Have data in KML that you’d like to open in a spreadsheet or convert into something else? Use Christian Spanring’s KML to CSV converter.

Java World has an expansive tutorial with plenty of code examples for serving KML network links that interact with Google Earth. (Via lindenb’s Connotea bookmarks)

Australian Computerworld has an interesting article about Google’s plans for the business versions of Google Earth, Pro and Enterprise.

These two versions are being placed under the “guidance” of Google’s enterprise unit, and the article quotes one Google exec at length:

“There’s definitely a lot of potential for integration between the Google Earth products and the Search Appliance and the Google Mini. We’re starting to look at what might make sense,” said Dave Girouard, general manager of the Google Enterprise unit.

Considering that the Search appliance starts at $30,000 and mini at $3,000, ads are unlikely in future business versions of Google. There is still no sign that that these versions will be aimed at GIS pros, though — rather they seem to position Google Earth as a snazzier more versatile way of viewing geosearch results.

walk.jog.run, a site where you can share your jogging routes as well as calculate distances and times, now also lets you export routes to Google Earth.

[Update: 9:49 UTC: Mre details here, on the developer’s blog.]

Some major talent’s been hacking Google Earth’s KML. UK-based TJ has come out with four separate feats of programming derring-do, listed here in order of increasing, well, impressiveness:

1) GE Traceroute: This has been tried before, but TJ’s version also lets you edit locations in the traceroute for accuracy, via an ingenious system that uses Google Earth as the interface. It’s available for commercial licencing.

2) TJ’s Global Nuclear Explosions Database: Yes, this database contains every known nuclear explosion, listed by date, yield, time, country, altitude, and of course, coordinates. Results can be filtered and then viewed as KML placemarks.

3) A better KML reference than Google’s own: That’s because TJ lists undocumented tags as well. (Why aren’t these in the official KML documentation?) Copious exampes illustrate howw the tags are used.

4) KMLDocument for Google Earth: As TJ writes, “I’ve developed a comprehensive KML package for PHP 5 that creates and manages KML XML documents, and can output KML plain text or KMZ gzipped data.”

Details of this beta: “The classes provide each KML element with its own createXXXX() method, has composite buildXXX() methods for building common tag structures (Placemarks, NetworkLinks, etc.), and has convenience methods such as buildIcon(), drawRectangle(), drawCircle(), drawEllipse() and so on.”

It will soon be released for Java and C++ as well, and you can email TJ if you want to help beta-test the PHP package.

You can export your Community Walk maps to Google Earth (I didn’t know that.) Kathryn Cramer explains how. (Here is her Community Walk map of the Pakistan earthquake. Note that Community Walk crashes Safari at the moment.)

Mikel Maron’s Brain Off blog led me to Zoran Kovacevic and his recent spurt of work converging georeferenced syndicated content with Google Earth.

First up, he posts about an XSL transformation he’s written, RSS2 Google Earth (get it?) that takes an RSS2 feed enhanced with geotags and pumps out a network link for Google Earth. Hopefully, news organizations will soon all tag their RSS feeds with the W3C geo vocabulary, so that converters which turn them into KML will no longer have to guess from the content. This is the future for syndicated content about places.

Then Zoran gets to work on integrating geotags into Serendipity, an open source blog content management system. He’s written a plugin that lets you enter coordinates for a post, and which then publishes them to the blog, links them to Google Maps and includes them into the RSS feed. He’s got a demo running.

Seamlessly connecting blog posts to a location is going to be the next step in collaborative georefencing. We already do it with pictures using Flickr and Panoramio, so why not restaurant reviews, travel posts and diary entries? Such items are greatly enhanced by a link to the actual place coordinates they reference. In this sense, there is little difference between news stories and blog posts — if it’s about a place, the most natural way to search for it is by location. (This is why Google bought Keyhole, of course.)

While we’re on the topic, Grasshoppermind makes the same point, and also underscores the importance of a datestamp for georeferenced content, so that future browsers can chart our creative outpourings not just in space but also on a timeline.

I’ve written before about how I’m waiting for blog tools to get good enough to let us georeference posts, so that we can browse them in Google Earth. Zoran’s tools move us a big step in the right direction. He also inspired me to go check out recent work with plugins for Movable Type, my blog authoring software of choice. And lo, there finally seems to be a plugin Movable Typists have long been waiting for: Customfields. This turns the task of georeferencing blog posts on Movable Type from a programming job to a templating job, and that is something I am definitely up to. Perhaps not this weekend, but soon.