Ethiopia was incredible. So was the email backlog that awaited me when I got back. That’s now been taken care of, so here’s what’s been happening during the past two weeks:

• Greenscreen + Google Earth redux: Remember my little Google Earth + greenscreen experiment from last summer to do a DIY weather forecast? Well, Gapminder’s Hans Rosling takes this to a whole new level in his exposition of the Bangladesh Miracle. Must see. (Thanks Stu Smith for the heads up.)
• Kenya violence: ReliefWeb has new satellite imagery showing the effect of the recent interethnic violence in Kenya, dated 19 January. But why is it presented as a PDF? This would make much more sense as a KML file, especially as Google Earth imagery is used as a reference.
• Star Viewer: Fantastic early use of the Google Sky API. Also exists as a KML file (YouTube videos currenly require PC version).
• Virtual Volcanology: On YouTube: Virtual Volcanology – Exploring volcanoes in Google Earth, A Google TechTalk by John E Bailey, from the Alaska Volcano Observatory & Arctic Region Supercomputing Center, University of Alaska Fairbanks.
• 360-degree Arctic panoramas: University of Alaska Fairbanks’ Matt Nolan goes beyond the call of duty and produces beautiful georeferenced 360-degree panoramas from northern Alaska (and here and here too). See them in Google Earth. I’m jealous.
• ExtGPS: “Symarctic ExtGPS allows you to use your phone’s built-in GPS module externally on laptop via Bluetooth. It is mainly targeted for Nokia N95, E90, 6110 Navigator handsets, allowing you to use existing, more sophisticated GIS applications.” I haven’t tried this yet, but this should mean I can use my Nokia N95to pinpoint my position on Google Earth on my laptop. Add a wireless data modem and bingo, I should be all set for live positioning on Google Earth while sailing down the Nile:-) (Via Nokia N95 Blog)
• Star icons: Hevelius style Star Icons for Google Sky, by Stephanie Lange. Incorporates an interesting alternate use for the time slider.
• Korea map war: Google Earth comes under fire for showing some South Korean towns as being part of North Korea. (Via Search Engine Land)
• IFC to SketchUp: Do you use pro 3D modelling apps like ArchiCAD, Revit and Microstation? Cadalog has a beta of an IFC plugin for SketchUp for you to test. If you can import it into SketchUp, you can export it to Google Earth.
• Google Moon? Eagle-eyed Alberto Conti notes that Eric Schmidt’s talk at the NASA 50th anniversary bash shows the moon being viewed via the Google Earth client. A preview of an upcoming release? (1m50s into the clip)
• Flickr maps explained: Ur-geoblogger and Flickr map guru Dan Catt will be talking at O’Reilly’s Web 2.0 conference in April, discussing “A Flickr Approach to Making Sense of the World“.
• ViewFlip: Barry Hunter’s ViewFlip, for those unfortunate souls without a Space Navigator 3D mouse, let’s you easy look around you from a specific location on Google Earth.
• Google Earth Design: Video of the talk Richard Treves gave at the American Geophysical Union annual conference in December 2007, discussing good KML design.
• Google Earth as canvas: A Dutch artist makes a work of art for satellite sensors.
• CyberCity lives! This from CyberCity 3D LLC‘s CEO, Kevin DeVito:
  

  Our company currently plans to place over 500,000 buildings on Google Earth through various channels. We have an extensive KML database already completed. Most importantly, we have added our first collection of terrestrial-mapped buildings (UCLA Campus) to the Warehouse. We were formerly a subsidiary of CyberCity AG (Hamburg model is on Google), but the Swiss company shut down and we (CyberCity 3D LLC) purchased all the assets.

• ArcGIS Explorateur? ArcGIS Explorer gets French localization.
• 1000 human lifetimes: Google’s Marissa Mayer presentation about Google Earth and Maps as reported by TechCrunch includes the tidbit that the equivalent of “1,000 human lifetimes have been spent looking at Google Earth.” Quick back-of-the envelope calculation shows that to be somewhat north of 600 million hours, which, if divided by the 300 million downloads of Google Earth comes to an average of about 2 hours per download. I think I’m over quota:-) BTW, Ogle Earth favorite EarthMine won the Crunchies award for Best Technology Innovation/Achievement. Congrats!
• Morocco: Morocco is still censoring Google Earth and Maps.
• Weather pics: AccuWeather.com’s 2008 weather calendar photos are available as a KML download.
• YourMap: Google Earth Hacks jumps into the map hosting space with YourMap. If all you want is a very simple map depicting a location to embed on your site, this will do the job admirably. Comes with a link to the location in Google Earth.
• Covered elsewhere: Also noteworthy, but already covered in other neogeography blogs: Google Code’s blog reviews recent developments in KML, procedural city modelling of Pompeii, Crysis game Engine for 3D city models, this:Irish town goes 3D in Google Earth, high-altitude ballooning viewable as KML, and last but not least, updated default layers in Google Earth.