A new version of Google Earth for the iPhone is due soon, and among its new features is one with a personal touch: the ability to see maps you’ve created and/or saved in Google Maps. To make this happen, the new Google Earth iPhone app will add the ability to login to your Google account — a feature that could open up additional personalization doors in the future.

Google’s announcement today includes an example from product manager Dan Birch using the new feature to track a pair of attempts to summit Mount Ritter, in which the combination of GPS, KML, and My Maps were used together to show the summit attempts on the Google Earth iPhone app.

A more down-to-earth (pardon the pun) improvement aims to help users get through the sometimes cluttered combination of business listings, Panoramio photos, Wikipedia entries, and other icons that appear in the iPhone app.

When a user touches icons that are too close, a new screen will show them in list format for easier selection of the desired data type.

Finally, the new Google Earth iPhone app is now available in 31 languages, up from 18 in the original release.

Google says the app should be available in the next 24 hours.

Both Bing and Google have updated their maps imagery. The Bing blog announced an additional 9,460 square kilometers of imagery added to Bing Maps. Not to be outdone, Google announced that not only are they updating their imagery, but they will increasing the frequency of those updates.

In addition, Google Transit recently added more partners, including coverage of Bordeaux, Tuscany, Reggio Emilia, Brescia and more.

A reader pointed us to the Delta 2 rocket launch where Microsoft was a co-sponsor. If you look closely, you can see the Bing logo on the rocket ship.

While Bing’s logo went into space, Google today announced a partnership with DigitalGlobe to launch a satellite into space to provide “high-quality imagery in Google Earth & Google Maps.”

What about Yahoo? Well, they did bury a Time Capsule in earth in October 2006 which wont be opened until March 2, 2020. Not exactly space, but still feels a bit futuristic.

People have been searching for the Loch Ness Monster for decades, using all kinds of scientific gear in and around Loch Ness in Scotland to see if the creature is real or fake. Is it possible they just needed to search Google Earth, instead? (Probably not, but play along with me on this.)

Jason Cooke of Nottingham, England, thinks he spotted the monster on Google Earth, and the British tabloid The Sun ran the story with the image above. You can see it for yourself by using the coordinates Latitude 57°12′52.13″N, Longitude 4°34′14.16″W in Google Earth. If you don’t have the full Google Earth, but have the browser plug-in, you can also see it on EarthURL.org.

A spokesman from the Loch Ness Project told the Sun, “This is really intriguing. It needs further study.”

This is the second time this year that Google is getting credited for possibly uncovering one of the world’s great mysteries. You may remember the buzz back in February when some thought that Google Ocean had uncovered Atlantis. Google refuted that rumor at the time … but there’s no word yet from Mountain View about this mysterious creature on Google Earth.

Meanwhile, I was about to make a funny/snarky comment asking what’s next after Atlantis and the Loch Ness Monster? Google finding Elvis Presley? Turns out they already have his ghost on YouTube.

Postscript: A Google spokesperson gave us this statement about the purported discovery of the Loch Ness Monster: “Google Earth has enabled users to make many discoveries, including new animal species, Ancient Roman villas, and meteorite craters, but we aren’t quite ready to add the Loch Ness Monster to that list.”

Today is the 40th anniversary of the Apollo 11th mission where man landed on the moon. To celebrate the anniversary, Google announced the launch of Moon in Google Earth. You can now use Google Earth to explore, fly around and search the moon.

Here is the video blog post explaining this announcement:

The Google LatLong Blog has details on many of the features of Google Moon.

There are some complaints that Google does not have a special logo up for the day, like Bing, YouTube and my blog. To see those logos, go to the Search Engine Roundtable.

Postscript: At 3:30pm EST today, Google has updated their home page to make a Google Doodle for the special day. Here is a picture:

Also, Google’s Street View Man is dressed in a space suit today:

After hearing about the “Great Pacific Garbage Patch” earlier this year — an area the size of Texas in the Pacific Ocean filled with trash — I went looking for it on Google Earth. And never found it. It’s not that the patch doesn’t exist. It’s just that despite being large, it’s not that visible from above.

