You knew it had to happen sooner or later, but so soon? Check out this demo of J. Coulston’s WiiGoogleEarth.PIE script for GlovePIE, which lets you control Google Earth with the Wiimote using gestures:

Now you’ve got that perfect excuse to go get a Wii. (Via Digg) This hack adds the Wiimote to a growing list of controllers used to steer virtual globes. Previously, there was:

Illuminated ping pong balls to steer Google Earth (Atlas Gloves)

Salling Clicker to steer Google Earth via bluetooth

Sony PSP to steer NASA World Wind

XBox controller to steer Virtual Earth 3D

And of course 3DConnexion’s SpaceNavigator, though this device is in a league of its own — it’s got six degrees of freedom, and gradiations of movement. Talking of which, check out this user’s feedback on the SpaceNavigator, from a comment attached to the review:

On the strength of this review, I treated myself to a space navigator. I can’t begin to explain how awesome this thing is. After first installing it, I spent the next eight hours google earth – so much so that my eyes began to hurt, I was transfixed.

Maybe they should put some health warnings on the packaging:-)

With the pre-Christmas work rush in full swing, it’s more bulleted news, I’m afraid:

• Mappic is a georeferenced photo sharing site, sort of like Panoramio, with a network link for its photos. And it also seems to have some very nice pics. (Via this Google Earth Community post)
• Raoul at ComeAcross asks why Zoomr wasn’t included in Google Earth’s “Geographic web” instead of Panoramio, and the comments thread leads off into a discussion about who was “first” and what it means. The obvious solution, in the medium term, is to include all serious georeferenced photosharing sites that want to have a presence.

  I see the biggest potential problem for Panoramio (and sites like it) being spammers, as spammers might be tempted by the site’s exposure on Google Earth to try to pepper it with photo spam. This is possibly a reason why Panoramio’s default layer in Google Earth isn’t live — first, get the dedicated users to weed the submissions. (BTW, you can still get the live network link at Panoramio.)

  In the medium term, then, Google Earth’s “geographic web” layer could becomes something akin to Yahoo!’s early days, when it was a pre-sorted directory of all interesting web content. But pretty quickly the “ordinary” web grew too large, and so will the “geographic web”. In the long run, then, we’ll need the equivalent of Google search for the geographic web, with all the KML content out there being crawled and made available on Google Earth depending on the context.

• It’s remarkable, too, how much the mainstream tech media has finally been catching on to the “geographic web” meme in the aftermath of these two new layers being released. Take this ZDNet post, for example. Regular users of Google Earth have had access to Panoramio and Wikipedia content for over a year, along with a whole host of other feeds, but it is only when Google made these social, user-generated sites default layers that the implications of Google Earth as a geobrowser hit home more widely. The lesson should be clear from the strength of the response: Much more of where that came from, please. It’s time for the mainstream to be shown what the early adopters have been playing with.
• Coming to a Google Earth near you soon: a KML version of FortiusOne’s GeoIQ heatmaps (blogged about previously here). So says Chris on the FortiusOne blog.
• An intriguing new Microsoft technology: WPF/E. What is it? In marketingese, it’s
  

  the Microsoft solution for delivering rich, cross-platform, interactive experiences including animation, graphics, audio, and video for the Web and beyond. Utilizing a subset of XAML (eXtensible Application Markup Language)-based Windows Presentation Foundation technology, “WPF/E” will enable the creation of content and applications that run within multiple browsers and operating systems (Windows and Macintosh) using Web standards for programmability.

  Yay for crossplatform browser compatibility. The immediate question that comes to mind is: Will this eventually work with 3D? And does this mean that Virtual Earth 3D will come to the Mac? And if it will, does this mean a change of tactics for Microsoft, from luring customers to its platform through Windows-only solutions (as is the case now) to luring developers to its platform through Windows-only solutions because the developers know their products can be experienced on any computer? That latter strategy would make a lot more sense, I feel. (Via Coding Day)

• Windows Live Spaces pinpoints the exact places where Virtual Earth’s bird’s eye views were added in last week’s update.
• And now for some eye candy:
  • Frank Taylor’s found a beauty: The Turning Torso tower in southern Sweden is a gorgeous piece of architecture, and as imposing in Google Earth as it is in real life, especially as there is nothing tall anywhere near it.
  • Frank also takes us to a large repository of NASA timelapse imagery, converted to KML.
  • Declan Butler has updated his flu map.
  • Digitally Distributed Environments posts a video of some early 3D output from a freeware application Andrew Smith and his team are working on to convert SHP files to KML.
  • DIY Choropleth mapping: Noel Jenkins over on Juicy Geography uses R. Sgrillo’s GE Graph in combination with some readymade polygons and data to build a simple choropleth map, and writes up the experience. Useful for anyone who wants to make presentations that blow the competition away.

