Earthquake sensor web: How’s this for thinking out of the box: MacBooks and Thinkpads have accelerometers, so why not let them detect and report Earthquakes in their spare time? So reasoned seismologist Elizabeth Cochran of the University of California at Riverside, and the result is Quake Catcher Network. Can’t wait for the live results as a KML network link:-)
US Storm Surge maps: Florida’s The News-Press reports: “The National Hurricane Center and Google Earth are joining to create a free Web-based program that allows computer-users to zoom into street-level storm surge maps. They are the same satellite views as regular Google Earth, but color-coded according to storm surge categories.”
3Dcamp in Limerick May 24: Virtual Worlds, Mirror Worlds, mashups, GPS… The usual suspects. One day, everyone welcome, and it’s free. More info. (Via KenMcGuire)
Blogoversary: Congratulations to The Map Room‘s Jonathan Crowe on his blog’s fifth anniversary. (Like dog years, are there blog years?) His was the first map blog I read, long before I ever considered piling in with this here blog. The Map Room is the ur-mapping blog, and may it remain so:-)
Microsoft Mobile Live Search coming:Searchable Maps will come to Windows Mobiles and Blackberries this spring, says Microsoft. It’s a bit of a catch-up effort, but one thing you will be able to do that you can’t currently with Google Maps for Mobile is show off maps (“collections”) that you’ve made while logged in to your account, or those that your friends have shared with you. That’s because Google Maps for Mobile doesn’t currently link to your gmail account.
Microsoft Virtual Earth 6.1 coming:Improvements include walking directions in the US and EU, and “new cross-browser support”, according to Nate Irwin, citing a source. ETA is April 10. Intriguing.
Street View for Google Earth: Google Street View is coming to Google Earth in a few weeks. So says Webware, citing a source. (It’s getting leaky around here:-) This development is expected, but welcome. As Street View is a Flash application, it won’t run on the Mac version of Google Earth, unless Mac support is ready to be rolled out by then. (Via Digital Earth Blog)
libKML news: Andrew Turner at High Earth orbit updates us on the state of libKML, and what it’s good for.
From amber to 3D insects: Not strictly neogeo but very 3D and very wow: “Secret ‘dino bugs’ revealed“, basically by looking at it with a 135m wide microscope. Watch the video to the end.
Notes on the political, social and scientific impact of networked digital maps and geospatial imagery, with a special focus on Google Earth.