Announced in January, but delivered in August, after Berlin and Dresden: Hamburg’s city center in 3D as part of the buildings layer in Google Earth. Was it worth the wait? It certainly looks good:

The models are credited to Cybercity AG, and the level of detail is impressive, especially when it comes to the nooks and crannies, though perhaps the colors look a bit washed out. You will also need a graphics card from the future — unless you are really close in, flying around Hamburg is done at extremely low fps… more like fpm, in fact. And because there is so much of it, expect to take some time for it to download.

If you read German, here’s more in the Hamburger Abendblatt. (Thanks Jan Wesbuer for the heads-up!)

The Minimap plugin for Firefox, flagged a few weeks ago, has just received significantly improved KML support. Minimaps’ author Tony Farndon explains what’s been going on behind the scenes:

The Ogle Earth ‘crowd’ were kind enough to give me some feedback in relation to kml, and although still early days, I have vastly improved kml support including a stored list similar to the address list. The largely useless Map Tab has now become more of a fullscreen sidebar/2D GE to some extent as well. […] I use GE myself and have found the sidebar a useful tool to quickly check the contents of a kml before starting up and opening in GE.

FYI, the latest version on my website (version 0.1.4.6) has this improved handling. You can drag and drop or right-click and select ‘Open Link in Minimap’ for any kml link that ends in .kml, .kmz, =kml, Google MyMaps and keyhole kml links. (Any other kml links that DnD or right-click does not recognise can be opened manually from the sidebar ‘add kml’ toolbarbutton.)

I really like the idea of a sidebar giving you geospatial context whenever necessary to your everyday surfing experience — this way the map doesn’t become a dead-end in the surfing experience but instead a parallel experience. And Minimaps is a very robust implementation; I was able to get it to fetch polygons and even network links.

Any chance for GeoRSS savviness in the future, Tony? That could make the online newsfeed reading experience really compelling, as more and more feeds come to adopt the format.

SketchyPhysics, a plugin for SketchUp (Windows only): I had no idea that adding a physics engine to SketchUp would be so easy (for us users), or produce such fun results:

That looks a lot smoother than Second Life’s basic physics engine, though perhaps not as scalable. Still, Google Earth + SketchUp + SketchyPhysics + avatars, and we’d be having heaps of metaversal fun. I don’t think it’ll happen anytime soon, but all the building blocks are getting there. (Via Think in Pictures, which has more YouTube videos to show you.)

This sucks. Cristian Streng, developer of Mobile GMaps — the most feature-rich and robust mobile mapping application I know for J2ME-capable phones — has been sent a cease & desist letter from “Google Enforcement Team”. Google only lets you use mapping tiles from Google via the API. But the API is javascript-based. Mobile phones don’t do javascript. Ergo no Google Maps-based tools allowed for mobiles… unless you use Google’s own (barebones) application, of course.

Cristian has now complied with the letter of the law, if not the spirit, as he’s removed the Google Maps option from the most recent version but also made it possible for the end user to now define any base URL for a tile mapping service like Google’s. (This reminds me of online “crossword” games where you have to build your own Scrabble ™ board.) Hack the Day has the settings for getting Google Maps tiles in the new version if you are so inclined.

One highly ironic result: You can now only legally view KML files on your mobile on top of Yahoo Maps and Microsoft Live Local.

It’s Google’s tiles and they can of course set the terms however they want. But it’s undeniable we have ourselves a sub-optimal outcome here. Google should consider doing one or more of the following:

1. Build a mobile mapping client that makes me want to switch from Mobile GMaps to Google Maps Mobile. (KML support? Live web tracking?)
2. Hire Cristian Streng.
3. Amend the API or their terms of use so that the mashup revolution can go mobile. Third parties need to be able to thrive on mobile platforms too.

That last point is very important. In an ideal world, people would simply start adopting more lenient mapping services for their mobile apps, and these then get the benefits of widespread adoption, but the real-world problem is that outside the US, high resolution satellite imagery by Google’s competitors is atrocious. In places like Egypt and elsewhere, Google’s imagery and maps are the only game in town.

In other Mobile GMaps news, KML output has been improved if you want to do live tracking with GMap Track. Simply point a KML network link to:

http://www.gmap-track.com/user.php?user=ogleearth&output=kml

You will get a placemark for your last location — and now also all the metadata that comes with it.