New features in Google Earth 4.3

World's Worst Polluted Places 2007

View Larger Map

The Top Ten (in red) of the Dirty Thirty (in purple) as determined by the Blacksmith Institute.

KML

NB: This was easily done from new 'Link to this page' Google Maps option, but the worstpolluted.com site didn't suggest it.

Greenland glacier melt accelerating

Guardian reports today that the giant Greenland glaciers are, as feared, melting more quickly.

The predicted rise this century was 20-60cm (about 8-24ins) , but it would be at the upper end of this range at a minimum, and some believed it could be two metres. This would be catastrophic for European coastlines.

Robert Corell, chairman of the Arctic Climate Impact Assessment, said in Ilulissat, Greenland yesterday:

"We have seen a massive acceleration of the speed with which these glaciers are moving into the sea. The ice is moving at 2 metres an hour on a front 5km [3 miles] long and 1,500 metres deep."

He had flown over the Ilulissat glacier and

"seen gigantic holes in it through which swirling masses of melt water were falling. I first looked at this glacier in the 1960s and there were no holes. These so-called moulins, 10 to 15 metres across, have opened up all over the place. There are hundreds of them."

This melt water was pouring through to the bottom of the glacier creating a lake 500 metres deep which was causing the glacier to float on land.

"These melt-water rivers are lubricating the glacier, like applying oil to a surface and causing it to slide into the sea. It is causing a massive acceleration which could be catastrophic."

The glacier is now moving at 15km a year into the sea although in surges it moves even faster. He measured one surge at 5km in 90 minutes - an extraordinary event.

The changes are triggering earthquakes.

· Glacier Melt in Google Earth · Google Earth file

www.flickr.com More Flickr photos tagged with glaciers

Religious leaders from all over the world met at the mouth of the Illulissat last week to say a silent prayer for the planet, appealing to mankind to address the impact that humanity is having on life on Earth.

Christian, Shia, Sunni, Hindu, Shinto, Buddhist and Jewish religious leaders took a boat to the tongue of the glacier for a silent prayer for the planet. They were invited by Bartholomew I, the spiritual leader of 250 million Orthodox Christians worldwide.

NASA: Fastest Glacier in Greenland Doubles Speed
Greenland Ice Changes Since 1990's: This visualization of laser altimeter measurements from the mid 1990's shows overall thinning of Greenland's ice sheet, with thickening in a few locations including the Jakobshavn Glacier, where the ice stream slowed down in the mid 1990s. More recent data show that the Jakobshavn is now, in fact, retreating, and causing accelerated thinning of adjacent ice at higher elevations in a manner that is consistent with its acceleration. Cool colors represent areas of thinning ice while warm colors show thickening. Slight inland thickening is attributed to accumulation of atmospheric moisture from melting ice at the coasts, supporting observations of a greater net loss to the overall sum of Greenland's ice cap. (6.7 MB). Credit: NASA



NB: First try with new Blogger video upload. Quick and easy but there's no way to share video and it's not indexed by Google Video. Also not allowing resizing, unlike YouTube.

Another NASA Jakobshavn Glacier animation

EU Video 'Living with climate change' about glacier retreat in the Alps, sea level rise (good bye Netherlands) and changing tourism patterns (bye bye Med, hello Baltic)

Bytes · How to Deal with MySpace Predators - Coogan's online soap - The Facebook coppers

Laws Fail to Deal with MySpace Predators

Larry Magid is pretty upset about the way some states' attorneys general are blaming MySpace for the fact that there are pedophiles and other predators on the site, and proposing legislation that would restrict kids' access to social networking sites. There are predators everywhere. The good news is that MySpace is at least trying to get rid of them.

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Time Magazine ran a scary experiment to see how much personalised information they could easily source about someone.

What makes these sites controversial is that they gather all this information without your permission. The resulting profiles can be embarrassing or simply wrong. And getting those profiles removed or changed can be impossible.

The Author, checking on popular site ZoomInfo, "saw that everything from my telephone number to my full name were flat out wrong".

• Washington Post on reputation management
  
  

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• Australian PM John Howard loses YouTube cherry.


Here's another YouTube video subject to takedown for obsessive/zealous copyright policing (warning! features babies dancing).

• Mike Grehan explores Google personalisation - and has a killer headline - A guaranteed number one listing at Google!
  
