Sometimes the actions of a remarkable person on a remote island forever mark that place, turning it into an destination for future generations of adventurous fans. Some well-known examples are Paul Gauguin with Hiva Oa, Father Damien with Molokai, Ernest Shackleton with Elephant Island and Robert Louis Stevenson with Upolu.

Then there is the case of Tom Neale, who is less famous, though no less remarkable. In 1952, at the age of 50, he decided to cast off from society and survive by himself on an uninhabited and remote atoll in the South Pacific. He then wrote a book about his adventures — An Island to Oneself, published in 1966 — which ever since has enjoyed cult status among adventurers and lovers of the South Pacific. He ended up living on his island for a total of 16 years in three stints, up until shortly before his death in 1977.

The “island” Neale had to himself is Suwarrow atoll, atop a lone and remote seamount in the northern Cook Islands, out of the way of shipping routes. I was unaware of both Neale and Suwarrow until yesterday, when I learned that two friends are planning to drop anchor there on their sail across the Pacific. I wondered what attracted them to Suwarrow, so I googled the place. Tom Neale’s adventures immediately stood out, and brought the place to life.

Soon, I discovered that long extracts of Neale’s book are available online (part 1, part 2, part 3). Be careful, because it makes for addictive reading: I thought I’d skim it in 15 minutes, but several hours later I was still at it, rapt, and managed to finish the book today.

Neale goes into meticulous detail about what surviving on a deserted island requires, along with the mishaps that befell him, the lucky escapes, and tales of the infrequent (and often dumbfounded) visitors. But the book’s appeal transcends its narrow focus, because his life plays out a fantasy many of us have had from the safety of our cubicle offices — what would it be like to be Robinson Crusoe, for real?

No wonder my friends are headed that way, to take in, just for a day or two, Neale’s world. Rhian and Andy are sailing across the Pacific from Chile (and blogging the trip, including their harrowing account of destruction and rescue when the Chile quake tsunami hit the Juan Fernandez islands). Rhian is an Antarctic research scientist while Andy is an ex-military adventurer-climber, so their attraction to Neale’s tale of extreme self-sufficiency makes perfect sense.

Neale’s book describes his atoll very precisely — the lengths and shapes of the various islets, the location of the pier he tries to repair, his cabin, the beaches he combs for flotsam, the trees he uses for food or tools… All of it ripe for enhancement with Google Earth.

Sure enough, Google Earth delivers very high resolution imagery from several different dates: February 5 and January 13, 2009, as well as from April 5, 2005 and November 17, 2004. Each set has different strengths — for example, the 2004 imagery has the most glorious turquoise views of the reefs. On all images you can see the pier, his cabin, the beaches, even the specific trees he mentions, and you can certainly count the crowns of the palm trees.

(To scrub between these different images, zoom in on Suwarrow, turn on the historical imagery slider and drag the marker to the different dates.)

Here is a KMZ file for Google Earth pinpointing the location of Suwarrow, and adding many of the places Neale mentions. Place names were added after cross-checking with this high resolution map of Suwarrow.

Strangely, around the atoll there is a large (15km) discrepancy between Google’s place name database and the satellite imagery. (The high resolution map linked to above corresponds to the satellite imagery). Geonames.org also shows a (smaller) discrepancy, so there is definitely a need to reconcile these diverging datasets.

These days, all of Suwarrow Atoll is a national park and one of the Pacific’s most important bird breeding areas. A caretaker lives on the island during the off-cyclone season, with perhaps 50 yachts per year visiting. (You can see several boats at anchor in the 2005 imagery.) A room in Neale’s cabin has been preserved just as he left it.

It’s people and places like Neale on Suwarrow that make the world such an interesting place. It’s just up to us to get out and go find them.

• UK's The Sun sees Jesus in a field in Google Earth – again
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Google’s problems in mainland China appear to be coming to a head these past 48 hours, with both google.cn and the China-localized Google Maps in danger of being shut down soon.

Most discussed among the pundits has been Google’s application for the renewal of the Internet Content Provider (ICP) license for Google.cn — read Google’s own announcement, and this take on the chances of it succeeding. The game may be up within hours.

Less publicized has been the uncertainty surrounding the fate of ditu.google.cn, The localized Google Maps implementation that abides by Chinese law when it comes to borders and names. For US users, the ditu.google.cn server is in Mountain View, but for Chinese users, the server is in China, as prescribed by Chinese law.

But Chinese law has more in store: Soon, only approved companies will be allowed to serve internet maps in China, and on June 28 a draft list of 23 companies up for approval was circulated (translated) — with Google missing from the list. 19 of the 23 are large state cartographic and geospatial institutions (“Land Surveying and Mapping Institute of Shandong”, “Yellow River Hydrological Bureau of Surveying and Mapping”), but four provide internet map services, of which one is Google competitor Baidu. All are Chinese.

A Reuters article quotes government sources saying that this list is not final, so Google may yet be added if it sufficiently toes some kind of line. The above list will be circulated for a week, so that interested parties can comment on it. It is not clear when these approvals will be meted out, but in the original explication of the law, December 2010 is mentioned as the date when unregistered maps will be cracked down upon and a blacklist circulated.

