I have been (and still am) traveling, so have had to peck at the news in a busy news week. Here’s some of the stuff I’ve had to give short shrift recently (fortunately others have not):

• Google Earth 4.3 coming online: Download it now. While you’re waiting, read Google Earth Blog’s first impressions.
• Landprint.com: Order your own 3D custom-made prints of bits of the planet. $50 + shipping gets you 6×6 inches of a 3D relief-map. By a developer of NASA World Wind. Very clever.
• Satellites over Iran: UK’s The Times has a story about a purported Iranian long-range missile factory. With photos. A blogger goes looking for the spot in Google Earth and makes the before/after analyisis.
• Virtual Earth 6.1 released: Microsoft has revamped its map and virtual globe offering, to general acclaim. Digital Earth Blog likes the trees and overpasses. James Fee notes that Mac Safari web browser support means Virtual Earth is now in play for more projects with tough browser compatibility requirements. Mapperz shows how you can overlay ESRI Shapefile data in Virtual Earth. Leave it to me to point out there is still no Mac support for the 3D component, which makes the clickable but useless “3D” button that is prominent on Mac browsers doubly irritating.
• KML accepted by OGC as a standard: Google Lat-Long breaks the news. Upshot: Broader adoption, slower development, and not a surprise. Matt Giger doesn’t like the part about the slower development, while some GIS pros scoff at the idea of KML as the geospatial HTML. The Daily ACK muses on making KML a standard for the visual display of astronomical data as well.