  
• New York Times Google Maps overview: With Tools on Web, Amateurs Reshape Mapmaking

NYT recommends:

MAPS

Graffiti in Federal Way, Wash.

Hydrofoils Around the World

Cheap Eats in New York City

Illinois Yarn Stores

Biodiesel Stations in New England

Trace Tribute Endurance Horse Ride by April Johnson

Geotagged Photos From Flickr Users

Favorite Places to Eat In Seattle While Boating

Tour de France Stages

Top 10 Oregon Vineyards

TOOLS

Google Maps: My Maps

Google Earth (download)

Microsoft maps (for Virtual Earth download, click on "3D")

Microsoft Collections

Platial

MotionBased

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This is a screenshot from Google Earth Enterprise

It's a geographic view of traffic to Dell.com. Presumably live.

More on

• Google Blog
• Google Lat/Long blog
  

Digital Earth on the GEE update:

Some of the enhancements include:

• Browser integration with the Google Maps API AJAX architecture, allowing 2D map views to be embedded in any web-based application, so everyone in an organization benefits from the power of Google Earth Enterprise.
• Performance enhancements amounting to as much as a 10x speedup for vector data processing and better than 2x reduction in server computation for responding to imagery requests.
• New search framework for integrating geocoding and other search services via Java plug-ins including a Google Search Appliance reference implementation.
• Regionator for creating Super-Overlays with Regions based KML and publishing them for viewing in any Google Earth client version (Free, Plus or Pro).
• Security improvements and extended Operating System support including Red Hat Enterprise Server 4 and SUSE Linux 9 and 10.

They’ve also streamlined the interface and made a handful of other improvements.

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Steve Coogan is behind online soap - sorry, 'interactive online sit-com' - Where Are The Joneses?

Dawn (Emma Fryer from Ideal), discovers from her dying mother that her father was a sperm donor and that she has 27 sibblings scattered across Europe.

Not loving the ads in your widget, Steve. Plus ya'gotta make sure the server's up to streaming it otherwise people will drop your widget. It's also crap marketing because it leads you to a flickr dead end ...

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Metropolitan Police on Facebook. They have a 600 strong group which the Mail (boo!) infiltrated. Something, anything wrong here? Nah.

A Met spokeswoman said last night it appeared that officers had fallen short of their professional standards.

Those involved could now face a dressing down from their superiors and even disciplinary action if they are deemed to have brought the force into disrepute.

:{

The CNN/YouTube Presidential debate

Quite an historic event this week, with the CNN/YouTube joint Democratic Presidential candidate debate.

MSM certainly took note. As the Chicago Tribune's Steve Johnson put it, "it was a bad night for news anchors and Washington bureau chiefs, the traditional interrogators of would-be holders of American high office."

Carol Darr, Director of the Institute for Politics, Democracy and the Internet, said that for the first time, “the filter that mainstream establishment media plays in presidential races — ‘we ask the questions, we are the exalted panel’ — that was broken down.”

Jon Stewart introduces and sets the tone ...



"Video size is important to the debate .. only young people can see it."

And more from Jon Oliver — did CNN 'youthenize' the debate? ...



Note the 'Al qaeda' drinking game ..

TechPresident summed up the reactions.

It brought home the hollowness of much of our scripted political speech, since those candidates who could break through the rhetoric and talk with a human voice really stood out

And Huffpost has a good dissection of what actually happened - they followed the questioners.

YouTube themselves described the new debate format as “more democratic than ever.” Apparently, YouTube founder Chad Hurley is hot for Obama (as are a lot of Google employees).

And — this has got to be a good sign — White House Press Secretary Tony Snow asked 'Did [Bush] watch the debate?' answered 'I don’t think so. I don’t think he’s big on YouTube debates'.

Andrew Keen - he of 'The cult of the amateur', which bangs on about Wikipedia being unreliable - took a hit as many videos from the 'amateurs' were very well produced or showed the sort of cunning approach journalists have by picking a hole they figured producers would need to fill.

This is what young guy John Cantees did in addressing a candidate everyone else would ignore.

Though another way of looking at it is that the process ends up sounding not dissimilar to that employed by Endermol to fill the BigBrother House.

CNN didn't just "pick the questions." They identified contributors and in some cases worked with them to shape the video.

