In a few hours I will step away from my computer and head to the Swiss Alps, where I will continue to be afk for a period of no less than 72 hours while also incidentally trekking over some mountains with friends. I tried to remember when I last was away from my computer for three days straight, and came up blank, but then again I can’t remember what life was like before the internet. At all.

I have no idea where we’re headed — but we will be aiming for some of those 1,300 Alpine huts dotted around the alps.

I will have my Nokia N95 with me during my trek, and in order to not completely sever my links to Ogle Earth I will be updating my position regularly using Cristian Streng’s Gmap-Track (batteries permitting). As luck would have it, Cristian’s been developing an embeddable version of the location map. It’s real simple to use, and the code looks like this:

<iframe style=”border:0;padding:0;margin:0 0 10px 0;float:left;” scrolling=no src=”http://www.gmap-track.com/user.php?user=ogleearth&output=embed&zoom=15&mt=s” width=”468″ height=”400″></iframe>

That’ll make a great little widget for the right-hand column of this blog if I make it back. If I don’t, please send reinforcements to the precise location marked on the map above:-)

• PLoS ONE is “an international, peer-reviewed, open-access, online publication” where all papers are full text and licensed by the Creative Commons Attribution License. In short, it’s how science journals ought to be. Chronobiology blog A Blog Around the Clock flags two papers published to PLoS ONE that reference KML files as part of their supporting information.
• So which Google Maps tiles contain a given coordinate? Mark Pursey’s tool tells you exactly. It’s an interesting illustration of what quadtrees are.
• Tobedetermined‘s Alexander van Dijk is making progress on getting his “user-generated orbits” (UGOs) tool ready for release, and is blogging it on the project blog. What are UGOs? Tracks of where your point of view in Google Earth has been over time. It’s whimsical and lovely.

  

• Digital Urban flags UpNext and its 3D implementation of Manhattan. Wow. Two things: One: It is blindingly fast (albeit by taking some game-engine shortcuts). Two: If they can come out of nowhere with a browser-based 3D client that works for the Mac, what’s taking Microsoft so long?
• Brian Flood provides a detailed preview of what we can expect of Arc2Earth v2, out in a month or so. Comes with plenty of examples, and even more examples in a follow-up post.
• Andrew Hudson-Smith breaks the news that negotiations between Google and the UK’s Ordnance Survey have broken down regarding the licensing of data used in the making of a 3D layer of London. No deal, so no layer. The Ordnance Survey’s excuse — that its licensing framework does not permit what Google wants and that it would be unfair to others to make an exception — fails to address the obvious retort: Then don’t make an exception, change a framework that is obviously unable to accomodate modern-day mapping applications like virtual globes and mashups.
• The Google Mashup Editor has a blog.
• If you’re using ArcGIS Explorer on Windows Vista, here’s a hint for boosting performance.

Richard Treves, whose Google Earth Design blog concerns itself with design issues surrounding the effective use of KML, has been interviewing the chairman of the UK’s Society of Cartographers, Steve Chilton, with part 1 and part 2 now out. Steve Chilton says, among other things:

Now we have the so called neo-geographers […]. The development of tools and techniques such as APIs […], Google Earth and geo-tagging, have considerably lowered the entry level skills for anyone to get into the spatial arena, and massively increased the number and influence of data users (the new map producers). […]

These neo-geographers (or even neo-cartographers) have two particular and notable characteristics. Firstly, they invariably have no knowledge and understanding of cartographic principles, but more importantly don’t care about them. In all probability they would like to turn these principles on their head and even throw them out altogether.

So called?!! :-) What I think distinguishes neogeographers from mere paper cartographers is that because neogeographers often come from a web-development background, they find it normal to separate content and presentation. Meanwhile, virtual globes like Google Earth sidestep the need to compensate for the constraints of a flat sheet of paper when visualizing data. Complaining that neogeographers don’t know their Peters projection from their Mercator projection is like complaining that car drivers these days don’t know how to crank-start an automobile.

I guess I just proved his point:-)

Via the Open Geospatial Consortium’s Mass-Market-Geo mailing list comes an appeal to collectively track the discussion on KML’s further development (now under the aegis of the OGC). Tag a relevant page with “ogckml” on de.icio.us or Technorati, and it will show up on KML Talk, part of the OGC Network site.

One person who’s been blogging up a KML storm is Andrew Turner over on High Earth Orbit:

OGC Agile Geography kick-off discussion of KML 3

KML 3 Kick-off, Module: Core

KML 3 Kick-off, Module: Styling

KML 3 Kick-off, Module: Metadata

Also via that tag comes a page of musings by Google’s Gregor Rothfuss on using Google’s GData API as a way of updating KML feeds.

Essential reading, all of it, if you want to influence how KML 3 will function.

