Links: KML to VE? Data update for Google Earth; Bliin

  • KML coming soon to VE? Microsoft Virtual Earth will support KML by October this year, reports Geothought from the GeoWeb conference in Vancouver. As recently as ISDE5 in June, a VE developer was non-committal on the topic when asked.
  • New data for Google Earth: Google Earth’s dataset has had an update, but Google’s LatLong blog is being coy about what precisely has changed. Digital Earth Blog steps up with some updated regions. Highlight for me is the fantastic DEMs for New Zealand and high resolution imagery of Timbuktu.
  • Social positioning: Bliin (beta) is a “location-aware real-time social network”, a very slick competitor to Twango that lets you share text, photos, sound and video with your mobile gadget, as well as update your location live (with a track) — and all of it commentable, giving it a Twitter-like feel. There’s more – The mobile application has a proximity sensor for other people’s georeferenced shared media, there’s privacy settings, integration with OpenStreetMaps.org, trip recording… Don’t have a mobile? There is client for desktops as well. Downsides right now: No API to reuse the info elsewhere, and no KML output.
  • Graphic Converter 6 for Mac ships. What It comes with the ability to set the EXIF coordinate metadata from the current view in Google Earth.
  • En Español: Google Earth Blog now comes in a Spanish version. Yo la tengo, as they say in Belgium:-)
  • Not free, no good: I have no idea why anyone would pay $15 for Phone2Gearth (for Symbian S60) when Nokia’s Sports Tracker does the same stuff for free.
  • HoudaGeo reverse geocodes: Photo geotagger HoudahGeo for Mac is up to version 1.2, adding among other things the ability to reverse geocode from coordinates to placenames, which is great for adding better metadata, faster.
  • Video + GPS: Cool demo of Microsoft’s Silverlight web app-building technology incorporating a GPS track, video and Virtual Earth.
  • Google SketchUp for Dummies is out, with its very own website full of videos that you can use even without the book.

One thought on “Links: KML to VE? Data update for Google Earth; Bliin”

  1. New data for Google Earth:

    Parts of Melbourne Australia have been updated. The new imagery also lines up with with the roads much better than the previous imagery, which was around 25m out.

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