Huffpost:

If the whole point of the exercise was to hear from citizens, it just shows how hard it is to displace the spirit of professionalism with another spirit-- even when one is trying.

And although there was a first - one woman on the stage - only 11 of 39 questions were from women - 70% were from men.

At this early stage, it's hardly surprising that videos like this one about Alzheimer's gets in — only 3000 video questions were submitted.



Noted that the documentation by YouTube is terrible. Here's that question on YouTube — see if you can find the answer here (it's the one below), on YouTube's main recap page. (The question was actually mashed in with others). One thing I've noticed recently as YouTube iterates its design is the navigation getting stripped too far back, so you get too much simplicity and too little complexity.

NB: and yes, you are reading CNN host Anderson Cooper right ..

POSTSCRIPT: Apparently, the Republican candidates think it's silly and that their base don't watch YouTube, so they aren't signing up for their version in September. The WashPost quotes Mitt Romney saying "I think the presidency ought to be held at a higher level than having to answer questions from a snowman." Republican blogger Andrew Sullivan says: "Ducking YouTube after the Dems did so well will look like a party uncomfortable with the culture and uncomfortable with democracy. But then, we kind of knew that already, I guess, didn't we?"

Bytes · Eye-trackin' - PDF 'illegal' - Car Tipping

• Seth Godin picks up on an eye-tracking video posted by Etre on YouTube.
  
  He makes an interesting point about web design:

  I think websurfing is a hunting activity. The eye is looking for anamolies, for things that don't belong ...One of the takeaways is that bad web design might actually be a good thing! Slightly bad design isn't familiar. It's off. It demands attention. (Very bad design demands the 'back' button, of course). One of the reasons that experienced power tool users--like table saws--can still lose a finger is that they don't pay attention... it's too easy to turn the thing on and just use it.

  
  





• Only supplying information in PDF format is illegal, according to the editor of IT law Web site Out-law.com.
  
  Struan Robertson, said.
  
  

  "The legal duty is to provide the information in a way that is accessible and usable. Many PDFs are not accessible and the solution is to provide accessible HTML in addition to PDFs, if you wish to use PDFs."
  

  
  Robertson added that, although an organisation that has generally "addressed web accessibility" would be unlikely to be sued over its PDFs, a failure to provide an accessible alternative "might trigger a complaint".
  
  

  "Many of us will dutifully warn the user that a PDF is going to be opened ... but we stop short of offering an accessible document," he said, indicating that this meant that "many disabled users take 'PDF will open in a new window' to mean 'don't click here'."

  
  
  Hugh Huddy of the Royal National Institute for the Blind (RNIB) said they'd tried to produce an accessible PDF of its annual report, but hit "glitches" with tables and slipping column headers -- factors he said could render such an important document legally invalid.
  
  

  "Most PDFs would not stand up to a basic accessibility check," said Huddy, who suggested that PDFs made from a "well-structured Word document" using Acrobat Pro might pass muster. He added that, in most cases, it would be "prudent to publish an alternative format, whether that is in HTML, [rich text format] or plain text, alongside [the PDF version of a document]."

  
  
  He told eAccess '07, organised by Headstar earlier this month that he was very concerned, given that so many important documents now come in PDF format. Documents rendered from Quark or other DTP software is a particular problem.
  
  Huddy recommended RTF or Word.



• From Google Sightseeing
  
  

  Car Tipping

  The urban equivalent of Cow Tipping, the inner-city phenomenon of Car Tipping has begun to spread like wildfire across Germany now that its been spotted on Google Earth…

  

  Also see our post on Extreme Parking for more.

  Via Gearth Blog.

Google Earth and Archaeology

Postscript: Hurrah!

I tried putting one of Google Earth's videos into this post and it went haywire. Literally, in the blogger edit post WYSIWYG it was flashing. But I managed to perform a dance - Hit button ... Now! Try again! Now! Delete! - and got it back ... video's here.



About.com has an piece examining the use of Google Earth by archaeologists — both professional and amateur.

Many archaeologists regularly use it to find otherwise hidden sites.

An Italian computer programmer playing around on Google Earth's images near his home in Parma discovered the ruins of a villa [kmz]dating to the early Roman Empire.

Many enthusiasts have created layers, placemarks and added additional information.

