The Earth Is Square

Got passed the URL for this journal yesterday and I have been reading the articles for the last day. It contains some very well written articles on the use of Digital Earth's in various ways. The International Journal of Digital Earth is the journal of the International Society For Digital Earth (ISDE) and this is the first issue of the Journal.

Here are the topics covered in this issue:

Review Articles

Evolution and implementation of the Digital Earth vision, technology and society
Author: T. W. Foresman

Geoinformatics and digital earth initiatives: a German perspective
Author: M. Ehlers

Research Articles

The use cases of digital earth
Author: M. F. Goodchild

Digital Earth in support of global change research
Authors: C. Shupeng; J. van Genderen

Virtual Australia: its key elements - know, think, communicate
Authors: B. Thompson; T. O. Chan; R. Slee; P. Kinne; A. Jahshan; P. Woodgate; I. Bishop; D. McKenzie

Reality-based generation of virtual environments for digital earth
Author: A. Gruen

Virtual representations of antique globes - new ways of touching the untouchable
Authors: F. Hruby; A. Riedl; H. Tomberger

Monitoring the source of trans-national dust storms in north east Asia
Authors: R. Tsolmon; L. Ochirkhuyag; T. Sternberg

Water resource applications with RADARSAT-2 - a preview
Authors: B. Brisco; R. Touzi; J. J. van der Sanden; F. Charbonneau; T. J. Pultz; M. D'Iorio

Letters

3D visualisations in simulations of future land use: exploring the possibilities of new, standard visualisation tools
Authors: J. Rodríguez Lloret; N. Omtzigt; E. Koomen; F. S. de Blois

Reclamation areas and their development studied by vegetation indices
Author: L. Halounová

Original Articles

Report on the 5th International Symposium on Digital Earth
Author: T. W. Foresman

First Announcement and Call for Papers

Digital Earth Summit on Geoinformatics: Tools for Global Change Research

One thing I noticed with the few articles I have read so far, the do not consider Google Earth to be a very good medium for data, and they considered NASA WorldWind and ArcGIS Explorer to be Digital Globes that are more what the guidelines recommend.

Two articles of interest that I have read so far are "Evolution and implementation of the Digital Earth vision, technology and society" and "The use cases of digital earth", these two articles have useful information for anyone wanting to explain about digital globes and if/why they may be of use for a project.

I was looking at the latest updates for Virtual Earth and noticed something.

New/Updated Birds Eye Cities in the US: Butler, Pennsylvania

Ok, they spend the time and money to cover a small tow, that while it does have some nice buildings.. is really not that special (Been there many times).  Yet... larger metro areas such as Williamsport, Bloomsburg, Danville are still in old USGS Black and White.

It has been a year and a half now... how about some updating

It is that time of the year again.  It is time once again for Google Summer of Code 2008, and hopefully we will get WorldWind accepted as a candidate for students.  Unless someone else steps up.. I will probably be the lead for this year.  And I will put in for both WW.Net and WWJava to get projects.  But what we will need more than anyting, is mentors.  So, if you are involved with some kind of WorldWind development (Java or .Net) and would like to be a mentor, drop me a line via the contact form on my blog.  I am hoping for 5 or 6 mentors this year that can be involved from start to finish.

There is the starting of a SoC2008 page located on the WorldWind Central website.

"Interesting article" on Slashdot today about navigation mapping errors.  The original article the author references is mainly about an errors in the navigation maps that leads drivers to a dead end road.  Which if you want the news, is reported in the UK about once every three days.

Branching off of that, the author seems to be frustrated there is no open mapping in the US where maps can be compiled by users.  There is Open Street Map that is doing just that.  And the Tiger data is free to use and modify (thought I don't think modifications can be submitted back into the system).  And several GPS makers do update their maps based on user input, such as TomTom.

My read of the article.. the author had no idea what to focus on and rambled about GPS Navigation, online maps and open mapping projects that he somehow could not find. A typical Slashdot post.

With the new Model Loader code for WWJava, we have the International Space Station floating above the globe.

I don't know what to say... I thought it was a joke.. but it isn't.   You can collect all seven Source Force (and friends) action figures by attending a brainwash... er..

Between March 15th and April 15th 2007, the new super dudette will be offered and will be sent to developers who get their act together and attend at least two live MSDN Webcasts or two MSDN Virtual Labs, or one of each. Oh, and hey, not so fast... In order to confirm your shipping address and receive credit for attendance, you must complete an evaluation at the end of each webcast or virtual lab.

All the "characters" have their own bio page with links to movie clips of them in action "saving the source"..I guess.  Kinda creepy if you ask me :}

Me love you long time!