• As CNN publishes the AP story of Indian Army Chief J.J. Singh’s problem with the march of technology as symbolized by Google Earth, Kathryn Cramer responds, as does Premnath Kudva.
• Modulo Security, a “risk assessment, compliance and knowledge management company,” has introduced a “geo-referenced risk view” that uses Google Earth to map risk areas:
  

  Created to allow control of risk in different business units, “Geo-referenced Risk View” produces a detailed map of the analysis area and defines the risk level for that area. Using Google Earth, users define the business unit to be analyzed and Check-up Tool maps all the assets and their corresponding risk levels, in full color and detail. This makes it possible to identify and classify risk levels in each unit, providing an overview of the risks involved with each asset. The map uses colors to identify the existing risks in each area.

  Here is the press release.

Blogs have been slow to integrate with Google Earth, in part because creating a KML link is still more laborious than creating an HTML link. And yet there are certain classes of blogs that are just crying out for integration in Google Earth — for example, sailboat blogs, where the content of posts tends to be very location-dependent.

SailBlogs provides an ingenious solution to this technical challenge: It’s a blog hosting tool that automatically links such blogs to the sailboat’s current location via a Google Earth network link. With the link, you can see the positions of all participating sailboats; click on one to go to its blog.

This is what we need more of: Blog hosting tools where the integration with Google Earth is taken care of seamlessly. I wonder if future plans for Blogger include Google Earth integration — it’s an obvious synergy for two of Google’s acquisitions that is still waiting to be exploited. (Via Tim in Ogle Earth’s comments)

• Google Earth Lessons is a great new resource for teachers to help use Google Earth in the class room. (Will update my links on the right with this and other finds when I’m back from vacation)
• Version 6.3 of MacGPS Pro, a GPS receiver interface for the Mac, adds Google Earth compatibility. (Via MacInTouch)
• Some updated versions of basic network link favorites: Global transparent cloud map and Wikipedia Places. The latter shows off OpenGIS support in MySQL 5, as reported here.
• Another report from what Indian army chief General J.J. Singh told reporters recently. He said that “we have taken steps and measures to deal with such exposures,” referring to Google Earth’s depiction of India. I assume this means the Indian military has begun building hangars for its fighter planes:-) (Here is the Times of India’s take.)
• New URL: Planet Geospatial is now at www.planetgs.com
• Eyebeam’s 3D capture tool OGLE is updated, and now has the ability to capture textures as well. Not yet useful for Google Earth, but it certainly is for other 3D authoring applications, and they’ll be able to export to Google Earth when Google Earth does do textures. (Via ReBang weblog)
• “FS Earth acts as an interface between Flight Simulator 2004 and Google Earth, letting to follow a flight in real time, over the satellite images generated by Google Earth.” (Via AvSim)
• Garmin Blogs. And does a good job of it too.

• GeoSpatial Experts’ GPS-Photo Link, a Windows georeferencing tool for photographs, adds Google Earth compatibility in the latest version.
• Another hint that India will go the route of trying to sponsor an international treaty, likely via the UN, to censor the resolution of satellite imagery made available to the public: India’s Army Chief General J.J. Singh says as much, reported by the Indo-Asian News Service. What a terrible idea. While we’re at it, why not also censor maps globally, by treaty? Why force the world to adopt the lowest common denominator when it comes to governmental paranoia?
• Another article about the Indian government’s displeasure with Google Earth, by DailyTech. Fact check: Australia has not complained about Google Earth, nor has Russia. Commenters take the article to task for other misconceptions, sort of.
• A new online marketing campaign uses Google Earth to promote the global DVD release of King Kong. www.findskullisland.com uses network links and overlays to place each “level” of the online “game” in geographic context. (Press release in German)

• Preliminary hearings in the patent-infringement suit brought against Google Earth by Skyline Software Systems appear to have the judge siding with Google when deciding on definitions for terms to be used during the suit. CNet says this bodes well for Google Earth.
• A wonderful op-ed piece in The Indian Express about why censoring Google Earth would be a terrible idea. Among the many good points made:
  

  Censoring net access is simply not an option for India. We are not China. We should not think of putting filters or of asking Google to block its service from Indian IP addresses. Not even if Google is happy to do so — and that’s the second point. Google caved in to Chinese demands on censoring its services inside China. That shameful cop-out robbed Google of a great deal of moral authority on issues of censorship. Democratic governments must take the lead.

From Google Earth’s official bulletin board:

March 31: We have added a very recent 3″/pixel inset for Las Vegas (March, 2006). In addition:

added/restored Koh Tao and several other islands in Thailand

removed black seam in Massachusetts

minor changes in Munich

minor changes in Mumbai and Chandigarh

[Update 18:41 UTC. Following a tip-off from Jim in the comments, some eyecandy from the truly amazing resolution for Las Vegas:

India’s CNN-IBN television news channel interviews India’s Deputy National Security Adviser Vijay Nambiar about the government’s continuing attempts to censor publicly available high resolution images of India, of the kind licensed by Google for Google Earth.

Let’s first get out of the way the fact that the tone of the reporter, Surya Gangadharan, is not neutral, nor factually correct:

Google Earth captured these images and put them on the internet for the world to see. And it publicised these pictures without even consulting India. Not surprisingly, the Indian security establishment isn’t amused.

But what did Nambiar have to say?

CNN-IBN: How serious a security issue is this?

Nambiar: There are certain security parameters to be met and we have been discussing these in the committee of secretaries as to how we can directly get in touch with Google and other organisations to see our basic security environment is safeguarded. It is a basic principle that if satellite pictures are taken over a particular country, then the permission of that country has to be taken.

CNN-IBN: What can be done to ensure this does not recur. Are we looking at an agreement with Google?

Nambiar: It has to be an international agreement. Individual companies or individual parties should adhere to certain common standards and there should be some kind of action should be taken when these standards are violated.

When Nambiar maintains there exists “a basic principle”, he is presumably referring to Principles Relating to Remote Sensing of the Earth from Outer Space, a UN General Assembly resolution from 1986, a time when only states engaged in satellite imaging, predominantly for spying. UN General Assembly resolutions are non-binding, and not a source of international treaty law, but presumably the tack Nambiar and his committee will take is that this resolution embodies customary practice, and hence can be construed as customary international law.

The problem with such a line of argumentation is that the resolution, like most other General Assembly resolutions, does not in fact reflect long-standing practice, from which customary international law might be derived. (General Assembly resoolutions are usually aspirational in nature.) Nambiar and the Indian government would have to show there has been a long and continuous record of governmental protest against private companies acquiring and selling satellite imagery. And there isn’t. Six months of being upset in response to some jingoistic newsreporting about images that have been around for over a decade does not international law make.

Nambiar furthermore hints that he would like to enshrine this supposed custom in some kind of “international agreement”, treaty law that would be a source of international law and thus binding on its signatories. But the actors in such treaties are governments, not companies, and I think it highly unlikely the US would willingly place such draconian curbs on its many satellite imaging companies.

[Update 17:51 UTC: Vijay Nambiar was recently appointed as a special advisor to UN Secretary General Kofi Annan. This could be a further hint as to what the international policy intentions of the Indian government are for putting the technology genie back in its bottle.]

[Update 18:21 UTC: Here is a post from December 2005 about a Christian Science Monitor article that mentions the General Assembly treaty.]