After years of offering satellite imagery as part of their standalone app Google Earth, last week the company added browser-based 3D perspectives to their popular Google Maps pages. No more downloading and installing an OS-dependent application: Earth View offers the ability to view mountains (and those thin blue lines flowing down them) from just about any perspective.

Earth View also allows you to dive beneath the ocean’s surface and view shipwrecks such as the Titanic — or that sunken island off the North Carolina coast where the giant bonito shoal up. Get the plugin here: Google Earth Plugin, just open up maps.google.com and click on “Earth” in the tabs at top right.

Austrian-born skydiver and world renowned BASE jumper Felix Baumgartner (“Fearless Felix”) plans to ride a helium balloon to an atmospheric height of 120,000 feet, and then jump–all in an attempt to surpass the 50-year record for the highest-altitude parachute jump set in 1960 by retired U.S. Air Force pilot Joe Kittinger.

Jason Paur of Wired writes about David Clark’s supersonic suit that will help keep Felix alive during the jump: “Baumgartner (like Kittinger did) is working with several scientists to research new, safer suit designs for pilots and future space travelers. The hope is to develop the next generation of full pressure suits that would help increase survival if the need to bail out of a spacecraft should ever arise at extremely high altitudes.”

Jen Leo, Travel blogger for the Los Angeles Times, reviews 21 iPhone apps that can: “help you pack your bag, find a rest stop on a road trip, translate a foreign language, navigate the subways in New York or book a night at a guest house in Cambodia.”

Finding great destinations is still up to the traveler…

Jason Cowie of Houston’s Kingpinz Skateboard is attempting to market his business on Google instead of the Yellow Pages–is this a sign of marketing things to come for outdoor specialty retailers? and what will this mean for large Yellow Page publishers as Google (again) attempts to secure a foothold in the local search space?

“‘I think Google is going to be the new Yellow Pages,’ Mr. Cowie said. ‘More and more of these younger kids are used to Google. They are looking at their phones rather than opening up a phone book,’” reports Miguel Helft of The New York Times.

Understanding and executing PPC (pay per click) advertising through online search engines often is a complex and potentially expensive process. Google’s new Enhanced Business Listings is allowing small business owners to highlight aspects of their businesses–photos, videos, websites, coupons etc.–with a reasonable $25 a month flat fee.

Yellow Page publishers, however, believe their foothold in the local search space is secure, pointing to the fact that only “… 10 percent of the [YP] industry’s $13 billion in annual revenue comes from the Internet.” Their bet is that print search will be around for years to come.

Oracle CEO and sailor Larry Ellison won the 33rd America’s Cup this weekend in Valencia, Spain in a race between his USA-17 and the Swiss defender Alinghi 5.

Brandon Bailey of the Silicon Valley Mercury News writes about the aggressive rule set that has allowed Ellison to excel both on and off the water: “Push the envelope on technology. Don’t be afraid to spend money. And make the competition personal.”

“‘He is perhaps the most aggressive CEO in the tech industry today,’ said Jon Fisher, a former Oracle vice president who now teaches business at the University of San Francisco. Fisher added that Oracle, a company that vies with such giants as Microsoft and IBM, is both highly competitive and ruthlessly ‘engineering-centric,’ even compared with other tech firms.”

photo credit: e53

GoSportn publisher Ned Desmond is attempting to create a network of social media portals (integrated with the popular social media platform Facebook) targeted towards sporting groups (hunting, fishing, backpacking) and their passionate user groups. The idea will be to offer social platforms for niche users and business to facilitate communication, upload content, and build local resources.

Desmond describes his marketing platform as a “quiver of amazing capabilities, and we’re putting together experiences in enthusiast categories that help those of us possessed by passions–like fishing for starters–connect in ways that are fun, useful, and addictive.”

GoFishn is the company’s first attempt at launching a sporting vertical, and currently boasts 5,300 fishing fans.

“Instead of professional writers, small businesses and enthusiasts will create the content. Anglers can upload pictures of their fish, swap stories and ask questions. For $24.95 a month, owners of small businesses, like tackle shops or charter boats, for example, can create profile pages, post comments and answer questions. Small Web sites and blogs can also create profiles and link to their articles,” writes Claire Miller of The New York Times.

The small business adoption will be the most valuable metric to track with this new startup, given the historical difficulty with social media monetization.

photo credit: Gonzalo Baeza Hernández

SkiReport.com (available for the iPhone at the App Store) is an application that allows skiers and snowboarders to publish real-time snow conditions, view live area cams and weather reports, and locate nearby ski areas via GPS. Not only is the application utilitarian, but it’s also been helpful in keeping ski resorts transparent about their snowfall reporting, which often is hyped as a marketing tool.

Two Dartmouth economists, skiers Jonathan Zinman and Eric Zitzewitz, decided to study resort snow reports from 2004 to 2008 and compare these findings to government weather stations.

“They found that ski resorts across the U.S. and Canada reported more fresh snow — 23 percent more, on average — on skier-coveted weekends than during the week. Resorts with more business to gain were the ones most likely to boast of deeper snowfalls, their study said,” reports Lisa Rathke of Salon.

“The resorts question the findings. For one thing, they say, the government’s weather stations aren’t necessarily in the same snowy spots as the slopes. And they say overreporting snow does them no good if disgruntled skiers and riders find less snow than expected.”

One way or another, useful iPhone apps like this are allowing winter enthusiasts to make smarter travel decisions.