• Nearby.co.uk announces a KML placemark sorter! That’s one for the toolset, methinks.
• Brian Flood posts an Arc2Earth mini FAQ. A trial version is in the works, and they are planning a standalone version too.
• Mapz notes that academic libraries and labs can get free Google Earth Pro licences, and that Arc2Earth also has educational discounts. Details on the other side of that link.
• A new SketchUp user gives the application a rave review.
• Know how to use SketchUp? Here’s a job for you: “New World Communications is in the business of recruiting Sketch-Up 3-D designers to design Google Earth buildings that groups of people can “fly” to … and meet face-to-face in..in real-time.”

  Sounds like a Second Life Google Earth Mashup in the making:-)

• All Points Blog points to another informative article on SketchUp’s purchase by a AEC professional Randall Newton (AEC = “Architecture, engineering and construction”).

The Sierra Club presents a textbook case of how Google Earth can help illuminate public debate: The US government is proposing to sell 800,000 303,000 acres of public land managed by the Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management to fund rural schools. So what does Google Earth have to do with this?

The Administration has argued that the parcels proposed for sale are “non-vital” — scattered and isolated and therefore difficult to manage. Closer inspection reveals that a good many of the parcels are in fact in-holdings, many of them within roadless or scenic areas or containing old-growth forest. See for yourself: Users of Google Earth can download this kmz file to browse parcels that are proposed for sale across the country.

The KMZ is very nicely implemented, and indeed presents the data in a way that would be impossible to grasp in a written report or spreadsheet.

A SketchUp user posts an open letter to the SketchUp forums, lamenting @Last’s “sellout”. It generates a passionate debate. The main thrust of the complaint is that the vast majority of such acquisitions end up badly for the application and its user base, even if it enriches the core developers and the acquiror. Perhaps, perhaps not, but I don’t think anyone is arguing that this has been the case for Keyhole in the year it’s been with Google. So Perhaps Google should be the measure of such things, not Microsoft (and its Geotango acquisition, for example, where it simply took the product off the market.)

I’d be tempted to gloat that the SketchUp user’s loss is the Google Earth user’s gain, but this doesn’t have to be a zero-sum game, so mercantilist notions don’t necessarily apply here: There is no reason why work on SketchUp 6 can’t continue while bits of its engine are copied over to Google Earth. (Imagine what you might do with SketchUp-like Ruby scripts running inside Google Earth for objects, layers and data…).

Not exactly a slow news week this week, what with Google Mars, Google SketchUp and Bentley MicroStation getting KML savvy. Playing catch-up:

• Get Google Earth calling cards, made in Switzerland (via Google Earth Blog).
• Bad Astronomy blog points to a list of NASA open source software. World Wind is but one horse in a large stable.
• Adena Schutzberg meta-reports on Bentley’s briefing to reporters. She also notes there is a KML exporter for competitor AutoDesk’s AutoCAD, Earth Connector.
• Valleywag alludes to “drama” and layoffs surrounding the SketchUp purchase, but writes “I’m gonna need some corroboration before I run it.” Excuse me Valleywag, but you just have. That’s not meta-reporting, that’s reporting.
• Trawling through Ogle Earth’s comments now: Ruby programmers who enjoy GIS should know about GeoRuby. (Thanks, Barry)
• Another sightseeing site: Google Earth Cool Places. (It will be interesting to see if any of these sites manages to differentiate themselves.)
• Two weeks ago Ogle Earth blogged archtecture magazine Domus introducing placemarks pinpointing buildings covered in the magazine, but wished there were actual models included of the buildings in the issue. ZNO to the rescue! Aurland Lookout, Norway; Mikimoto store, Tokyo. Really nice.

As alluded to yesterday by Martyn Day, Bentley Systems have now announced support for Google Earth in the latest release of their flagship CAD authoring application, MicroStation V8 XM Edition.

Read the press release. All the information concerning Google Earth and Bentley is reachable from this start page on their site.

