Short news: Mo’ Mao, Apple Mail 2 Earth, patent law

  • David Hsieh has been hunting for large slogans on Chinese mountainsides. Churned through my Mac’s translator widget, I get “Overcomes all difficulties to strive for the victory”, “Only struggles from morning until evening”, “Serves for the people”, “Chairman Mao long live” and “The Shangrila – pine approves the forest temple” (a religious text, assures David).
  • Good news for Mac users: The latest update of Brian Toth’s excellent Google Maps plugin for Address Book adds support for Google Earth and benefits from Google’s expanded geocoding for a bevy of European countries. The plugin is now a Universal binary to boot.

    mapofapple.jpg

    This is what address books should look like by default. I might even begin to add people’s addresses to mine:-) (Via Faded Pictures)

  • The Technology Liberation Front has a go at the Skyline patent suit vs. Google Earth, and finds it lacking. Not so fast, argues Daniel Markham. [Update 2006-06-18: Avi Bar-Ze’ev comments as well.]
  • Maybe you already knew this, but I did not: Platial’s Today Nearby links its maps to Google Earth. The RSS could go GeoRSS, though. (Via Digg)