Bull of Bull’s Rambles blogs how he’s managed to convert simple KML files into NASA World Wind add-on files, and posts some examples. He doesn’t post the application he used, though. If he were to do so, World Wind would suddenly have a wealth of data available. But why not support KML (and network links) natively?

Bashing The Times of India about their Google Earth coverage: Outsourced!

Friday eye candy: A 3D blimp in Puerto Rico; check out the size of CERN; a map of the battle of Little Big Horn.

Earth Stumbler: “Earth Stumbler is a program to import GPS-tagged Netstumbler information into Google Earth.”

Softree, maker of surveying and engineering mapping applications, announces support for Google Earth in the latest versions of its software applications. What took them so long? :-)

3dTracking.net turns the live tracking of somebody using Maps or Earth into the seamless web 2.0 mashup experience for the masses that it should be, rather than an exploit for geeks to boast about. You, the “trackee”, will need a GPS, PDA (running Java/Symbian or Windows Mobile 5) and a connection to the net, perhaps via your mobile phone, or a hybrid of all three. Palm OS support is coming. (It also helps if your “tracker” has a Mac or PC running Google Earth somewhere, or else there isn’t much point:-)

The site promises that this will stay a free service, comes nicely packaged, and doesn’t even bother asking for your email address when you register – how enlightened is that? Premium services are in the works, presumably to allow you to see more than just the last 20 tracking positions.

I’m still waiting for somebody to track their transatlantic flight live using, for example, SAS’s in-flight wifi. If nobody does this soon I might be forced to buy myself a GPS unit:-)

[Update 23.43 UTC: A positive review from somebody who’s actually used it.]

[Update 2006-01-19: Modded up from the comments, Sergio has an interesting niche blog dedicated to GPS devices. Here is his positive review of 3DTracking. I’ll be tracking his blog…]

EchoLink is a curious hybrid — it’s VOIP for amateur radio, like a Skype for licenced ham radio stations. Base stations that are continents apart but connected via Echolink can act as repeaters, so that anyone driving within reach of one of these stations can talk to anyone within reach of any other station. In the specialized world of ham radio, it has apparently made quite a splash, with 170,000 registered users in 158 countries (according to the site).

And now comes the Google Earth network link [KMZ] that shows all the currently connected stations, live. Very cool, that. More info here. Ten-four.

(Via Ben Sutton, who explains how it comes in handy for him. There is also a Mac Echolink client.)

Chris Davis of 9Rules posts a beginner’s tutorial for writing simple KML placemarks, and promises more are to come.

Fotocade’s Archi-maps contains KML files for several places in the UK highlighting interesting architectural landmarks. Many of the placemarks are annotated by photos by Andy Marshall, an architectural photographer. If you like them, you can buy them. It’s an interesting new way to sell stock photography — by georeferenced location.

Safe Software, the 363-kg gorilla of GIS transformation tools, has announced FME2006, their latest version. It does KML (of course).

Not to be outdone, Brian Flood is putting the finishing touches on Arc2Earth before its official 1.0 release. Arc2Earth turns output made by pros with ESRI ArcGIS into KML, so that the rest of us can consume it with Google Earth.

The San Francisco Chronicle has an article online on how Google Earth is changing the way environmentalists work. The thesis:

For environmentalists, Google Earth has turned out to be much more than another gee-whiz software development. Instead, it’s starting to look like a killer app that could change the power balance between grassroots environmentalists and their adversaries. […]

The environmental importance of this tool has not been lost on Google. “The power of Google Earth is that it’s not a map. It’s actually a real model of the real Earth,” says Rebecca Moore, a software developer who works on Google Earth. “Suddenly ordinary grassroots environmentalists have a tool that up until now only government agencies or commercial interests had. It’s leveling the playing field.”

The article mentions Moore’s own environmental work, viewable here, Sprol.com, which uses Google Earth to illustrate environmental issues, and the Sierra Club’s ANWR overlays.

In what looks suspiciously like an act of digital altruism, Digitally Distributed Environments is getting set to single-handedly populate London for us with 3D buildings. Today we get London’s BT Tower. “Larger sections of London should be available shortly,” Andy Smith writes.

Previously: St. Paul’s Cathedral, the Gherkin, Canary Wharf… there is plenty to go looking for.