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[just realized this is partly a duplicated story, but it offers different links] Remember last week Microsoft announced Streetside, a feature similar to Google's StreetView? Today Google announced something similar to Bing Bird's Eye View: tilted perspectives imagery in Google Maps: "Starting today, developers will have access through the Google Maps API to high-resolution overhead imagery that is presented in a new aerial perspective. This is currently available in 2 spots in California: San Jose and San Diego. This new perspective gives users the ability to tilt their view of the world. In addition to seeing hotel rooftops like in our current "satellite" view, users can now see both the rooftop and sides of the hotel at an angle. In fact, users can rotate around all the sides of a hotel to get 4 different views from back to front. While the imagery is great to look at, we wanted to make sure it was also a useful tool for users. Consequently, we decided to stitch thousands of images together so that users can smoothly pan across the map in perspective." Developers can access tilted aerial imagery using the Google Maps API v2 (and v3 probably soon). Two other official entries focuses on finding what's nearby in Android and the launch of 'Favorite Places on Google' service using 'QR code' and a camera-equiped smartphone: "This launch is part of our overall effort — online and offline — to provide you with the best local business results whenever you're trying to figure out where to go [...]" The Google Earth Blog also shares his predictions for Google Earth in 2010, the themes: imagery freshness, map and imagery correlation, cloud power, 3D buildings and StreetView. There's also Italy's Milan now in 3D. Ogle Earth also shares an entry comparing the latest major Bings Maps upgrade with Google Earth.

We mentioned the new Mapzen application from CloudMade earlier this month, now Geoweb Guru shares an overview of CloudMade, which shares the same founders than OpenStreetMap: "CloudMade was founded to provide a "range of innovative tools and APIs that allow you to make the most of map data". They source their data from OpenStreetMap data, and all of their tools are clearly designed to work primarily with OpenStreetMap data. CloudMade products are generally open source, but are currently classed as alpha or pre-alpha. Pre-alpha web services are currently available free of charge, but CloudMade will be charging for some services and service levels as they are developed. The CloudMade web services all require API keys. These are currently free. Presumably they will be used to track usage when fees are charged. They are currently used for performance monitoring, and to ensure the terms of the Creative Commons license are respected where necessary (eg. for tile rasters)."

Over last weekend, Slashdot discussed a story named ISS Can Now Watch Sea Traffic From Space. Their summary: "During its last mission, astronauts from the Space Shuttle Atlantis installed an Automatic Identification System antenna on the outside of the International Space Station that will allow astronauts aboard the ISS to monitor signals from the AIS transmitters mandated to be installed on most large ocean-going craft. Although these VHF signals can be monitored from the Earth's surface, their horizontal range is generally limited to about 75 km (46 mi), leaving large areas of the ocean unwatched. However, the signals easily reach the 400 km (250 mi) orbit of the ISS. The European Space Agency sees this experiment as a test platform for a future AIS-monitoring fleet of satellites that will eventually provide worldwide coverage of sea traffic."

It's Friday, you thus get your geonews in batch mode! Let's start with the Google front. They just added 6 new cities to Building Maker: "• Stockholm, Sweden • Nuremberg, Germany • Hiroshima, Japan • Saitama, Japan • Miami Beach, FL USA • Orlando, FL USA." and there's again more new imagery to Google Earth and Google Maps. Here's an entry providing arguments that Google Maps Navigation is a problem, not a solution. Here's an entry on migrating CAD to enterprise GIS. In my FOSS4G wrap-up yesterday I forgot to mention there's a new CVS import interface for JGrass/uDig. Here's an entry showing how fast can contributions to OpenStreetMap can be done. O'Reilly offers an entry on location-based services, specifically discussion the future of Android vs iPhone. Meanwhile, it seems Apple wants to take iPhone Maps to "the next level". Here's an entry enumerating software and hardware resources for augmented reality. Map Hawk offers an entry on OnStar and how far in-car location-based services can go. Dan Dye linked to two interesting articles, first one on SDI access control and identity metasystems and another one named "Knowing your Role when defining Best Practices for SDI Access Control". Here's a new source of free data; Natural Earth vector and raster data for the entire world up to the 1:10 million scale. DM offers an article on the future of environmental law mapping, a case study in France. On the maps front, an Atlas of Norway has been introduced, here's a map of foreclosures in the U.S. by County and a World AIDS Day map. This week, V1 and SS offered plenty of small and interesting (but not major from my point of view) entries. I encourage you to take a look at them if you have an additional 2 minutes. Spatially Adjusted offers a link to GIS-related T-Shirts and goodies, not a lot of choice, but some interesting (I do like the "NAD27 - Never Forget" sticker).

Yesterday Microsoft had a major Bing Maps upgrade, introducing Streetside, a feature similar to Google's StreetView. That said, Google still generated many recent noteworthy geonews. StreetView got updates in the U.S., big updates for Canada and Singapore now gets StreetView too. Google launched their first-ever, international Google Model Your Town Competition: "You're invited to use our free tools — SketchUp and Building Maker — to make sure your community is represented on the world's biggest 3D stage.". Starred items in Google Maps and Google Maps Mobile are now synced. There's another entry on Climate Action in California and Gov. Schwarzenegger's Google Earth tour. This year too you'll be able to track Santa Claus on Google Maps and Google Earth. Finally, Ogle Earth offers a blog entry on 3 trends of Google Earth for 2010: imagery freshness, map and imagery correlation and cloud power.

Anonymous Voxel writes "ClimateScape will be built on top of Firescape -— a funded, peer-reviewed National Science Foundation effort already underway —- which focuses on a subset issue -— fire weather prediction and management. The Firescape web application is available here. ClimateScape will increase the scope of Firescape beyond fire weather predictions to include data collection, remote sensing data analysis, and data presentation across the Internet focused on issues of climate change. Such issues include, for example, date of green-up, length of growing season, status of snowpack, location and severity of storms, drought conditions, fuel moisture, fire danger, and so on. Data presentation will take the form of mapping products, charts, video, historical trending, and similar."

Stefan Knecht writes "Walk & Ride is an upcoming iPhone app by Germany based United Maps taking vectorized hyperlocal maps and onboard routing to the iPhone ... hey: and the iPod Touch. Here's a short video demoing core functionality, providing always-on, offline pedestrian and public transit navigation independent of GPS. And it looks quite sweet ..." See also previous walking maps stories below.