I’m back in Cambridge for the weekend, getting IPY.org out the door. In the meantime, here’s some commentary on my airport reading:

Andrew Hudson-Smith points to an article/op-ed piece in the Guardian (where he is quoted) that laments the copyright squabbles that are keeping a 3D building layer of London out of Google Earth:

Google was equally enthusiastic and approached the university about incorporating Virtual London into its city maps.

At the moment, London boroughs can use Virtual London under licences they have with Ordnance Survey [OS] and Infoterra, which supplied the Lidar data. What nobody can do is put the model on the web for all to see. Google’s approach “led to some discussion between OS and Google”.

However, these discussions appear to have reached an impasse. The sticking point is understood to be Google’s attempt to negotiate a fixed fee for the data, rather than accepting Ordnance Survey’s practice of charging by the number of transactions. Ordnance Survey would not comment on the specific case, but said that a fixed fee would “wreck the level playing field for other partners” – and it should be noted that it is obliged to treat all customers (including itself) on the same terms. OS said it is happy for its data to be used in a “Google-type” environment. “Sites such as Multimap and Streetmap use our data and their services are freely available to the public over the web.”

[…]The impasse illustrates the difficulty faced by Ordnance Survey in adapting its licensing policies for the new age.

When GIS was a specialized field, pay per use wouldn’t bankrupt anyone, nor make anyone rich. But when the number of potential users for this data reaches the hundreds of millions, then it really is time to come up with another model for rewarding innovation, especially when the cost of duplicating content asymptotically approaches zero. In other words, OS’s other partners are also being overcharged, now that the data in question is ready for mainstream consumption.

Interestingly, (I know, I’m using that word too much of late) the article is part of a wider campaign by the Guardian to make tax-payer funded data free to all. But Google wasn’t even asking for free data — it just wanted a licensing model that can scale with the rising popularity of geobrowsers.

Contrast all this with a recent more successful model for collaboration: NASA giving its raw data away in return for help from Google in processing it and serving it. Perhaps the Ordinance Survey and Google could try out something more creative along those lines — could OS use some time or room on Google’s server farms for some projects, perhaps? Surely some Google technology would be of use to OS in some kind of barter deal?

(Malicious afterthought: There must be a fixed cost to getting this data for oneself, without OS’s help. Perhaps Google could collaborate with open-source initiatives like OpenStreetMap to obtain a duplicate set, and then there would be no need to for anyone to license this data from OS anymore. This prospect in turn might drive OS to make a fixed-cost deal.)

• Military site Strategy Page looks at the effect Google Earth had in 2006… among US troops:
  

  Google Earth’s major problem was not it’s ease-of-use, but the manner in which it showcased the shortcomings of the American NGA (National Geospatial Intelligence Agency). The NGA is responsible for taking the satellite photos, spiffing them up as needed, and getting them to the troops. Trouble is, the stuff still isn’t getting to the troops that need it, when they need it. This was made very obvious when Google Earth showed up, and demonstrated how you can get satellite images to anyone, when they need it, with minimal hassle.

  That was the case too for when disaster strikes — such as with Katrina and the quake in Pakistan during 2005.

• An image of a brave new world that makes me very happy. It’s easy to be optimistic about the future when stuff like this is happening.
• You may have heard of FON, a grassroots wifi network of Spanish origin that is Big in Japan. There is now a Google Maps mashup that shows you where the FON wifi hotspots are, and it comes with a KML link. (Via Going My Way, whose author is definitely an early adopter)
• There’s a new Japanese Google Earth fan site on my radar screen: Noblesse Oblige. It comes with its own blog and wiki. I don’t understand much of it, but it looks promising:-)
• Tip of the week from Valery:-) In Gmail, if you compose a new email message, you can add event info, and there, too, you can add KML files in the “Where” field:

There is a new geotagging site on the block. Right from the get-go, Geonomy sports over 400,000 georeferenced locations — wikipedia articles, National Geospatial Intelligence Agency data, user-added content, geographic features — all of it searchable, viewable in Google Maps, and browsable by category and tag. Add to this USGS topo maps and US weather as overlays in Google maps. The pièce de resistance, however: Each category and tag has its own KML link for instant viewing in Google Earth. I just wish they’d be dynamic network links.

The site is the work of Ben Lewis and Scott Melby. Here’s how they explain what they’re doing:

Geonomy does not aim to be a warehouse of map information but rather an index to place descriptions which already exist on the web. Geonomy does aim to help expand the list of existing descriptions, improve the geographic locations of existing features, and to help improvements make it back into Wikipedia and other repositories.

That makes Geonomy more like Wikimapia and Geonames.org than Tagzania. One thing is for sure: The bestiary of georeferencing sites sure has grown this past year to contain some very varied specimens.

