• Mapki is a wiki that aggregates developer tools, tutorials, and code for Google’s Map API. Among other things, it contains KMLMap, a code snippet that lets you add placemarks from a KML document onto your Google Map.
• A great overview (with cool workflow chart) of the tools available for a typical GIS project, by GIS for Archaeology and CRM.
• Ed Parsons writes up a talk by Google Earth CTO Michael Jones at the Map Middle East Conference in Dubai. A must read for those trying to divine what Google is up to (buzz words are “a sense of place” and “user-focused”). Jones also cited the tricorder as an inspiration for Google Earth, in the sense that both could/should provide all the relevant information about a local space.

MA student “Jemalaska”, in/from Craig, Alaska, has posted a KMZ file to Google Earth Hacks that manages to be innovative in two wonderful ways. The first involves some clever social engineering:

My professor allowed me to submit a GE tour instead of a paper.

The second involves importing documentary photographs into Google Earth simply by placing them onto the surface of the Earth as overlays. There is plenty of flat space to do this — for example where the oceans are, but even on land the terrain doesn’t cause problems if viewing from directly above, or away from mountains (or with terrain turned off).

I think this wholly unintended use of Google Earth’s overlay tool works well. There is something quite natural about scrolling past pictures plastered onto a sphere, and of course many traditional maps use illustrations in exactly the same manner. I’ve just never seen it in Google Earth until now.

A recent post on a bulletin board (I can’t remember where) claimed that Google Earth Enterprise Client already has the fabled time browser built in — it’s just that none of us have used Enterprise Client as it is part of an industrial-strength solution that is most certainly not free.

I couldn’t find any mention of a time browser on the product page, so I asked Google Earth’s director of engineering Brian McClendon if the time browser exists. Here is what he wrote back:

GE-EC (the client software) does have a time menu that adds an additional visiblity filter based on a animatable slider.

But Brian says that it isn’t ready for prime time yet; this means we’ll need to wait before it arrives in other versions of Google Earth.

• CadalystAEC polls industry insiders as to what’s in store for SketchUp and Google Earth. It’s an interesting read.
• Arab News has a balanced article about Google Earth, security and privacy. The main focus is on privacy, with some interesting local color, and all viewpoints are represented. In fact, it is Google that comes out with a rather weak defence:
  

  Eileen Rodriguez with Google Corporate Communications, told Arab News: “We have not received a request to decrease the resolution of imagery of Saudi Arabia. […]”

  Surely that’s not relevant?

• DIY aerial photography (via The Daily Flog)
• The Daily Graze notes a neologism coined at a Game Developers’ Conference roundtable last week: “M3S”, which stands for “Massive Multi-player MySpace”, such as Second Life, and which will be populated with SketchUp content, of course. (Aside: What are new acronyms called? neocronyms?)

University of Alaska Fairbanks’ Matt Nolan announces the First Annual Virtual Globes Scientific Users Conference, to be held in Boulder, Colorado on 10-12 July 2006. Why?

[Virtual Globes] are quickly becoming the new paradigm in earth science, earth science education and outreach, earth science logistics, and earth science data access. This conference is interested addressing questions such as: How are these tools currently being used in earth sciences? How do they work? How have they changed earth sciences? What needs of earth sciences are currently not being met by the existing tools? What should we expect for the future and what role should we play in it?

Register here. The venue is the University of Colorado Boulder’s Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences facilities, and it appears to be free of charge.

It’s 1996. The web is made up of home pages and big corporate portals. You’re a small business, you want a web site but have no in-house HTML code monkeys. What do you do? Chances are that you find a net geek setting up a fledgling “web design” firm, looking for customers like you. The net geek has no idea how his market is about to explode.

It’s 2006. Google Earth is made up of hobbyist content, big science outreach and some experimental real estate and tourism content. You’re a small business, want some content in KMZ and have no in-house GIS code monkeys. What do you do?

There are suprisingly few outfits focused on this market. In the US, I only know of the The Timoney Group as having specifically articulated creating solutions for Google Earth/KML, but Brian Timoney appears to aim at larger corporations. A Dutch company, Globe Assistant, focuses on hotel and real estate. Many other GIS outfits probably could do KML output in their sleep, but the fact is that they aren’t advertising such services to a broader market comprised of smaller customers and smaller jobs.

Via my referrals referrer logs, a company in France is positioning itself in precisely this space. GE-Data sells its services to all comers, and recently reports (in French) of having helped local communities and businesses to present GIS data in Google Earth. Surely this is the start of a major trend, not an oddity?

If anybody has other examples of businesses targeting small businesses or consumers for low-end GIS presentation à la what can be done via KML, I’d love to know about them.

[Update 16:50 UTC: Just to be clear, I don’t do infomercials and this isn’t one. Any ads on this blog are clearly marked as such.]

• Boakes.org discovers a giant iPod visible from space. Naturally, it is to be found in Australia.
• Here come the SketchUp models. Okay, so it’s on an architecture student’s project blog, rather than by complete amateurs like me or you, but I think it’s a great semi-detached house. It’s a pity that the KML version is not online, and the author, Michael Drewe, is difficult to get hold of.



• KisMAC is a wifi stumbler for the Mac (useful for wardriving). The latest version now exports to Google Earth.
• ZNO blog has two models of the Tower of Pisa — leaning for the realists and vertical for the idealists.
• Lee Rickler’s digilondon is a sightseeing site just for London.
• Last but certainly not least, Brian Flood has a great walk-through of how exactly Arc2Earth can get data from ESRI’s ArcGIS into Google Earth. It looks both intuitive and powerful, which is a hard combination to pull off.