The Google Lat Long blog noted a new viewer so anyone can watch changes the company's map database, in something like real time. While it's fun to watch the little bubbles pop up (you zoom around the map as do; most I saw were about an hour old), I'm thinking of questions I'd like to ask about the edits:

Who's doing them?
What's getting moved most - residences? businesses?
Do certain geographies get more edits?
Do edits jump at certain times of day? Times of year?
What's the relationship of the geography of the editor to the geography being edited?

Google, which began putting mapped results on its general search page (Universal Search) some time ago, has upped the number of such results from a typical three to, in some situations, ten.

Search Engine Land tracks the details, but the most interesting part from my perspective is the "why?"

Google said today that the reason it's showing more links is because usability testing revealed that many people didn't realize there was additional local content available beyond the three listings, despite the "more results . . ." prompt. Accordingly, Google said that with the 10 links it is hoping to signal people that there is much more local content a click away.

Mickey from Google Earth Hacks share this new tool.

We've just created a new tool to make it easier for beginners to embed maps on their site, and I thought it might be worth blogging about.

The tool is called "YourMap."

Users fill out the form on that page (all fields optional except for "name") and a map will be created for them. They can choose the size, starting zoom level, starting map type, etc. Based on their address, the location will be geocoded for them. Optionally, they can submit alternate lat/lon if they wish to be more accurate.

Once the form is filled out, HTML code for the map is given to them. They put it on their site and it's done! In addition to showing the map, it also builds a Google Earth KML with their location inside.

The HTML calls an iframe on our server, so they don't have to worry about an API key or anything. I've tried to make it very, very simple to use, and I hope I've succeeded.

Another patent via Gary Price, this time from Google:

Markup Language for Interactive Geographic Information System (filed June 12, 2007)

"Data-driven guarded evaluation of conditional-data associated with data objects is used to control activation and processing of the data objects in an interactive geographic information system. Methods of evaluating conditional-data to control activation of the data objects are disclosed herein. Data-structures to specify conditional data are also disclosed herein."

I don't really get this - but I think it's about giving the user more control of the display of large data sets. Perhaps readers can help me out?

Pennsylvania's Department of Conservation and Natural Resources' PAMAP will soon be part of Google Eath, thanks to a cooperative agreement with USGS.

- PennLive

The project, called Innovative Support to Emergencies, Diseases and Disaster (InSTEDD), is a nonprofit organization funding by Google.org, The Rockerfeller Foundation and others. It launches today and ties together free software like Twitter and Facebook and Google Earth to enable communications during disaster. The geo example:

One such application will be the so-called Twitter bot framework, which bridges the Web service and phones with a location-detection feature that can link to a layer in Google Earth, [Eric] Rasmussen [CEO] said. That way, for example, Rasmussen could send a message about a patient with untreated symptoms in Laos via SMS on his phone, which might only have one signal bar of service. That message could then be broadcast to anyone subscribed to his messages, including aid workers at UNICEF or InSTEDD's headquarters in Palo Alto, Calif., which could show his location and note on a Google Earth map.

"We can send an SMS message onto Google Earth in an emergency center, and it sees a dot with a color-coded response, with my name and date. Right underneath that, there's a button that says reply, and (aid workers can send a note that says) we have the resources you need 2 miles north...Suddenly there's a two-way conversation using nothing but a cell phone with one bar," he said, adding: "We've done this."

- c|net