Bentley System’s products are used in the design of infrastructure, pretty much everywhere — roads, bridges and facilities, ports… (US) governmental agencies are big users, and not surprisingly MicroStation provides industrial strength CAD: The list price for the new V8 XM is $4,795.00 with an annual maintenance of $725.

So it’s not likely to end up on my desktop anytime soon. But what we can hope for is that the huge inventory of existing virtual infrastructure made with MicroStation will now begin populating Google Earth. The path has definitely been cleared. Imagine if Google were to make some of it available in a base layer…

Bentley highlights some of the nicer touches that the conversion tool manages to pull off:

• Views inside MicroStation can become saved views inside Google Earth
• Linked documents linked from inside MicroStation (PDF floorplans, say) can be converted to placemarks in Google Earth with links to the files.
• MicroStation objects that already have coordinates can be placed automatically in Google Earth.
• Layers in MicroStation become layers in Google Earth, and if the Microstation file contains hi-res imagery of the surrounding area (as it apparently often does), you can see this as an overlay as well.

You can download a KMZ file of Bentley’s campus in Exton, Penssylvania, if you want to see these features in action. There is also a “making of” screencast, but to see either you will need to register.

[Update 21:18 UTC: Okay, it’s time for me to learn a new acronym. CAD (computer-aided design) doesn’t quite define what MicroStation does, apparently. It’s more specifically AEC-related, as in “architectural, engineering, and construction”. You wouldn’t use MicroStation to design a blender, for example, not even big ones.)

UK’s Martyn Day, a design technology journalist specializing in CAD, has today’s must-read story, involving Bentley Systems’ MicroStation CAD system, SketchUp, and Google. He concludes:

For the [CAD] industry as a whole, which has struggled to promote and ‘assist’ users to move to 3D – the news is that Google owns a great, easy to use 3D creation tool and will distribute it, promote it and invest in it. It appears to be the biggest kick in the backside this industry has ever had. Suddenly 3D models are cool, Google Earth is the platform and Bentley has suddenly been promoted to leading the charge at the professional-end of this new digital geocentric paradigm.

If I read it right, Bentley is the ESRI of CAD:-) Read the whole thing; Martyn’s views are evidently infused with a deep knowledge of the CAD industry. And if you don’t read the whole thing, at least look at his eye candy.

(Bentley was looking for beta testers for its converters to KML last month, blogged here.)

I’m surprised at the surprise with which some are greeting the announcement of SketchUp’s purchase. Conventional Google and search engine blogs are trying not to be befuddled — this is getting way beyond search, and they don’t like it. But even some CAD blogs are scratching their heads.

The Irish are all over this, however (smart people). Geared Up Blog:

What models? You wait! Entire towns will be mapped all over the world, for Google. If everyone maps their village/district/block, can you imagine the resource this would create? Woah.

EirePreneur even suggested that Google buy Sketchup in July last year:

If Google bought it and gave it away as it did with Picasa it could easily recruit a huge team of volunteer 3D modellers to fill in the gaps on Google Earth. I for one would happily create a ‘freehand’ model of my local town. Wouldn’t you?

Exactly. The main thesis sustaining this blog is that Google Earth is a next-generation browser. It’s a social tool, above all, with a mission to mirror the real world. Just as HTML browsers have had content built for them with successively more sophisticated authoring tools, so too Google Earth needs to kick-start the virtuous circle that will propel geobrowsing.

Additionally, the idea of the geobrowser is predicated on the notion that much of what is found on the internet can in fact be tied to a specific place on Earth, and that we are more used to navigating physical spaces like Earth than abstract spaces like the internet (not surprising, considering that we’ve had a 4,000-generation head start with the former over the latter.) Until now, we’ve made do with the abstraction of the internet because we hadn’t yet reached the technological tipping point that made virtual Earths a feasible mass phenomenon. (The two are not really ‘worlds apart’, though. Think IP = geographic coordinate pair, web URL = street address.) Soon, we’ll have two snugly interlocking metaphors for browsing humanity’s collected knowledge: topic and place. Internet and Earth.

Or maybe the two teams just got along really well and Google had some spare cash…