ABC News on Google Earth 4.3 Application

Today, The Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) has just announced the launch of ABC Earth - a content layer, which features live stories and archived content including video, audio and text as a layer in Google Earth 4.3 application.
If you already have installed Google Earth 4.3 and want to get started viewing the ABC content, then simply click on the ABC Earth link. The ABC layer will automatically open in the Google Earth including national news, video news, stories from 50 years of national and international news and much more.
"With the recent launch of Google Earth 4.3, reading the news and soaring over some of Australia’s finest architecture has never been so fun and easy (and filled with sunshine). The search for new ways to see the world never ends, and we look forward to the new perspectives to come."

The Official Australia Blog

Google Earth Browser Plug-in and API

Google announced the release of the new Google Earth Browser Plug-in driven by an extensive JavaScript API that let users embed Google Earth within their own web sites. Google Earth API allows you to run:

• Control the camera by simply moving it with timeouts or tilt view.
• Create Placemark, ScreenOverlay, ScreenOverlay frame, LineString, LineString style, Polygon, Polygon style, Placemark StyleMap, Polygon(circle), GroundOverlay, 3D model, NetworkLink, MultiGeometry.
• Open feature balloon, HTML String balloon, HTML Div balloon, change balloon content and close balloon.
• Globe or window events and placemark events.
• Parse KML, fetch bad/good kml link
• Toggle sky mode, terrain, buildings, test navigation control, GMapsAPI geocoder

"The Google Earth API is a free beta service, available for any web site that is free to consumers."

Google also provided a variety of example applications you can develop using the Google Earth API.

Google Earth: Now 120 Maps in the Rumsey Historical Map

"With the recent addition of over 100 new historical maps, there are now 120 maps in the Rumsey Historical Map layer in Gallery layer in Google Earth, and these maps can now be seen in a new layer in Google Maps. The original 16 historical maps, launched in November of 2006, have been augmented by adding many more maps of cities, regions, countries, continents, and even globes"(Link)

Google Earth 4.3 New Features

New navigation and street view are new interfaces of the last version of Google Earth 4.3.
In Google Earth 4.3 (Beta) you will find:

• Photo-realistic Buildings

With Google Earth 4.3, see 3D buildings faster and in more cities than
ever before. Now you can access hundreds of new buildings from the
world's cities, including San Francisco, Boston, Orlando, Munich,
Zurich and dozens more.

• Swoop Navigation

Fly seamlessly through the landscape with new navigation controls.
Swoop from outer space to street level and leap from one building top
to another. Use the look joystick to view buildings as if you were
standing right in front of them.

• Light and Shadow

With the new Sunlight feature, you can watch the sunrise and sunset
from anywhere. Move the time slider to watch dusk, dawn and shadows
move across the Earth.

• Street View

Street View, available in Google Maps, is now in Google Earth!
Fly into panoramic images of select cities and take a 360 degree tour.

Read more on Google LatLong Blog & Official Google Blog.
Read also on Google OS.
Download Google Earth 4.3.

Google Earth New Layer

An interesting layer added from Google Earth shows you news from the NY Times. The new feature mentions a certain place, even thought you can hide the layer. Google Earth updates the layer every 15 minutes. "The New York Times offers geo-coded news, and Google Earth offers the platform for reading that news in a 3D browser"(Google LatLong Blog).

Google LatLong Blog also mentioned that this is the first time they've endeavored to show news updated in real time, and they're very excited to work with this first-class publication to bring users the latest and greatest news.

Read also on Google OS.
Try out yourself with Google Earth.

Google Sky Site Launched

By now Google Sky was an accessible feature on Google Earth. Now it’s launched to a web browser. Some of features Google Sky allows are e.g. searching for planets, listening to Earth and Sky Podcasts, watching Hubble telescope images and more, but the Google Lat Long blog and Google’s press released a list the features of this new service:

• Zoom and pan the sky, like with Google Maps
• Link to any particular place
• A search box which expands results if something is found
• Different views to switch to, like infrared or microwave
• Best-of galleries with imagery from Hubble and other telescopes
• A podcasts gallery
• The ability to overlays KML (Keyhole Markup Language) files, similar to Google Maps and Google Earth

Learn more about Google Sky features watching this video.

Get read the full story on Google Lat Long Blog.
Get started Google Sky yourself.
Try out Google special maps sites for Moon and Mars.
See also Microsoft WorldWide Telescope (WWT).