It looks like it is going to be a quiet weekend, newswise. All the more time, then, to follow these links:

• Geoplace.com carries An Impending Massive 3-D Mashup, first of three in an article series by Fred Limp, who directs the Center for Advanced Spatial Technologies at the University of Arkansas. It’s an outlook for the 3D industry, with special focus on geospatial applications. I learned a lot.
• Google Earth has been used to spruce up video podcasts before, but here is a new one. it would be even better if the guy could actually dance:-) (Via Digg)
• James Fee’s Spatially Adjusted notes the updated ETA for the public beta of ESRI ArcGIS Explorer: No longer later this quarter, but “later this year.” His commenters show some apprehension.
• I’m a sucker for KML placemark files linked to panoramic images, hence the link to a file of Wolfgang Stich’s photographs from central Europe.
• ZNO blog produces some more Google eArt. This time, it’s an interpretation of Dustin Shuler’s Spindle. Kudos to ZNO for getting the colors right, mostly. And the licence plates are a nice touch:-)

  

• Press release: RDV Systems Lets Autodesk Users Publish to Google Earth. A free 30-day evaluation is available, though not until and unless they get their website to work. It’s usually a good idea to do that before issuing a press release that links to it.
• I don’t believe I’ve mentioned Geotags.org blog before. Nor ToBeDetermined, the blog.
• Google Earth Blog notes that the the latest beta of the pro modeling app for Windows Rhinoceros now exports KML for Google Earth. There’s a free evaluation download. It appears that you need to own a serial number to download the beta. (Although this site is also down currently…)

• Globezoom.info is home to a German Google Earth Community forum.
• Coral bleaching: The National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) Satellite and Information Service has produced some very professional network links that show, among other things, global ocean water temperatures in near-real time.The datasets help illuminate the phenomenon of coral bleaching, where corals die off due to overly high water temperatures. Divester blog has a great and knowledgable writeup, so no need to duplicate the effort here.
• Google Earth as a grass-roots collaborative foreign policy tool? Kathryn Cramer proposes some concrete steps that could be taken amid the current talk of escalating the conflict between the US and Iran. The basic idea: Make high-resolution of Iran available to all on Google Earth, so that neither government’s claims are opaque to the scrutiny of concerned individuals. It’s an great idea — imagine if Google Earth had been available with high resolution imagery of Iraq as recently as 2002…

The Webby Award nominees are out and Google Earth gets the nod in not one but two categories — for “Best Visual Design – Function” and “Broadband”. Congratulations to the Google Earth team. You definitely deserve the recognition.

In the first category, amusingly, it gets a bit cannibalistic (or is it incestuous), with Google Earth up against Google Maps. A third strong contender is Flickr (with MadeinMTL.com and Elmwood Flooring Tool bringing up the rear).

In “Broadband”, Google Earth is up against CBC Digital Archives, FourDocs, Frontline and iFilm. I think the one with the biggest bandwidth bill should be handed this award. :-)

Still, it seems to me that the Webby Award nominators committed something of a category error. What is Google Earth doing among mere web sites? (I doubt it was nominated for its download pages.) Google Earth is a browser, not a web site — you can even view the other nominees with it.

Is Google Earth even part of the World Wide Web subset of the Internet? Strictly speaking, yes, I suppose, but Google Earth treats the web merely as an abstraction layer on top of which it builds a wholly separate, geographic frame of reference for publishing data objects. It’s like a whole new universe has calved off from an existing one.

In fact, this new universe could use its own Webby Awards, as it contains a completely different taxonomy of content — network links, overlays, placemark collections, converters, calculators, scrapers — with many talented content producers already hard at work, on Google Earth Community and elsewhere.

The fact that Google Earth is so clearly out of place as a Webby Awards nominee is in itself an indication of the application’s groundbreaking nature (yes, yes, together with geobrowsers like NASA World Wind). I am about to type the words “paradigm shift” now so I’ll stop while I’m ahead.

