- Skype-based Google Earth controller Unype reaches version 0.2, gaining some significant new features, as explained on the app’s blog: You can now show an avatar of your choosing at your location, see others’ avatars, share models, and synchronize layer visibility settings with other users. This latter feature is great, because it in effect gives Google Earth shared states, much as in online multi-user networked games and Second Life. Oh, and you can of course still direct the view of others remotely, or follow along with another’s explorations.
It’s Windows only, but that’s because the API of the Windows client is so much more sophisticated. Slowly but surely, Google Earth is turning into a MMORPG. Impressive.
- There’s a new Google Earth blog on the block — and this one truly looks promising: Google Earth Library focuses on finding and cataloguing KML content for Google Earth (as opposed to highlighting landmarks or views in the base layer, something which many sites already vie to do). Much of what’s on offer looks useful for education, so especially educators should take a look.
- Mac app iPhotoToGoogleEarth reaches version 1.03, and now its author, Craig Stanton, is off for six months hiking the entire Pacific Crest Tail. He’s geoblogging the trip, and is doing so using one of the most seamless implementations of Google Maps and blogs I’ve seen to date. There is a KML network link to subscribe to as well.
- MIT Technology Review reports on a new computer model made by Ohio State University for determining the probability of traffic accidents in different times and places — with the results shows as KML in Google Earth:
- Matthew Hurst at Data Mining has the list of all the universities taking part in Google’s 3D campus competition — that he knows of.