• 3D building maker: Dutch company 3dClearEarth is guessing your business may want to have a 3D rendition of its headquarters built as Collada-based KML, ready for inclusion in Google Earth. Packages start at ‚Ǩ300 for one building and go up past ‚Ǩ1,500 for a complex. The sample buildings are very detailed, so for a medium- to large business wanting to make sure that they’re spot on Google Earth is “covered”, this could be the ticket.

  If you read Dutch, local paper Eindhovens Dagblad has an article on the company. Just like everyone else, they need to submit their models to 3D Warehouse, so there is a delay before they show up on the base layer.

  I hadn’t seen pricing on Collada models before — I imagine the barriers to entry in this business are not that high, though one constraint would be the availability of high quality photography of the buildings to be modeled, which would need to be obtained locally if not already available.

• Mobile pollution sensor web: New Scientist reports that in Cambridge (UK), computer scientists have cobbled together a cheap mobile pollution sensor web using bicycle couriers, GPS devices, smartphones and phone-sized pollution sensors that record carbon monoxide, nitrogen oxide, and nitrogen dioxide levels. The devices all talk via bluetooth, and then the phone send the georeferenced data live to a server as the courier cycles about town.

  The bit that is especially interesting for this blog is that the result can then be visualized in Google Maps, and also as a path in Google Earth — with path height depicting pollution levels, as this picture on Daily Wireless shows:

  

  I’d love to try this out in Cairo, though I suspect the pollution sensor would probably just get clogged — if you haven’t been to Cairo, you don’t know the meaning of the word pollution:-) (Via Daily Wireless and Jon (thanks!))

• Highlighting flight paths: Another great bit of innovative KML authoring on Barnabu.co.uk: Flight paths between UK and Irish cities that become visible for each city as you hover its icon. Let’s hope Barnabu’s James Stafford gets to sell this wonderful visualization idea to RyanAir for lots of money — or at least lots of free tickets:-)

Back in September, Ogle Earth linked to the beta of 3D Route Builder for Windows. Version 1.0 has now been released. What does it do? Developer Nick Kopp explains:

It now offers accurate building and editing of GPX, KML/KMZ and Garmin TCX routes directly in Google Earth in terms of location, altitude and time. Time can be shifted and scaled. Altitude can be smoothed and updated producing quality profiles. A powerful new feature is correction of barometric drift. Playback routes in real-time and optionally with absolute altitude so tunnels, bridges, cable car rides and flights are more realistic.

Two things stood out for me: One is the deft embedding of Google Earth proper into the application — it becomes the canvas onto which routes can be manipulated in real time using the app’s ample controls.

Click to enlarge

Second is an innovative two-tier revenue model — either use the free version, which shows Google ads in a popup control window when “touring” your routes, or else pay ‚Ǩ20 to remove the ads and also get some additional functionality. R ead more on Nick’s thinking behind this revenue model on his blog. (I have no idea whether such a use of Adsense is kosher, but I’m sure we’ll find out:-)

It’s pretty clear Nick is a perfectionist, for whom even the latest GPS devices are simply not accurate enough:-) Hence this tool, which really gives you pinpoint precision control over every element (or range of elements) in a route.

It’s only January 3 and yet we may already have the year’s weirdest Google Earth story on our hands. When I first read the Kampala-based Weekly Observer‘s “Uganda: Google to Find Kabaka’s Land” I was convinced it was parody on par with the Onion. How else could you explain paragraphs like:

As the dispute between [Ugandan] President Museveni’s government and the Kingdom of Buganda over land heats up, the latter has hired leading Internet search company Google to “search and map” all the kingdom’s land in Buganda.

and

The Buganda kingdom is hoping to use Google to prove the Uganda government wrong. “We have decided to produce bwino [documentary evidence] concerning our land. With its search, mapping and satellite technologies, Google will be able to pinpoint Buganda’s land, and the government will not have any more excuses for not returning it,” a source close to the Kabaka [Buganda’s tribal king] told The Analyst.

and

“Google can even get you a picture of a mulalo [person originating from western Uganda] urinating on the Kabaka’s tree or a government official forging the kyapa [title] to the Kabaka’s land. So all that monkey business – with due respect to the Nkima clan – will be no more,” the Mengo [seat of the Buganda monarchy] source told The Analyst.