• The British Army is planning to climb Mount Everest, and has a flashy marketing website to show for it. Naturally, such sites need “Google Earth Integration”. By now, however, that should mean more than a clutch of placemarks and stock photography. How about some high-resolution overlays, topo maps, altitude coded markers, routes, historical routes, weather, etc…? (Via Adverblog)
• NASA World Wind’s forum likes the idea of perhaps asking Bergen if they too can use the data in their browser. Bergen’s answer should be Yes.
• By the ever-prolific Barry Hunter at Nearby.co.uk, LookFrom, a web app for generating the correct KML for your intended view in Google Earth.
• A blog surfaces, talking up a promised new web application for Google Earth, “M3D Glider”, from a Dutch company called Mediality3D.

  What is M3D Glider? In their own words, the application “makes it possible to integrate many Web 2.0 capabilities into the FREE Google Earth viewer – on real location!” It sounds a bit like Globe Glider, but made with AJAX, and it would be crossplatform, working on Macs as well. No demos or betas, but there is a screenshot at which we can squint. We’ll have to wait this out.

• News from the Bay Area: Insurance Firms Use Google Earth To Deny Coverage (add desired number of exclamation marks here).
• Excellent Flickr-to-Google Earth aide Flyr morphs into Flyr Pool with the help of Greasemonkey/Firefox.
• Jean-Michel Billaut’s video podcast demo of France’s own upcoming geobrowser, GéoPortail, has turned both podcaster and podcastee Patrick Leboeuf into French internet celebrities (in French). Billaut writes that the story is getting some play among those who see GéoPortail as a symbol of valiant France fighting back against America’s evil GIS-industrial complex (OK, so I exaggerate a little:-), but he himself thinks such defensiveness is rather gauche. (More at Rodrigo A. Sepúlveda Schulz).

Following up on the embryonic feature wishlist for Google Earth embedded in the long post from yesterday, Michael of the Google Earth team would very much like to know: What is your most urgent feature request/improvement for Google Earth?

I have a couple myself I’ll start off with.

1. A more accurate, higher-resolution height data mesh. Currently, the peak of my favorite mountain, the Matterhorn, falls between datapoints, and the result is this:

   

   Instead of this:

   

   In many places, especially mountainous areas, getting more height data points would do more for the accuracy of the view than getting higher resolution imagery.

2. Auto-suggestion when searching for placenames, like this. Perhaps even access to georeferenced directories like GeoNames?
3. The ability to look in all directions from any given location. The ability to move vertically without first having to look down.
4. A way of getting better resolution at the poles, and better base imagery, especially now that the International Polar Year is soon upon us (and I can promise you, the scientists are planning a big bash).
5. The ability to link to a location in Google Earth directly from within HTML (as described in this post, perhaps). The ability to link from one KML file to another.

What else? Scriptability? The ability to render WMS data natively? Support for OGC standards? What’s most urgent?

(On a different note: Michael noted that the Google Earth file of the discovery locations of 26,000 meteorites that I linked to yesterday is the product of the hard work of Google Earth Community member Majoska, who’s been building the database for several months now, with the help of many people. It is worth linking back to Majoska’s post, where the project is constantly updated and where credit is properly due.)

Realtid.se, which broke the story last week of the censored Swedish “spy base” (HQ of FRA, “the National Defence Radio Establishment”), also read the Swedish blogger who found out that you can in fact purchase what appears to be an unretouched aerial image of the base from the website of Lantmäteriverket, the state GIS agency responsible for the censorship. In doing so, Lantmäteriverket appears to be breaking a law they have just been defending in the press.

So Realtid.se went and purchased the offending image, called up a spokesman at Lantmäteriverket, and had some fun. Translating a whole lot from the resulting article, in Swedish:

— Realtid.se: I have just bought a photo of FRA from your web site. Is it legal for you to publish such images?

— Lantmäteriverket’s spokesman: Yes it is.

— Realtid.se: Why then do you retouch Eniro’s images?

