New and Updated Imagery
There have been two updates to Google Earth imagery since the last newsletter. In Early August we published new and updated imagery - see a list of highlights, or view this KML file which outlines the areas where imagery changed. In late August, we pushed out another release of new and updated imagery. Here is another list of places changed, and here is the KML file for the updated areas from the most recent release.

New Street View, and partners
In mid-August we introduced three new countries with Street View imagery. You can now view parts of Taiwan, Portugal, and Switzerland in the Street View layer of Google Earth (or in Google Maps). Read more. Not only that, but we introduced imagery from our new Street View Partner Program: Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca, Thunderhill Raceway Park, San Diego State University and LEGOLAND California. Read more about the new partners.

Crisis in Darfur Layer Updated
In the Spring of 2007, the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum worked with Google Earth to release a layer documenting the crisis of human genocide and displaced persons in the Darfur region of Sudan. In August, the museum released, through its partnership with Google Earth, the most detailed picture to date of the scope and nature of the destruction that occurred during the genocide in Darfur. That thousands of villages were destroyed has been known for some time; these new data document the true enormity of the destruction. Read more about the data released and how you can use the historical imagery mode of Google Earth 5 to view before and after pictures of the villages destroyed.

Afghanistan News Tour
CBC News in Canada produced an excellent narrated overview of the situation in Afghanistan by producing a Google Earth tour to introduce their audience to the geographical locations, and perspectives on life in the country. You can watch, and listen, to the GE 5 Tour here (it requires the Google Earth plugin to view with your browser).

US College Football
In celebration of the start of Coolege football, we released a collection of placemarks showing the home stadiums of the 245 NCAA Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS) and Football Championship Subdivision (FCS) teams. We've included a quick overview of each school, a link to school news, the name and an image of their mascot, and their home stadium. Oh, and be sure to turn on the 3D Buildings layer for full effect! On a related note: check out EarthSwoop's collection of stadiums viewable with Google Earth plugin.

Update to the Google Earth API Docs
We have re-vamped the documentation for the Google Earth API including new features, and improved readability. The documentation is intended for software developers. See the new Earth API documentation.