I’ve been experimenting with Google Notebook today at work, and I found it to be immediately useful in ways that complement my other web tools. (I’m a big user of and believer in data portability tools — I use .Mac, Basecamp, Backpack, Foxmarks (for shared bookmarks), Google Calendar, GMail and NewsGator (for shared RSS).)

It’s tempting, whenever Google introduces a new service, to add it to the grid of mashable services and see which squares haven’t been filled in yet. It can lead to formulaic blogging, and I’m guilty of it just yesterday (suggesting a mash-up of Google Trends and Google Earth.)

Having just said that, I’m now going to repeat the crime: If you can annotate the web with Notebook, why not use it to annotate Google Earth? Ah, you might reply, you can already do that, by adding placemarks. But that would be committing a category error, because placemarks are like network links, overlays or 3D objects — content published to Google Earth — and hence themselves something to be annotated, just like all content published to the web.

So imagine this scenario: In Google Earth, you find an interesting piece of architecture via the 3D Warehouse network link, so you right-click on it and choose “Note this (Google Notebook)”. Using Google’s built-in (PC only) web browser, Notebook shows you a georeferenced link to the model, and lets you add your notes. Later, you find a border or place name you want to annotate. Again, just right-click on it and comment away.

If you make your notes public, turning them into a web page, others can read your log, with links to Google Earth that recreate what you found. This has the added benefit of bringing more people into Google Earth who might otherwise not have ventured off the web.

• gps2geX is a Mac utility that takes your GPS position and maps it to Google Earth in real-time. Use it with gpsdX, an open-soruce GPS daemon that lets many applications use the same GPS data simultaneously. Both are written by Australia’s Robin Darroch, and get a great review here.
• A well-written article for CSO Online, “5 Ways Google is shaking the security world” has a section on Google Earth that is especially worth reading, and not just for chief security officers. Quote: “If your organization’s security plan is based on no one being able to obtain aerial or satellite photography of a facility, then it probably ain’t much of a plan.” (I found the entire article fascinating.)
• You can tag websites. You can tag physical places. So why not tag events? Austrian collaborative community site Shnitzl lets you do precisely that. And since events have to happen somewhere, venues are automatically mapped to Google Maps and Earth. There’s an RSS feed for every venue, as well as a global RSS feed, and same goes for Google Earth files. Shnitzl is still in beta — the events are for Vienna only, the RSS could use geoRSS tags and iCal format support would be nice — but this is solid Web 2.0 work. (Upcoming.org is a full-featured event tagger, but doesn’t fly you to Google Earth. And Shnitlz feels leaner, in a good single-minded-purpose kind of way.) (Via Google Earth Community)
• Google Earth Blog finds another (one-man) company offering Google Earth development services: Pierre Racine’s GeoWebService, de Québec.
• “CH2M HILL Enterprise Spatial Solutions Becomes the First Google Earth Certified Partner in the Google Enterprise Professional Program,” boasts a press release. Except that MetaCarta joined yesterday, and they sure use Google Earth too. Bummer.

• Over on Google Earth Community, further discussion of censored areas on Google Earth, both in the Netherlands and in New York State. It seems that prisons are proving to be a popular item to blur. Google Earth must be a popular pastime for prisoners, but if an aerial shot is all it takes to break out of Sing Sing, I’m not impressed:-) This page, maintained by PriceCollins, lists all found instances of censorship in Google Earth’s data set — currently at 63 areas. A wonderful resource for informed debate.
• Mac users of SketchUp pro need wait no longer: The plugin for Google Earth is now up. “This release brings the ability to post to & download from the new 3d Warehouse to OS X SketchUp Pro 5 users.” (Announcement). In anticipation of SketchUp for Mac Free, dowload the 8-hour time-limited pro version if you haven’t already.
• SketchUp3D.org is a new blog by a Milan-based design agency, and so far it has had some great short tutorials. Here’s how to make 3D text, and here’s how to make a floor texture for SketchUp with Photoshop.
• Since Mike Pegg mentions it over on Google Maps Mania, I guess it’s official:-) On Google’s Geo Developer day on June 12 (registration now closed), both Mike and Frank Taylor of Google Earth Blog will be showcasing some of the most interesting mashups and network links of the past year.

In case anybody still thinks Google’s forays into GIS constitute a dilution of its primary mission, here are two items:

• Geographic intelligence provider MetaCarta announced today it is joining the Google Enterprise Professional program, in order to “integrate our technology with Google Earth Enterprise for use in the government, energy, and enterprise sectors.” Says Claudine Bianchi, MetaCarta’s VP of marketing:
  

  Companies and government agencies who use Google Earth can now extend the power of their searches using MetaCarta to view unstructured content such as content found in HTML pages, MS-Word, and email as search results on the Google Earth map interface.

  Here’s a slideshow with screenshots.

• Ed Parsons notes how Google Trends makes available to us geospatial “attention data” — letting us find out where a given search term is the most popular (as a percentage of total searches). This undescores that while Google is “all about search,” search is often geospatial in nature. In fact, before the web, that was the only kind of search there was:-)

Both the MetaCarta announcement and Ed’s post, read in short succession, suggest a natural Google mashup and hence feature request: Why not output Google Trends’s geospatial attention data as KML? This should produce a much more natural representation of the data. The KML could show relative popularity either via an overlay with color opacity, or else by some kind of 3D bar graph centered on each location.

Finally, here too a timeline would be handy — it would be interesting to see, for example, in which regions new memes are searched for first, or the regional reach of a marketing campaign over time.

• Tim Beermann is asking anyone who is interested in testing his Shape2Earth application to get in touch. Details on his site.
• Andrew Turner at High Earth Orbit is looking for some “cutting edge” users to beta-test his Google Calendar mashup. “Think Calendar and Traveling,” he hints.

• What a way to start the week — with Atlas Gloves, a DIY hand gesture user interface for Google Earth. It works exactly like the really fancy futuristic ones we’ve been seeing, except here you just need a webcam and two small lightpens in your hands to spin and zoom and scroll. There is demo video, which you’ll have to settle for in anticipation of the download and DIY instructions. It’s by Dan Phiffer and Mushon Zer-Aviv, for the Tisch School of the Arts’ ITP Spring Show, held a few days ago.
• More art in Google Earth — Os Candangos (Google images) by pivnice on ZNO.
• Wolfgang Berberich, author of TrailRunner 1.0, a free route planning application for the Mac that exports to the iPod but also KML, is looking for volunteers to localize it. Any takers? (Wolfgang’s email is at the bottom of the page)
• A Belgian typographer is making a typeface out of buildings found in Google Earth… (Pics promised soon.)

Flickr geotagging tools for Firefox come and go as the Google Maps API gets updated. The one that seems to have gained most in popularity since last I checked in is .CK’s Google Maps in Flickr, GMiF — now onto version 4.0, which incorporates the Google Maps API 2.0.

What I like especially about this most recent update is that it exists as a plain-vanilla Firefox extension — there is no more need to have the Greasemonkey script engine installed, and updating is much simpler. Once you’ve installed it, why not try it out on this picture? (Like with previous versions of GMiF, you can use it to fly to Google Earth from within Flickr.)