Slashgeo

Ogle Earth discuss Talk Maps, a site to map instant messaging contacts (Jabber network, including Google Talk) to Google Maps or even Google Earth. From the blog: "You add a bot to your friends list, so that it knows when you are available, and you also enter your coordinates on a special form once. Bingo, yet another way to meet new people from all over the world."

The GIS and Space blog shortly discuss RadiusIM, a new player in the field of geographical instant messaging. Here's the company website. From the blog: "The premise is that you can see others in your area (the mapping component is Google Maps), and IM them. As you change your map extent, the list of potential IM candidates changes accordingly. [...] You can use the radiusIM chat client to chat with your buddies on GoogleTalk/Jabber, MSN Messenger, Yahoo! Messenger, and AOL Instant Messenger. I did test this out and it works pretty well." See related stories for other similar geo-enabled instant messaging stories.

Ogle Earth describes a global early warning system using Google.org and InSTEDD. InSTEDD stands for Innovative Support to Emergencies Diseases and Disasters. From this CFP article: "One of the applications that this project will focus around is the ability that Twitter has to work between the internet and mobile phones. Using a location detection feature, a message sent from a phone from the middle of Africa, will tie in with a layer on Google Earth, pinpointing the senders location, with the text message requesting help." Using geospatial technologies for emergencies and disaster management has been covered quite a few times before, including AlertMap, see related stories below. Another example is WebEOC Mapper, an ESRI ArcGIS Server based disaster response web interface released last September (via Kurt's Weblog).

twittearth is a new way to visualize the twiter public stream. It takes location data embedded in the twitter messages or tweets and displays these on a 3D spinning Globe. It is pretty addicting to watch. It has been described as twittervision on steriods.

If you don't know what Twitter is, it is a microblogging platform. The basic idea is that you as the user can send 140 character tweets out and your followers or the general public will be able toview those tweets. This is very useful for sending out short massages. Your followers will be notified of your tweets either by the webapage or a mobile device if they enable one. If you already have a Twitter account you can follow my tweets on twitter.