google earth

Google Earth may be facing some real competition from the Chinese map service 51ditu. They've launched a 3D Earth project called LTEarth with many features similar to Google Earth, like flying to your destination by address search, and controls for tilt, rotate and zoom. From what we can tell the satellite images come from NASA.

To try it out yourself you'll have to download and install the plugin for IE and then use a guest login. If you're having trouble launching it, make sure that the Chinese language pack is installed on your system.

The revenue model is going to be ad based. Local businesses can list themselves in the search on a pay-per call basis using Longtuo's Dilingling service. There will also be text ads available right on the map using Longtuo's Clickeye.

Recently at the Casual Connect conference Google representatives announced the upcoming "Adsense For Games". Google's purchase of AdScape Media back in March combined with the incredible virtual world applications constructed with Google Maps and Google Earth have left everyone wondering if we were going to see games produced by them, or at least a games portal. Instead what they've planned is a system where content producers are able to make video and text ads available for purchase within their games.

This will all start with web-based games but PC and console games will soon follow. This is especially timely as many virtual worlds, such as Toontown, are moving to an ad-supported free to play platform. If Google is able to make these tools truly easy to integrate (as they have with everything else they've produced), this may make it much easier for a small group to create a 3D startup.

We'll have more on this as information becomes available.

The Envirolink group have launched a cool project on Common Wealth Island that brings some of the Google Earth functionality into Second Life. Though it clearly needs work, at least from my point of view after taking a look round, it's a neat build and a fun visual based information tool to use. Scarlett Qi has an extended writeup At Slnn and Mark Wallace is also excited by the innovative new build.

You can teleport to the globe here, but just don't try flying around it, that doesn't work, use your camera controls and zoom in on the various hotspots.