I’ll be living the idyllic life on an island in the Stockholm Archipelago for the next week or so while I hunt for an apartment in town. Due to a lack of easy access to the internet there, a pictoresque but longish daily commute by boat to work, and the apartment hunting effort, Google Earth coverage will necessarily be restricted. In other words, expect more abbreviated news like this:

• Mark Zeman’s FlickrMap becomes Trippermap, still looks gorgeous, and now uses Flickr’s new geotagging API to let you tag Flickr photos in Google Earth directly. Yuan.CC Maps has also upgraded to the new Flickr API. There is now every reason to convert one’s old geotags into the new system (using Flickr’s import tool.)
• Declan Butler posts that he interviews NASA World Wind’s Patrick Hogan in the latest issue of Nature. Next up for Earth’s dataset: Lighting and shading.
• TechWorld: WiFi network planner uses Google Earth
• Interesting press release: “Farallon Geographics built a web-based interface using a free Oracle Express database and a free Google Earth interface to assist 2 San Francisco Bay Area Geological Hazard Abatement Districts manage risks related to property damage from potential landslides and other disasters.”
• How does Google Earth keep track of all that data it serves? With its home-grown “Bigtable” database. Read all about it.
• A new version of Arc2Earth is out. Brian Flood explains what’s new. (Via GIS User)
• Documenting Picasa, an even niche-ier blog than this one, notes that Google has registered googleimagetagger.com, and speculates as to what it could mean.
• Chris Holmes writes up his GeoServer Tech Talk at the Googleplex, now available on video.