• Thirteen minutes into the most recent BBC Television’s Click new-technology program, there is a 5-minute report on 3D mapping, with a focus on Graz-based Vexcel, which Microsoft bought to get hold of its aerial digital camera system for Virtual Earth’s cities. Read the related story, or just click on the Watch Now button to see the program. Interesting quote:
  

  Director of Microsoft Photogrammetry [and Vexcel founder] Dr. Franz Leberl says: “The aerial mapping field is one of the few domains where film was still relevant. In other areas film has long been documented to be dead, so I think with this camera we are contributing also to doing away with film in the aerial mapping.

• Youtube video of the TED presentation by Stephen Lawler, general manager of Microsoft Virtual Earth. Blog istartedsomething picks out the highlights, including “cute view”. I especially like the part at the end of the video where he blends bird-eye view imagery with the 3D map. Worth a look.
• Healthmap.org: A really well-done Google Maps-based realt-time global disease alert map. (Thanks Jonathan Thompson)
• Those of you lucky enough to live in the promised land (as in, chosen by Apple for the launch of the iPhone), here is a KML file of all AT&T stores where you will be able to get one on June 29, in addition to Apple stores.
• Antony Loewenstein says access to Google Earth’s servers is blocked in Iran. That would make Iran and Morocco the only two countries where such a blockage is in effect.
• Plazes, a European web service that lets you share connections between events, people and places, now does KML.
• Andrew Turner at High Earth Orbit

  writes a completely sensible and clear precis on how exactly KML and GeoRSS could coexist. Still, if KML is to HTML as GeoRSS is to RSS, then what I really want is GeoCSS.

• A bit late to mention here, but very very cool: In addition to having GPS, a 5 megapixel camera, wireless communication abilities, a huge memory and an open operating system, the Nokia N95 is very light. Which makes it the perfect choice to be programmed for imagery acquisition from atop a remote-controlled plane. Pict’Earth does it again, with live positioning in Google Earth. Not surprisingly, Valery Hronusov was instrumental to the improvement over the previous, heavier solution.
• Google Earth Blog and Barnabu.co.uk share details on how to add a realistic sky to your close-up view of Google Earth, ideal for when taking snapshots of city-scapes.

One of the highlights for me of ISDE5 a few weeks ago was the portable domes on display in the exhibition hall. Made by Elumenati, they use a special fisheye lens system to project onto a half sphere or quarter sphere (depending on the type of dome). The Minnesota Planetarium Society had a large one, and NOAA had a smaller one on display. I took video of both with my N95:

Here’s the “narration”:

First up, NOAA’s dome, which is showing Google Earth. The person driving it with a big grin on his face just happens to be Google’s own Brian McClendon. (Interesting side note: NOAA used it primarily to show off its Second Life project. The open-source Second Life client was altered to compensate for the distortions of projecting onto a curved surface; that’s not possible with Google Earth right now, so it looks a bit warped in the video)

Then, the larger dome. Inside, the Minnesota Planetarium Society ran UniView, a really impressive universe simulator produced by Swedish company Sciss AB. I could have sat in that dome all day — UniView + an Elumenati dome is like Celestia on crack. (Not that I’ve ever tried it. Crack, that is.) (BTW, a lot of UniView’s data comes from and is available as a free download (with a multiplatform viewer) courtesy of the Hayden Planetarium.) What I found interesting was UniView’s ability to show a rendition of the magnetosphere — that’s pushing the envelope when it comes to visualizing Earth, and provides a taste of where digital Earths may be headed in the future.

PS: Every video uploaded to YouTube now presents you with a spiffy georeferencing option:

That YouTube layer for Google Earth really cannot be too far away.

PPS: The current edition of the IEEE’s Spectrum magazine has a great article on Elumenati’s domes, and how they are being used to make science come alive to jaded video-game addled schoolkids.

At least some fishermen on the island of Fuerteventura in Spain’s Canary Islands are illegally bottom-trawling beaches for fish, Spain’s Green party charges in a complaint to the European Union. How do they know? They saw it on Google Earth, report Spanish media (for example, El Pais) citing a Spanish newswire story. As a result, the EU will now investigate the practice, which is banned on the Canary Islands, and has meanwhile admonished the local government to be more vigilant, as the law is being broken “in plain light of day and in view of satellites” (translated from Spanish).

Alas, no photos are supplied with the articles, but there is a location mentioned: Sotavento beach. A quick Geonames query later, and we had our target:

There is no metadata for the imagery, provided by local company Grafcan, but Grafcan says it was taken in the past two years. Grafcan’s imagery has not been without controversy: An earlier update was accused of covering up new development by local Greens (a conspiracy theory without merit, I feel) and certainly did censor local bases, though the censorship was removed in the latest update.

