A new version of Google Earth is out.
From the changelog:
Features
And then there were two
There’s another blog obsessed with all things Google Earth: Google Earth Blog, written by Frank Taylor. Amazingly, it’s been flying under my radar for nearly a month (perhaps because it isn’t pinging Technorati et al?)
The more Google Earth blogs the merrier — be sure to add it to your bookmarks if you want the most complete coverage possible of Google Earth.
Asteroidal occultations with Google Earth
Google Maps Mania links to a really fine mashup with Google Earth support: Occultation Maps for North America for asteroids.
Asteroidal occultations are like miniature solar eclipses, except it’s with a star instead of the sun and an asteroid instead of the moon. Click on a link to view the paths where the occultations are visible; from there you can download the KML for Google Earth.
Pixagogo adds Google Earth support
Pixagogo adds a KML feed next to its RSS feed for labels, containing all the latest photos for that label, ready for viewing in Google Earth.
What you really need to do to get this to work properly is: Grab the URL of a particular label’s KML feed, go to Google Earth, add a network link, and then paste the URL into the source field. If you just click on the KML feed link in your browser, you will open a static file.
What Pixagogo (and several other sites) could do is offer up a ready-made KMZ network link file that links to the feed, rather than just the feed. This makes subscribing simpler and easier.
Oktoberfest helper
If you need to find a place to eat in Munich this Oktoberfest, going-out guide Gastroguide-Muenchen has poured their entire database into a Google Earth KMZ file.
As they point out, this makes far more sense than an alphabetical listing. Zagat and Time Out, are you listening? (Via)
Zmart layer
Zmarties posts a Google Earth layer that links each country to a wealth of information on the web. Simple, but very effective. It’s tools like these that encourage the use of Google Earth as a first recourse for web-based information gathering.
New US guidelines for disseminating aerial imagery
A US Geological Survey committee on Thursday posted new guidelines for disseminatng aerial imagery of the type Google Earth buys from vendors, according to a GovExec.com article citing the National Journal’s Technology Daily.
Apparently, the new guidelines exist in order to safeguard the public’s access to imagery, rather than to restrict it further:
The decision to draft the guidelines was made because some organizations “curtailed access without assessing the risk to security” before considering the public benefit.
That might be spin, but it just so happens that Google’s imagery recently became less censored, not more. In any case, the new guidelines “do not grant any new authority,” and mainly exist to clarify existing policy.
I went hunting for these guidelines on the USGS website, and soon discovered that this site is in serious need of an information architect to beat some sense into that sprawling mess. It’s fiendishly hard to try to find updated info when none of the component sites talk to each other.
Eventually, I did find a final draft dated June 2005, Guidelines for Providing Appropriate Access to Geospatial Data in Response to Security Concerns, a 3 16-page PDF, on the website of something called the Federal Geographic Data Committee. I’m guessing these are the guidelines that were adopted.
In these guidelines, the uniqueness of information is a factor in deciding whether imagery should be restricted. If imagery is available from open sources elsewhere, the guidelines clearly note, restricting the data is not justified.(None of this applies to non-US data providers.)