Google has just announced Google Earth Mac 3.1.0527 Beta. Anyone with a 600Mhz G3 (!) or faster running OS X 10.4 should head on over to Google and download it, then come back here for a review, up shortly.

Well well well, Rev Dan Catt, of Geobloggers renown, just got a job at Yahoo!, joining Tom Coates and Simon Willison, and no doubt plenty of Web 2.0 goodness will come of it.

Dan writes, “I’ll also post how this affects/has affected geobloggers and what the plans are.” Yahoo! now owns Flickr, remember. Does this mean that Dan’s been persuaded to switch mapping API for the next version of Geobloggers? It’d be difficult when Yahoo! Maps is US only. As long as there is still a Google Earth network link in the mix, I’m completely agnostic on the matter:-)

[Update 2006-01-10: Dan explains (nearly) all.]

The Northwest Arkansas Times tells the story of how it came to be that two remote counties in norhwestern Arkansas have some of highest resolution imagery in Google Earth:

Once the [aerial mapping] project was completed, the University of Arkansas Center for Advanced Spatial Technology (CAST) took the information and put in on a server application called Geostore. In order to get the data, interested people had to download the file and have the software that reads it. “Google Earth is always looking for the latest imagery so they contacted the CAST and asked for permission to put it on their Web site,” he said. “Now anyone can access the data from any location.”

How refreshing to see a (local) government decide that since the information was gained via public money, it belongs to the public. I wish that were the norm. Read the whole article.

[Update 17.423 UTC. Adena at All Points Blog wonders, why aren’t public bodies taking over the role of keepers of such data? This raises interesting questions about trust and the role of government. Would you prefer it that a private company makes satellite imagery of your area publicly available, but only if it sees economic incentives, or that the government is responsible for doing so? With a private company, privacy issues loom, whereas with the government, censorship issues loom. Of course, governments can make laws that protect consumers from companies, while private companies can always access foreign source data that governments can’t censor. So the result is an equilibrium of sorts.]

A reader wrote asking if I knew of a business example where somebody provides restricted KML files to Google Earth, i.e. which require a user ID and password to download (the idea being that you could then sell them). That’s not possible, as far as I know and the reason is that Google Earth does not currently have the ability to ask for user IDs and passwords before accessing a restricted server. (I could be wrong, in which case please set me straight.) [I am wrong. it works fine. See comments, and I have word from the Google Earth team as well. (20:30 UTC)]

It is not an outlandish feature request, though; the nearest analogy is RSS, and RSS readers are definitely able to ask for passwords, and there are restricted RSS feeds that require it.

In the meantime, vendors could keep network link files they want to sell on a restricted server that you use an HTML browser to access; these then get downloaded and opened in Google Earth, getting their data from normal, non-restriced servers. Of course, people who download a password-protected network link would be able to just distribute it at will, but you can do the same thing with passwords for normal content. The trick, then, becomes making sure the network link refreshes from a URL that has unique ID linked to an account. If an account starts getting hit from many different IP addresses simultaneously, you could call it abuse and cut it off.

Regarding business models and Google Earth, the only ones I’ve seen so far are referral-based (use our Google Earth network link to find a hotel/house/holiday and we get some money), services-based (let us build you your Google Earth-based web app), as advertising (Google Earth is impressive, so is our product/city) and tangentially, as content producers (3D models that could be viewed in 3D renderers, including Google Earth). but I haven’t yet seen anyone deliver value through Google Earth for an up-front fee. One of the easiest Google Earth-based applications to monetize in this way right now, in my opinion, would be a game, like GEWar.

[Update 12:38 UTC: I soon as I posted, I thought of an example! Geocaching.com makes its geocaching database available in Google Earth for premium members only. It’s one feature among many you get for $3 a month.]

Binary Bonsai has a good point: Microsoft already has a true 3D mapping application: Microsoft Flight Simulator X: Here are some awesome screenshots.

One thing I noticed about Mark Zeman’s otherwise excellent Flickrmap multimedia tutorial (see previous post) is that he spends a good deal of time at the start explaining how to set up the network link that allows you to use Flickrmap with Google Earth. Indeed, setting up a network link can be quite tedious: Add Network Link from the menu, right-click on it, choose edit, change the name, type a longish URL, set refresh preferences… It’s not rocket science, but it is typo-prone, and perhaps a bit overwhelming for beginners.

But there is an easy way to circumvent all this if you want others to have a network link to your precise specifications:

First, set up the network link exactly as you like it. Then, right-click on it, choose Save As, select KMZ as the file format, and save. The resulting KMZ file, when opened by anyone with Google Earth installed, will automatically result in your network link appearing in their Temporary Places, no setup required. KMZ files are zipped, so they are mailable, downloadable, uploadable, linkable, etc… So instead of telling people how to make a specific network link, you can just give them a link.

Why is it so simple? Because network links are just a piece of KML markup. Mark’s Flickrmap network link, for example, looks like this:

(I got this text to reveal itself by saving the network link in Google Earth but choosing KML as the file format, which is just a text file format. I then opened the resultant file in a text editor.)

So, to make a long story short, here is Flickrmap’s network link [KMZ] for you to download and start using in Google Earth right away.

(For extra credit: Network links themselves don’t have to be static files. GEWar, for example, provides each new player with a dynamically generated network link. Each network link points to a different URL, in effect giving each player their own unique view of the game.)

[Update 2006-01-07: Mark reports that he’s fixed it and changed the tutorial to reflect this.]

Geotagging Flickr photos has proven to be a hugely popular pursuit, with over 100,000 images tagged to date. You can display geotagged photos in Google Earth using the most excellent Geobloggers site’s network link (temporarily down for renovations and boy do we miss it), and there are several ways of easing the geotagging task: Marrying GPS data with a digital camera’s EXIF data, Steeev’s script for using Google Earth (apparently broken by the latest version of Greasemonkey), standalone Windows application ITag, and .CK’s GMIF script for using Google Maps. (More info and links at the GeoTagging Flickr group page.)

Now, New Zealander Mark Zeman has taken the geotagging concept to a whole new level with Flickrmap, a properly ajaxified web application that does several things: It lets you show your geotagged Flickr photos on a map on your own website or blog, it lets you use Google Earth to geotag your photos, and it acts as a geotagging “manager” for your Flickr photos.

The integration with Google Earth is seamless and impressive, but I think the cleverest (and genuinely innovative) feature in Flickrmap is that it will automatically convert placename tags into geotags. For example, if you have a photo that is tagged “Paris France”, Flickrmap will suggest the correct geotags for you to add. You can then use Google Earth to pinpoint the location, but you don’t have to if you don’t want to — your Flickrmap map will already locate that picture in Paris.

Mark explains it far better in a multimedia tutorial. Worth watching, even if you don’t geotag photos, just to see what you can do with Google Earth, Flickr, and a healthy dose of ajax.

[Update 2006-01-07: As Ole points out in the comments, Flickrmap is not the only geo-spatial solution for photos. His post has a long list.]