempt to break it.

Yeah. What Erik said.

Some things provide massive benefits to society: education, information, photography, maps, open government, etc. In general, if you deny these things to the "good guys", you will find that the "bad guys" are likely to have access to underground workarounds that are not available to the "good guys".

That's why open societies benefit the good guys more than they benefit the bad guys.