I googled ‘Buganda’, and soon found myself drawn into the fascinating world of local Ugandan politics. The article is legit! [See below] My sources for the following short primer are a Wikipedia article on Buganda and The Weekly Observer article “Uganda: Why Kabaka Refused to Meet Museveni” [not satire].

(But before we begin: There is actually a joke in that last quote, above. Nkima means ‘monkey’ in the local Luganda language, and the current Kabaka, Ronald Muwenda Mutebi II, is married to a member of the Nkima/Monkey clan.)

So: Uganda is comprised of several kingdoms, including Buganda (the red bit on the map), whose kings have no real power but do have the loyalty of their subjects, along clan lines. The central government of Uganda, headed by President Yoweri Museveni, has been wary of these allegiances as a potential threat to the unity of the state (Kenya being the current cautionary tale). Buganda’s king, the Kabaka, meanwhile suspects the central government is out to undermine his influence.

How might the central government go about this? The Kabaka is the largest landlord in Buganda. By amending the Land Act of 1998, which is what Museveni’s government is currently proposing to do, title holders would no longer be allowed to sell land without consulting its tenants. And if a landlord wants to sell it, tenants would get first right of refusal. According to The Weekly Observer, the government’s stated motivation for the amendment is that when deeds were first granted in 1900, they were not done so fairly. The proposal would tilt the playing field in favor of landless tenants. It is seen as a populist move.

The Kabaka is obviously not taking this lying down. He’s set up a “Land Committee” whose aim is to “sensitise” Bugandans to the implications of the land reform, and explain why it would be bad for Buganda. Apparently, herdsmen from Western Uganda have been migrating to Buganda, and they would be able to buy land via the first right of refusal. This would dilute Bugandan ownership of Bugandan land, which is upsetting to the Kabaka.

(It is far from clear to me who, if anyone, has the moral high ground here.)

But why is the Kabaka calling on Google? According to the article, the Ugandan government has insinuated that some of the Kabaka’s titles might be fake. The Kabaka, in response, claims the central government owes Buganda 9,000 square miles of land. And apparently, Google is going to find it for him. But will it make a difference? Well…

[Ugandan] Government spokesman, Mr. Mulundi, was however adamant that nothing Buganda did would change government’s position on land.

“They can bring Google or Giggle… The Uganda government will stick with the peasants who, quite honestly, don’t know what is going on,” he said.

Alas, I seriously doubt Google has decided to enter the territorial adjudication business, or that it is about to announce Google Earth Pro with a new “territorial adjudicator” feature. We can still wish for it, of course, as it would certainly make peace on Earth a whole lot easier. In any event, the adjudicator tool would be beta for ages, so all decisions would just be provisional:-)

The big picture: Kidding aside, Google is being ascribed powers in Ugandan civil society that are beginning to take on mythical qualities. It’s quite an astonishing window into the popular culture there, and the place Google has achieved in it. “Appealing to Google” has become a way of proclaiming one’s innocence or advertising a perceived injustice. The subtext is that Google knows the actual answer, somewhere — that’s omniscience of the kind more often ascribed to God as conventionally imagined.

[Update 2008-01-04: It is a satirical piece (see comments). The dispute is real, and the post above is accurate, save for the quotes from that Analyst column. And of course, the Kabaka did not hire Google. I’ve been had — congrats to the Analyst:-) Check out “Kabaka sets terms to meet Museveni” for more non-satirical context.]

[Update 2: More in-jokes in the satire piece explained here.]

Clear Sky Clock forecasts when in North America your nights might be clear enough for some good sky gazing. Such forecasts are highly local, which means there is an obvious opportunity for a geosavvy solution here. And indeed:

You can drill down on your local region using a Google Map; each area has its own home page, for example for Vernonia, Oregon, from which you can additionally get a light pollution map. The very cool thing about the light pollution map is that you can also get it as a KML image overlay. This way you can find the darkest spots with precision.

