Short news: Tagzania does 3D, Snotel, Geonames, Geotagging timeline

  • Jabal al-Lughat is a linguist blog written by Lameen Souag, who has recently discovered Google Earth. He blogs how easy it is to creates collections of placemarks to create linguistic maps of places where obscure and minority languages are spoken. And indeed it is. Here’s one he’s made of where Tunisian Berber is spoken. Tip to Lameen: Use Tagzania‘s place tagging and commenting tools to create fully searchable linguistic indices. Or even just upload your KMZ file to Google Earth Community to have it show up automatically on other people’s Google Earths.
  • Speaking of Tagzania, the team behind it has landed a commission to produce 3D models of Spain’s latest architectural wonders for a video installation at the Venice Architecture Biennale (!!). You can travel to Venice to see it (until Nov 19) or you can download the models for your computer now.
  • Snowfall info is not just for skiing anymore — it’s an important leading indicator for drought. jfleck at inkstain links to the KML versions of data from the Natural Resources Conservation Service’s Snotel automated snowpack measurement stations in the western US.
  • Geonames.org fixes its ontology after some feedback from the big names in web semantics.
  • Freelancer turned Flickrer Rev Dan Catt sets the timeline straight as to who developed geotagging when.
  • I’m a bit late to report it, but what a boost for GeoRSS: National Geographic gives it a big wet sloppy kiss on the lips. Way to go GeoRSS. (NG has a whole series of articles on the digital revolution in mapping — perhaps a bit late to the party?)
  • If you want to see GéoPortail’s 2D imagery draped over a 3D Google Earth, Guilhem Vellut has created a Ruby application that will fetch the relevant tiles and present them as overlays in Google Earth 4, on demand. PC only at the moment. (Via Le Blogue d LFG)
  • Newham High Street in London seems set to be coming to Google Earth sooner rather than later, courtesy of an enlightened city council and the Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis (CASA). Comes with YouTube eyecandy.