• NetNewsAsia reckons Wikimapia is being used as a “global toilet wall and killer’s confessional.” How does Google Earth Community avoid such a fate? By having user accounts, for one. Meanwhile, Wikipedia makes sure every addition or alteration is peer-reviewed soon after it is made. In Wikimapia, each item has a link for reporting it as inappropriate. Will that be enough? What if the morbidly tagged locations were in fact accurate?
• Stefan Lorimer at Graphics, Culture, and Bad Grammar posts his notes on Google Earth CTO Michael Jones’s talk at GeoWeb 2006.

Get Amazon A9’s street-side photos via a network link. That’s a pretty amazing demonstration of how one service’s content can be repurposed onto another’s platform. Simply zoom in over an area that has coverage (try the East Village, NYC) and wait for the network link to return a placemark with a link to the appropriate photo. (Via Le Blogue du LFG – Guadalajara, Mexique)

The “brain” of this network link is an ASP script on www.thechajoneri.se. This is not the first instance of such a mashing up of services: An early network link let you put Google Maps tiles on Google Earth, and a more recent one (also by www.thechajoneri.se) puts tiles by Swedish mapping service Eniro onto Google Earth. When somebody wrote an add-on for World Wind that puts Google Maps tiles onto that globe, it was removed at the request of Google. You can, however, get Microsoft Virtual Earth tiles superimposed on World Wind, because this add-on is sanctioned by Microsoft.

What’s the legality of (unsanctioned) scripts powering network links? They are definitely parasitic — the result is that the bandwidth and efforts of the host company are used without the host company being able to generate revenues from this. But all that the scripts actually do is generate URLs for deep links into a publicly available image database, and that deep link is just the same as any other deep link on the web. As far as I know, if it’s publicly available and you can link to it, there are no legal recourses for the linkee. In fact, “linking policies” that try to regulate how you may link to a website regularly get ridiculed on Boing Boing.

One thing that should not distract from the legal question is the type of browser used to display the content of deep links: Whether a Google Maps tile is displayed “naked” in a web browser, via a network link in Google Earth, via a network link in ArcGIS Explorer or via a World Wind add-on is not relevant — these are all unintended uses. A network link is a snippet of KML, and thus can/will be used by any number of geobrowsers, not just Google Earth.

Google SketchUp has revamped its help center, wrote Google employee Bil Eberle a few days ago to the SketchUp Pro forum. As a result, the direct email support link for pro users has been moved to the end of each help center article, to encourage users to first look for solutions to their problems there.

This generates a minor tempest in a teacup in the ensuing thread, because several customers simply cannot find the link for email support, probably because they actually haven’t tried to solve an actual problem by drilling down to an actual help article, as suggested by Bil. But I suspect that the real reason for the snippiness of the pro users is still down to the fact that most of a product they paid for is now free for personal use (minus email support.)

In any case, the direct link to email support is here. You can also use it for feedback, to report a problem, and for “Other”.

Bonus SketchUp resource: SuWiki, a wiki about SketchUp. It’s still being filled in, but the section on Tools is already very useful for those just starting out.

Finally! After a few months of tweaking, Dan Phiffer and Mushon Zer-Aviv are ready to go public with the code for Atlas Gloves, their DIY hand gesture interface for Google Earth that let’s you pretend you’re fighting precrime in Minority Report. Get a webcam, make some ping pong ball lightbulbs, download the free Java application for Windows, Mac or Linux, and try it out. (Here is a short video demo if you need an introduction.)

I haven’t have a chance to try it yet (I’m on the road) but I didn’t want to keep this all to myself in the meantime. If you try it, do let me know how it goes. Source code is also available.

• Popularity contest redux. I have it on good authority that the 100 million figure cited for Google Earth downloads in June 2006 was in fact “for unique user activations (not downloads).”

  Meanwhile, equal time for The Earth is Square.

• Middlesex University’s Steve Chilton writes:
  

  It might interest your blog-readers to know of a workshop on Google Earth that is being held as part of the Society of Cartographers Summer School this September. The course is at Keele University (UK) from 4-7 Sept, with the workshops on Wed 6 Sept. The Google Earth workshop is being run by Richard Treves. Richard is a tutor on an MSc at Southampton University. (Web course.) Full details of the summer school, which looks at the wider world of cartography, are here. Programme summary here.

