After a week of sucking Internet through a straw, the connection at home here in Cairo is finally restored, and all systems are go:

• Panoramas: 360-degree panorama collection sites Arounder and 360 Cities get a worthy competitor: ViewAt.org, which has a prominent button pointing to a KML version of the panoramas and a truly wonderful full-screen mode (via the browser). What I want to know is, which of these sites will be the first to convert their panoramas to KML 2.2-savvy PhotoOverlays inside Google Earth?
• Sky spreadsheets: Valery Hronusov updates his spreadsheet-to-KML templates so that they can now also contain astronomical objects.
• Migratory bird tracks: RobinNZ CAD Blog over in New Zealand has news of the migratory Gotwit bird that flew 30,000km, tracked via satellite and with its very own KML track:

  

• Video + GPS: VeoGeo merges video with a GPS track to bring you the video, a corresponding live location on the map and telemetrics data. Fantastic! (Via Mapperz)
• Tiberium Earth: I hadn’t seen this before: Electronic Arts has an extension for their Command and Conquer 3 Tiberium Wars game, called Tiberium Earth, wherein players are invited to model structures from the game using Google SketchUp and then upload them to Google Warehouse. Players get a modeling toolbox with common components to get them started. Here are the results. (Via Slog)

MP3 in Google Earth: GE Lessons has a tutorial up that shows you not only how to embed Flash in popups in Google Earth for Windows, but mp3 files and other Windows Media-compliant files. (This KML is currently not supported on Mac and Linux.)

• Tutorial repository: Digital Urban now has a reference page containing all the tutorials posted there to date. Quite a collection of new-media how-tos.
• RouteBuddy 1.4: RouteBuddy, a computer-based navigation program for the Mac, becomes a lot more interesting with version 1.4, now that KML import and export is supported. Version 1.3 saw the addition of routing directions, which means that the two main criticisms of this program in my original 1.0 review have now been adressed. But is RouteBuddy a must-have at $100, plus the cost of maps? The main advantage to this application remains the ability to access maps and directions when you are away from the internet. Otherwise, Google Maps does a great job for the unbeatable price of Free.
• GeoJournal: A new geocaching application for the Mac. $25.
• Steve Fossett search: All Points Blog has the search for Steve Fossett covered. Amazon’s Mechanical Turk has been brought into the effort, and now this story too has gone mainstream: The Guardian‘s article on the search has a remarkable datapoint:
  

  There are 129 known crash sites in Nevada, but officials estimate that over the last 50 years more than 300 small planes have disappeared in the state.

  That’s one every two months. Here’s where Google Earth’s slightly older imagery can be of use — to filter out false positives from he new imagery.

• Flight simulator tips: Google Earth blog has the flight simulator in Google Earth covered: An explanation of the HUD and some flying tips.
• Standing back for a second: That’s quite an amazing couple of weeks for Google Earth’s mind share. The release of version 4.2 generated remarkable mainstream publicity from its Sky feature, and then a week later there was another wave when the hidden flight simulator feature was uncovered. Such a double whammy would not have happened if one of the features hadn’t been turned into an easter egg:-). And now there is a highly visible campaign to crowdsource the search for Steve Fossett using an overlay in Google Earth. What’s next?
• ESRI PR: ESRI ArcGIS Explorer build 410 gets a press release announcing its availability. Finally!