Excuse the interruption of coverage on Ogle Earth, despite there being obvious virtual globe news to report, but things can get a little hectic over at the Swedish Institute. Yesterday we launched Linnaeus300.com, a site that uses Swedish naturalist Carl Linnaeus’ 300th birthday as an excuse to bring science into the classrooms — one question a week meant to elicit discussions and feedback. (Pardon the Flash — I know it needs to go). I played my part by organizing a little side-meeting of Swedish science bloggers, getting them to agree that setting up a kind of Planet GS but for science (in Swedish) would be a good idea. James Fee, I need to talk to you:-)

And then I’m partly to blame for this:

Sweden to set up embassy in Second Life

Sweden is to become the first country to establish diplomatic representation in the virtual reality world of Second Life, officials said.

“We are planning to establish a Swedish embassy in Second Life primarily as an information portal for Sweden,” Swedish Institute (SI) director Olle Wästberg told AFP.

I’ll be project-managing that particular effort. The plan wasn’t to announce first and produce later, but that was before the Swedish media got hold of the story. At least in the worst-case scenario, we’ll have been the first to announce an intention to have a government presence in Second Life:-).

And now I’m in Berlin for the weekend, which also puts a serious damper on blog productivity. But stay tuned.

It didn’t take long for the lesson from Basra to sink in with other governments. Here comes the next volley from South Korea. Reports dongA.com today:

In the satellite service provided by U.S. search portal “Google,” a closely-taken photo of an anti-aircraft missile position of Korea’s air force is posted. Since the photo is showing part of the key defense networks of Seoul and the metropolitan area against North Korea, they are raising a security issue. […]

The resolution of the photo is so high that one can see not only the exact location of the military unit but also how many positions of anti-air craft missiles exist and where those missiles are deployed within the unit. One military official said, “The location of key air-defense missile deployments are an important military secret. They are at least category 2 confidentiality.” […]

One source from a military security agency said, ” Since there is no means to ban the satellite photos taken by foreign commercial satellites, which are not subject to domestic laws. Currently there is no clear way to deal with such issues even if similar cases happen.”

Maybe they could try to find a North Korean holding a printout of the view from Google Earth.

• Yet another funny ending to an article (Google tailors Earth for DOD users):
  

  He was reluctant to disclose customers, but said the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency, the Coast Guard and the state of Alabama through a grant from the Homeland Security Department use Google Earth products.

  That’s according to Rob Painter, director of Google Earth Federal, responsible for selling Google Earth Fusion and related products to US federal agencies, including the Department of Defense. I’m honestly curious: Is this technology exportable? Is it something Google is allowed to sell to Kenya, for example, or Sudan?

• A lovely and original biography of MC Escher, illustrated with his own drawings and with views in Google Earth of the places that inspired them. A KML placemark collection lets you investigate all this content geospatially, at your leisure. Brought to you by Paul Dorsey.
• More GUI goodness in this press release:
  

  Mechdyne Corporation today announced that its VRCO software division released Conduit for Google Earth Pro 4.0, a visualization middleware package that enables stereoscopic display of desktop-based imagery and viewing in multi-planar , large-scale immersive and interactive displays…

  Do check out this short but, er, immersive video. I’m surprised the guy can stand up at all. No price is given for Conduit, but I’m guessing that if you have to ask…

• A datapoint: Not sure how significant this is but CondoDomain is moving from Virtual Earth to Google Maps because:
  

  Recently, Microsoft Virtual Earth has had difficulties rendering our Geo-coder in the new Firefox 2.0. Supposedly there is a fix for this (as we were told @ Inman Connect NYC), however, we have had zero response from Microsoft….so Microsoft, your out…Google is moving in!

  Is the internet mapping business so cut-throat that Google, Microsoft et al are now also going to have to offer free tech support to their free services to get people to develop for them?

• Andrew Hudson-Smith & co’s Google Earth Panorama viewer makes it to Make: Blog. Greatness awaits.
• David Riallant, he of Pict’Earth, the system for collecting aerial imagery from a lightweight drone and positioning it on Google Earth that made such a splash a few weeks ago, has started up a partnership and a blog with Valery Hronusov, he of Superoverlay, the application for chopping up large images into bit-sized ones so that Google Earth can display them more fluidly.
• Franson’s GpsGate.com lets you publish your GPS position from a GPS-enabled mobile phone to the internet, so friends can follow you around online in real time, including on Google Earth. Here‘s how it works. The only small print: You need to buy the software ($10) but there’s a free trial.

