Microsoft’s got friends in high places. One friend, anyway-the U.S. Department of Defense. A branch of the DOD known as the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) will work with the software giant on Microsoft’s Virtual Earth mapping project, which will be used for both military and non-military purposes.

Last week, Yahoo bought Meebio, makers of well-regarded media center / DVR software.

Through a special website hosted at Yahoo, visitors can pledge to take energy-saving measures that may help improve the quality of life on Earth.

Word on the street has it that Google has added loads of new data to the offerings available for viewing via Google Earth.

Recycling, global warming, and endangered species topped the list of environmentally related queries being queried on AOL Search.

New Honda Civics in the Japanese market will have the capability to retrieve traffic information using Google Earth. The service, called the InterNavi Floating Car System, is available to subscribers as part of the InterNavi Premium Club, a navigational service.

Not sure about what’s up south of the 49th, however, up here in Canada during TV coverage of the Masters, a TV ad just appeared telling people to logon to Remax.ca next month to search for real estate listings using Google Earth… pretty interesting…

Honda has announced it is adding in-car navigation systems powered by Google Earth, presumably the same systems Volkswagen has been reported to be developing for a little while.

Maxim Magazine, in order to celebrate their 100th issue, decided to build a gigantic version of their magazine cover, large enough to be seen by satelites, including those used by Google Earth.

The Indian army is a little freaked-out that Google Earth shows satellite images of their strategic installations.

Tim Beerman over at his interactive earth blog has recently announced that shape2earth will be going out for beta testing shortly.

One day, my pie in the sky will be crumbs on a plate. Full-bellied, my GoogleNet wireless connection will intuitively retrieve an ad for Alka-Seltzer; the bubbly concoction plop-plop fizz-fizzes with tiny executive voices admitting in fizzy whispers, “yes, Jason, Google’s full of it.”

This from our mates down-under…

James Fee has reminded us about some nifty applications developed using Mapguide Open Source – thanks for the head-sup James!

Google continues is roll-up of cool technologies with news that it has acquired @Last Software, makers of SketchUp.

Chances are you heard or saw this already but hey, the word is simply too cool not to share on the blog…

juice Analytics has done a very cool job of intergrating US CEnsus Bureau data into Google Earth, resulting in some amazing graphics.

Remember how A9 took a car with a few cameras on it down streets of major cities and let you see what the storefront looked like at a particular address?

The Virtual Earth team at MSN has managed to go from concept to launch in a matter of weeks with their on-the-street perspective of Seattle and San Francisco.

What if leadership didn’t originate from the top of an organization, society or ecosystem, but from its middle?

From the popular journal, Nature, an interesting article on how biologists are using Google Earth to support their efforts.