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Links: Google’s naming doctrine, Géoportail to get API, Google Sky lawsuit update

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  • Google’s “Primary, Common, Local” doctrine: Does Google’s Director of Global Public Policy Andrew McLaughlin have the best job ever? He gets to write long posts entitled How Google determines the names for bodies of water in Google Earth for their official Public Policy Blog. It’s a fascinating read.

    McLaughlin never mentions one particular body of water, lying between Iran and Saudi Arabia and which contains a lot of oil, but I can’t help thinking that his long explanation is an implicit defense of why Google Earth labels it both Persian Gulf and Arabian Gulf; this in the wake of an online petition by sympathizers of the Iranian stance that Google should remove the latter name and keep only the former. When I last visited this issue, on February 24, the campaign was shy of 13,000 signatures. Currently, it has 94,188 signatures.

  • Géoportail to get API, KML support: Renalid reports (in French) that Géoportail, the web-based 2D/3D mappping application by France’s National Geographic Institute, will get two AJAX APIs on April 21: API Web2D and API Web2D Pro. The basic one is free, the Pro one will incorporate GIS functionality, such as support for WMS. KML support is also mooted, though it is not clear if this requires the Pro API. (Please please make it accessible to the masses). A 3D API is due in the summer, writes Renalid. Here’s hoping for more generous tile quotas than the UK Ordnance Survey’s OpenSpace.
  • Google Sky lawsuit update: If you want a good example of the wasted man-hours caused by frivolous lawsuits, look no further than this page, which charts the progress of the lawsuit against Google by Jonathan Cobb for the alleged misappropriation of the Google Sky concept, an allegation already previously debunked here. The lawsuit was filed Feb 13. On March 28, Google replied, denying everything substantial.
  • Webby nominees: Georeferenced panorama photo repository 360 Cities is shortlisted for a Webby.
  • Google App Engine announced: This is big. Soon, Google will be offering to scalably host your dynamic KML network links and the apps you build to generate them. One less reason to keep your own server. Cloud, meet KML KML, Cloud.
  • Google Earth Pro does reverse geocoding: Somehow, I’ve missed this until now.
  • Google Streetview privacy lawsuit pics: The Smoking Gun has them.
  • AutoCAD 2009 to Google Earth: Updated Google Earth Extension for AutoCAD Now Available
  • KML in the North: April 23, Fairbanks, Alaska: “The Geophysical Institute and Arctic Region Supercomputing Center are hosting a one day symposium dedicated to demonstrating and teaching about the use of Keyhole Markup Language (KML) by researchers at the University of Alaska Fairbanks.” Organizer John E. Bailey adds: “Aiming to make the presentations available as YouTube vids after the event.” I strongly suspect it will be free to attend.

KML_Poster.jpg

2 thoughts on “Links: Google’s naming doctrine, Géoportail to get API, Google Sky lawsuit update”

  1. Yes, KML in the North is free to attend. And lunch is free too. Only catch for most is you have to get yourselves to interior Alaska, about 160 south of the Arctic Circle :-)

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