• Interesting article in a local newspaper of the Canary Islands (in Spanish). Apparently, local imaging firm Grafcan made a deal with Google to supply the high resolution imagery for the Canary Islands — except that it dates from 2002, and now the locals are clamoring for imagery from 2006, which has been promised soon. (This is the kind of problem you want to have, really). For the record, zoom in on the Canary Islands and Grafcan is indeed credited for the imagery.
• Hmm. For Forbes, Rich Kargaard writes in his Digital Rules column (registration required):
  

  Recently I got a peek at a future version of Google Earth, which will showcase a much-improved 3-D depiction of terrain and buildings. This cool software could make tons of money–from ads.

  Imagine using Google (nasdaq: GOOG – news – people ) Earth to zoom low on a city street. Gone is the old pancake-flat look of buildings. They will be depicted in stark relief. And here’s the moneymaker: Addresses that have bought ads, such as restaurants, shops or commercial buildings for lease, will stand out as a cut above the rest–in perfect, rich detail and color. Click on one of these buildings and you’ll be whisked away to the establishment’s Web site.

  Not sure how much of that is meant to be new or speculative. He goes on to review Zillow.com and writes about how both Google and Zillow are about to “scarf up real estate ad revenue” that would otherwise go to newspapers.

• TJMartin is also blogging GeoWeb 2006, and he seems to have a confirmation from Microsoft Virtual Earth’s Steven Lawler that their upcoming 3D building content won’t be user created (unlike what Google’s tactic seems to be for Google Earth, with SketchUp). That’s not a surprise, of course, especially after their purchase of Vexcel and GeoTango, photogrammetry experts both, but it’s a good thing to know.

Live from GeoWeb 2006, a contributor writes:

[Google Earth CTO] Michael Jones said he’d been up all night writing position papers because Google will be posting all of Lebanon later today.

They are expecting that there might be a reaction to the seemingly one-sided information.

If that’s confirmed (nothing yet, as of this writing around 60% of Lebanon is in high resolution, and none of it from 2006) that would be an impressive and quick response to current events. Applications like Google Earth become especially valuable if they are able to rapidly reproduce new “facts on the ground” in cases of natural disasters or wars.

That said, I can imagine Michael Jones must be apprehensive about wading into this conflict in an region where nuance or neutral information is always construed by both sides as abetting the enemy. Still, we’ve already seen the perspective from the ground on TV. Let’s see the perspective from the air. The more information the better.

I’m on the road — Paris tomorrow for the Google Earth usability test (as long as nobody tries to attach electrodes to my head they’ll be fine) then off to Belgium for a family visit. But first, some news:

• Over at the Earth is Square, a commenter points out that NASA World Wind is just short of its ten millionth all-time download. With Google Earth having been downloaded 100 million times just recently, does this mean that Google Earth enjoys 91% market share vs. NWW’s 9%, roughly speaking? Or would it depend rather more on who comes out with the most versions over time, which would require more repeat downloads?
• I had this ready but Andrew Turner was too quick for me and has already left a link in my comments: High Earth Orbit‘s authoritative list of Mac GPS software.
• Stefan Lorimer writes up GeoWeb 2006.
• Panoramio‘s KML feed is new and improved. Writes Eduardo Manchon:
  

  Now it’s more responsive (it downloads all previews on one shot), prettier (frame around thumbails, bigger images, panoramio’s logo) and more informative (titles on mouse over, name of the location, …). Hope you like it.

And now for something completely different: Press releases.

• Geometric Software’s eDrawings:
  

  eDrawings for Google SketchUp provides an innovative way to share your designs. You can publish your SketchUp models to eDrawings files that can be packed into a self-executable (.exe). The self-executable file contains the viewer as well as the design data. [Windows only, obvs.]

• CarbonTools Pro for .NET (third generation):
  

  .NET developers can now use the location content they want, wherever (or whoever) it comes from – Google Earth KML, OSGeo MapGuide, Yahoo Maps, […]

• “Eloquent Systems Improves Global Access to Systems for Museums, Archives and Heritage Societies”:
  

  The VisualSearch interface is a mash-up that combines geospatial tools such as Google Maps and Google Earth with the rich information described in collections hosted by Eloquent’s clients.

• RealViz comes to Google Earth (MacWorld, Mac New Network):
  

  The move means that [Mac] users can display images within Google Earth — including panormas, 3D models, virtual tours and other material created with Stitcher, ImageModeller and VTour.

  The only problem is that neither article, nor the RealViz website, explains how exactly this is meant to happen. How do we add the metadata? Do we get a KML file as a result? Do we get to share it with others? It’s a mystery.