I was disappointed in Google at first, for not having images of the patch. After all, the company made a big splash with Google Ocean earlier this year, a way to see more about the majority of our planet that’s covered with water. But while Google Earth is good for seeing under the ocean, why can’t I see more of what’s on top, such as this huge collection of garbage?

Google Ocean product manager Steve Miller emailed me this explanation earlier this year:

Regarding the availability of satellite imagery of the oceans: Unfortunately we haven’t found great sources of data for most of the open ocean because most imagery providers focus their efforts on the land. Where we do have satellite imagery for the ocean surface, we’ve preserved it in the most recent version of Google Earth and the satellite view in Maps. For example you can still see trawling vessels in southeast Asia. There are a number of potential applications for such imagery, from amateur interest in finding ships to looking at off-shore oil platforms to locating illegal fishing vessels, so it’s certainly worth exploring how we could track down data for the rest of the ocean.

Regarding the gyre: the trash gyre presents its own set of challenges. Even if we had satellite imagery, the gyre likely wouldn’t appear in it. Most of the plastic is particulate and/or a bit under the surface so you can’t see it in the imagery. A number of groups are starting to focus on collecting more data about the gyre via expeditions and sampling – we’d love to see one or more of them produce maps that could be viewed in Google Earth.

So there you go. A huge pile of trash collectively, but trash so small individually that the patch doesn’t show up.

Want to learn more about the Great Garbage Patch, also known as the Pacific Gyre? Wikipedia has an entry, and there’s an entire site with information about it: the Great Garbage Patch. I’d also recommend watching the video below from this year’s TED conference featuring Captain Charles Moore, who is credited with discovering the patch:

Google’s inclusion of historical Japanese Maps in Google Earth has caused an outcry in Japan. According to the AP these maps were already on public view and online. But Google is taking heat from rights organizations as well as the Justice Ministry in Japan.

Why? What’s the controversy?

Apparently the historical maps originally showed locations (which have now reportedly been removed) where a feudal caste called the Burakumin lived. According to the Wikipedia entry:

The burakumin are descendants of outcast communities of the feudal era, which mainly comprised those with occupations considered “tainted” with death or ritual impurity (such as executioners, undertakers or leather workers), and traditionally lived in their own secluded hamlets and ghettos.

They were legally liberated in 1871 with the abolition of the feudal caste system; however, this did not put a stop to social discrimination and their lower living standards because Japanese family registration (Koseki) was fixed to ancestral home address until recently. In certain areas of Japan, there is still a stigma attached to being a resident of such areas, including some lingering discrimination in matters such as marriage and employment.

The AP article points out that job discrimination is still very much alive in Japan against the descendants of this group:

Today, rights groups say the descendants of burakumin make up about 3 million of the country’s 127 million people.

But they still face prejudice, based almost entirely on where they live or their ancestors lived. Moving is little help, because employers or parents of potential spouses can hire agencies to check for buraku ancestry through Japan’s elaborate family records, which can span back over a hundred years.

An employee at a large, well-known Japanese company, who works in personnel and has direct knowledge of its hiring practices, said the company actively screens out burakumin job seekers.

Groups advocating on behalf of the rights of the decendants of the Burakumin were upset by the publication of the historical maps on Google Earth. At the bottom of the objections is the idea that Google Earth would somehow facilitate continued discrimination by making it easy to identify the places where their descendants lived and continue to live.

In fairness to Google the fact that these maps were already public made it less predictable that the issue would cause such a stir. As mentioned, the offending material has apparently been removed.

A California lawmaker has introduced a bill that would limit what Google Maps and other online mapping sites are allowed to show, on the basis that these online tools help terrorists plan attacks.

We’ve been here before: Late last year, the Indian government suggested that Google Earth should be censored after terrorists involved in the Mumbai attacks reportedly admitted to using Google Earth when planning their missions.

