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Friday roundup: Blogger meetup at Where 2.0, GeoRSS scuffle, “paid placemarks”

  • Are you a blogger attending Where 2.0? Here is your meetup, time and place TBA, put into motion by Fantom Planet.
  • This is a wonderful overlay, posted to Google Earth Hacks: How the continents looked during the Late Cretaceous period, around 65 million years ago, when the dinosaurs suddenly became extinct. Turn on borders in Google Earth, and you have an instant comparison with how the continents look now.
  • Apparently, this is the location in Iraq where Al Zarqawi was succesfully targeted, as shown on the video release by the US military. It looks similar, but I can’t tell for sure.
  • A press release by Cambridge UK company The GeoInformation Group announces the availability of its 3D buildings data as KML. London is available now, and “568 UK cities” will follow in the next year. I wonder if this will make it to the Google Earth base layer? According to the press release, the KML conversion of their data “is founded on a long established relationship between The GeoInformation Group and Google.”
  • Import geotagged Flickr photos into Tagzania. Neat! (and if you have a Mac, here are some AppleScripts for converting KML placemarks into Tagzania items.)
  • GIS for Archaeology and CRM has an interesting collection of links to GeoRSS articles, including Adena Schutzberg’s recent primer.
  • Speaking of GeoRSS, a debate has broken out over who should “own” the development of the GeoRSS format. It began with Howard Butler’s article questioning the motives of the Open Geospatial Consortium for trying to take on the role. Chris Tweedle chimes in, as does James Fee.
  • Greenpeace definitely thinks of Google Earth as a weapon of note in its PR battles, as its latest campaign (about polar bears) makes clear. (Via Le Blogue du LFG)
  • Chikuyu means “Earth” in Japanese, but it is now also the name of a free GPS-to-KML coverter for a GPS enabled PocketPC.
  • GlobeAssistant‘s Earthbooker, which lets you see the locations of (paying?) hotels on Google Earth, now has a special World Cup edition.
  • TMM also jumps on the “paid placemark” bandwagon, with a network link of some businesses in Germany (it calls the network link an “Earth skin”). The only problem with this business model is that you have to convince people to download the network link before they will view the paid placemarks. So if there are businesses paying fixed sums to be included rather than on a pay-per-click basis, then they are being duped, clearly.
  • CNET has an article about 3D monitors shown at SID2006, and asks, “has 3D’s time arrived?” Despite wanting to say yes, it clear that the conclusion has to be, “not yet.”