A Reuters story titled U.S. general laments Google Earth capability that received a fair bit of exposure, including in India, begins thus:

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The head of U.S. Air Force intelligence and surveillance on Thursday said data available commercially through online mapping software such as Google Earth posed a danger to security but could not be rolled back.

Except that this is not at all what his quote maintains in the following paragraph:

“To talk about danger is, if I may, really is irrelevant because it’s there,” said Lt. Gen. David Deptula, deputy chief of staff for intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance.

“No one’s going to undo commercial satellite imagery,” he told reporters in Washington.

Nor do we get any kind of context as to how and where the general is interviewed. So here is my take: General Deptula gets doorstopped on his way to a conference by a journalist intending to get criticism of Google Earth from the defense establishment. The general responds (correctly) that satellite imagery is a fact of life, just like paper maps, and that the correct response is camouflage, concealment and deception.

Somehow, the “irrelevance” of asking about the dangers of Google Earth turns into a “lament” about said dangers. I think that most implausible.

Hmm, New York City sushi, or long-form blogging? Tough choice. Not:-)

• Are you in NYC on June 26? According to the Nonprofit Technology Network (NTEN), that’s when and where Google will be launching a new Google Earth initiative for nonprofits. Details are lacking except for the planned speakers: Jane Goodall, Kathy Bushkin Calvin (United Nations Foundation), Edward Wilson (Earthwatch), Elliot Schrage (Google) and John Hanke (Google).
• Remember Ogle Earth’s Center of Gravity calculator? Now there’s a new site up that does all that and more, Geomidpoint.com. Collect cities or specific coordinates, and then get an accurate center of gravity calculation, shown on a Google Map. There’s no KML output (yet?) but you can assign weightings to places, which makes this site worth a playful visit.
• What’s better than Google Earth on a 30-inch Apple screen? Google Earth splayed across 18 such screens, as seen at the 2007 Apple Worldwide Developers’ Conference.
• One of the mooted uses of mapping for humanitarian purposes has always been distributed feedback and editing of information by experts and people in the field. CartONG now has something very much in that vein running for the UNHCR, keeping track of displaced people in Uganda. (Via Humanitarian.info)
• Josh Bancroft provides photographic evidence of a UMPC demoed at Research@Intel day running Google Earth, controlled by an accelerometer and magnetic compass. Tilt the UMPC, tilt the globe, etc…
• The OQO also runs Google Earth (Flickr image posted by GISuser.com)
• Avi Bar-Ze’ev reviews MIT Technology Review‘s recent Second Earth article. Having worked on early versions of both Google Earth and Second Life, his insights are worth reading. Note his mention of MySpace.
• For those that use the Military grid reference system and would like to do so off-line, Nearby.co.uk’s Barry Hunter provides resources and step-by-step instructions.
• The official Maps API Blog points to several new KML resources: The how-to on getting KML and GeoRSS included in geospatial Google search has been revamped, and there is a new tutorial on using PHP and MySQL to create KML.
• Google’s collaboration with the Amazon Conservation Team and Amazonian tribes to preserve the rainforest has seen a cresendo of media coverage over the past week. Here is Google Lat Long Blog‘s entry about the visit to Mountain View of Chief Almir, leader of the Surui Indian tribe.
• Mentioned better late than never: The newsfeed of the National Snow and Ice Data Center became GeoRSS savvy a few weeks ago, as was announced at ISDE5 by Lisa Ballagh.
• ESRI and Microsoft technologies get a little cozier, reports Virtual Earth for Government:
  

  Jack Dangermond announced a REST Application Program Interface (API) that will be released with ArcGIS Server 9.3 and will allow interoperability between ArcGIS and web services, notably Microsoft’s Virtual Earth. With the release of 9.3, ESRI will provide an ArcGIS JavaScript library that extends the Microsoft Virtual Earth Software Development Kit. You can use the extended SDK to mashup content from any ArcGIS 9.3 Server via the REST API for ArcGIS Server with Virtual Earth maps and imagery.

• Speaking of Microsoft Virtual Earth — a June 19 press release announces much higher-quality DEM data (elevation model) for Great Britain, courtesy of Intermap Technologies:
  

  In addition, Intermap is now aggressively mapping Europe under its NEXTMap Europe program. Data for the entire country of Germany is currently being placed in the Intermap library, and data collection for the remainder of Western Europe is scheduled for completion by the end of 2007. The continental U.S. is being mapped concurrently with the European initiative and is scheduled for completion by the end of 2008.

  Good on you. Good for us.

