Links: Oz scaremongering, KML Editor (in Japanese)

I don’t believe it. Here we go again. The Melbourne Herald Sun tries the “Google Earth is a threat” tack, managing to get every fact in the next two paragraphs wrong;

This contrasts with US authorities, which sought modification of images of the White House and other sensitive locations, leading to temporary shading blocks being placed to obscure some aspects of buildings.

Britain also sought the blotting out of potential terrorist or military targets, including its Government Communications Headquarters, the Faslane nuclear submarine base, and the Fairford airfield used by U2 spy planes.

(The only bit the UK government managed to erase was its bases in basra). Australia last featured on this blog in August 2005, when the head of Australia’s nuclear energy agency wanted to censor the imagery in Google Earth of that country’s only nuclear reactor, only to be overruled by cooler heads in the federal government. The imagery stayed as it added no danger.
If you speak Japanese and have a PC, KML Editor does precisely what its name suggests. I’m surprised nothing like this has come out in English — Google Earth’s own KML editing features are rudimentary, and do not let you access many of KML’s extended feature set, including its styling abilities. That would appear to be an obvious business opportunity.

4 thoughts on “Links: Oz scaremongering, KML Editor (in Japanese)”

Sign me up for an English version of this! Plain GE placemarks are so boring, but adding the code to make them interesting is certainly extra work. A WYSIWYG editor to help people prepare richer KML content would be a very welcome tool, and would enrich the GE experience.