Slashgeo

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.

The GeoRSS Weblog informs us the following : "I’ve never really got into the whole Twittering thing, but I’m sure this will be of interest to some. I just came across GeoTwitter, which is an open source .NET code base that does what you think."

Please visit the links above for more information.

Several blogs discuss the Swine Flu event. You have All Points Blog offers a few links, including one to HealthMap.org (mentioned on /geo in 2006). Spatial Sustain also links to a Google My Maps on swine-related events, and an appropriate pandemic preparedness map for the U.S.A.. In 2007, Strange Map offered a pretty interesting map of pigs in the world, it's surprisingly unevenly distributed. Slashdot also discussed Swine flu. To end this story, xkcd may make you smile. See also related stories below.

Unsurprisingly, more Swine Flu maps are available since our Monday round up. The official Google LatLong blog offers an entry with links and maps: "You can find more, updated information about swine flu from the World Health Organization, Centers for Disease Control, and the UN Food and Agriculture Organization." The Google Earth Blog also links to more links on Google Maps Mania. Microsoft reminds us that the BBC is tracking Swive Flu with Virtual Earth. The Off the Map blog offers additional nice and informative maps done by Finder! and Maker!

Amongst the recents maps on the geoblogs... More Swine Flu maps on MS Virtual Earth. Very Spatial discusses ToxicRisk, mapping toxic release inventory data and links to an interactive map of the U.S. electric power grid. The Map Room offers a map of the Taliban in Pakistan and map of popular snapping sites, based on Flikr's 35 million photographs. He's also linking to nothing less than a map of the seven deadly sins in the USA! Mapperz informs us about TopOSM, one of the best OpenStreetMap rendering effort. See also related stories below.

This Friday's geonews cleanup. There's an entry by Between the Poles named "Engineering Data to GIS and Back", discussing the link between CAD and GIS data and underlining that most of the world's spatial vector data is captured using CAD applications. The same blog shares a map of the geography of recessions in the U.S. The Google Earth Blog discusses the real-time mapping of ships, with over 10,000 ships mapped on the planet. The same blog mentions the KMLFactBook, which is the CIA World Factbook in kml format. Mapperz mentions StreetVi in alpha, mixing StreetView, Birds Eye View and Google Maps with places nearby. Off the Map offers an informative entry, with maps of course, on Swine flu vs the regular flu. Mandown informs us ArcGIS Online Map Services now uses the same zoom levels than G, M and Y! (see previous story). The Map Room offers a map of the uninsured in the U.S., map of the organic farms, still in the U.S., a map of mental health and a map of global airplane routes. Meanwhile, Spatial Sustain informs us about the completed geological map of the Arctic. Google offers the open source library MarkerClusterer, a solution to when too many markers have to be shown on a map. All Points Blog points to blaming web maps for actually slowing traffic, and another entry on developing, documenting and sharing Dr. Niman's H1N1 (swine) flu database. See also related stories below.

Donald McMillan writes "Trending Restaurants and Bars is a new service that geocodes content from twitter, and enables users to browse and share local favorite places.

Our intention with the service is to:

~ Provide a cool way to discover Twitter trending local restaurants and bars.
~ Let Twitter users add opinions and tweet their own restaurant and bar picks.
~ Filter trending restaurants in useful ways, based on location and category.

We're currently live with 13 cities, including New York, San Francisco, Washington DC, Los Angeles, Seattle, London and Sydney.

Going forward, we'll be:

~ Adding more cities as Twitter's popularity spreads.
~ Enhancing the experience with more filter and search options.
~ Releasing an iPhone app, one that displays Twitter trending restaurants around the user's detected location.

Any feedback or suggestions would be much appreciated."
See also previous Twitter-related stories below.