Microsoft Virtual Earth updates

For those of you who haven't seen the update posted for this month, Microsoft has updated their imagery to the Virtual Earth platform. This new update consists of 27.32 TB of data and includes 3D city models, high resolution aerial imagery, satellite imagery, and road data for three communities in Iowa: Des Moines, Sioux City, and Waterloo. Combine that with last month's update that included the Quad Cities and there are some nice updates that are taking place via the online mapping sites.

The Iowa Caucuses

This should probably be a posting that talks about all the mapping mashups that showed the results from last week's caucuses here in Iowa, but it isn't.

I saw this on the Foreign Policy blog with the headline below, and had to pass along.......

If you haven't seen the Miss South Carolina thing, you need to see that. One thing that really surprised me when looking at the other search terms for January 3rd were how many instances and varieties of ways people were looking for information on Iowa and the caucus process.

A job for Miss South Carolina

On January 3, the 46th most-searched term on Google was "Iowa caucasus." You know, those Iowa Caucasus that are tucked between Azerbaijan and Armenia.

(Hat tip: gurBlogs)