What’s in store for 2007? Public-private partnerships that involve Google popularizing access to cutting-edge technology. Here’s a telling preview, just off the wires:

Pennsylvania Governor Rendell Announces Pioneering Technology Venture to Promote State Tourism
Public-Private Partnership Will Allow World to Experience Pa’s Civil War Heritage

HARRISBURG, Pa., Dec. 11 /PRNewswire/ — Governor Edward G. Rendell today announced that Pennsylvania will become the first state in the nation to capitalize on the Google Earth platform by using a new, cutting-edge technology to make tourism an interactive experience from anywhere in the world.

The Governor said the state will provide a $285,000 grant to support an unprecedented partnership between Google Earth, Carnegie Mellon University, NASA, the Pennsylvania Tourism Office and the National Civil War Museum that will allow ‘virtual tourists’ from all corners of the globe to immerse themselves in Pennsylvania’s Civil War trails.

A bit further down in the press release, we find out what the intended end product is supposed to do. Says the governor:

Those who use this technology could see a panoramic view along a trail, zoom in to read the inscription on a Civil War monument, or go back in time to witness the change of seasons on a historic battlefield.

That’s quite a tall order, but we can assume that he isn’t making this up, as we soon get some more hints about the technology behind this:

Google Earth technology provides for a visual display of information about a specific location. Building on this platform, the Pennsylvania Tourism Office will incorporate a new technology developed through the Global Connections Project, a partnership that includes CMU, Google and NASA’s Ames Research Center.

Known as Gigapan – short for Gigapixel Panoramas – the technology combines thousands of digital images to create a panoramic image in excess of one billion pixels. When combined with time-lapse, users can explore the space through time as well.

The Global Connections Project was also responsible for the National Geographic layer in Google Earth and some of the Katrina and Pakistan quake imaging. Here is their Gigapan page, which connects to a page about its commercial applications. (Pages are loading haphazardly at the moment, try refreshing or use these individual page caches, 2, 3, 4, 5.)

Pennsylvania’s government isn’t the first to realize the appeal of Google Earth as a tool for rustling up tourists — until now, however, local towns, cities, or tourist boards have largely been content to donate imagery to Google, or to publish geospatial databases of points of interest as KML. Pennsylvania’s partnership takes this to the next level, apparently turning the Google Earth platform into an extremely high-resolution multimedia platform.

The press release doesn’t say, but I am guessing that the result of this grant, when complete, will just show up one day in an updated version of the Google Earth client, where we’ll have the ability to zoom much closer than currently, and use the time browser (or something like it) to navigate time-wise through base imagery. Here’s also hoping for authentic historic 3D buildings, and troop positions over the duration of the battles. Perhaps also by then we’ll have the ability to play 3D “presentations” in Google Earth, with voice overs and timed specific vantage points. But I’m just dreaming aloud.

[Update 21.01 UTC: Avi Avi Bar-Ze’ev has further interesting commentary on this news.]

It was a good idea to turn on Google Earth this Saturday morning — even if the laptop was within destruction reach of a 1.3-year old niece who is attracted to keyboards like an ICBM to its target — because today there was the pleasant surprise of seeing two of the most interesting third-party network links turned into default layers, and placed in a new directory, “Geographic Web”:

• Wikipedia’s georeferenced articles are now available via a layer of placemarks, with the popup containing an overview, photos, and links to further articles. The marriage of Wikipedia with Google Earth was a great idea, and now it’s available by default to a much wider range of people.
• Panoramio, a site for sharing georeferenced photos that has long provided a network link of its photos, is also included inthe new directory. Panoramio’s photos tend to be more post-card/documentary than those on Flickr, so they have an easier time being useful in an educational setting.

