Google Maps/Earth shows evidence of ancient ruins

Article from a while back describing an Italian programmer who found evidence of ancient ruins near his property, using Google Maps/Earth. There were TONS of results when I searched for this, but this website links to the location on Google Maps, and links to the Italian programmer's personal map of the area. Then a follow-up: Google Map Archaeology Gets a Website

Linguistic mapping

Seems some of you haven't seen the Pop vs. Soda map. Honestly, is living your so-called "life" in the "real world" actually more interesting than lame internet memes? Huh? Also, the very excellent MLA Language Map, mapping language use based on census data.

Yar, thankee, satellites, for proving me sane

For years, biologists have laughed at sailors for reporting vast swaths of glowing ocean, or "milky seas." Also, they laughed at their funny accents and missing limbs. But now, cold, uncaring satellites have succored the sailor cause by providing real digital evidence of this phenomenon. Behold, a glowing milky sea the size of Connecticut! You can get all the details from the PNAS paper, but why would you do that when aliens are clearly to blame. Silly scientists, why do you even bother?

Nasa World Wind 1.3.3.1

Ok, I am highly recommending this to anyone with a decent video card and high speed internet connection. This new version has blue marble next generation built in (no need for separate download), as well as moon data. Uninstall any previous version before loading this one (and delete the old World Wind Cache files). Click here --> http://worldwind.arc.nasa.gov/download.html

Landsat Imagery Source

Another source for Landsat imagery (this one from U. of Maryland Global Land Cover Facility).

Amazon Maps

Check out Amazon's A9 mapping site @ maps.a9.com. Be sure to take a look at the blockview images. For those of you who live off of popular streets, you are likely to see a picture of your place.

Morbid local map

Whoa, suicides from the Golden Gate Bridge summarized in an attractive infogrpahic. Not really "cool" so much as interesting. From boingboing

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Sat-nav to save the environment

A mildly-interesting BBC News article on proposed uses for the up-and-coming Galileo satellite system developed by the European Union and the European Space Agency. The system should be fully-operational by 2008, hopefully operating with "complementarity" with the existing GPS and GLONASS systems, and promises sub-meter real-time accuracy (Note: I'm not sure how, but it's certainly do-able).
The BBC article highlights an application for shared electric cars that could be located online, picked up and dropped off anywhere. I just got here so I don't know whether this has already been discussed for programs like the Bay Area's City Car Share program, but it seems like a natural direction (even without sub-meter GPS).

Tracking marine resources through historical menus

NYTimes has an interesting article on the efforts of some marine biologists to track the relative abundance of seafood species through their presence and price on historical restaurant menus. Very cool historical ecology project.

Workin hard…

For all y'all slogging through a VTM quad now (or ever), rest assured that Yoda has moves.