Clear Sky Clock’s features don’t stop there — there are plenty of links from each local area’s home page to other astronomy resources, all geared towards letting you know what’s happening in the sky near you. You can even have news of propitious viewing conditions sent to your email or mobile phone. (Via the Baltimore Sun’s Maryland Weather blog)

Welcome to 2008. Let’s get to work:

• War views: The Swiss Federal Institute of Technology has published a really interesting dynamic KML layer: WarViews: “Visualizing and Animating Geographic Data on Conflict.” The idea is that if you map data that is usually associated with the causes of conflicts, such as ethnic groups, oil deposits and pipelines, and diamond fields, you get a better understanding of existing conflicts and regions prone to conflict.

  WarViews is also a sort of best practices example when it comes to using open-source software: The static browser-based version uses OpenLayers, and content is served with with GeoServer.

• Map tiles for everyone: TileCache 2.0, “a Python-based web tile server,” is out. (Announcement). Christopher Schmidt at Technical Ramblings blog points out that TileCache “now has limited support for KML SuperOverlays, allowing you to use browse your worldwide dataset in Google Earth”. TileCache also supports Mobile GMaps, letting you serve your tiles to mobile phones with ease. (BTW, the most recent version of Mobile GMaps, from December 31 2007, supports OpenAerialMap imagery.
• Geo convert: Also via Technical Ramblings: OpenLayers Format Conversion, a simple web tool for converting between GeoJSON, KML, GeoRSS and GML.
• Text to KML icons: Yet another Valery Hronusov hack: He and Sergey Devyatkov wrote a PHP script that takes text, coordinates and styling parameters as part of a URL and returns KML with a PNG image icon of the text at the specified location. It also works with charts — in other words, it automates the process of wrapping KML around charts, as described by the Maps API Blog last month.
• Road safety: Taiwan is georeferencing all its road accident data with a view to making it publicly available as a KML file.
• Python hack: Control Google Earth’s API in Windows with Python, using pywin32.
• GPS Photo Linker: GPS Photo Linker for the Mac is now Leopard compatible.
• Google Maps route to KML: Export Google Maps multi-destination routes to Google Earth using Barry Hunter’s latest web tool. (All of Barry’s collected tools here.)
• Search and Rescue redux: How to turn the impromptu online aerial imagery search for Steve Fossett into a sustainable infrastructure for future such searches? You create InternetSAR.org, Internet Search and Rescue, the result of a post on Google Earth Community. Currently, you can help look for pilot Ron Boychuk. Vancouver’s The Province newspaper’s blog posts about it.
• GPS iPhone? Well, the add-on looks a bit vapory, but mmmm. (Via Mapperz)
• Live weather: Another cool global live weather dynamic KML overlay from this page. (Via Flyer.co.uk)
• Neogeo paper: Science Daily flags Michael Goodchild’s “Citizens as sensors: the world of volunteered geography” in GeoJournal and writes:
  

  [Goodchild] concludes that “collectively volunteered geographic information represents a dramatic innovation that will certainly have profound impacts on geographic information systems and more generally on the discipline of geography and its relationship to the general public.”

  (Via Slashdot)

• iPhone + Google Sky redux: Alasdair Allan at the Daily Ack has another go at bringing Google Sky to the iPhone, this time using Google Code UI.

One of the advantages of having multiple companies providing internet-based maps is that it makes censorship a less feasible proposition for a government — akin to playing a game of wack-a-mole. It’s an entirely positive development for us end-users, because if the source material for the Netherlands in Google Earth is overly censored, why not try Virtual Earth or Yahoo Maps?

