Search Engine Watch gets a spokesperson to confirm that “We are currently conducting a limited test of ads in Google Earth. We do not have any other specifics to share at this time.”

Here is what they look like. (Via Search Engine Lowdown.)

Clearly, what Google is experimenting with this time around is a kind of Adwords for Google Earth, not Adsense. Adwords are the ads that appear next to a search in Google, while Adsense is the kind of ads you get to see on a blog like this one.

If you like discussing what Google’s ad strategy might be for Google Earth, there was an interesting flurry of speculation back in November. The suggesttion then by Brian Flood was that Google Earth might someday have Adsense ads, as a way for freelance content producers to get paid for their KML.

As for whether ads in Google Earth are a good thing or a bad thing, Check out the post and comment thread on James Fee’s blog from around then.

Google comes out with a new incremental update for its Earth. No changelog yet. (Via Google Earth Blog)

James Fee (of Spatially Adjusted fame) has launched his newest project: A GIS blog aggregator called planetgeospatial. I’ve just subscribed to its RSS feed, which has the great feature of linking you straight through to the blog of the article you’re reading (rather than to planet geospatial). I like it, as it helps prevent interesting stories falling through the gaps.

While your at it, if you’re coming to Google Earth from the GIS angle, then you might also want to consider looking at Planet GIS, another aggregator (that alas does not sport an RSS feed), and SlashGISRS, a Slashdot-like site for GIS matters.

Yet another GPS conversion utility, GPS Utility, gains viable KML support in its newest version, released today. (Via Juice Analytics)

MeHere, by Glenn Murphy, is an especially refined-looking entry in the live-tracking software subgenre.

MeHere is a PC app that gets input from a GPS device and serves it from the localhost in a variety of formats that other apps can then use to display your location in realtime. It works for Google Earth but also a whole range of mapping sites with Greasemonkey. Several scripts are already available, but anyone can make their own.

In Google Earth, each GPS device can be tracked simply by creating a network link that refers to the KML file published by MeHere. Many devices can thus be tracked simultaneously.

There is also a forum for help. This piece of free software looks very simple and developer friendly, which should greatly aid its adoption throughout the Web 2.0.

There’s a new blog on the block: Geography 2.0: Virtual Globes, by Alan Glennon at the UCSB’s geography department.

The blog seems to be a companion to an upcoming session on virtual globes at the Association of American Geographers’ annual meeting in Chicago next March, but if this blog is going to be a place to post and discuss ruminations on this relatively new way of displaying spatial data, then it certainly looks very promising.

For example, a recent post has a listing of all the virtual globes that have been created to date. I for one would love to know what the particular innovations of each were.

pointingit is a new niche blog with a wonderfully singleminded focus: Pointing to great architecture in Google Earth, and linking back to photo galleries on the web. All new placemarks are also collected in one global network link, and it’s worth keeping.