Google Where
There was lots of news out of Google’s Geo Developers Day, held yesterday ahead of O’Reilly’s’s Where 2.0 conference that starts today. Among the notable tidbits (mostly lifted from Ogle Earth, but also reported by Jerry Paffendorf, who’ll be speaking at Where 2.0 this afternoon):
• Here’s Google’s press release about it all.
• Google Earth in new version 4.0 beta is now available for Linux [<-- download] and on Mac [<-- download], as well as Windows [<-- download]. Good roundup of new/changed features on Ogle Earth, including support for textures and local lighting on SketchUp models.
• There’s a new KML 2.1 spec and tutorial. And you can now upload KML to Google Maps just by pasting in a URL, according to Ogle Earth.
• The Google Maps API also now supports Geocoding for many parts of the world.
• There’s a new Google Maps for Enterprise service (with fee) for business and government.
A couple of other pertinent links:
Google Earth Blog reports live from the conference.
The Official Google Blog weighs in.
As does the Official Google Enterprise Blog.
What’s it all mean? Well, prettier, more realistic models mean broader adoption. New capabilities mean new mashups coming soon. And some of the other things in the works at Google, as well as at Mozilla, mean new ways to connect to each other and the world around us. But I’ll save that for the next post.
Feeds
[…] Tim O’Reilly picked up some points from the presentation, I have some thoughts coming out of the conference in a comment on Terra Nova, and Mark Wallace has the rundown on new Google Earth and Sketchup announcements as well as speculation on Google’s 3pointD aspirations on 3pointD (Just downloaded Sketchup on my Mac!). Here’s a pic of me with the cursed clicker, wondering why the IT gods have forsaken me lol: In other talky goodness, last week I chatted with Matthew Reinbold at mutednoise.com and he’s got the podcast, Second Guessing Second Life, up on his site now: mutednoise is pleased that in our first foray into podcasting our guest was Jerry Paffendorf of the Electric Sheep Company. He serves as Futurist in Residence where he is instrumental in the exploration of virtual worlds and their relevance to everyday life. In this 43 minute piece of audio mutednoise’s Matthew Reinbold and Jerry cover everything from text communication efficiencies to Jerry’s Sex Shack. Is Second Life really Internet 3.0? […]