Links: PLoS ONE, quadtrees, UGOs, UpNext

Thursday, August 09, 2007 (21:18 UTC)

PLoS ONE is "an international, peer-reviewed, open-access, online publication" where all papers are full text and licensed by the Creative Commons Attribution License. In short, it's how science journals ought to be. Chronobiology blog A Blog Around the Clock flags two papers published to PLoS ONE that reference KML files as part of their supporting information.

So which Google Maps tiles contain a given coordinate? Mark Pursey's tool tells you exactly. It's an interesting illustration of what quadtrees are.

Tobedetermined's Alexander van Dijk is making progress on getting his "user-generated orbits" (UGOs) tool ready for release, and is blogging it on the project blog. What are UGOs? Tracks of where your point of view in Google Earth has been over time. It's whimsical and lovely.

Digital Urban flags UpNext and its 3D implementation of Manhattan. Wow. Two things: One: It is blindingly fast (albeit by taking some game-engine shortcuts). Two: If they can come out of nowhere with a browser-based 3D client that works for the Mac, what's taking Microsoft so long?

Brian Flood provides a detailed preview of what we can expect of Arc2Earth v2, out in a month or so. Comes with plenty of examples, and even more examples in a follow-up post.

Andrew Hudson-Smith breaks the news that negotiations between Google and the UK's Ordnance Survey have broken down regarding the licensing of data used in the making of a 3D layer of London. No deal, so no layer. The Ordnance Survey's excuse — that its licensing framework does not permit what Google wants and that it would be unfair to others to make an exception — fails to address the obvious retort: Then don't make an exception, change a framework that is obviously unable to accomodate modern-day mapping applications like virtual globes and mashups.