Take the example of the office of the “Dienst Vastgoed Defensie”, aka Defence Property Services department, in The Hague. The aerial photography in Google Earth and Maps was over-enthusiastically censored by Dutch authorities before being released to the public domain back in 2006:

For whatever reason, the recently updated version in Microsoft Virtual Earth suffers from a much lighter censor’s touch. A medium-resolution satellite version doesn’t suffer from censorship at all (as Dutch authorities have no jurisdiction over satellite imagery):

Virtual Earth’s high-resolution aerial imagery suffers censorship at a much lower grain of pixellation than Google’s, and also over a smaller area:

Ditto for bird’s eye view:

Finally, for comparison, Yahoo’s Maps’ effort, a satellite image that is not censored:

This game can be repeated for any of the over 100 Dutch censored sites as identified by this layer in Google Earth Community. In other words, due to competition things are getting better, not worse, when it comes to tools for circumventing web-based map censorship attempts.

• Ipoki: The idea of letting friends know where you are live on the map and following friends around yourself is a pretty seductive one. I’ve been using GMap-Track on this blog to update my whereabouts, but that application is not the only player in this geosocial application space. Now there is Spanish-origin Ipoki, newly relaunched (it used to be called hipoqih) and ready for the big time. Ipoki works as a small application on GPS-enabled phones, or you can also set your location manually from the website.

  The functionality of Ipoki and GMap-Track is very similar: Both have privacy controls, people search and the ability to let you embed a live location map on your website. Ipoki has a few more Facebookish features, such as a “what you are doing” status line you can fill in and commenting features. Ipoki also lets you view your friends as a live KML network link, and lets you link to unique permalinked pages to track individual users (I am at www.ipoki.com/maps/belmeloro).

  But GMap-Track’s phone application, Mobile Gmaps, hasn’t been standing still — the latest version allows you to load KML files direct from your memory card, which is a great way to take KML data into the field with you. (Extra tip: Use Gmap-Track’s public map to compare Yahoo, Microsoft and Google’s map offerings, as all are available to choose from.)

• Geoflock: Got Flock? It’s a newish, free social-networking savvy browser that appears to be having something of a resurgence. If you do, get Geoflock, a plugin that gives you a wealth of mapping tools within the browser. For example, it can
  

  Create and save a sidebar map using the addresses or address links you find on web pages, or by manually adding locations. Show traffic Info, drag and drop kml files and geotag Flickr photos within the Flock photo uploader. There is a great deal of additional functionality which is hard to sum up, such as automatic geoURL/geotag discovery, support for Google Earth, Platial.com, getting directions; loc.alize.us…

  Automatic discovery and viewing of maps relevant to a web site is a great bit of functionality, methinks.

• Ordnance Survey in Google Earth: Ah, finally, UK’s Ordnance Survey’s mapping tiles are put to use in a productive manner — as a dynamic overlay in Google Earth, thanks to Gavin Brock. No doubt this breaks all manner of EULA, but check it out in the meantime as an example of what the data could do it if it were open and freely accessible:

  

  (Via Naquada)

• GPS2KML: C-GPS2KML is not the first application to convert GPS logs to KML, but it does have an impressive feature set and a myriad of display options. It’s free, comes in Windows and Linux versions, has a detailed manual, and the screenshot eye candy is very enticing. Check it out. (The only competitor I can think of when it comes to similar customizable display options is the web-based app GPS Visualizer)
• Virual Earth dataset update: Microsoft Virtual Earth comes out with another mammoth dataset update, including 15,000 square kilometers of 3D urban landscapes (almost all of it in the US) and heaps of bird’s eye views, aerial and satellite imagery (a bit all over).

  Reaffirming a previous observation: Microsoft’s data gathering priority is above all urban areas, and primarily the developed world, whereas Google’s collection is far more indiscriminate — but in a good way: If, as Thomas Friedman argues, “the world is flat”, this is in part because even out-of-the-way places can now finally get equal footing in the cartography stakes.

• ESRI ArcGIS Explorer update: James Fee points us in the direction of a new release of ESRI ArcGIS Explorer — Build 440. My favorite new feature: Popups can use a full complement of HTML tags, including Javascript and CSS! Now wouldn’t it make everyone’s life easier if KML supported that?!
• Geology visualization: Frank at Google Earth Blog and Richard Treves at Google Earth Design write up a great new geology visualization technique using Google Earth by Declan De Poar of Worcester Polytechnic Institute, presented at the AGU’s annual conference last week.