It’s 1996. The web is made up of home pages and big corporate portals. You’re a small business, you want a web site but have no in-house HTML code monkeys. What do you do? Chances are that you find a net geek setting up a fledgling “web design” firm, looking for customers like you. The net geek has no idea how his market is about to explode.

It’s 2006. Google Earth is made up of hobbyist content, big science outreach and some experimental real estate and tourism content. You’re a small business, want some content in KMZ and have no in-house GIS code monkeys. What do you do?

There are suprisingly few outfits focused on this market. In the US, I only know of the The Timoney Group as having specifically articulated creating solutions for Google Earth/KML, but Brian Timoney appears to aim at larger corporations. A Dutch company, Globe Assistant, focuses on hotel and real estate. Many other GIS outfits probably could do KML output in their sleep, but the fact is that they aren’t advertising such services to a broader market comprised of smaller customers and smaller jobs.

Via my referrals referrer logs, a company in France is positioning itself in precisely this space. GE-Data sells its services to all comers, and recently reports (in French) of having helped local communities and businesses to present GIS data in Google Earth. Surely this is the start of a major trend, not an oddity?

If anybody has other examples of businesses targeting small businesses or consumers for low-end GIS presentation à la what can be done via KML, I’d love to know about them.

[Update 16:50 UTC: Just to be clear, I don’t do infomercials and this isn’t one. Any ads on this blog are clearly marked as such.]

• Boakes.org discovers a giant iPod visible from space. Naturally, it is to be found in Australia.
• Here come the SketchUp models. Okay, so it’s on an architecture student’s project blog, rather than by complete amateurs like me or you, but I think it’s a great semi-detached house. It’s a pity that the KML version is not online, and the author, Michael Drewe, is difficult to get hold of.



• KisMAC is a wifi stumbler for the Mac (useful for wardriving). The latest version now exports to Google Earth.
• ZNO blog has two models of the Tower of Pisa — leaning for the realists and vertical for the idealists.
• Lee Rickler’s digilondon is a sightseeing site just for London.
• Last but certainly not least, Brian Flood has a great walk-through of how exactly Arc2Earth can get data from ESRI’s ArcGIS into Google Earth. It looks both intuitive and powerful, which is a hard combination to pull off.

Jeff Thurston at Vector One notes that 3Dsolar was one of this year’s European IST prize winners for a 3D technology that floats an image in front of the screen. “There are numerous possibilities for this type of technology in the spatial information field,” writes Jeff.

There are some intriguing clues that this might happen sooner rather than later:

• Somebody affiliated with 3Dsolar (founder and inventor Patrick Levy Rosenthal?) was an early contributor of a network link that remains one of the most useful around. So the company is well aware of Google Earth as a 3D visualisation tool.
• Ex-Keyhole CEO John Hanke’s inspiration for Google Earth, the CIC Earth in Neal Stephenson’s 1992 novel Snow Crash, is a true floating 3D marvel. Time perhaps for an excerpt from the book?
  

  There is something new: A globe about the size of a grapefruit, a perfectly detailed rendition of Planet Earth, hanging in space at arm’s length in front of his eyes. Hiro has heard about this but never seen it. It is a piece of CIC software called, simply, Earth. It is the user interface that CIC uses to keep track of every bit of spatial information that it owns – all the maps, weather data, architectural plans, and satellite surveillance stuff. (Ch. 13)

  Earth materializes, rotating majestically in front of his face. Hiro reaches out and grabs it. He twists it around so he’s looking at Oregon. (Ch. 35)

  3Dsolar’s technology allows you to grab 3D floating objects like that. From their website:

  The 3Dsolar screen projects a virtual image that can be physically manipulated with the user’s hands as if it were a real object. 3Dsolar screens in retail store windows will offer the opportunity for passer-byes to interact with the virtual products projected outside of the store’s window.

• For those of you with a programming bent, 3Dsolar now has an SDK out for their technology:
  

  The SDK is free of charge and allows CAD designers, animation creators, developers, and content providers to view and present their work on 3Dsolar display screens.

  As details about the technology are hard to come by, this may offer some clues. I’m awaiting my download link as I blog this.

When the units go into production mid-2006 (according to the company’s forum), they’ll cost around $6,000 each, falling to $3,000 as production ramps up (according to the press release). At that price point, Google should be able to afford a few for demonstration purposes:-)

Declan Butler has just posted the latest iteration of his global avian flu map. It’s a beast of a dataset, and this version incorporates some major improvements over previous ones:

• It’s now a set of network links, so the data will update itself. Declan says weekly. This means the download is a keeper.
• The backend is now ArcGIS and Arc2Earth (instead of Microsoft Access and PHP).
• Better-defined datasets: One for human cases, one for bird cases, and a map of poultry density. That last one is unexpectedly fascinating — I see surprisingly few chickens in Sweden. More datasets are promised, such as rail networks and bird migration routes.

What could possibly make this any better? Timelines. Fortunately, Declan writes that it is on his to-do list. Meanwhile, Google just needs to add that functionality to the browser.

(Declan’s blog announcement.)

The New York Times looks at mash-ups, focusing on Platial. (I am very annoyed with the New York Times at the moment, BTW.) Having seen a lot of these mash-ups, Platial looks oddly old-school to me. In terms of features, Tagzania is ahead… and map-neutral to boot — see tagged places in just about any map, as well as Google Earth.

(Wired also wrote up Platial a few days ago.)

The collaboration between Google and Volkswagen to develop an in-car Google Earth is far further along than I would have guessed. In fact, there is a working prototype, and CNet has the video to prove it. It’s all very polished and clever — my favorite touch is the ability to drag the view in Google Earth using the touch screen. No word on how much of this demo relies on an active internet connection, though.

In a sure waste of advertising dollars, the CNet video is sponsored by BMW:-) (Via Ojobuscador)

Google Earth gets a data overhaul:

We now have almost all of Germany covered in high-resolution, plus some really high resolution insets in cities like Berlin, Dortmund, and Frankfurt. Also we are now using TruEarth for our 15 meter basemap of the world.

We have also fixed alignment error for few areas like Boise, ID and Memphis, TN.

Hope you enjoy the new data.

Why thank you, I think I will. Google Earth blog notes higher resolutions for many smaller islands. Geography 2.0 likes the new basemap more.

Geocoding blog notes various signs that Yahoo! may be on the verge of launching international map coverage. I’d say that’d be an excellent idea — a mapping project I’m doing here in Sweden currently only has Google Maps and Microsoft Live Local as contenders — in fact, unless the feature sets change drastically, we’ll have to go with Microsoft, as they are the only ones with any kind of map for continental Europe through an API.