In addition, the most highly rated posts of Google Earth Community now get special treatment. I tend to turn on all Google Earth Community layers if I’m zoomed in close and want to find out what I’m seeing. Amid the chaff, there is almost always an answer.

In sum, promoting the best content for Google Earth to a default layer (and presumably hosting it) is easily the biggest bang for the buck the Google Earth team can provide, as well as providing wider exposure for the content providers, and more stuff to do for users. Win-win-win. I’m looking forward to more.

• Microsoft Live Local gets an imagery dataset update, reports Windows Live Spaces. Coolest by far: Bird’s eye views of several Italian cities! Here’s where I lived and studied in 1993. Lots of UK and US cities get the treatment too (listed in the blog post, above.)
• Shape2Earth is almost ready. (Beta testers required.) Tim Beerman previews one function: the ability to label polygons.
• James Fee’s comments generate news: Swivel once had an API, and soon again will. Data Mining riffs off the implications.

And now I’m blogging from Edinburgh, also for work. Not as exotic as Taipei, but definitely better whisky. As a result, Ogle Earth continues in an inebr^H^H^H^H^H abbreviated edition…

• 

  GPSies (get it?): A really nicely designed community GPS site. Uploaded tracks can be exported in a wide range of formats, including KML and KMZ. It doesn’t do uploading of photos (yet?) but you can use the format converter without having to use the site’s social tools. Worth a visit.

• Swivel is setting all data junkies to drooling. There have to be GIS applications for this — Valery Hronusov has already been alerted. Currently the site seems to be feeling the strain of being such an obviously good idea, but luckily James Fee found some time to play with it earlier.
• Adam Burt releases the Geo-Blogging Tool Kit for the Mac’s ecto blogging client and the Blojsom CMS. It comes with a screencast so you can see how easy it is to use.
• Got a lot of small screenshots of a region that you want to stitch together? Stitch Maps 2 might help. (Not tested.)
• Press release: Water resources app maker MWH Soft releases NetView Pro, which visualizes analysis results on Google Earth:
  

  Initially introduced for InfoWater, the industry’s premier and most comprehensive ArcGIS-centric (ESRI, Redlands, CA) water distribution modeling and optimization software, NetView Pro is the first software to seamlessly combine mapping, GIS and modeling data with Google Earth in an integrated environment via an intuitive, easy-to-use interface.

  Not sure about the “first” bit, but isn’t this exactly the kind of stuff that is meant to be done with ArcGIS Explorer?

• January 3, 2007 will see the release of an early version of World Wind Java, reports The Earth is Square. I hope this means it’ll work on the Mac.
• Cambridge, UK, in 3D! (BBS post)
• Google Earth’s been credited with many things, but the Daily News of Halifax asks, Can Google save Nova Scotia tourism?
  

  The province will also launch what it claims to be a worldwide first, using Google Earth to showcase Nova Scotia destinations.

  “It’s pretty cutting-edge,” said Lloyd Banfield, executive director of the tourism division for the Department of Tourism, Culture and Heritage.

• 3DConnexion SpaceNavigator users, there is a forum especially for you.
• A Francophone Google Earth community bulletin board (unofficial): googleearth.forumpro.fr.

A month or so ago, the new ESA featured content layer in Google Earth left me a little underwhelmed: Placemarks with links to relatively old and low-res imagery on the web are so — how shall we put it — 2005. But today comes news of something much more impressive, with much more potential: MIRAVI (MERIS Images RApid VIsualization), a new website with near real-time images taken with ESA’s Envisat satellite, posted directly to the web for immediate download. There are at dozens of new images added every day, and they come with a full complement of scrapable metadata, including the coordinates of the edges… which means that all the necessary information is there to produce a KML network link with proper overlays of the latest data automatically. ESA should of course offer this (and perhaps they’re working on it), as it is clear synergetic addition to the site. But until ESA does it, is anyone game to have a go? That would definitely deserve “featured content” status in my book.

PS: Notice how cloudy it is in most places most of the time? It makes you realize how rare the imagery that ends up being used in Google Earth is.