On the forums at AVSIM, a flight simulator afficionado site, somebody has posted a side-by-side comparison of the same view of Seattle in Google Earth and in Microsoft Flight Simulator X. The FSX view looks much better — but much of it is fake.

Ed Parsons muses about the larger implications of the “Australian flying car” meme that propagated throught the internet over the past week.

Grasshoppermind notes the existence of digital cameras with built-in GPS, but wants to know — where are the video cameras with built-in GPS?

Austin Cot√© observes that “sometimes Google Earth is like an M. C. Escher painting”, and he posts a picture to prove it.

The BBC cites Google Earth as an example of a service that might end up diminishing our privacy while enhancing our quality of life.

Astronomers name a recently discovered earth-like exo-planet “OGLE-2005-BLG-390Lb”, after this blog. (Thanks Declan!)

Google Earth Blog points the way to a site with interesting data on the Antarctic region, packaged as a network link. You can use it to find the current position of larger icebergs, the extent of the sea ice, the location of bases, and more.

Both this site and the one for the Arctic blogged previously are linked to Polar View, a project sponsored by ESA. All this is pretty much a dress rehearsal for what’s coming: Next year is International Polar Year, and we can expect many more such outreach programs.

(One obvious item on the wishlist: Upgrading the image detail in Google Earth of the polar regions. There is plenty of raw source material, but last time I tried turning these into overlays I ran into positioning conflicts, as we are getting rather close to the poles, which are a sort of singularity in the reference system Google Earth uses.)

The Official Google Blog announces another upgrade to the quality of the imagery available in Google Earth. Vast swathes of the UK are now at 6-inch resolution, and people are clearly visible in most cities.

Additionally, Google Local’s data is brought up to date with Google Earth’s imagery, and there are also two new zoom levels for Local.

But only for Local. The API’s imagery has not been updated, at press time. Take, for example, the Clifton Suspension Bridge in Bristol. Visit the bridge with Tagzania, and you see the old imagery. Click on the Google Local link just below that map, and you’ll see the new imagery. Scroll to the bottom of the page, and you will see a KML button for the equivalent view in Google Earth.

We’re used to it in Google Earth, but remember that when it comes to the online mapping space, Google Local is still, after almost a year, the only offering with detailed global content. Any developer using something other than the Google Local API for a collaborative mashup automatically limits herself to a US user base. (But Google is good that way — witness the extreme language customization available in Google Search, a feature used by legions of non-native English speakers.)

[Update 2006-01-25 00.11 UTC: Word is that Google Earth did not in fact get an image upgrade, The blog post announcement is merely worded ambiguously.]

If you’re a serious photographer, you might use the IMatch image management tool. If so, you’ll like some scripts that have been written for that app, integrating georeferenced images with Google Earth. (Via Aaron B. Hockley, who provides some added context.)

Last week, Ogle Earth came across Navizon, which connects physical places to user-created content on the web using GPS, wifi, and cellphone signals. We wished for a view from Google Earth, however.

Now check out Semapedia: the concept is just as innovative, but doesn’t rely on wireless positioning technology to link the real world to the web. Instead, software for Java-enabled cameraphones lets you take pictures of special digital tags attached to physical locations — this takes you directly to the related wikipedia article. What’s more, the project is deeply collaborative, with anyone able to print out tags for any georeferenced wikipedia article and affix them to the location.

This has the potential to turn the world into a giant museum gallery, with your phone as the guide. The project is just 6 months old, so there is still plenty of tagging to be done; this is why the brand-new Google Earth view (KML) is so handy (blog announcement). All those tags that do exist are locatable via the KML file. Note, however, that this file is not a network link, so you’ll have to make one yourself if you want the info to update automatically. (How?)

Some thoughts regarding this sudden meme:

1)Wireless telcos will love it, as both Navizon and Semapedia encourage the use of your mobile phone’s internet connection.

2) Navizon and Semapedia have a different method for geolocation and a different content set. There is no real reason why these methods and the content aren’t complementary, however. In the long run, I expect they will be — there will be multiple ways to connect the physical to the virtual, and for different purposes.

Remember the Damocles Arctic sea ice project I blogged last week? The page associated with the Google Earth network link (KMZ) is now looking a whole lot more informative — explaining precisely what all the data types portrayed are.

While you’re playing with the network link, be sure to turn on the AMSR-E total ice concentration layer for a very colorful and informative take on the effect of the Gulf Stream on the sea ice. All this is of course screaming out for time lapse motion. (Thanks to Pierre-Philippe Mathieu at ESA for the original heads up. Is ESA’s EOMD planning anything with Google Earth, BTW? Can’t let NASA have all the fun:-)

While Google Earth has search built in for businesses and layers for restaurants, bars and museums, these features only work in a few countries. For most of the world, this kind of local cultural knowledge has been provided ad hoc by committed amateurs, but now some enterprising businesses are taking advantage of this gap in the market.

Exhibit A: Ticnet.se, a Swedish service I use regularly to buy tickets to concerts, has come out with a network link that lists all venues in Sweden, and also all its upcoming events sorted by dated folders, with pop-ups for information. It’s still beta — the obvious thing missing is the link to the ticket-sale page in the pop-up — but it is immediately useful for things beyond tickets: It comes with high resolution overlays for Sweden’s second city, G√∂teborg, which has not yet been blessed with Google Earth’s own hi-res images.

(The dated folders are a kind of stop-gap measure for doing your own time-based search. If/when Google Earth adds a time browser, this kind of network link will become even easier to use.)

Exhibit B: About month ago Cape Town Magazine came out with a static KML file that obsessively listed every hip coffee shop, restaurant and clothing store in Cape Town, and much else besides. Most items are linked back to articles in the magazine, providing a whole new way of navigating its content.

At the moment, you have to send them an email to get access to the file, but they are planning to soon come out with a proper network link, so that updated content in their magazine is reflected simultaneously on Google Earth. That’s a clever tactic — not just because it increases interest for new content, but because I think there is a first-mover advantage in effect here: Whoever lays claim to a city with comprehensive coverage first will likely become the default option with the locals — there is no point in having four placemarks enabled for each museum.