Blogwise lists over 50,000 blogs in its directories for you to browse. Those blogs that have position metatags in their headers can now be browsed in Google Earth via a dynamically generated KML file that lists the 50 blogs closest to the center of your view.
If you don’t yet have Google Earth (i.e. you are a Mac user) then you can still do this via Blogwise’s Blog Maps. The advantage in using Google Earth, however, is that you can see more than one layer of data at a time. In Google Earth, you can now simultaneously see the closest Blogwise blogs, del.icio.us links and Flickr photos if you want (and a lot more). We’re beginning to have some serious functionality here.
So, if your blog hasn’t been submitted yet to Blogwise, perhaps now is a good time. And if your blog does not yet have positioning metadata, here is what you do: Use this souped up version of Google Maps (in Satellite mode outside the USA) to center yourself on the map, find your latitude and longitude (displayed below the map) and then use these instructions to add a position meta tag to the header of your blog.
Brazilian blogger Charles Pilger has posted some simple but nifty php hacks (and the code) that are a great example for those wanting to start coding Google Earth’s KML markup.
The basic version of Google Earth is free — and plenty impressive. This makes life harder for those inhabiting the GIS Earth ogling competitive space. GIS professional and blogger James Fee weighs in.
In the amateur atlas aficionado space, I can’t help but feel that Software MacKiev’s gorgeously designed 3D Weather Globe & Atlas suffers from atrocious product launch timing. At any other time I’d have forked over the $40, but now I’d rather wait for the Mac version of Google Earth, even though Google Earth Mac likely won’t have the lovely interface MacKiev’s product does. That’s because in the end, levels of detail, the open standards and concomitant hackability (for example, the ability to add your own weather map overlays should you so choose, or anything else for that matter) are far more important. That said, I would love it were Google to buy MacKiev’s product for the GUI.
Just as you can circumvent music DRM by recording the audio, you can record video from your flybys in the free version of Google Earth with this nifty hack. Otherwise, you’d need the pro version.
Re yesterday’s stereoscopic images and the wish for a “live” version of them: If you can record Google Earth video from one path, you can record the video from two paths. If one path is translated slightly vis-a-vis the other, you’d have left and right video. Mesh them together in Final Cut Pro and voila — stereoscopic video.
The problem, of course, is that with the level of detail Google Earth manages, it’s rather harder to fudge borders. Perhaps a layer containing all disputed territories is in order?
Or perhaps we could resort to virtual wars on Google Earth rather than on the real thing. Anyone for a game of Google Earth Risk? Now that is a hack I’ll patiently wait for. (As it turns out, somebody seems to be working on a version for Google Maps. And many more games besides.)
Beenmapped.com, which extends the notion of the bookmark to include physical locations, as of today also provides a link to a KML file for each bookmark, ready for opening that same spot in Google Earth.
(Safari for the Mac misses crucial bits of the site, as it has poor support for XSLT, apparently, but it works fine in Firefox.)
On my wishlist: the ability to keep and organize lists of my own location bookmarks, like I can with URLs in del.icio.us, instead of still needing to add them to my browser’s actual bookmarks. But otherwise this site is coming along very nicely.
Notes on the political, social and scientific impact of networked digital maps and geospatial imagery, with a special focus on Google Earth.