For some time, GoogleTouring has let you upload KML/KMZ files containing placemarks into Google Maps with their In-browser KML view web app.

Now there’s a new app on the block: Jacob Reimer over on Reimers.dk has written an ASP.NET control that makes it easier to use Google Maps in ASP.NET projects, and he shows off what it can do on this map.

What he’s made is a kind of placemark authoring tool that easily lets you import from KLM/KMZ files, but export to KML and KMZ as well. For example, take this KML file [KML] of placemarks for Swedish universities. Click on it and it will load up in Google Earth. But if you right-click on it and save it to your desktop, then you can upload it to a Google Map and edit it. Register (for free), and you can upload your KML files to a file manager, so that you can access them from anywhere later or view them on a Google Map (with a permalink you can send via email). This is great for making Google Earth placemarks accessible to those who can’t use the app for some reason.

(A weighty aside: Are we really meant to call Google’s mapping service “Google Local”? In my use of it, the maps are almost never local — neither in the sense of being of places nearby nor zoomed in all the way. At least I don’t have to call it Live Local, which is double untrue, that.)

• Lee Jackson’s Victorianlondon.org has a wondeful KMZ file up listing many of London’s historical spots, with links to mentions in contemporary texts. This should enliven both history class and English class.
• Google Earth Blog marks the spot of a major new crater found in the Sahara using Satellite imagery. The thing is, it’s so clearly a crater, I wonder if scientists haven’t come across it in the past but moved on, thinking it must already have been discovered.

  If not, we should all make ThinkLemon’s network link of known craters a fixture in Google Earth, in case we come across something improbably large and round, so we can claim it. (For example, the Africa crater database lists a smaller crater just a little to the west of it. How could anyone miss the bigger one??)

The sites that specialize in such things are betting that Microsoft’s upcoming Origami “ultra-mobile PC” (UMPC) device will sport a built-in GPS receiver. Add to this a full-fledged XP operating system and a sub-$1,000 price point, and we suddenly have some very interesting possibilities.

That’s because Tomtom’s and Garmin’s top-of-the-line GPS mapping devices for cars are currently priced at the same level, but are one-trick ponies. Origami, on the other hand, could conceivably run Google Earth, connect to both GPS and the internet, and thus duplicate Volkswagen’s announced project. There already exists software that turns Google Earth into a live position display device — it would take a small tweak to adapt this for an all-in-one GPS Windows ultra-mobile.

Of course, between the time that Origami is announced and comes to market, prices on dedicated GPS devices will have fallen further. And this post is entirely speculative. But if GPS goes mainstream in the way wifi did 5 years ago, then this market is still very much in its very earliest phases.

On August 10, 2005, Ogle Earth was tipped off that you can Google KML and KMZ files by filetype. There were 6,500 KMZ files then, Google estimated. And now, 7 month later?

59,400. Interesting to see which the top ones are:

1. Olympic venues, Google
2. Flying car, The Register
3. World’s top 500 hotels, Travel & Leisure
4. First post, Gombe Chimp blog, Jane Goodall Institute
5. Antarctica, PolarView
6. Herzog & De Meuron offices, Pointingit architecture blog
7. Schroeder the whale shark, Seeadlerpost.com
8. Yellowstone Park overlay, Spatialdatalogic
9. Ants, Antweb
10. Jesus face, arturogoga.co.nr

• Architects, on the whole, are a spatially aware bunch, so it’s not surprising that Domus, an Italian architectural magazine, will be enhancing each issue with placemarks relevant to its articles, starting with the current issue.

  Even cooler would be if each issue came with 3D models of the structures it covers, placed in context in Google Earth. I’d even consider subscribing… (Come to think of it, that’s an excellent idea for an online magazine, and it doesn’t appear to have been done before, from a cursory search.) (via Things Magazine)

• Mika Niemik wanted to monitor his X-Plane flight Simulator flights in Google Earth so he wrote a C application that takes the position data from X-Plane and turns it to a KML file. He then pointed a network link at it. “I don’t know if anyone’s done this already,” writes Mika. Not quite: Juergen Haible wrote something similar for Microsoft Flight simulator.
• A Comment in the previous post by Matt Fox led to his site containing a network link to detailed historical USGS maps going all the way back to the 1890s, mainly of California. Matt writes, “So far have over 500 maps online and adding more all the time. The topographic maps cover mainly Calfornia and Nevada right now, but I will be adding other states in the near future.”

  It’s a slick presentation of some great data, and it comes with excellent screenshots. Matt is responsible for the aeronautical sectional charts that FBOweb.com links to.

This weekend’s trip through the archives to trawl up the gems for the expanded right column (now that it’s easy to do) brought to light a couple of sites that have improved since the last visit:

• German site Geokoordinaten für Google Earth is a directory service for finding and mapping places to Google Earth, but with a unique twist: Choose a country and then enter some search text. This web app will return a KMZ for Google Earth with all the placenames starting with that text. For Example, search for “ber” in Germany and you will get 1185 places returned for opening Google Earth, just one of them Berlin. Each placemark has a link to Wikipedia, whether or not the article exists. Somewhat useless, but lots of fun.
• FBOweb.com made quite an impact when they began offering live flight tracking of commerical airlines in Google Earth. They have a pay service, but now they have also expanded their free offerings to include live plots for inbound traffic to seven US airports. Most impressive to me are some cool overlays they’ve added: A massive 3D layer showing Special Use Airspace around US airports, and an excellent network link to detailed sectional maps for pilots covering the entire US.

Eyecandy?

A year ago I never thought I’d be staring at something like this on my desktop for free. Long live the march of technology.

Do check out the lists on the right, at your convenience. If you think I’ve missed something obvious or know of something new to add (or see a mistake) email me or leave a comment.

At least from Sweden, Google appears to be down, with no access to Google Earth’s servers, Google Search, Google Maps and Google Adsense. Anyone else seeing the same? All other sites work from here.

As a result, all web apps using Google Local’s API are down too, of course:-) Did somebody just write something about the vulnerability of mashups?

[Update 13:52 UTC: Belgium gets Google fine, so it must be a Swedish thing.]

[Update 14:35 UTC: Back up. Comments confirm something was amiss.]

[Update 14:56 UTC: Not back up for everyone in Sweden, though. Writes a Swedish hacker friend: “From what I can see it seems like a routing problem to some of the servers and nameservers. For example ns1, n3, and ns4 are not responding while ns2.google.com is… Considering that it seems to work in other countries it’s most likely a routing problem.”]