- French Google blog Zorgloob looks at the imagery of the new aerial maps accompanying the French yellow pages — provided by the Institut Géographique National (IGN), who will produce Géoportail, France’s answer to Google Earth.
Zorgloob speculates that this imagery will become the base layer for Géoportail as well. The verdict: IGN’s imagery is better than Google’s in the countryside, but Google’s imagery in large cities is of a higher resolution. There are also some gaps and/or censored bits in IGN’s data. And, of course, Géoportail will only cover France.
- Google Earth Logger is a freeware Palm application that creates a KML tracking file from a connected GPS device.
- One of the most impressive regions I’ve travelled through is the Karakoram mountain range in Pakistan-administered Kashmir. Over on Google Earth Community, Waqas_ has put together an exhaustive link collection for the region with annotated placemarks for practically every peak, valley and village. Google Earth really comes into its own in mountain ranges, and the Karakoram is the best one out there.
And if you find a nice spot, go look for pictures of it here on TrekEarth. (Via this amazing photograph on Flickr)
- I haven’t tested this, as I have yet to install Boot Camp on my MacBook Pro, but Smithsonian has posted an updated version of his EarthAnimator — a weather map animator for Google Earth — to Google Earth Community. He’s looking for feedback. (It requires Microsoft’s .NET 2.0 framework.)