Find the Archaeology is a game on the Google Earth community bulletin board where people post an aerial photograph of an archaeological site and players must figure out where in the world it is or what in the world it is.

Pompeii

Darfur
Major refugee camps on the Chad side of the border with Darfur in high resolution

• about.com: Google Earth and Archaeology
  
  
• Google Earth
• Archaeology Placemarks
• Ancient Monuments (JQ Jacobs)
  
• Scott Madry
  
• Web lets UNC prof do armchair archaeology
• Find the Archaeology
• Online Archaeology
• Georeferencing with Picasa and Google Earth for archaeologists


• Cara and Supe Valley ruins in Peru
  .
  
  
• GoogleSightseeing
  Pompeii
  Teotihuacán
  

Campaigners have also been using Google Earth to highlight World crises, such as global warming (layers showing rising sea levels) and Darfur (which shows smouldering villages).

This uses Google Earth files which use network links and GE 4 features to show increasingly higher resolution photos as you zoom into areas of concern.

For example, you can see cases of ethnic cleansing where whole villages have been destroyed between March 2006 and November 2006.

Bytes · Google brain drain - little green hikers - 1 in 3 say resist ID

• Revenue and Customs has set up a podcast service. One of the first is aimed at helping employers to file their end of year returns. It leads them through the process step by step, telling them what options are available and providing advice on other sources of information.
  
  
• Google is suffering a brain-drain. Hundreds of the 2,300 Googlers hired before the Internet juggernaut's initial public offering in August 2004 are hitting their fourth anniversary. When they do, they'll be free to cash in the final portions of their pre-IPO options, collectively worth an estimated $2.6 billion before taxes.
  
  Stacy Savides Sullivan, Google's chief culture officer and a 43-year-old pre-IPO millionaire herself. "We anticipated more because we think it would only be natural. We worry every day about this and hope we can stay ahead of it."

• On A List Apart, Martin Kliehm looks at the potential of Accessible Web 2.0 Applications with WAI-ARIA.
  

• Directgov is now producing a 3G version with
  

  ' live travel information; quick guides to learning, money, homes and property; and the latest public announcements including terror alerts and severe weather warnings'.

  Doesn't this sound just like the BBC?
  
  
• Trimble Outdoors has partnered with Google to provide Google Earth viewers with GPS-based interactive hiking information.
  
  The Trimble Outdoors Trips layer is found in the Featured Content selection in Google Earth (http://earth.google.com/). The layer has premium GPS-enabled multimedia content (routes, waypoints, text/audio/video notes) from trips contributed by editors of the BACKPACKER, BICYCLING and Mountain Bike magazines, as well as trips shared by Trimble Outdoors users.
  
  To view the layer:
  
  * Start Google Earth
  * Go to "Layers" in the Sidebar on the left
  * Expand the "Featured Content" folder under "Primary Database"
  * Click the "Trimble Outdoors Trips" checkbox
  * In the main window, pan and zoom into the area of interest to you until you see red lines and dots indicating Trimble Outdoors trips
  * Continue to zoom in until you see little "Green Hikers":
  
  Depending on the zoom level and context, clicking a Green Hiker will open a popup window with detailed information about a trip or its element, for example a photo.
  
  
• Google has launched Checkout in the UK. Merchants get free credit and debit card processing.
  
  
• A programme to kick-start the use of internet communications in space has been announced by the US government. — The Department of Defense's Iris project will put an internet router in space by the start of 2009.
  
  

• OutLaw reports that one in three people say they will resist identity checks using the new ID Card.
  
  In 2004 Mark Oaten, the then Liberal Democrat spokesman on home affairs, asked for figures to be published on the assumptions being made by Government about ID cards' use.
  
  The Government refused.
  
  Oaten's request was backed by the Information Commissioner and an Information Tribunal and the figures have now been released.
  
  · NO2ID:stop ID cards and the database state
  
  

High res Brum at last

• Amongst new high-resolution photo coverage updates for Google Earth for England are:
  

  Northamptonshire, Nottingshire, Berkshire, Peakdistrict, Birmingham (where the new developments like Selfridge's were absent), Greater Manchester, Avon, Gloucestershire, and Lincolnshire.

  Also included were Sydney Harbour and the Matterhorn.
  
  
• Google Earth Blog