Funniest ending to an article about Google Earth in a while:

The Corrections Department said Google Earth’s images did not reveal any jails’ security features. But Corrections asked The Dominion Post not to mention that prisons could be viewed. Just in case.

What a valiant attempt at security through obscurity. Those are New Zealand jails we aren’t mentioning. Just to be clear. I wonder if inmates have access to Google Earth?

I so want to live in the future. Not too far off, just about to where I can afford me one of these. Or maybe two:

Note the appearance of Google Earth in the video. The person we can thank for this is Jeff Han. Fast Company has an article about him and the company set to produce these, Perceptive Pixel. Data Mining has more if you’re curious.

• Sensor web central: DestinSharks.com releases yet another layer useful to boaters:
  

  Our DestinSharks.com Metar Weather Feed displays the latest weather observations for over 1,700 US locations in Google Earth. These observations include wind speed and direction, temperature, dewpoint, visibility, and general conditions.

  Icons point in the direction of the wind. You can also collect all three layers in a “super link”, also downloadable from the site.

• Kurt Schwehr has a cool demo that demonstrates some very interesting ways in which whale sightings might be visualized. I like his use of polygons to get across triangulation.
• Version 1.1.0 of MapGuide, an open source web-based mapping platform, supports output as KML. Jason Birch explains the details.
• High Earth Orbit‘s Andrew Turner has written an O’Reilly Short Cut book on NeoGeography. A bargain at $8.
• Virtual Earth Blog: Lots of New Birds Eye coverage in Europe. Boy, that’s a long list. Microsoft like totally pwns Google when it comes to imagery of Italy. Vice versa for much of the rest of Europe, though. (Via The Map Room)
• If you want to know more about the Geluidsnet sound/plane sensor web blogged a few days ago, the press release has now been translated into English.
• Great minds think alike? The Sydney Morning Herald reports that both Google and Microsoft will be flying planes over Sydney on National Australia Day, urging Australians to leave their cartographic mark. Google Earth Blog has more about Google’s plan, while here is Microsoft’s project page listing several events across Australia.
• Not noticed before: Geohack turns any geographic coordinate pair into a page linking to that location in more mapping services than you care to shake a stick at. Just play with the URL. Great for automated comparisons.
• A bit mean, but hilarious: Get a First Life. Notice the Google Earth-like button that states “Find out where you actually live.” (Via Tech Crunch)
• Chris Tweedie re-tests Google Earth’s WMS support four months after it first appeared as a beta, and finds some issues resolved, but concludes it is “still very average”.
• The New York Post reviews googlesightseeing.com‘s book, Off the Map.

Fire up Google Earth this morning and you’re in for a European treat. The base layers for Belgium, France, Spain and Portugal have been upgraded from the default global 15m/pixel Terrametrics TruEarth imagery to Spot Image‘s 2.5m/pixel imagery. Spot Image has a page with updated information about the process that generated the imagery:

One SPOT 5 image at 2.5-metre resolution covers 3600 km2.

We therefore needed over 500 images to cover Belgium, France, Luxembourg, Portugal and Spain.

The images were selected from among the most recent available in our catalogue, according to their quality and with as few clouds as possible.

First the images are put together like a giant patchwork and ortho-rectified so that the North is along the vertical axis and the distortion due to relief and viewing angle is removed, then the coverage is made seamless by defining the cut-lines so that the border between two images is virtually invisible (generally along a riverbank or the side of a building). We also take advantage of the overlap between images to get rid of the remaining clouds. The last step is to balance the contrast globally, so that the colours and contrast are as close as possible to the real landscape. [This text replaces an earlier draft.]

I may be wrong, but to the best of my recollection this is the first collaboration between Google and Spot Image.

I also noticed that several new high resolution DigitalGlobe tiles from 2006 are available in Belgium, where I tend to remember what wasn’t there; probably the same is true elsewhere on the globe [update: I was wrong, see comments], but alas I need to get back to work. Do let me know if you find anything.

[Update 1820 UTC: Here is the official press release from Spot Image and Google: I forgot all about Luxembourg!]