For the next three weeks, I’ll be blogging pretty much full-time at Economonitor.com, replacing Felix Salmon while he takes a well-deserved holiday. I expect the first few days to be rough going as I take a running dive back into the world of macroeconomics and high finance, so bear with me when it comes to Ogle Earth’s posting frequency. Meanwhile:

• Now that the heavy lifting has been done at Live local (I’m guessing), Microsoft’s MapPoint guru Chandu Thota is moving on… to ASP.NET.
• If you haven’t read it yet, a fascinating article about the indigenous people of the Amazon, and how technology is helping these deeply geospatial people to preserve their cultural heritage, much of which is georeferenced to places in the forest. GPS devices, Google Earth and conservationists all play a role.
• EDUCAUSE has released a short PDF aimed at teachers: 7 Things You Should Know About Google Earth. A quick read, but this also means there is nothing by way of links to online resources for teachers.
• Geogreeting: Write with imagery from the Google Earth/Maps dataset.
• Pete Brunelli writes in to point out that NASA’s Earth Observatory has begun adding a KMZ file download option for some of is satellite images — for example, as with this image of Saharan sand over the Canary Islands. (Scroll to the bottom of the page.)