• Correction from a previous links post: EarthNC has had NOAA ship weather as KML available for a while.
• Free Geography Tools switches CMS and URL. (Old URL)
• The SketchUp Team gets a blog, the Official Google SketchUp Blog. Here‘s a story on how the Google 3D Warehouse plugin for Photoshop CS3 Extended came about, and here‘s a story on how to get color “underlays” for SketchUp buildings when placing them onto Google Earth.

• MIT Technology Review‘s Second Earth is a long and exhaustive article about the Second Life/Google Earth/3D web/metaverse/augmented reality/virtual world/mirror world/mashup place that futurologists promise is impending and inevitable. It’s a good read, especially for the shortcuts to Second Life places if you’re a newbie there (and want to see what all the fuss is about) and serves as a great introduction to all the new terminology that has bloomed over the past few years. There’s no major new idea that hasn’t already been covered on this blog or elsewhere, but the article is certainly a shorter read than the entirety of Ogle Earth’s archives. (The only oversight, in my mind: No mention of MySpace. That’s the app to kill, and whoever invents a 3D MySpace wins over the masses, I think. In other words, the 3D web will look a lot uglier than we can imagine:-)
• GUIWeather is an extremely well-specced and gorgeous Google-Earth centric weather website. Writes GUIWeather’s Steve Gallien:
  

  Please note especially these products which , as far as we know, are unique:

  • buoy & ship observations
  • Level II radar — the only kml product I’m aware of using true Nexrad Level II
  • worldwide lightning strikes
  • U.S. watches and warnings (the only example of filled polys using the new VTEC codes that I’ve seen anywhere)

  Google Earth Blog has further details.

• Out of India, The Financial Express has a pro-Google op-ed piece defending Street View.
• Another case of Google Earth’s place names causing a ruckus among the more nationalist-minded, this time in Korea.
• Belgeoblog flags a horridly tendentious and lazy article in Belgian paper De Standaard (in Dutch, behind a paywall), which headline translates to “Google Earth helps terrorists”. Among other things, the article proceeds to quote a professor at Belgium’s largest university saying that Google has acquiesced to demands to mask Belgium’s nuclear power plants. A quick look by the journalist would have shown this to be false. Nor is there any exposition as to how imagery is collected and published — it is not Google that censors the imagery that it acquires, but the originating sources, which are sometimes bound by governmental controls (as is the case in the Netherlands).
• And last but not least, Google Maps for Sweden launched officially. If I weren’t in Oregon far away from regular internet access, I’d be doing a comparative review right now between Google Maps, Hitta.se and Eniro.se, both formidable competitors.

And now back to my Oregon vacation, miles away from internet access…:-)

Georeferenced 360-degree panoramas of places on Earth have been with us since the start of the neogeography craze. Back in July 2005, Berkeley University’s panoramas from around the world were georeferenced, and they soon became a staple on Google Earth.

A few weeks ago, Google’s Street View caused a stir, both for its illuminative qualities and for the privacy concern it generated in some quarters. The focus with Street View is very much automated blanket coverage — so far in US cities only.

What about Europe? Two websites have taken up the baton in Europe. The previously mentioned Arounder, but also 360 Cities. What’s interesting is how they’re going about their task — there even seems to be a business model that is sustaining them.

Neither site aims to be exhaustive. Instead, each focuses on the most interesting spots in (mostly) European cities, but also on their shops, bars and cafés. In the case of Arounder, commercial places are clearly paying for the privilege of having their interiors photographed (and in the interests of full disclosure I think 360 Cities should tell if that’s what they do) but this presents an interesting new revenue opportunity, in addition to the ads they are showing. (360 Cities also lets you buy high resolution posters of the panoramas.)

Some of the cool features to be found on these sites:

• 360 Cities links to a KML placemark for every panorama in its database.
• 360 Cities has an effective Google Maps-based solution to placemark crowding — in fact it is almost identical to how Flickr’s Yahoo Maps-based solution avoids crowding. Do try it.
• Check out Venice in 360 Cities — beautiful! If you want to know how exactly the 360 panoramas get made, check out this one. (Hint: scroll to the left.)
• In general Arounder tends to focus more on insides of places and cultural highlights, whereas 360 Cities tends to have more of an outdoors focus.
• I remember finding one place in Arounder that had a soundscape to go along with it, but can’t find it anymore. Still, I think this is very much the way to go in the future. After all, QTVR lets you embed sound files.

One more thing: In case you want to try this at home, Maganalox today announced that you can add geoerefenced QTVR panoramas to your GPS logs. I think that making panoramas yourself is going to become much more popular than it currently is, not just because the equipment is becoming much cheaper, but also because the software component has become so automated, and because with KML 2.2 such panoramas will be viewable by default from inside Google Earth. That makes for one big inducement to start experimenting with the technology:-)

Now I’m off for a road trip along the west coast of the US. Posting will resume after the weekend.

(360 Cities via Gadling)