EarthNC‘s Virgil Zetterlind has an early hack out taking advantage of the new iframe support for placemark popups in Google Earth 5: You can now search georeferenced YouTube videos, get the result as a KML file, and then look for new keywords from within a popup in GE. Here’s the explanatory post on Maplify.com.
NOAA’s press release detailing their involvement of the Ocean in Google Earth.
Scripps Contributes to Google Earth’s Expansion into the Ocean (press release) and One of the Brains Behind the New Google Earth (article) — Both pieces are about Scripps Institution of Oceanography geophysicist David Sandwell’s recently produced global map of the ocean floor, now used by Google Earth 5.
EarthNC, which has been developing marine content for Google Earth, outlines how Google Earth 5’s oceanic improvements enhance their products. Among other things, they’ve produced some 3D charts mapped directly to the ocean floor.
One-time Keyhole Earth developer/co-founder Avi Bar-Zeev (now working on unspecified 3D projects at Microsoft) thinks Google Earth 5 is just great, though thinks less of the extended KML namespace, because he says it makes it harder to get KML embraced at Microsoft and elsewhere.
Matt Giger, lone-wolf virtuoso developer of the recently-made embeddable EarthBrowser thinks the KML extensions for creating tours fulfil a need, but wishes the time tags had been implemented differently.
Is Google Earth 5 default imagery dataset older than what it was before? New Jersey Geographer argues yes, at least in New Jersey.
Google Earth Design’s Richard Treves explains why the new touring functionality in Google Earth 5 is his favourite new feature, looking at it from the perspective of an educator.
Google’s Michael Ashbridge tells the OGC’s Mass-Market-GEO list, among other things:
To enable the sharing of these new features [in Google Earth 5], we have used the extension mechanisms available in OGC KML 2.2. You’ll find exhaustive detail on our main KML pages here: http://code.google.com/apis/kml/documentation/
Additionally, there are specific articles on the main additions to KML here:
http://code.google.com/apis/kml/documentation/touring.html
http://code.google.com/apis/kml/documentation/altitudemode.html
http://code.google.com/apis/kml/documentation/time.html
This morning we also updated libkml to v0.9, which fully implements all of our additions to the language: http://libkml.googlecode.com/
Finally, an initial XSD detailing the extensions is available here:
On a matter unrelated to Google Earth: University of Southern California’s GIS research lab would like you to know that as a result of their ongoing research, there is now a free, secure and accurate geocoder available here — free at least to academic, non-profit, and governmental researchers and institutions.
And reporting a bit late — from a reader:
Alexei Karpenko and a Googler, Alex Kennberg, flew a high altitude helium balloon. There are some amazing pictures and KMZ files.
Also late to report, but wonderful — HeyWhatsThat.com‘s Michael Koslowsky writes (abridged):
I’ve just updated the Cosmic Visibility and Planisphere sites with this year’s solar and lunar eclipses The Cosmic Visibility site uses Google Maps with its sky maps to bring the night sky to your web browser. For the lunar eclipses and other options, use the Advanced Planisphere.