This is more of an "end of year" geonews in batch mode! Everything pertinent found in the last two weeks that we haven't shared yet. I wish you an excellent holiday break. We'll be back in January. You can still send in your contributions.

From the Google front:

• A summary entry on everything Google Maps/Earth and Santa Claus and another one on holiday trees in 3D
• More details on Google Maps 5.0 for Android
• Paris gets major 3D enhancements in Google Earth
• Google Kills (beta) Location Alerts Feature in Latitude
• Google now offers a 3D Body Browser
• There also was an imagery update in the middle of the month

From the ESRI front:

• ESRI Confirms 400 million user-genenerated maps on ArcGIS in October

From the open data / open source front:

• Via the geodata list, I learned about the U.S. Census TIGER/Line Shapefiles starting to become available, and it's also available from WeoGeo
• OpenLayers gets a new Bing Tiles layer
• Natural Earth map data in the public domain
• An entry on Geocoding Github: Visualizing Distributed Open-Source Development
• An O'Reilly article on Ushahidi enabling crowdsourced journalism and intelligence
• rgeo, a new geo library for Rails
• Here's a new project named GeoApt Spatial Data Browser
• The OpenGeo Suite Community Edition 2.3.2 released
• An entry on QGIS 1.7's vector rule editor and polygon line styles

From the Microsoft front:

• Bing Maps REST Services now supports transit routes

In the miscellaneous category:

• SS informs us Russia Launched a Geospatial Data and Earth Imagery Portal
• V1 offers their geospatial top 10, DM also have their own geospatial top 10
• Here's a new augmented reality app that translate text that you see
• Still in the AR topic, an entry on how Kinect democratizes augmented reality
• Two Slashdot entries on 3D printing: MakerBot Thing-o-Matic 3D Printer Assembly and Cheap 3D Fab Could Start an Innovation Renaissance
• Still on the 3D topic, Researchers Develop Genuine 3D Camera
• TanDEM-X is now operational

In the maps category:

• Here's visualization of Wikileaks mirrors around the world
• A colleague sent me a link to the BBC Facebook connections map the world
• An Interactive Map of Diabetes in the U.S.
• Don't we all dream, here's an Atlas of Remote Islands

And the almost-off-topic link of the week, an amazing 4-minutes animation of the last 200 years of global history

If the two recent Bing Maps announcements (here and here) left you underwhelmed, fear not. There is a new video up from cnet which has Blaise Aguera y Arcas, Microsoft's architect of Bing Maps and Bing Mobile, giving a rundown on some of the new mapping features they are releasing (starting with the iPhone). Check it out as it's pretty interesting and innovative stuff coming from Microsoft.

Here's the traditional Friday geonews in batch mode.

Christmas geo-gift ideas:

• Four entries from Very Spatial: The four days of holiday gifts, Day 2: Sneaky Geography Gifts, More holiday treats for the geographer in your life, To round out our holiday gift ideas
• TMR shares an entry on Map Blankets

From the Google front (yes some more since yesterday):

• An official entry named How Local Search Ranking Works
• The GEB shares an entry named Google Earth continues to reveal strange sights from above
• APB discusses the Google Earth Engine as an Image Analysis for the Masses

From the ESRI front:

• I was amongst many to notice that ArcGIS for iOS now has data capture capabilities

From the open source / open data front:

• The OpenStreetMap editor Potlatch 2 has launched
• MapQuest is now using Swizerland and Netherlands data from OpenStreetMap
• Here's details on the Microsoft imagery access given to OpenStreetMap
• Thanks to open data, you can generate added-value for mostly anything, including an OpenFireMap
• V1 shares a long review of the OpenStreetMap - Be Your Own Cartographer book by Jonathan Bennett
• Via the OSGeo Discuss, I learned about the International Free and Open Source Software Law Review journal

In the miscellaneous category:

• Don't we all at some point look for a Free Shapefile of Countries of the World, here's a comparison
• Via the EOPortal, here's an article named Russia To Spend 2 Billion Dollars For Space Clean-Up
• SS shares an entry named Psychological Scientists Look at Spatial Skills for Indoor Navigation
• Slashdot ran a few somewhat geo-related stories: Combining Two Kinects To Make Better 3D Video, Aussie Government Competition To Predict Commute Times, and Feds Warrantlessly Tracking Americans' Real Time Credit Card Activity
• The GEB shares an entry named Take your own aerial photos with the Swinglet CAM
• The EO-1 satellite has been acquiring imagery for 10 years already

