Summer is ending in Sweden; after a final brief jaunt to the Stockholm Archipelago this weekend, I’m heading back to Cairo. In the meantime, Google Earth news hasn’t stood still:

• Flight Sim: Marco Galotta discovers a fully-fledged flight simulator hidden inside Google Earth! Ctrl+Alt+A gets you there in Windows, Command+Option+A on a Mac. There’s an official page listing flight simulator keyboard shortcuts on earth.google.com.
• Google Earth User Guide: The Google Earth user guide has been updated to reflect the changes in version 4.2 beta, including system requirements.
• Pattern recognition: An intriguing thread wherein DigitalGlobe is looking to have its imagery be made more accessible by experimenting with the Numenta Platform for Intelligent Computing (NuPIC) and its hierarchical temporal memory system (HTM), which aids with pattern recognition.
• Send to car: While Google Lat Long Blog announces that Google Maps’ “Send to Car” feature for directions will soon be available to all European BMW Assist customers, a press release by Mercedes announces that US customers will soon be able to start using the same feature, and additionally also send directions from Yahoo Maps. And Digital Urban looks at 3D sat nav for cities, to be rolled out by Tele Atlas in the coming months.
• FlashEarth popup: Over on the nearby.org.uk blog, Barry Hunter hacked together a network link that shows the view from the FlashEarth mapping application inside a popup in Google Earth (for PC only). He then goes and tweaks it, producing this final version.
• More video: Other content taking advantage of KML 2.2: Digital Urban flags the Virtual Tourism Blog‘s KML layer of georeferenced videos