Google has released an updated version of Mac OS X, includes Google Earth browser plug-in. Now users will be able to use Google Earth software as a browser plug-in. Around six month back it was released and made available for Windows but now the Google Earth plug-in has been made available for the Mac & they are still working on the Linux version. Digital Earth Blog was the first to blog about it & points to a few sites such as EarthSwoop and Mini Flight Sim where people can try the plug-in.

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As everybody knows that hundreds were killed and injured on Wednesday in a series of coordinated terror attacks that struck Mumbai,India’s financial and commercial capital. After that Investigations by the Mumbai police from one nabbed terrorist, The interrogation committee revealed that they were highly trained for such attacks and used technologies such as satellite phones, and global positioning systems (GPS), means Terrorists used Google Earth to plan the recent attacks in Mumbai.

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World search leader Google’s services are not available in all parts of world. Currently Google has blocked it’s services in Cuba, Syria, North Korea, Iran, and Sudan. This is not the first time when Google has blocked it’s services in some countries last year also they have blocked Google Earth services in Sudan.

According to a Google spokesperson,

In order for the company to abide by U.S. export controls and economic sanctions, we are unable to permit the download of Google Chrome in Cuba, Syria, North Korea, Iran, and Sudan.

Jessica Dheere points out something even more interesting than the blocking of Google’s services

Another curious aspect of this is that though Google blocks Syrians and Iranians from accessing these programs, it still serves them ads. According to Sadeq, Google AdWords ads appear on websites and blogs in Syria just as they do elsewhere. Sadeq double-checked that this was the case and that clicking through didn’t pose any problems. "Moreover," he said, "I don’t think there is a problem in setting up an [AdSense] account for one’s blog/website (I tried it once in my blog)."

How did he set up the AdSense account? When asked what country he was from, he simply chose Lebanon because Syria wasn’t an option. The account was easily set up that way.

According to US regulations Google Adsense ads can be shown in these countries but but marketing services would be prohibited. But for doing this Google has just removed the name of countries of the drop down list but the users from these countries are able to make Google accounts and using Google services. I think there is some thing wrong in the process of blocking services from these countries because users from these blocked countries are using proxy websites for accessing Google services.

Google has updated it’s Map and Earth with fresh new pictures of China. According to Google Official blog  some of the imageries are less then 2 weeks old.

Matt Manolides, GIS Specialist Said

We’ve published brand new imagery of Beijing in time for the Olympics, and that some of the new imagery is less than 2 weeks old! Everyone on the imagery team is very excited to make this data available to you just before the start of the games; it’s very hard to get good satellite photos of Beijing due to clouds and other atmospheric conditions, but our partners GeoEye and DigitalGlobe pulled through and were able to get us some really amazing shots. Some updated areas include Beijing, Tianjin, Shenyang, and Quindao — you can check out the new data in both Google Earth and Google Maps.

Image quality is really good and you can see all the places where world’s best athletes compete with each other. Some of the updated areas are Beijing, Tianjin, Shenyang, and Quindao.

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Google has released Google earth browser plug-in and Google earth API. Now users can user Google earth without installing Google earth desktop software. We can say that Google earth browser plug-in is just like a bridge between Google earth desktop application and Google Map. Google Earth Browser plug-in is available for Firefox and Internet Explorer.Unfortunately this plug-in is not available for Linux

Google also launched the JavaScript API for Google earth. Developers can use this API to interact with the globe, draw markers, add layers or integrate with Google Maps. 

The Google Earth Plug-in and its APIs let you embed the full power of Google Earth and its 3D rendering capabilities into your web pages.

Google LatLong blog announced that each Google Maps mashup can take advantage of the new 3D view by adding a single line of code.

Our goal is to open up the entire core of Google Earth to developers in the hopes that you’ll build the next great geo-based 3D

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