In+ersec+ion for Spatial People

Randall Munroe has exhibited his geeky map side (another, another, 'nother, triumph) before in his xkcd.com comic. Today he reveals his Pet Peeve #208 and nose-tweaks those who think a pretty map is worth a thousand hours of real data collection. (Well, if that's not what he is tweaking, he is definitely tweaking something.)

Here's the recent Google-related geonews, it covers a longer time span than usual.

From official sources:

• Here's a summary entry of the major changes and updates to Google Maps and Google Earth in 2011
• Google launched today Public Alerts in Google Maps: "If a major weather event is headed for your area, you might go online to search for the information you need: What’s happening? Where and when will it strike? How severe will it be? What resources are available to help?"
• The World Bank signed a greement to use Google Map Maker for disaster preparedness, this just makes me wish even more that Google will join and merge GMM with the OpenStreetMap bandwagon
• On the dev blog, they introduced pyKML, a Python library for manipulating KML
• There's new 45 deg imagery for nothing less than 24 cities:
  • US: Boise/Caldwell, ID; Buffalo, NY; Chattanooga, TN; Cleveland, OH; Denver, CO; Greenville, SC; Houston/Pasadena, TX; Kansas City/Gladstone, MS; Knoxville/Louisville, TN; Memphis/Bartlett, TN; Mobile, AL; Nashville, TN; Pensacola, FL; Racine, WI; Santa Monica, CA; Sarasota/Englewood, FL; Stockton, CA
  • Europe: Baiona, Spain; Basel, Switzerland; Friedberg, Germany; Mannheim, Germany; Santander, Spain; Ulm, Germany
  • South America: Porto Alegre, Brazil
• StreetView is now available in South Korea, for the cities of Seoul and Busan and there's new campus tours in Street View too
• Google is open sourcing Sky Map and will collaborate with Carnegie Mellon University
• On the dev blog, here's about integrating Street View and custom panoramas into your apps
• And another entry discusses heatmap.js and its Google Maps API Heatmap Overlay
• There's an official Google Maps game coming to Google+ next month
• Here's biodiversity tours in Google Earth
• There was a major imagery update the first week of January, here's the details

From other sources:

• The GEB shares his own recap the year 2011 for Google Earth
• Here's an entry on traffic congestion visualization in Google Earth
• If you're curious about the Costa Concordia ship wreck, here it is in Google Earth and satellite imagery
• Here's an entry on wave mechanics in Google Earth
• Here's the North American power plant emissions in Google Earth
• Mapperz informs us that Google Maps U.K. now integrates National Rail Info and Ed Parsons offers an entry on multi-modal travel planning in Google Maps
• APB reports that Android phones now ranks above iPhone when it comes to GPS navigation