By its very nature, communications infrastructure is general. It can be used to plan both legal and illegal activities, and it’s generally impossible to tell which is which. Last year, a US army intelligence report worried that terrorists could plan their attacks using Twitter, and there are unconfirmed reports that the Mumbai terrorists read the Twitter feeds about their attacks to get real-time information they could use. British intelligence is worried that terrorists might use voice over IP services such as Skype to communicate. Terrorists may train on Second Life and World of Warcraft. We already know they use websites to spread their message and possibly even to recruit.

Vancouver is now available in photorealistic 3D. It's a beautiful city in Google Earth now as well as in real life. I looked around quite a bit for other new 3D cities, but couldn't find any other new ones. There are some expanded coverages in other cities. For example, New York City is now extended north a bit covering Harlem all the way up to the Bronx. Also, I have reports of Portland and Seattle being a bit more expansive. While looking for new coverage I was looking at Los Angeles.

The amount of coverage from downtown LA to the coast and north up to the foothills is amazing. Thousands of buildings! But, I those areas were part of the last update. Read GEB's last 3D cities post which lists all the known major 3D cities in Google Earth - except for the new one: Vancouver.

This week's edition of the BBC World Service's Digital Planet is all about the Geographic web. The programme includes an interview with Marcello Quintella, a geo project manager at Google’s Brazilian Headquarters. In the programme Gareth talks about some of the latest geographical features available on your mobile phone, including Google Maps and Street View.

Also on the programme is a section on geocaching (GPS treasure hunts), You can listen to the podcast of the programme here. Because this is a special all about the geographic web there is also a Google Map of listeners. Digital Planet wants to know where their listeners are, so they have created this Google Map, to which you can add your location.

The tech world was abuzz this weekend with rumors about a big upcoming event concerning Google Earth. WebProNews and AppScout were the first to report on Friday. Google has sent out an invitation to the press, including Google Earth Blog, for a "Special announcement about Google Earth" on February 2nd in San Francisco. And this event looks like it could be the biggest announcement since Google Earth was released! Speakers include: former Vice President Al Gore, CEO of Google Eric Schmidt, VP of Google Marissa Mayer, and Director of Google Geo John Hanke. Wow!

There are no specifics on the announcement mentioned in the invitation. Just some comments about how Google Earth has reached hundreds of millions of people around the world. The last time Google had this many dignitaries to make an announcement for Google Earth was in June of 2006 when they announced the upcoming release of Google Earth 4. Eric Schmidt and the two co-founders of Google (Larry Page and Sergey Brin) were there for the announcement made by John Hanke at that event. Google Earth 4 introduced photorealistic textures to 3D models, GE for the Mac and Linux, multi-lingual support, and a huge global imagery update covering many countries for the first time. Another clue for this announcement was some other speakers for the announcement: Sylvia Earle - Explorer-in-Residence for National Geographic Society; Terry Garcia - EVP for National Geographic Society, and Greg Farrington, Executive Director for California Academy of Sciences. The last one isn't surprising because the invitation says the announcement will be held at the California Academy of Sciences. The big clue is Sylvia Earle. As pointed out by everyone, Sylvia Earle is a world renowned oceanographer. So, of course, the immediate conclusion is that Google Ocean is finally about to be introduced. Rumors have been flying about Google Ocean for quite a while. So, clearly Google Earth is going to get some new Ocean-related data. Google just added new detailed ocean floor imagery last week. And, it's a known fact that several of the parties involved with that also have worked on 3D bathymetry.

Google Earth to date has not had many layers which provide data about the ocean. And the ocean terrain has always been flat (2D) in Google Earth. More ocean data is an area I've been looking forward to with great anticipation. Especially since this year my wife and I are departing to spend the next five years circumnavigating the oceans by sailboat. Having Google Earth help us explore the oceans will be handy! Google Earth has needed more information about the 75% of the Earth most of us ignore. I don't think this announcement will be confined to just Google Ocean though. When Google makes an announcement like this, they always try to push the envelope on multiple fronts. And, with Al Gore headlining the event, I'm sure we're going to get some data about the environment. I'm expecting lots of new features and data to write about in February. It's going to be exciting! I just wish I could attend the event myself - but, unfortunately we've got plans for next week which keep me from going. But, have no fear, I'll still be reporting on this major event!