If you’re curious for more, Scott Melby is interviewed about Geonomy over on Profy. Interestingly, Scott also runs a wine blog — now georeferenced, of course. (Via The Blog Herald)

Last Friday, the WSJ reported that Microsoft and Ford are set to announce Sync at the Detroit auto show and the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas in the second week of January.

What is Sync? The WSJ calls it

A hands-free Bluetooth wireless system and in-vehicle operating system developed by Microsoft that will eventually be an option for its entire Ford brand lineup, according to people familiar with the matter.

The WSJ sees this as a necessary move for Microsoft to combat the lead Apple has with its in-car iPod connectors. But there is another motive for Microsoft to invade the car cockpit — one that’s just as good, if not better than a defensive move in the iPod stakes:

Localized search with in-car navigation.

Google and Volkswagen announced their collaboration on a navigation system based on Google Earth at last year’s Consumer Electronics Show, and had something to show for it by March, though it continues to be in development. (Some enthusiasts couldn’t wait and made their own.)

Microsoft finds it imperative to have a presence in cars, to keep both Apple and Google in check. But it’s not clear yet just how extensive the navigation functionality of Sync will be — the WSJ says only that “In many cases, the technology will be integrated into a navigation system.”

What is clear, however, is that if Microsoft comes up with something next week that does not in any way leverage its Virtual Earth 3D and/or Live Local capabilities, then it will have dropped the ball. Google Earth and Virtual Earth are like TomToms on steroids, and there is evidently strong demand for in-car navigation of this sort. Putting the map where most people use it (in the car) is obviously a good idea.

University of Alaska Fairbanks’ Matt Nolan has produced an online video that uses his research on Alaska’s McCall Glacier to explain the anatomy of a glacier and how glaciologists do their work. It had me watching with rapt attention. I don’t think I’ve ever learned so much about glaciers in so little time.

The video sets the bar for how virtual globes can be used as presentation tools. It also shows off nicely the abilities of EarthSLOT, a free virtual globe that Matt developed using Skyline’s TerraExplorer technology, and which he could thus customize with height mesh data that has a higher accuracy than Google Earth’s for the region:

But the video also whets the appetite for how virtual globes could and should be used as presentation tools, because what we really want to do is view such presentations in the virtual globe itself, with a scripted camera, a voiceover track, and layers or objects that load and unload at the appropriate time. Matt’s EarthSLOT has some of this functionality built in — you can download some components of the tour in the middle of this page (though without voice, for example: Matt added that in post-production for the video.)

Soon, conceivably, such a presentation might be delivered via a KML file that plays in Google Earth or a KML-compatible virtual globe. And when you’re done with the presentation, the contents of the KML file would be available as layers for you to explore at your leisure.

Such virtual globe presentation technology would be useful for much more than just science presentations. You could give guided tours of SketchUp houses or city neighborhoods, narrate your travels, or re-enact historical battles.

• In November, Google Earth Team’s Jessica Pfund gave a one-hour Google Tech Talk that serves as a great introduction to Google Earth, its user interface and the things you can do with it beyond looking at your house. The talk has now been posted to Google Video. I too learned something: Double right-clicking will zoom you out in Google Earth.

  The video is a link worth sending to anyone you know who still hasn’t caught the Google Earth bug (and who has a free hour). (Also, with hindsight, Jessica’s T-shirt was quite a hint about where Google would be acquiring next.) (Via SEO by the Sea)

• Another blogger likes the 3DConnexion SpaceNavigator.
• If you use iGO navigation software for PocketPC or have a Mio GPS navigation device (both popular in Europe), then you might be interested in a point-of-interest (POI) Editor that lets you drag KML files (among others) to the app and thus to your device.

• DestinSharks’ Virgil Zetterlind is kind enough to host Intel’s demo game, Mars Sucks, on his server. Here is his blog post announcing the link. It’ll be up as long as it isn’t popular:-)
• Time Magazine’s Wilson Rothman likes 3DConnexion’s SpaceNavigator. But he finds it “annoying” that you can’t use it for anything besides Google Earth. A month ago nobody had even thought of navigating desktop applications in 3D, and now Rothman’s main “complaint” is that he can’t. Still, I guess it’s the kind of frustration you want customers to have.
• Remember that bogus website Download-Earth, which misappropriates Richard Treves’ Kokae tutorial screencasts of Google Earth without permission and then tries to get you to click on a paid referral link for Firefox, pretending it’s for Google Earth?

  Well now there is another site, Google Earth Tips 360, that has the exact same spiel. Once again, Richard Treves’s screencasts are used without permission, and once again, you are invited to download Google Earth by clicking on a referral link for downloading FireFox.

  

  There are some strange people out there.

• Garmin announces that their Training Centersoftware for their sports GPS devices is ready for the Mac, as promised earlier this year. It’ll be available at the MacWorld Expo Jan 8-12, and then as a download later in the month. The app integrates well with Motionbased.com, which already supports the Mac, and which lets you export KML.