WorldTribune.com comes out with an not-entirely clear article about a graphic of the Chinese anti-missile test on January 11 — the website alleges Google “self-censored” it. The graphic, a screenshot of the missile’s trajectory in Google Earth, was produced by the Science, Technology and Global Security Working Group at MIT.

While the article never spells it out, in all likelihood what it is trying to say is that the graphic has been removed from the Chinese Google Search service, the one which removes links to content censored by Chinese censors. That wouldn’t surprise me at all, and it isn’t really news.

The upside to the article, however, is that it lead us to the actual page where the MIT researchers published their findings — it comes with the original KML file that shows the trajectory of the satellite and missile in Google Earth:

Slightly more disturbing, however, is that in Google Earth, the region from which the missile was launched, the Xichang satellite launch center, shows signs of having been censored by Google. I can’t be sure, and I usually am sceptical of claims of censorship myself, and the Google Earth team itself maintains that it never censors imagery by pixelating or otherwise doctoring imagery, but look at the evidence: Two Digital Globe squares almost exactly overlap each other, with the top one at a highly reduced resolution. Finally, on top of all this, an unprecedented gray band that obscures all:

To me, this suggests that an earlier high resolution square proved too revealing, and that this has been resolved by adding a lower-resolution “patch”. Another option is that this is a data processing glitch that just happens to lie in an extremely interesting part of China. The only other explanation that I can come up with is that the US government invoked its privilege to censor Digital Globe’s satellite imagery before it was released into the public domain. Even so, there would be no reason for Google to then add this lower-resolution patch to Google Earth’s dataset, as clearly it obscures what was once crystal clear.

Chikai Ohazama of the Google Earth Team posts some great news to the Google Maps API Blog today:

Users can now search through all of the world’s Keyhole Markup Language (KML) files, making the millions of Google Earth layers on the Web instantly accessible for geobrowsing and exploration. Last month, we encouraged you, our Maps API users, to create KML site maps for your mashups. Today’s launch is the next step towards making those sitemaps – and all of the world’s geographic information – discoverable by users worldwide.

Indeed, it works like a charm:

There are some more screenshots in Chikai’s post.

I especially like the fact that the set of returned KML is not just what’s available on Google Earth Community — although that place surely contains the bulk some of the best KML out there. This is important if KML is going to become an open, community-driven standard sometime in the future.

Being able to do a text-based search through the KML files available on the web for a particular view in Google Earth should do to the geospatial web what Google Search did to the plain vanilla web.

filetype:kmz shackleton

[Update 17.17 UTC: Just to be clear, you could previously already do a text search on KML files using Google Search, for example filetype:kmz shackleton. Now you can further pinpoint your query to get results just near your view in Google Earth, and you can also have them returned to you as placemarks, from across many KML sources.]

Can small, local web mapping services still compete against Google, Microsoft and Yahoo!’s offerings? Absolutely. All they have to do is blow us away with cool new features:

Norway’s Yellow Pages, a part of the Scandinavian search engine and portal Eniro, has just come out with aerial datasets for 1937, 1952, 1971, 1984 and 2004, which you can put side by side and then browse in sync. Try it. (Select “Dra/Panorer” to drag the maps.)

It’s technically well thought out as well — the unique URL for each view contains the date of the desired dataset for each pane — so can send people views of your house (assuming your house is in Norway) together with a view of the area in decades past.

The possibility of having multiple historical datasets available for comparison has been mooted before: One case in India has already demonstrated how useful such a feature can be, especially if the time intervals are small and frequent. This pioneering Norwegian implementation really drives home the potential.

(Via digi.no)

Yesterday, two versions of the same article concerning Google Earth satellite imagery of South Korea:

From The Korea Herald, an excerpt:

In September 2005, high-resolution pictures of Cheong Wa Dae, the Defense Ministry and air and naval bases were featured on the site. They were deleted following a protest by the Korean government. The National Intelligence Service has recently requested the U.S. authorities to take measures curb the posting of sensitive facilities on Google, according to Seoul officials.

From AsiaMedia, the same snippet:

In 2005, high-resolution pictures of Cheong Wa Dae, the Defense Ministry and air and naval bases were featured on the site. The National Intelligence Service has recently requested the U.S. authorities to take measures to curb the posting of sensitive facilities.

Last I looked, Cheong Wa Dae (the presidential palace) was still visible. Not sure what “US authorities” have to do with any of this, in any case.

