Somebody’s been trying to hack into fellow MemeFirst group blogger and Google Earth user Rob Sterling‘s Google Earth account. Like he asks, what’s the point?

I was rereading the Earthbooker.com press release this morning, and a phrase at the end stood out:

GlobeAssistant, who’s responsible for the creation of Earthbooker and patented integration with Google Earth, believes that within the next 4 years in 50% of all travel arrangements Google Earth and their technology will be used.

It stood out not so much for the prediction but for the word “patented”. I highly doubt a method based on a process that’s only been around for a few months would already be patented. So is it patent-pending? Or is this press release-ese? Or a bad translation from Dutch? What’s so patentable about a method for depicting a database on Google Earth? Am I missing something?

(On GlobeAssistant’s site there is a more detailed description of the patent: “GlobeAssistant BV uses the patented Altitude Ranking Algorithm to filter relevant data before it is published to the Globe.” Haven’t some of Google Earth’s built-in layers done that since day one? Just asking.)

A company called Screampoint now has a utility that coverts Autodesk 3dsMax files to KML.

While converters are getting to be a dime a dozen, (okay, this one’s $30), what intrigued me is the promised upcoming features:

– Screampoint will start to license its extensive library of digital buildings and cities in .kml format

– digital content includes portions of New York City, Las Vegas, San Francisco, Hong Kong and Shanghai

– registered users will be entitled to receive select digital building files

Excellent: Google Middle Earth (Beta)

While a few days ago it seemed like John Hanke was indicating Google might be content to just use it’s Earth as a backdrop for geobrowsing, today brings a job ad for Google Earth that looks a bit more ambitious:

The Keyhole group is hiring a sales/deployment engineer who will help the Keyhole technology to be adopted by large commercial and government customers.

Some of the more interesting requirements: “Knowledge of GIS technologies is desired including common data formats and applications (ESRI, MapInfo, Oracle Spatial, etc.) is desired” and “Hands-on Linux experience is a must ” and finally “5+ years experience as a […] systems engineering in a UNIX/Linux environment.”

So there does seem to be a will to compete on the high end, but is it possible (and I’m asking because I don’t know) that Google might deliberately choose to provide its enterprise products on a Linux platform while other mainstream GIS vendors like ESRI do Windows? Would that make sense, GIS pros? After all, IBM et al are pushing Linux, so why not run your your GIS on Linux at the enterprise level…

Journalism students at the University of Kansas have a Q&A with John Hanke, in charge of Google Earth. Some interesting stuff there regarding Google Earth’s ambitions:

Question: Do you have plans to add more analytical capabilities to google earth in the future?

Answer: In the traditional GIS sense of analytics, we don’t have any plans. We are more of a spatial thumb-tack wall where you can pin notes and work with information on top of geography. We want to make it easy to share that type of information. We aren’t like ESRI or MAPINFO in the traditional GIS sense. Those companies do a good job at what they do.

Yep, Google Earth as a geobrowser. The entire Q&A is worth reading.

Jim Cser updates his KML Home Companion to version 3.0. It lets you export ESRI ArcMap documents to KML. James Fee has a quick review.