The head of map collections at the British Library includes Google Earth in a list of 10 maps that changed the world.

How big is the Deepwater Horizon oil spill? Gulf Coast oil spill map vs urban areas by Paul Rademacher

Fascinating article by/about Google Earth's Michael Jones. Choice quotes: "The future is not a better Google Earth but a smaller Google Earth." "The new application we are working on is called the Star Finder. It will map all the star locations." "In the future all you will have to do is point you phone at something and get information about it. That is the immediate future and we are working on that."

Location of the world's largest beaver dam in Google Maps.

What is probably the world's largest beaver dam was discovered with Google Earth, and is large enough to be visible from space. Is this also the world's largest animal-made object (not counting coral reefs)?

What morons.

As an example of how the future of computing (and mapping) is mobile, Google's Michael Jones points out there are already more installations of Google Earth on iPhone OS than on the Mac OS. (At the very end of the video)

That new hominid discovered in South Africa? It was done with the help of Google Earth.Very cool.

Updated with a response to Export Law Blog.

Whoa! Central Shanghai and the Expo area just got high-resolution imagery from Oct 4 2009 in Google Earth and Maps.

The Institute for Science and International Security keeps on coming up with interesting analyses of satellite imagery that is publicly available via Google Earth. Here, ISIS looks at evidence that a new Pakistani reactor is contributing fuel to the nuclear arms race with India.