• The BBC today: Iraqis use internet to survive war
  

  Google is playing an unlikely role in the Iraq war. Its online satellite map of the world, Google Earth, is being used to help people survive sectarian violence in Baghdad.

  As the communal bloodshed has worsened, some Iraqis have set up advice websites to help others avoid the death squads.

  One tip – on the Iraq League site, one of the best known – is for people to draw up maps of their local area using Google Earth’s detailed imagery of Baghdad so they can work out escape routes and routes to block.

  Just don’t try that in Basra. Google Earth isn’t much help there anymore.

• Google Earth Hacks has a new URL: gearthhacks.com
• Business 2.0 reports that the online video ads tested last year for Saturn — which showed a video of Google Earth zooming in to a Saturn dealer near the user based on a geocoded IP address — have been deemed a success. You can expect the ads to be shown across the US this spring.
• Google Karten is a weblog “similar to google maps mania but in german”.
• The context is in Dutch, but this page lists plenty of good English language links to best-of-breed KML files, most of them direct links to the Google Earth Community download.
• Another map overlay of Stockholm, circa 1885. Courtesy of the geodata unit at Department of Human Geography at KTH, the Royal Institute of Technology.

Tim Park writes in about TierraWiki, a new project of his that looks slick and sounds promising:

I thought I would write as I am working on a project that blends Google Earth with Wiki technology for outdoor enthusiasts that I thought that might be interesting to your readers. The humble goal of my site, TierraWiki, is to create the most complete reference to the outdoors in existence.

The wiki is based off of the same MediaWiki technology as Wikipedia but I have built extensions to

1. be able to use the GPS track information from our outdoor activities to build a comprehensive trail map that you can access not only on the web but also through Google Maps and Google Earth,
2. enable location based search to make it easier to find outdoors information in the vicinity of another location, and finally
3. have exposed a Google Earth network link that allows you to always have the latest trail map in Google Earth as well as articles that are geotagged.

Basically, I ask that the community go out and use the outdoors on their favorite trails and then upload their GPX tracks to build the trail network. I then have some algorithms that I am working on that can merge this track data, and eventually, will let users plan outdoor trips and have a look at just what they are getting into across the web and Google Earth before they do it (nothing is worse than finding that “extra mountain” on your mountain bike ride).

Here is an example track page, and here is an example of a composite trail map. Finally, here is the TierraWiki network link containing all the trails in its database. Each individual trail is also downloadable as a KML file.

I especially like how it is possible to upload and show elevation and speed data from the GPX file. Wikipedia now has many of its articles georeferenced, but with TierraWiki the geospatial savviness goes the other way — you start with the geospatial data, and then you mark it up semantically with maps, photos and/or a description.

There are of course other good GPS community sites out there, but TierraWiki differentiates itself by using a wiki content model to assimilate information, as opposed to an account/login model. It’ll be interesting to see which proves most popular in the long run.

Shanghai Daily comes out with this news item today:

Digital map to provide 3D view of downtown

By Zhang Jun 2007-2-10

BY the time the World Expo opens in 2010, travelers will no longer have to visit the city in person to enjoy a three-dimensional tour of its downtown core. They will only have to boot up their computers.

The city plans to create a digital, three-dimensional map of Shanghai that can be easily searched online. The project will be similar to Google Earth, a site that lets you study satellite images of the planet, but will provide an even better look at the city’s architecture, according to Shu Rong, a researcher with the Shanghai Institute of Applied Physics, which will provide airborne camera technology for use in the project.

Users will be able to view the map using a PC or cell phone.

“The map will provide a vivid city tour,” Shu said, noting it will include pictures of the sides of buildings, unlike the Google site which only provides a birds-eye view of cities.

A couple of comments:

• Just as when France’s IGN decided to come to build a custom viewer, Géoportail, to depict its imagery of France, you have to ask: Why chain content to a specific delivery mechanism? Wouldn’t it be better if IGN and the Shanghai city government made their datasets available in an open format, viewable with a range of virtual globes? Isn’t the whole idea to disseminate this information as widely as possible? Imagine coming out with a special browser exclusively for your website — it doesn’t make any sense.
• You can bet your bottom dollar that this content will be censored, just as GéoPortail’s is. Then again, censorship seems to be something Google Earth is no longer immune to either.
• 2010 is far off. Google Earth already today lets you show 3D buildings, as does Microsoft Virtual Earth 3D. The mind boggles when I consider what virtual globes will be capable of in 2010, especially considering the rapid rate of development we’ve seen over the past 18 months.

(Thanks to Robert Jacobson for the heads-up.)