Jeff Thurston at Vector One notes that 3Dsolar was one of this year’s European IST prize winners for a 3D technology that floats an image in front of the screen. “There are numerous possibilities for this type of technology in the spatial information field,” writes Jeff.

There are some intriguing clues that this might happen sooner rather than later:

• Somebody affiliated with 3Dsolar (founder and inventor Patrick Levy Rosenthal?) was an early contributor of a network link that remains one of the most useful around. So the company is well aware of Google Earth as a 3D visualisation tool.
• Ex-Keyhole CEO John Hanke’s inspiration for Google Earth, the CIC Earth in Neal Stephenson’s 1992 novel Snow Crash, is a true floating 3D marvel. Time perhaps for an excerpt from the book?
  

  There is something new: A globe about the size of a grapefruit, a perfectly detailed rendition of Planet Earth, hanging in space at arm’s length in front of his eyes. Hiro has heard about this but never seen it. It is a piece of CIC software called, simply, Earth. It is the user interface that CIC uses to keep track of every bit of spatial information that it owns – all the maps, weather data, architectural plans, and satellite surveillance stuff. (Ch. 13)

  Earth materializes, rotating majestically in front of his face. Hiro reaches out and grabs it. He twists it around so he’s looking at Oregon. (Ch. 35)

  3Dsolar’s technology allows you to grab 3D floating objects like that. From their website:

  The 3Dsolar screen projects a virtual image that can be physically manipulated with the user’s hands as if it were a real object. 3Dsolar screens in retail store windows will offer the opportunity for passer-byes to interact with the virtual products projected outside of the store’s window.

• For those of you with a programming bent, 3Dsolar now has an SDK out for their technology:
  

  The SDK is free of charge and allows CAD designers, animation creators, developers, and content providers to view and present their work on 3Dsolar display screens.

  As details about the technology are hard to come by, this may offer some clues. I’m awaiting my download link as I blog this.

When the units go into production mid-2006 (according to the company’s forum), they’ll cost around $6,000 each, falling to $3,000 as production ramps up (according to the press release). At that price point, Google should be able to afford a few for demonstration purposes:-)

Declan Butler has just posted the latest iteration of his global avian flu map. It’s a beast of a dataset, and this version incorporates some major improvements over previous ones:

• It’s now a set of network links, so the data will update itself. Declan says weekly. This means the download is a keeper.
• The backend is now ArcGIS and Arc2Earth (instead of Microsoft Access and PHP).
• Better-defined datasets: One for human cases, one for bird cases, and a map of poultry density. That last one is unexpectedly fascinating — I see surprisingly few chickens in Sweden. More datasets are promised, such as rail networks and bird migration routes.

What could possibly make this any better? Timelines. Fortunately, Declan writes that it is on his to-do list. Meanwhile, Google just needs to add that functionality to the browser.

(Declan’s blog announcement.)

The New York Times looks at mash-ups, focusing on Platial. (I am very annoyed with the New York Times at the moment, BTW.) Having seen a lot of these mash-ups, Platial looks oddly old-school to me. In terms of features, Tagzania is ahead… and map-neutral to boot — see tagged places in just about any map, as well as Google Earth.

(Wired also wrote up Platial a few days ago.)

The collaboration between Google and Volkswagen to develop an in-car Google Earth is far further along than I would have guessed. In fact, there is a working prototype, and CNet has the video to prove it. It’s all very polished and clever — my favorite touch is the ability to drag the view in Google Earth using the touch screen. No word on how much of this demo relies on an active internet connection, though.

In a sure waste of advertising dollars, the CNet video is sponsored by BMW:-) (Via Ojobuscador)

Google Earth gets a data overhaul:

We now have almost all of Germany covered in high-resolution, plus some really high resolution insets in cities like Berlin, Dortmund, and Frankfurt. Also we are now using TruEarth for our 15 meter basemap of the world.

We have also fixed alignment error for few areas like Boise, ID and Memphis, TN.

Hope you enjoy the new data.

Why thank you, I think I will. Google Earth blog notes higher resolutions for many smaller islands. Geography 2.0 likes the new basemap more.

Geocoding blog notes various signs that Yahoo! may be on the verge of launching international map coverage. I’d say that’d be an excellent idea — a mapping project I’m doing here in Sweden currently only has Google Maps and Microsoft Live Local as contenders — in fact, unless the feature sets change drastically, we’ll have to go with Microsoft, as they are the only ones with any kind of map for continental Europe through an API.

• A quick and dirty way to generate higher resolution background meshes from Google Earth when positioning SketchUp models for export to KML. (Note, the Mac version of the KML exporter works differently for me, and is still a bit too buggy for mainstream use.)
• Cartography points to another use of Google Earth in the service of environmentalism — Greenpeace outlines all the world’s intact forest landscapes. In ESRI Shapefiles too.
• We knew Keyhole got funding from In-Q-Tel, a CIA-funded venture capital firm, before Google bought it. A Slashgeo commenter notes that @Last, makers of SketchUp, got the same treatment, as blogged by All Points Blog, who runs by some more names funded by In-Q-Tel. Randall Newton at AECNews.com points to a long list of past In-Q-Tel investments.
• Alan Glennon at Geography 2.0 raises some very interesting points about the pitfalls of having too much data, in the context of Declan’s article about sensor webs in Nature. Often, the hardest part is deciding what data to ignore, and the more data you have, the harder it gets.
• Directions Magazine‘s Adena Schutzberg and Joe Francica divine the future of the nature of the competition between Google and Microsoft. Conclusion: “We are just a short hop away from a major disruption in the geospatial market.”
• Alan Glennon perseveres through an LA Times article with little to commend it to find a nugget of Microsoft news at the end that is worth a mention: “[Steven Lawler, general manager of Windows Live Local] said that these [bird’s-eye] views covered areas where about 20% of the U.S. population resided and that it would be up to about 90% in two years.” (Thanks Alan)
• Glenn at GISuser laments how websites will use any excuse to put “Google Earth” in headlines in order to garner more traffic. Like this very post, for example.

Following up on the post of the release of the latest version of KMLImporter for NASA World Wind, author ShockFire writes in:

Yesterday it has also been decided that KMLImporter will be included in WorldWind v1.3.4, so I’ll likely release several updates soon to reach a final (stable) version before the release.

Ladies and gentlemen, we have our HTML of geobrowsers. It was as good as given before, but now it’s official: The three largest geobrowsers — ESRI ArcGIS Explorer (upcoming), NASA World Wind and of course Google Earth will all have KML support by mid-year, including support for network links. For the sake of the child nodes, let’s hope these implementations all treat KML the same way.