• ThinkLemon has made an updated KMZ file of suspected Earth impact structures, made from the the Impact Field Studies Group’s database, brought up to date just his month. (Is it me, or does Sweden seem particularly prone to being rained on from outer space?)
• Google Earth Hacks has a great KMZ file pinpointing hundreds of US missile silos and weapons depots. Where placemarks are located on top of high resolution imagery, you notice that most of these locations seem to be abandoned remnants from the cold war. Still, very interesting to see how they are dispersed geographically. (Now we just need the ones for China, Russia, India, Pakistan, France, UK and Israel. Anyone?)
• KML Home Companion, Jim Cser’s free ArcMap extension that lets GIS pros output KML files, is now up to version 3.1, This latest update gives you a precision boost and better categories. It’s available here.
• Some versions of Valery’s KMLer application, an ArcGIS 9 extension that lets you both export and import KML, just got more affordable. Writes Valery: “Old Price: Standard / Plus / Pro – USD 20 / 50 / 100

  New Price: Standard / Plus / Pro – USD 20 / 35 / 50 Buy it.” (Prices aren’t updated yet on KMLer’s home page.)

We all went “nobody saw that??” When the Kebira impact crater in Libya was discovered and we flew on over in Google Earth to have a look. Astroseti.org’s Emilio González decided to go hunt for some more, and appears to have found some promising candidates in no time at all. He’s checked with the experts, and they say the finds look promising (though confirmation requires geologists on site). Says Emilio:

But the most important thing of this story is, probably, that using a free distributed software (Google Earth, but I’m also using NASA World Wind) anyone can search for similar structures.

I’ve made a KMZ file with Emilio’s candidate craters [KMZ]. Go have a look. He notes that they are aligned with the Aorounga crater further south in Chad, which makes it possible they are part of the same event. (The KMZ file also has Kebira, Aorounga, ThinkLemon’s database of Africa impact structures, a recent find from 2004 on the Gilf Kebir plateau in Egypt, and a few of my own candidates for good measure:-)

So what’s going on here? My guess is that until Google Earth came out, there was far more desert and tundra than there were scientists looking at satellite pictures of desert and tundra. Until a year ago, much of this imagery had to be bought, and that would have been too costly for individuals or even bored scientists — after all, why buy imagery of a specific area on the off chance you find a crater?

All that has changed with Google Earth. Back in September, Luca Mori discovered a Roman villa using Google Maps. More recently, the Kebira crater discovery prompted news that there might be one in Northern Canada, as blogged by Google Earth Blog.

Just like maths and physics has turned to distributed computing to break new ground, so too can geography, geology, and archaeology turn to distributed Google Earthing. There’s enough tundra and desert for everyone. Let’s get going.

As Declan promised, there are two long articles in France’s Le Monde today (in French) about satellite mapping — one of them focusing on Google Earth proper. (The other looks more broadly at the satellite imaging industry.)

The article about Google Earth begins badly by describing the application as a website, and appears to conflate Google Local with Google Earth, as it lists both NASA World Wind and Windows Live Local as the competition. But then it redeems itself by reporting an interesting observation by Thierry Rousselin, a GIS consultant. Rousselin maintains that geobrowsers like Google Earth constitute a second revolution in the democratization of maps, but one no less momentous than the first one, at the beginning of the 20th century.

What happened then? Translating:

Companies that had nothing to do with mapping, that sold petrol or automobile parts, like Michelin, launched themselves into the production of maps in order to give the first motorists a taste for the road. This liberated cartography, which had until then been principally confined to servicing war ministries.

With Google as the outsider this time around, it’s a clear case of déja vu. The internet now, just like cars then, was a relatively new phenomenon whose disruptive nature competely rewrote the demand picture for maps. And it is Google now, like Michelin then, that moved to fill the need. I’ve learned something new today:-)

The Bay Area’s Chico Enterprise Record has a wonderful writeup of a USGS-produced “virtual helicopter ride” along the length of the Hayward Fault, near San Francisco.

This is a fascinating Google Earth file, and not just because it’s annotated with closeup pictures. The Hayward Fault is also due for an Earthquake, so it’s perhaps best to get to know it now:

“The Hayward Fault is locked and loaded,” said USGS seismologist Tom Brocher. “It is ready to fire at any time.”

Impatient types can get at the KMZ file directly from this USGS site. The data is also available natively for ArcGIS.

[Update 2006-03-11: The Unofficial Google Weblog has now retracted its post, after some further prodding by Felix Salmon. But Kudos for running the correction, though.]

The Unofficial Google Weblog gets its Google Earth news story — Sensitive India Areas Removed from Google Earth — exactly wrong. How might that happen? It takes a collaborative effort.

First, find a local reporter with a misplaced sense of national pride. Let him write a piece of wishful thinking in a notoriously biased newspaper that begins thus:

NEW DELHI: Don’t expect to see clear Google Earth satellite images of Rashtrapati Bhavan, PMO, armed forces headquarters and sensitive nuclear installations on the website any more.

Then get a weblog editor to read this at face value. Furthermore, require him not to take 30 seconds to check up on Rashtrapati Bhavan to see if it might actually be true. Finally, embellish the story with a completely untrue meme that survives from the last time we went through this:

Google has also fielded similar concerns from the US Government, and has switched up areas with lower resolutions, and blurred areas.

Precisely the opposite is true. Each successive data update has seen higher resolution imagery, never lower. There has never been a case, in the US or elsewhere, where existing imagery has been switched for blurred images. Nor has the US ever asked for areas to be blurred, something which Google has confirmed. For a blog to say it has doesn’t make it so.

Nevertheless, expect this meme to do the rounds now that a mainstream blog has validated it. Who watches the watchers, indeed? This kind of sloppiness gives blogging a bad name.

Gawker Media‘s Valleywag Silicon valley rumor blog considers the whereabouts of the Google Earth team to be worthy of a post:-)

A Google contingent is heading over to NASA’s Moffitt Field facility today around lunchtime. The airfield is currently playing host to a fellow who’s created a virtual reality headset for air traffic controllers, and the Google Earth people are stopping by to see it first hand.

It goes without saying that Google Earth in stereo would look pretty awesome. Ogle Earth has already blogged Genista’s Google Earth stereograms here, Digitally Distributed Environments has toyed with anaglyphs here, and Google Earth Blog has written up Jan Melin’s analgyph Google Earth movie here.

Local reporting on the Indian government’s hamfisted attempts to come to grips with modernity ranges from the clueless…

NEW DELHI: Don’t expect to see clear Google Earth satellite images of Rashtrapati Bhavan, PMO, armed forces headquarters and sensitive nuclear installations on the website any more. […]

Minister of state in PMO Prithviraj Chauhan told Rajya Sabha on Thursday that the government had given the go-ahead to security agencies to start experimenting with ‘masking’ high-resolution images on the website. The agencies will be using advanced space technology under the guidance of the ministries of defence and science and technology, the sources said.

to the enlightened:

Sources in the government told DNA that the government is seeking opinion from the ministries and intelligence agencies on how to classify sensitive locations and installations. It is also looking at creating a national list of sensitive installations.

The move, similar to the steps taken by China and other authoritarian governments regarding various Internet facilities, is not being received well by everyone in the government.

Some sources say that the move wouldn’t go down well with India’s image as a liberal democracy and could damage its efforts to attract foreign direct investment, especially in the booming technology sector.

Read the whole thing. It’s fortifying:-)