Ogle Earth. Now it’s official.

Just as Google Earth Beta was getting an update, so was the look of this blog.

Ogle Earth is finally looking a bit more professional, so I guess a more formal launch is in order.

The aim of Ogle Earth is to collect resources, links, and news related to Google Earth, and to spot new trends as they happen — in other words, to keep a finger on the pulse of the Google Earth community. In the coming weeks and months, expect to see interviews with people of interest, and maybe how-tos and tutorials (if and when Google releases the Mac version — VirtualPC is proving a bit on the slow side at home, where the free time is.) Ogle Earth will not itself be a repository of markers or layers, but will point to them.

The motivation is simple. I am convinced that Google Earth and its upcoming competitors are a disruptive technology; these Earth browsers will fundamentally change how we web users envisage information. Most everything on the internet can be related back to the real world, but often the location dimension has been left unused. As a result, far too many place relationships have been left unmined, until now.

Google has proven to be a master of managing related data — witness Google Search. It has done so by harvesting the link-votes of ordinary web-users. Google is taking this tack again with its Earth, this time by letting it be a canvas on which anyone can create and share. Google Earth is visually stunning, but it is this openness to community creativity that currently makes the application unique, and why is it proving to be a rave success. And all these users will probably one day see Google’s sponsored links in their locational searches inside Google Earth, just as we now do with Google Search.

I am planning to stay abreast of this revolution. I thought a blog would be a good place to store and share what I find.