In the maps category:

• TMR shares a map of Natural Disaster Hot Zones

And the new somewhat off-topic link of the week: and entry from 'Information is beautiful' named Data, Information, Knowledge, Wisdom?, a quick look at the pic is enough, and it includes mapping ;-)

From the Google Earth Blog, there is a new release which brings three big updates. First there is a tighter integration with Street View imagery, as well as a new navigation mode (ground navigation) which allows you to easily navigate at ground level (ala fps). Secondly, there is better/native support for 3D trees. Not quite sure there is an API around it, but at least they are slowly populating GE with 3D trees. Lastly, there is an update the the historical imagery to make it easier to detect and switch between the imagery. Check out the blog for more details and youtube videos.

The Friday geonews in batch mode, including anything pertinent that we haven't shared yet.

On the Google front:

• Google announced single-click StreetView navigation
• Last March was announced that Google Mapplets were on their way out, their annihilation plan begun
• The GEB shares an entry on animated 3D models in Google Earth
• There will soon be bike directions for many Canadian cities in Google Maps

On the ESRI front:

• An entry on a mosaic image finder addin for ArcMap

In the miscellaneous category:

• MDA released a National Urban Change Indicator for the U.S.
• Here's an interesting entry (it must be since its involves Slartibartfast ;-) on removing complexities of complex polygons
• Here's an entry showing us what happens when you compute circular buffers in geographic coordinates
• If you're looking for geobooks to give at Christmas, The Map Room shares lists of geospatial-related books released this year
• There's also a new book named Preservation in Digital Cartography, co-authored by Tracey P. Lauriault, Peter L. Pulsifer and D.R. Fraser Taylor
• This entry explains why location privacy is different from privacy

In the maps category:

• From numerous sources, here's a one-minute video of the last 88 years of presidential election results in the U.S.
• The Map Room offers a long review the ninth edition of the National Geographic Atlas of the World
• The Economist shares an informative and scary interactive map of the global public debt
• In the same vein, GeoCurrents shares an entry named the So-Called Happy Planet Index, which includes a map
• The Strange Maps blog shares a Map of the World's Countries Rearranged by Population

In case you missed it, the Fuzzy Tolerance blog has an article up showcasing a virtual globe done completely in javascript. It's a bit rough around the edges, but goes to show that it may be soon feasible to have a virtual globe experience without resorting to browser plugins.
 

Via the Ogle Earth blog, it's a 2D web map with the option to go 3D. From the Ogle Earth summary: "China's State Bureau of Surveying and Mapping today released their long-anticipated web-based mapping tool, Map World (天地图), Reuters reports. it's in Chinese only but the controls are intuitive enough."

Over the weekend, Slashdot discussed this story named A Portable Laser Backpack For 3D Mapping. Their summary: "A portable laser backpack for 3D mapping has been developed at the University of California, Berkeley, where it is being hailed as a breakthrough technology capable of producing fast, automatic and realistic 3D mapping of difficult interior environments. ... The backpack is the first of a series of similar systems to work without being strapped to a robot or attached to a cart. At the same time, its data acquisition speed is very fast, as it collects the data while the human operator is walking; this is in contrast with existing systems in which the data is painstakingly collected in a stop-and-go fashion, resulting in days and weeks of data acquisition time. It utilizes novel sensor fusion algorithms that use cameras, lasers range finders and inertial measurement units to generate a textured, photo-realistic, 3D model that can operate without GPS input and that is a big challenge."

Catching up on almost 2-weeks old geonews, Intergraph announced GeoMedia 3D, to be available in the fourth quarter. From SS: "The 3D capability is an add-on component that will add the capability to view and manipulated 3D models via another desktop window. The tight integration with GeoMedia means that the learning curve will be very quick for those that already use the existing GeoMedia product suite. [...] The initial formats that are supported are CityGML, KML, KMZ and DAE. " Those interested in learning more can read the press release.

Here's recent Google geonews that we haven't shared yet. From the offical LatLong blog:

• Google Earth Pro 5.2 is no longer beta, and adds a few features such as vector and image 'regionation': "In a nutshell, Regionation allows Google Earth Pro to display huge amounts of data. It does so by breaking the data or imagery into the smallest necessary components".
• Google Earth itself got a brand new website
• There's another round of imagery update from Google

From the official developers blog:

• Directions are now draggable in the Maps API v3

From other sources: