Well, the legend has come to pass. The war that began down here between Google and Microsoft – in the form of their earth 3D virtualization programs – has now spread to the skies. Last August, Google introduced Google Sky, an “extra” for Google Earth which lets you look up virtually from the ground – as opposed to down below from the sky, as in GE (Sky has since moved online for those without Google Earth installed, at http://www.google.com/sky/).

Microsoft also has an earth virtualization scheme, called Virtual Earth. As opposed to Google Earth’s desktop application, the MS version is strictly an on-line affair (some role reversal there, considering that Google is the online king, while the desktop is MS’s domain), accessible at http://maps.live.com/ (you may need to download a 3D display component from http://www.microsoft.com/virtualearth/ in order to use the site properly). Both earth programs have been around for a few years; in early reviews of both, many users gave the advantage to the MS program because it had more ready made buildings and landmarks, and rendered better 3D images up close, but by this time, most people consider both programs to have more or less the same capabilities.

Last week, Microsoft launched its own space-based virtual mapping program, called Worldwide Telescope. The early reviews give it high marks (even GE-focused Ogle Earth called it “stunning” at http://tinyurl.com/6nhqvy). In terms of experience, WWT really gives you a bang for the buck (don’t worry, it’s free!), allowing you to explore the ends of the universe, just like Google Sky – except the attention to detail seems greater, and the pictures seem sharper. WWT’s images are taken from the Hubble Telescope and ten major earthly satellites, while GS relies mostly on the Hubble. With WWT, you can move back in town to the beginning of the common era or move forward another 2000 years, and view the sky as it was or will be seen from any point on earth, complete with labels on what you’re looking at (stars, constellations, etc.).

You can zoom into an area of the sky as far as the telescope image supports (ie viewing from the same spot in space that the photo was taken from). You can see the Moon, Mars, Jupiter, Venus and four of Jupiter’s moons (not Titan, thought) in full rendered 3D. You can view panoramas of the sky or the planets taken by spacecraft that have flown there, such as panoramic views of Mars taken by the Rover, as well as collections of images taken from some of the most famous observatories and planetariums in the world. And, using the ASCOM (AStronomy Common Object Model) driver, you can attach supported hardware – like telescopes – to your computer and record your own images, which you can add to WWT and integrate into your virtual universe. You can build your own “guided tours” of the universe (similar to building a Powerpoint presentation). WWT even has an earth component, offering many of the views available in MS Virtual Earth (although it uses a different engine).

WWT sounds wonderful, and it is. But (there’s always one of those!): Wimpy computers need not apply. This is an application designed with the Vista Age in mind. You need memory (gobs) and a video card capable of accelerated 3D graphics (to display DirectX 9.0 compatible graphics, a must for WWT). However, if you have a relatively new computer, you should already have all the hardware you need for it; I got WWT to work on my Macbook with virtualized Windows XP (SP3) installed, using a virtual 3D graphics card. It wasn’t the fastest horse on the track, but it did the job.

Indeed, “professional production” is written all over WWT. For a company often called unimaginative by its critics, WWT really is something new and different. According to Microsoft, they are not planning to work out ways to profit from WWT (until daily space shuttles around the Solar System become a reality, I guess) – it’s more of a prestige project, unlike the case with Google Earth and MS Virtual Earth.

As such, you download, install and use WWT on Microsoft’s terms – and if your computer doesn’t meet the standards they’ve set for use, then it’s not for you (in other words, you really, really need a Vista machine to enjoy this to the fullest). And of course, Mac and Linux users are not invited to the party (don’t expect one, either). And, unlike in Google Earth and Sky, where any old Joe can feel right at home, the community in WWT is associated with prestigious publications or groups, such as s the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics and or Sky & Telescope magazine. It’s truly humbling to be able to tap into the knowledge provided by these groups, and even more humbling to see the miracles of outer space up close. If you’re really into the stars and take astronomy seriously, though – if you’ve ever wanted to “see the distribution and illumination of massive primordial hydrogen cloud structures lit up by the high-energy radiation coming from nearby stars in the Milky Way” – you’re going to love WWT.

But wait – before you download and install (or if you’re not a Windows user), keep in mind that there are other virtual universes out there you can download and use. The one I like best is Stellarium, a free open-source program that lets you examine the universe from anywhere in the world, and works in bunch of languages as well (no Hebrew, though). You can also install user scripts of events that occurred in the past, record presentations, set the earth time for previous or future cosmological events, and check out over 210 million stars (!). Between Google Earth/Sky, WorldWide Telescope, and Stellarium, you’ll be busy flying around the universe whiling the light years away – until you come back down to earth and explore the briny deep, with the upcoming Google Ocean!

Readers will have certainly read this story (http://tinyurl.com/6mcjbq), a Jerusalem Post scoop, describing serious security breaches on Facebook. IDF soldiers have posted details of their bases, weapons they have worked with, and personal information about who they are and what they do in the IDF. A special IDF unit, the article says, has been searching Facebook for months trying to identify and, hopefully, eliminate the information, which could potentially be used against Israel in a future war.

It’s the same on Google Earth; terrorists have, by their own admission, used information on GE to target Israeli sites (http://tinyurl.com/3agqb7):

“Members of the Aksa Martyrs Brigade, a group aligned with the Fatah political party, say they use the popular Internet mapping tool to help determine their targets for rocket strikes. ‘We obtain the details from Google Earth and check them against our maps of the city center and sensitive areas,’ Khaled Jaabari, the group’s commander in Gaza who is known as Abu Walid, told the Guardian. Abu Walid showed the Guardian an aerial image of the Israeli town of Sderot on his computer to demonstrate how his group searches for targets.”

All this, in addition to the insult and injury both Google Earth (http://tinyurl.com/5vazkc) and Facebook (http://tinyurl.com/5pzttm) cause us as a nation and a people.

But what’s good for the Israeli goose is good for the Iranian and Syrian gander. They, too, have military secrets that are “out there,” and a discerning Web surfer could find out a thing or two about how Israel’s enemies are preparing for war. Much information of use to terrorists anywhere in the world is publicly available on the Web. Many shopping malls, for example, have detailed information about the way the building was constructed, the plumbing or air filtration system, or similar details that an ambitious terrorist could take advantage of.

And there are also sites that have useful tidbits and nuggets about security procedures, weapons and other interesting information for almost every country in the world (it helps to be multilingual, though). Even local map sites have interesting and useful information that maybe shouldn’t be there. I found a couple of what I thought were “questionable” items on a well-known Israeli map site (I won’t mention what or where, for obvious reasons, but I did e-mail the site).

What’s good about services like Google Earth and Facebook is that they’re “concentrated” – everything you need is on one site, if you know what you’re looking for. And no country is safe; finding out “secrets” is often more about human error (as in the case of the IDF soldiers and Facebook), or intelligent people putting two and two together.

Intelligence experts in Europe last week noticed something different on a satellite photo taken in Iran recently, and determined that Iran was developing long-range ballistic missiles capable of reaching targets in Europe (now they know how it feels).

Of course, anybody with access to a multimillion-dollar satellite that can take high-resolution photos from space of objects two feet off the ground (http://tinyurl.com/5s8j4w) can pull off the same trick. But you don’t need to spend a lot of money on satellite photos to figure out what the Iranians are doing. All you need is a quick eye on Google Earth, like the person at http://tinyurl.com/5bmg55. While the hi-res photo didn’t reveal the specific site in Iran where the missile development is taking place, comparing the hi-res photo with older images of Iran on GE, the poster of this information figured out where the new facility was – right down to the building:

“Entering the coordinates N 35 13 19, E 53 53 41 reveals a Digital Globe satellite image of the facility taken earlier than” the one cited by Jane’s (the site was referred to in the article as “a previously unknown missile location, the site, about 230 kilometers. southeast of Teheran”).

Another intelligent guess on intelligence regarding Iran can be seen at http://tinyurl.com/59xvh2, where the author extrapolates what Iran would do with the the S-300PT SAM system it purchased from Belarus (it got two from Belarus and two from an “undisclosed source”). The author of this blog cites his source as Jane’s, and discusses several other weapons and defensive systems Iran has acquired recently.

Being apparently less innovative than Israel in how its weapons are deployed, the author makes a case for a scenario in how the systems would be used to defend strategic Iranian interests, including Teheran and the country’s nuclear facilities. Attached to the analysis are images of Google Earth, marked up with diagrams showing how the missile systems (to be used for defensive purposes, the author said) would be deployed, as well as the most logical locations for the systems, given their known capabilities.

GE has also helped reveal to the wider world the “secret” of Syria’s nuclear weapons deployment in the North of the country. The Ogle Earth site (http://tinyurl.com/5vwjva), which is where GE geeks go to share ideas, analyzes the satellite photos of the September 6 raid (officially, we still don’t know who was behind it), and based on information quoted in the name of a “senior US official,” pinpoints what the site believes to be the “single spot” where the facility could have been. The building where the facility was being built for the last six years, according to intelligence reports (http://tinyurl.com/63dgbf), should have shown up in GE – and indeed it does, following the coordinates based on the analysis listed.

Of course, Israel’s security is a lot more important to us then Iran’s or Syria’s – and Israelis, as citizens of the nation with the highest per capita amount of computer ownership in the world, have more opportunities to make mistakes. (It’s hard to imagine Syrian troops forming a club on Facebook.) With greater opportunity comes greater responsibility, of course – but it’s nice to see that the system can work in our favor sometimes, too!

But, thanks to some quick thinking by folks from the town of Kiryat Yam (and a little follow-up by yours truly), at least one of those “little liars” has been shown up for what he really is. Busted! You may have heard the story – how one Thameen Darby is the impetus by Kiryat Yam for a lawsuit against Google.

Darby claimed in a posting to Google Earth that the town was built on the remains of an Arab village, cleared out by Israel after the War of Independence. It was not, Kiryat Yam city fathers (and mothers) say. There was no Ghawarina, at least not on the sand dunes upon which Kiryat Yam was built. And so, officials of the city filed a complaint with police over libel, and plan to sue Google for defamation of character. Being that Google and its software is involved is what makes all the difference.