Jim Cser writes:

I just wanted to announce a long-overdue update to KML Home Companion, my ArcGIS extension. Version 3.2 removes the extraneous commas, making the KML files compatable with Google Maps. Downloadable from ESRI ArcScripts, or from the Google KML Dev Support forum.

KML Home companion is a free ArcGIS extentsion that converts ArcMap layers into KML.

As GPS devices and geobrowsers become ever-more popular, connecting the different ways of using geospatial content becomes more and more important. Ideally, you want to publish georeferenced content just once, and then let technology do the monotonous work of transferring this information to the web, the geoweb, and to mobile devices.

EarthNC has gone and done precisely that with the TakItWithMe Embedded Map Generator (beta). Reference a KML file published to the web (even a network link!), center the map, get some code back, put it on your website, like so:

If I update the content referenced by the network link, so will the map. This alone makes the Embedded Map Generator a usefiul tool for bloggers, but the buttons at the bottom that send you on to a larger Google Maps map, Google Earth or a GPS device are an especially nice touch for this (free) service. Publish once, view anywhere. (And yes, it works with Picasa’s KML and MyMaps.)

[Update 13:47 UTC: NCEarth’s Virgil Zetterlind comments: “Since the file you reference is a KMZ file, the send to GPS function won’t work properly (getting a web provider to support reading/writing ZIP compression in PHP5 is a major chore and one that’s still in progress). Since you’re mostly illustrating the concept of embedding, it’s not necessarily a big deal. You can hide the Send to GPS Button by adding the following to the iframe src url “&nogpsbutton=1″ if you want. One of my next steps with takitwithme is to improve error trapping on the GPS conversion for KML (My Maps have a pretty rigid defined structure so they pretty much just work), which of course is why this is still beta.”]

Once more unto the breach…

New York Assemblyman Sam Hoyt wants to censor Google Earth imagery in his state because, drum roll, the US vice president’s mansion has been censored, reports a local TV station:

“It’s a minimal sacrifice for the greater good,” said New York Assemblyman Sam Hoyt.

Hoyt has concerns about what you can see on Google Earth. “The vice president’s mansion for instance, in Washington D.C., has been blurred out on the map,” said Hoyt.

The vice president lives at the naval observatory and from Google Earth, it’s all a blur. So is the Air Reserve Station in Niagara Falls. But Hoyt wants other landmarks in Western New York to be blurred out, in case the details of those places get into the wrong hands.

“The terrorists were actually using Google Maps and Google Earth to pinpoint specific targets at Kennedy (JFK Airport) as a means of going forward with a terrorist act.”

Hoyt’s concerned about the Niagara Power Project. Yes, it can be seen on Google Earth. So can the Peace Bridge, even Fort Drum comes in clear. “It’s a good program available but when bad people use a good program for a bad purpose, we should prevent that from happening,” said Hoyt.

Is there any way in which you can unelect assemblymen who come out with quotes like that? Imagine how he must approach other topics in his tenure if this is how he overreaches on the GIS front.

The most interesting thing about the article, however, is that whoever wrote it asked for a response from Google, got the official line, and posted it in its entirety. I think it’s an eloquent defense, lyrical even, and since it’s a Saturday, why not repost it here, for future reference?

Google’s mission is to organize and make accessible the world’s information. Google Earth is an important component of that mission, as it enables individuals to explore and learn about their world, about places both foreign and familiar, and to gain new understandings of geography, topology, urbanism, development, architecture, and the environment. Google Earth’s geospatial imagery and maps constitute a powerful and flexible platform for organizing information and making local data globally available.

We have paid close attention to concerns that Google Earth creates new security risks. By way of background, Google Earth utilizes a wide range of both commercial and public sources of satellite and mapping data. These sources include a number of governments at the national and local levels. The imagery visible on Google Earth and Google Maps is not unique: commercial high-resolution satellite and aerial imagery of every country in the world is widely available from numerous sources.

Additionally the imagery in Google Earth is not real-time but rather anywhere between six months and three years old. Indeed, anyone who flies above or drives by a piece of property can obtain similar information. Accordingly, we expect security concerns to be addressed primarily by the companies and governmental agencies that gather and distribute the images.

Google takes security concerns very seriously, and is always willing to discuss them with public agencies and officials. Our experience is that security concerns can best be addressed through dialog with the relevant governmental experts. For example, the United States government, in the form of a Presidential Decision Directive, has established a policy that favors the public availability of commercial remote imaging data, on the ground that the benefits to the public vastly outweigh the potential risks. This conclusion was reaffirmed by a RAND Corporation study following 9/11/2001. The government has the power to limit the capturing of satellite images whenever appropriate. Google both supports the federal government’s decision and understands the government’s interest to set limits wherever appropriate.

Google has engaged, and will continue to engage, in substantive dialogue with recognized security experts and relevant agencies worldwide.