— Spokesman: Hm… Can I get back to you?

Realtid.se writes how Anders Wiik, deputy head of FRA, called back later, to explain that selling such images is nothing to be worried about. Sure, he says, there is a law against photographing such buildings, including from the air. But the images are not sufficiently detailed for it to be a cause for concern to them at FRA, he maintains. Wiik does admit, genially:

I am going to send your article to our head of security. It does all look a little inconsistent. And consistency is not always a strong suit of the Swedish civil service (“Myndighetsverige”).

A bit later, Lantmäteriverket’s head of security Michael Munter calls Realtid.se. (Munter is the person who last week explained to Realtid.se exactly why Eniro’s images needed to be painted over with trees). Munter assures them that in fact the image they purchased is retouched, just in a cleverer way:

In our image there are retouched areas, but not buildings. The secret objects are retouched, but in another way. It isn’t often that we retouch buildings.

So I too bought the official 1-meter resolution aerial image of the base and decided to have another (closer) look, comparing it to what Google Maps shows. Google Maps is far more detailed, and also appears to be much more recent. For example, there are new parking areas not seen on the bought image, and roads that have faded on Google Maps through disuse are still clearly in use on the bought image.

Both maps clearly show parabolas on the north end of the image. The only substantial difference I found anywhere on the base is one new building in Google Maps, around which the road has clearly been rerouted, and a parabola to the west. Check for yourself:

Google satellite image

Snippet of same area, as sold by Lantmäteriverket (1-meter resolution)

Let’s not forget how all of this looks in Eniro (exact same area):

There is nothing missing from the official sold image that looks “retouched”. It’s merely an older image.

In my estimation, instead of coming clean, Michael Munter once again tried to pull a fast one on us. Ironically, because we cannot verify the trustworthiness of the image, there is no means for us to check if he is in fact telling the truth or simply covering up for a week of glib platitudes to the press. And the lack of accountability that comes with him being his own judge and jury in this respect drives home the whole point of why, in an open society, obfuscating censorship is worse than censoring honestly, for example by pixellating.

Norway’s city of Bergen doesn’t just possess beauty, it has brains too. That’s obvious from a deal it has just made with Google, as reported by the local paper, Bergens Tidende.

The deal: Send Google high-resolution images of Bergen for inclusion in Google Earth. For free, as long as Google Earth has a free version. They should be up soon, reports the paper.

Bergen now in Google Earth

The idea is Endre Leivestad’s, who is Bergen Commune’s GIS coordinator. The motive couldn’t be simpler, as explained by Ole Warberg, Bergen’s tourism director (translated):

Choosing a travel destination is a visual thing. Bergen is a beautiful town, and it is wonderful that we can now show this to the whole world.

Bergen soon in Google Earth

The images sport a resolution is 20cm per pixel, and are taken from the same database that feeds www.bergenskart.no, so you can check our a preview for yourself. (Choose “Karttype: Flyfoto” for a preview). Here is some eye candy prepared earlier by the paper.

Two points:

• There seem to be two options available to state GIS agencies. Either build your own 3D browser (as the French are doing) that shows just the data you own, or else give the data to all comers in what amounts to a Creative Commons licence for GIS, as Bergen is doing with Google Earth. (I certainly expect the deal not be exclusive, and open to NASA World Wind to replicate should it be so inclined.) In fact, there is no reason why opening up your data to all comers is incompatible with building your own 3D browser, if you like. (Unless you consider Google a Anglo-Saxon competitor to be kept at bay:-)
• I hope Google has guarantees about the trustworthiness of the maps. By that I mean that all censorship of military bases should be clearly marked as such. As reported on Ogle Earth just a few days ago, Norway has admitted it too obfuscates censorship on maps, a habit it can’t shake from Cold War days. I’d rather have low resolution maps than false high resolution ones, myself.

  That said, it would be even smarter of Norway to get Google to show its maps “free”, after being able to censor them. I wonder if that is the case here.