If in the next few days Google loses the license to operate google.cn inside China, all of this will be moot. In that case, an uncensored maps.google.com will still be available to mainland China users, and a Chinese-language uncensored version at maps.google.com.hk. Chinese authorities will then have to decide whether to start blocking access to Google Maps using their “great” firewall. If Google Maps goes, it is only reasonable to assume Google Earth will go too. The next few days will tell.

• GeoPlatform – Gulf Response
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DPReview flags the release by Adobe of a GPS data panel for Adobe Photoshop CS5, Bridge CS5, Fireworks, Flash, Illustrator and InDesign. Download it free for Mac or PC.

Once installed, if you have a photograph containing GPS metadata open in one of these applications, you can view the data through the File > File Info menu option — that’s where all the Extensible Metadata Platform (XMP) panels reside, including any custom ones you might install.

It’s a very basic addition, far short of the kind of georeferencing support seen in iPhoto and Aperture, but it is better than nothing if you happen to be in Photoshop and want to check an image’s coordinates or see if it has coordinate metadata at all.

Not content to launch a new version of Google Earth for the traditional operating systems, Google also today quietly released version 3.0 of Google Earth for Apple’s iOS, now with native support for the iPad. Download it on the iTunes store.

The iPad version of Google Earth makes good use of the extra screen real-estate: Pop-ups are opened inside the 3D view. This latest version also adds road layers on the iPad and iPhone 3GS. (Via Electronista)

Google Earth 5.2 is out. Download it.

Over on Google’s official Lat-Long Blog, Peter Birch has the announcement and the overview of new features.

This latest release focuses on improving the visualization of user-generated data collected via the many GPS devices on the market today. GE 5.2 comes with two new powerful tools for analyzing your GPS-tracked trips: Tracks, and the visualization of elevation profiles and telematics:

Tracks: Previously, if you wanted to import GPS data into Google Earth you would either end up with a large collection of detailed points or else a much more compact linestring of the path that removed most of the point data. With GE 5.2, Google introduces an extension to KML called tracks, which aims to give you the best of both worlds. Briefly, tracks let you assign multiple time values to an object. This object can be a point, but can also be a complicated 3D model, say of a sailboat. Using tracks also lets GE 5.2 interpolate positions between the given time data.

The KML Reference page is now updated with a thorough explanation of the new <gx:Track> extension to KML. This is the place to start for all development of what will surely become the de facto means of visualizing GPS data in Google Earth. GE 5.2’s GPS importer creates these tracks automatically, but you can of course also roll your own.

Elevation profiles: In GE 5.2, you can right-click on any track or linestring in the Places sidebar to select “Show Elevation Profile”. A new panel appears at the bottom of the window graphing relevant data such as height and speed. If you select a range of data, you get information such as total distance, elevation changes, maximum slopes, average speeds and much more. It’s quite a sophisticated tool and best grasped simply by playing with it — Dan Barcay’s post on Google Lat-Long Blog provides some sample tracks to use.

In addition, if you collect other data with your GPS device — such as heart-rate data — this too can be visualized if imported.

There is a third major new feature in GE 5.2:

Embedded browser: Now that Google Chrome is a mature cross-platform web browser, why not leverage it in Google Earth? GE 5.2 seamlessly integrates the web browser across all three platforms — PC. Mac and Linux. (Older Windows versions of GE inherited a IE-based split-screen browser that always felt tacked-on and which never gained much traction. This implementation is much better, and universal.)

If you click on a URL in GE 5.2, for example in a pop-up, you no longer leave the application and open your default browser — the 3D map is replaced by a full-window web browser pane. However, if you don’t like this intrusion of Chrome into your web surfing habits (or if you need your usual complement of shortcuts and plugins) you can turn off this default behavior in the preferences pane: Go to the General tab, and turn on “show web results in external browser”.

Embedding a web browser in Google Earth is a nice corollary to the embedding of Google Earth in web browsers via the Google Earth plugin, and it neatly illustrates the fact that the web browser and geobrowser are really just different sides of the same coin — highly evolved adaptations of data browsers. In the case of the geobrowser, that data’s most salient organizational aspect is its geographic location; For the web browser, location is not as important as the semantic neighborhood of the data, determined by links and URLs and such.

In may cases, however, the data straddles this divide, and could be usefully explored in either context. This is why I miss a split-window view in GE 5.2, where both geo- and web browser are visible simultaneously. Currently, the relationship between the geo- and web browser is one-way — actions in the geobrowser lead to the rendering of a URL location in the web browser. Why not have the geobrowser’s view change as the result of activity in the web browser? For example, visiting the web site of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in NYC could have the geobrowser component of GE 5.2 zoom in on the physical location and all the content that is nearby, and hence relevant.

NMEA: One more smaller feature, as per the release notes: GE 5.2 can now read NMEA files, as well as Garmin GDB, Garmin Training Center, and Ozi Explorer files. Previously, you needed an external application to convert these file formats into KML.

For the pros: Google Earth Pro gets a much-improved GIS importer that fully supports KML 2.2 and which lets you generate and handle GeoTIFFs, including their conversion to superoverlays. Pro also comes with additional default data layers for the US: Parcel data (useful for real estate), demographic data (down to the block level) and historical traffic data. The price for Google Earth Pro remains $400 per year. The release notes contain full information on the changes.

Finally, what’s missing? I’m still waiting for the cloud to hit Google Earth – so that my Places can be saved and synced and shared via the cloud, using my Google account.