Google Street View explores remote Canadian arctic region

---

You may have never heard of Cambridge Bay, a hamlet in the Kitikmeot Region of Nunavut that sits far beyond the Arctic Circle.

Located in the Canadian Arctic, the area is surrounded by a web of tundra, waterways, and glaciers. It's one of the most remote places on Earth ? only accessible by plane or boat. But you'll soon be able to visit the region with Google Maps Street View.

Google recently ventured to the northernmost point it has ever traveled in Canada with an ambitious goal in mind ? to build the most comprehensive map of the region to date. The tech giant has been working with local community members to use Google Map Maker to add new roads, rivers, and lakes to the Google Map of Cambridge Bay and Canada's North.

"We're empowering a community and putting Cambridge Bay on the proverbial map of tomorrow," Google Earth outreach team member Karin Tuxen-Bettman wrote in a blog post Wednesday.

With the help of the community, the team has already added the hospital, daycare, a nine-hole golf course, a territorial park, and the remnants of an ancient Dorset stone longhouse. All these points of interest have also been translated into the local Inuktitut language.

Now, team members are riding the Street View trike around the hamlet's unpaved roads to capture imagery of the area. The Street View team will train local community members to use the equipment so they can travel to other communities in Nunavut.

"This is a place with a vast amount of local knowledge and a rich history," Chris Kalluk, a local resident who is collaborating on the project, said in a statement. "By putting these tools in the hands of our people, we will tell Nunavut's story to the world."

The street views of Cambridge Bay are expected to his the web in a few months.

In July, Google added panoramic imagery of historic Antarctic locations to its World Wonders site, joining Asian, Australian, European, and North and South American locations.

Google's recent Street View updates include?new Latin American imagery and some really exciting shots from inside NASA's Kennedy Space Center.?

Published under license from Ziff Davis, Inc., New York, All rights reserved.
Copyright ? 2012 Ziff Davis, Inc

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/itproportal/rss/~3/qCTB5_koIcY/

ibooks author gabrielle union merle haggard ladainian tomlinson mark wahlberg pipa keystone xl