Cool! Tagzania has just granted my very own feature request — a link to Google Earth for individual placemarks.

This means that, for example, a place that I’ve marked on a Google Map via Tagzania is now accessible via Google Maps, Google Earth, MSN Virual Earth, Multimap, Mapquest and as a search in GeoURL. (And you can even paste the placemark, map and all, into any website you like.)

Previously, Tagzania places were only viewable in Google Earth as part of a user’s complete set of items for a particular tag or user. Now there is granular control, which makes Tagzania very much the del.icio.us of places. I just keep my places there, tag them, and let the user decide how to view them.

After some initial confusion as to what exactly it was that MapInfo had decided to do with Google Earth, the matter has been cleared up with a search for “KML” on MapInfo’s site, which yielded these results:

A Product guide for the MapInfo Link Utility for Google Earth.

Release notes for the Link Utility.

Basically, it lets you export existing MapInfo maps as KML/KMZ for viewing in Google Earth. No biggie, really. It’s sort of expected that self-respecting GIS companies do KML these days:-) (Moshe Binyamin from MapInfo comments on All Points Blog that the utility will probably be released on November 11.)

Google is looking for a Google Earth client software engineer for the Win32 platform. Intriguingly, “familiarity with QT is a plus.” Intriguing because that either refers to Apple’s QuickTime, or else Trolltech’s Qt, the crossplatform GUI application development toolkit for X11, Mac, Linux and Windows.

(Posted earlier today to Simply Hired)

If I may be so bold as to highlight a snippet of a comment left by Brian Flood on James Fee’s blog regarding those Google Earth ads:

This is AdSense not AdWords we’re talking about here. AdSense allows individuals to share in the profit. AdWords is primarily for the main Google Search page. So as a publisher of data, you could *choose* to place AdSense keywords in your KML and share in the click-through revenue with Google. […] This is something that could actually improve the quality of data, that is, shared ad revenue could help offset the cost of collecting/maintaining some datasets.

If this is turns out to be correct (and I suspect it is) it would make absolute sense (with hindsight), as the recurring metaphor for Google Earth is that it is a browser, with layers published to be rendered by Google Earth akin to websites published to be rendered by conventional browsers. And in both cases, it would be the content producers whom Google gives the option to show Google ads if they feel the need to be rewarded for their efforts.

In which case, the revenue model for Google Earth changes slightly. Sure, you can still pay upfront to remove all ads, but in other cases, Google shares its revenue with content producers, which spurs content for Google Earth, which in turn spurs its use. This is even more sophisticated than the Opera model.

And it has the potential to be quite devious too. Imagine a content producer who has enabled AdSense ads for his network link showing the 50 nearest casinos for a given view. Imagine ArcGIS Explorer being able to render KML (it will). Will ArcGIS Explorer then render the AdSense ads that come with the casino network layer, or will it choose to ignore them? Show them, and Google makes money while ESRI serves the base data and foots the bill. Skip them, and the content provider makes no money. Might ESRI rip out the AdSense ads and place generic ads elsewhere to pay its own bills for serving the base data? Would this be legal?

GETrack is a free java application for those with both a Nokia Series 60 phone and bluetooth GPS receiver. It generates KML files with positions at varying intervals which you can then download to the PC via bluetooth.

That makes the whole process rather painless, no?

I’ve been playing with WW2D, a cross-platform Java-based open-source Google Earthish application that works on OS X and Linux (and Windows), and here are some usage notes:

Installation is a cinch. Instructions are crystal clear. Whatever Java machine comes with OS X 10.4.3 works flawlessly.

Wait, this is Java??? WW2D is extremely responsive, even on my aging Mac, and the zoom controls are so fluid that I found myself zooming in and out far more often than I needed to. Image tiles are fetched from the internet on demand (much like Google Maps) but navigating the map is far faster and more responsive than any 2D web-based app I’ve used. It never crashed.

WW2D isn’t 3D, of course, so no tilting and no globe, but when you’re zoomed in close, it feels like Google Earth.

The data set is not bad. It renders the entire contents of Blue Marble Next Generation. Closer in, the world is covered by Landsat 7 imagery, which in many places is as good as Google Earth gets. In the US, you have access to the USGS imagery, which Virtual Earth uses. But the rarest (and most fun) is the layer labeled Aerial orthophotography. You don’t know if you get to see anything from this layer until you zoom in close, and there isn’t much available, but do start with Long Island, as it is covered in its entirety. Fire Island especially has some amazing villas on it:

The main downside vis-√Ü-vis Google Earth, other than the lack of 3D, is that while there are “add-ons” with additional data available for WW2D, there is nothing similar to the network link, and its absence makes you realize to what extent Google Earth’s usefulness is derived from it. Without the network link, you don’t really have a killer app (hence NASA World Wind’s relative obscurity).

WW2D’s GUI is a very sparse, but I came to regard this as a zen-like feature, not a bug. As long as there isn’t a 3D globe application out for the Mac, WW2D belongs on every Mac-owning map aficionado’s desktop, purely for its usefulness as a speedy Landsat 7 imagery browser. All the rest is a welcome bonus.

Dave Bouwman is giving two talks this coming monday at Colorado State University in Fort Collins: “Enterprise GIS: The Future is Embedded” and my favorite, “The Google Effect: How web-mapping became the killer app of 2005”. Open to anyone. A bit late notice for me:-)