The reason I’m in Cambridge this summer is to help develop the future website for the International Polar Year (IPY, 2007-2008), a major scientific collaboration that will involve scientists from over 30 countries working on several thousand science projects in the Arctic and Antarctic.

Much of the collected data will be ideal for visualizing in geobrowsers like Google Earth. Part of my job is to see what’s feasible; one thing I’ve done is take a look at polar resources in KML that already exist. Below is the list — I’m sure I’ve missed some, so if you know of more polar content published to geobrowsers, please leave a comment or let me know.

IPY-related (so far):

• Damocles, near-live Arctic layers
• Polarview, near-live Antarctic layers
• Danish Polar Center, Proposed IPY projects in Greenland

Not IPY-related:

• Shackleton’s expedition (highly recommended)
• Overlay of the newly discovered 500-km wide impact crater on Antarctica
• NOAA’s Aurora activity plot (both north and south)
• Ice thickness overlay, Antarctica
• Bouvetøya, medium-res image and map overlay
• The path of the annular eclipse over Antarctica on Feb 7, 2008
• Roald Amundsen’s 1911-1912 expedition to the South Pole
• NSIDC’s State of the Cryosphere: Then-and-now images of georeferenced glaciers (not strictly polar)

• Barry Hunter at nearby.org.uk adds a new worker-bee network link to his impressive collection. It returns the Military Grid Reference System (MGRS) (about) and gives you the exact reference for the screen’s center — be sure to zoom in to around 200km or closer.
• Ah the perils of blogging stuff too early. And now I’m late with the news that Google is partnering with the Tour de France to bring you the Tour in Google Earth.
• Avatech’s Earth Connector, for exporting to Google Earth from Autodesk is up to version 1.1, posted July 6.
• BrandToBeDetermined notes that you can use Gliffy — a very slick and free in-browser Visio-like application — to make floor plans that you can then export as a PNG, JPG or SVG, ready for importing to SketchUp, where you can begin extruding it.
• GIS for Archaeology and CRM has a nice find: A slew of UK archaeological sites are georeferenced with links to Google Earth here.
• SOLA’s G1, a free converter for Mac and Windows that takes 3DS, DXF, OBJ and W3D files and converts them to KML, is up to version 1.6. Not sure what the improvements are, as my Japanese is terrible:-), but previous versions were very well received by this blog.
• NASA World Wind 1.3.6 will have 3D clouds, sort of. Bull’s Rambles has the screenshot.
• Much as I think that Terminal Air — a proposed “art” project that would track the CIA’s rendition flights in Google Earth from publicly sourced data — could contribute to the debate about their legality, I think it’s a bit lame to make a big brouhaha about just having the idea. And so is calling it art. Just do it already, and then you’ll deserve some attention, if it’s any good. (Via We-make-money-not-art)
• Yet another great little hack that involves Barry Hunter: Link to Google Earth from within Excel by using Google’s geocoding feature on your addresses, like so:
  

  =HYPERLINK(“http://www.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=en&output=kml&q=” & A2 & “,+” & B2,”Google Earth”)

  Where A2 and B2 are address fields.

From nil to The New Yorker in 365 days, Ogle Earth first saw the light of day exactly one year ago with this post, where I explained the aims of this blog:

This microblog is going to serve as a record of my explorations using the holy grail of atlases, Google Earth. Ogle Earth will contain links to tutorials, links to interesting new layers and markers, and my own contributions as well. I will also be musing on new uses Google Earth might be put to, and chronicle innovative contributions as they happen. In other words, this blog exists to disseminate what I learn about and with Google Earth.

Eight hundred and twelve posts later, that turned out to be pretty accurate, save for the “micro” part. It’s been a great ride, to a large extent because of the many creative people I’ve gotten to know along the way. Let’s see what the coming year brings. [Note: this is the annual pat-on-my-own-back post. You’ll be spared another until mid-2007.]

I’m not done yet catching up with the backblog that’s built up while I took a quick holiday, but here is a first stab at interesting remaindered links:

• The Wall Street Journal looks at some of SketchUp’s competitors in the DIY architectural modelling space: Software lets you unlock your inner architect. Some of the cautionary tales about letting the client run rampant with these tools are quite funny… if you’re not the contractor.
• More comparative screenshots from GéoPortail and Google Maps. Includes examples of censorship in Géoportail.
• AutoDesk Labs released KML exporters for AutoCAD 2007-based products (last week, on June 28. I’m playing catch-up, clearly). Here is a screencast showing how it works — the functionality is similar to how SketchUp integrates with Google Earth.
• It looks like Mac OS X 10.5, AKA Leopard, may boast some deep integration with mapping and GPS, according to AppleInsider, a rumor blog that can be accurate.

I’ve just stumbled across Quikmaps (beta), a web app that uses the Google Maps API to let you scribble on maps in a variety of ways and then save them and share them. As soon as I started playing with Quikmaps it became clear this is an impressive piece of programming, but it is useful as well, and very intuitive. It took me no time at all to draw my daily bike commute to work, adding interesting sites along the way.

The map I made is here, but Quikmaps also gave me the code so I can embed it thus (this seems to wreak some havoc with the javascript for Google ads at the moment):

The real clincher, however, is the fact that whatever I make with Quikmaps gets an automatic KML link for Google Earth, like so. Bravo!

This is one of just a few Google Maps-based applications that I can see spontaneously returning to when I need to make a quick map — an apt name indeed. Make sure to take it for a spin yourself. (Via GIS Geoblog)

Ooh, Google Earth-friendly Panoramio has new features, writes Eduardo Manchon:

• Suggest new location: Since there are many people correcting wrong

  located photos we decided to create a new feature called “Suggest new

  location”. We will take a look at the suggested location and accept or

  refuse it. This feature is only working few days, but already many

  photos have been corrected.

• Photos with geodata in EXIF are automatically located in Panoramio.

  You don’t need to do anything but upload the photo when it has the

  coordinates included in EXIF. There are many tools to edit EXIF data,

  but it is specially interesting since the last version of Picasa

  includes a geotagging feature that adds geodata to EXIF.

• Map photos directly by coordinates: When you want to locate a photo,

  instead of writing the name of the place and browsing the map, you can

  type the coordinates in decimal or sexagesimal format. Now it’s just

  available in the “suggest new location” feature, soon we will add it

  to the upload page.

The suggest new location feature is a very nice addition; let’s just hope it scales well:-) I also like the implicit cooperation between EXIF-aware Picasa and Panoramio.

The UK’s Times online has a longish article that details many of the censored bits in Géoportail, trying hard not to engage in a bit of needling along the way:

Millions of French internet users are zooming in on aerial views of their holiday houses with a new state web service, but not Jacques Chirac.

The Château de Bity, a country home in the Corrèze that the President rarely visits, is blanked out, along with the surrounding village.

Etc… Elsewhere, the Times gets its facts quite wrong:

At the request of the US Government, Google blurs detail on a few American locations, including the residence of Dick Cheney, the Vice-President, but not the White House. India, Israel and other states have also put pressure on Google to hide sites that could be valuable to enemies or terrorists, but nowhere have so many zones simply been blanked out as on Geoportail’s France.

Just to set the record straight, then: Google doesn’t censor its imagery. It buys imagery from providers that are subject to national laws, but it is quite free to shop around for the best data, and often it does so. Nor have India, Israel or any other country successfully lobbied Google to remove or censor content in its database, as far as I know. Why is it that this particular piece of information can be almost relied upon to be misreported?