According to The Industry Standard, the new California bill would prevent Google and others from showing “aerial or satellite images of schools, places of worship, government buildings and medical facilities unless they have been blurred.” Says legislator Joel Anderson, who introduced the bill:

“What my bill does is limit the level of detail [in Google Earth]. It doesn’t stop people from getting directions. We don’t need to help bad people map their next target. What is the purpose of showing air ducts and elevator shafts? It does no good.”

A Google spokesperson is quoted in the article, saying they’d like to visit with Anderson to discuss his concerns. Earlier this year, Google Earth chief John Hanke defended Google’s mapping tools, saying they aren’t “tipping the balance in favor of the bad guys.”

Citing the Mumbai terrorists’ statement that they used Google Maps as a planning tool, a California legislator (from El Cajon) has introduced a bill which would “not allow online mapping tools from companies like Google Inc. to provide aerial or satellite images of schools, places of worship, government buildings and medical facilities unless they have been blurred.”

Presumably this doesn’t apply only to Google and extends to Microsoft, Yahoo!, MapQuest, Ask and others that offer satellite maps and related imagery. According to a news article the Assemblyman, Joel Anderson, said:

“What my bill does is limit the level of detail [ in Google Earth ]. It doesn’t stop people from getting directions. We don’t need to help bad people map their next target. What is the purpose of showing air ducts and elevator shafts? It does no good.”

If you live in the world of technology it’s easy to quickly dismiss something like this as naive or reactionary or both. That was my first impulse. But it’s also important to recognize the concerns at the heart of this bill, which is unlikely to pass, as legitimate. Technology is moving much faster than the human ability to assimilate and cope with it. To some degree, efforts like this stem from frustration over that fact and represent an attempt to “do something” to address real or perceived problems.

Terrorists are in fact using these tools but they also use other tools as well. The question is: where do we put our efforts and focus?

Would Assemblyman Anderson be equally disposed to limiting access to guns and clamp down on automatic weapons trafficking because automatic weapons are used in these attacks? I don’t know his personal views on guns but Republicans in the US have historically been reluctant to regulate guns in any way. (I’m not trying to suggest that there’s any analogy between guns and online mapping tools.) In this context it’s quite silly to argue that mapping should be regulated when there’s a corresponding refusal to pursue much more dangerous instruments of terrorism.

Limiting “sensitive” information displayed in online mapping has its place but what information should be considered “sensitive”? Indeed, those limitations or restrictions should be defined very narrowly. These tools are now very valuable to people in their daily lives and should remain generally accessible. There’s also the question of free speech; the old First Amendment vs. national security debate: “criticism of US policy gives comfort to terrorists.”

Terrorists will find other access to satellite mapping or ways to plan their attacks if these online tools are curtailed. Indeed, the Internet itself is a vast terrorist planning tool because of the information it makes available.

Limiting what’s displayed on Google Maps, or Virtual Earth, won’t prevent terrorist attacks. The society needs to address the root causes of terrorism in the countries that spawn it (i.e., economic and solical instability). That’s a much more complex and difficult set of problems to address than pointing the scapegoating finger at Google.

Is that the lost city of Atlantis?

Whatever it is, this grid-like pattern of lines on the floor of the Atlantic Ocean is getting a lot of buzz these days — and it’s all made possible by the recently launched Google Ocean.

According to the Telegraph, a 38-year-old aeronautical engineer recently spotted the pattern off the coast of northwest Africa near the Canary Islands. The newspaper quotes archaeology experts who say it’s “one of the most prominent places for the proposed location of Atlantis.”

We’ve already covered Cool Sights In Google Street View, so if anyone is planning a similar article about cool sights seen in the new Google Ocean, your list begins here.

PostScript: PC World is running an article today in which Google says the image isn’t Atlantis, but just an artifact of the data collection process: “Bathymetric (or seafloor terrain) data is often collected from boats using sonar to take measurements of the seafloor. The lines reflect the path of the boat as it gathers the data.” (Thx @neyne.)

PostScript #2: Google has also joined in formally with a very scientific explanation on the Official Google Blog.