Google Earth is the modern way to handle geography. Volumes of old-fashioned gazetteers now languish on library shelves, as users who have downloaded the program make use of its basic and advanced features to map the world. Google Earth lets you check out almost every area of the world in detail, viewing 2D maps, 3D satellite imagery, terrain, communities and even specific buildings just by typing a search term into the program. Distances, statistics and information on faraway places that once took half a day at the library to discover are now available in a couple of clicks. Such is the power of the Internet when harnessed by Google.

To extend the usefulness of Google Earth, the program allows users to create “layers” – overlays of data, photos, political concerns, environment data, etc. – on the basic map. For example, you can view farms and plantations around the world that grow “fair trade” produce, which are supposed to fulfill certain basic conditions regarding safe environmental and fair labor practices.

One of the problems with the Internet, as we all know, is that anybody can proffer themselves as an expert on anything and, for the cost (free) of signing up with a blogging site, make their “observations” a part of the greater body of human knowledge, no matter how silly, ridiculous or false.

When it comes to Israel and, by extension, the Jews, despite the denial of those who claim to be “anti-Zionist, not anti-Semitic,” the disinformation is endless. According to most of the anti- Israel bloggers, for example, Gaza terrorists missing their marks and hitting open fields “proves” that these are “false flag” attacks being perpetrated by Israel – to give us an “excuse” to conduct a “Holocaust in Gaza.” And, of course, to increase the drama, Israel sometimes hits its own people with these rockets.

Interestingly, many of the links that connect to these sites are from the real anti-Semitic underbelly of the Internet – those sites that scientifically “prove” that the kids on the back of the milk cartons are victims of a blood libel.

Of course, no person in their right mind would take this stuff seriously. But then again, there are a lot of people out there not in their right minds. And as with the “big lie,” constant repetition often leads gullible people to believe that where there’s smoke, there’s fire. But when a lie shows up in something like Google Earth, it’s different.

Google Earth is not a common blog; it’s a sophisticated piece of software that the parent company has spent tens of millions of dollars developing. Google is a serious company, and nobody would accuse its (Jewish) inventors of being anti-Semitic or even anti- Israel. So when a “false flag” shows up in a program like GE, it’s far worse than when the same nonsense appears on a plain-vanilla Web site or blog.

Google says Google Earth is an open system and allows any user to post whatever s/he wants, and thus the company should not be held responsible. It seems that Google wants to have it both ways – the freedom to say that it cannot stifle “other voices,” accurate or not, while retaining the aura of authority and respectability Google Earth has among users.

If Google wants its products to become the premier tools of Internet communication, it has a responsibility to ensure that the information provided by its tools is correct. I really do hope Kiryat Yam takes action; there’s a real case here. Imagine a kid in Omaha writing a school report on the refugees of a town that may never have existed, based on Google Earth! Giving the imprimatur of truth to the false charge of expulsion of a civilian population – yep, Kiryat Yam does indeed have a case for defamation of character.

What does Darby have to say about this? “As far as I can know, the Arab Ghawarina locality was in the place depicted”; but if it could be proven that there was no Ghawarina, “I will be quick to reallocate it.” In other words, Kiryat Yam is guilty until proven innocent.

Well, I can help Thameen out a bit – from a site he is quite familiar with himself. A site called “Palestine Remembered,” which purports to catalog the villages within the 1948 borders from which Israel evicted the Arabs, turning them into refugees, and which Darby refers Google Earth users to for more information. It displays a 1946 map of Mandatory Palestine, with all extant villages, cities, railroads, etc. The map bears the signatures of Moshe Dayan and Transjordan’s Ahmed Sudki El Jundi, establishing the “green line” cease-fire lines in 1949. The map was based on an extensive British survey of the territory in 1944 (updated in 1946, a year before the end of the Mandate and two years before Israel was officially established).

Guess what? No Ghawarina! Neither is Kiryat Yam there, for that matter. But since the town was basically a tent on a sand dune (seventh photo down) when first established, it would make sense that it not appear on the map. In fact, the Palestine Remembered page with information on Ghawarina is completely blank – save for the claim that the village did indeed exist, contradicted by that “original source” map on the same site.

Comparing Darby’s Google Earth posts with the British map, I came up with some other questionable claims: villages claimed to have existed that don’t appear on the British map at all (Wadi Qabbani, said to be be outside Netanya on Google Earth); villages that do exist today claimed to have been destroyed (the Arab Ein Hawd). In addition, Darby has “claimed” as Arab villages all sites on the British map that use the term “Khirbet” – a ruin – even if they clearly show up as ruins, wells or springs on the map (numerous examples).

Now, does this mean that Arabs did not flee what was to become Israel when told to by Arab leaders, who promised them the riches of the Jews after the latter were slaughtered (another original source)? No – the Arabs did flee, and they turned into the refugees whose third generation descendants are clamoring for the “right of return.”

But then there was Gush Etzion, Hebron, the Old City of Jerusalem and numerous other Jewish villages, whose residents were forced to flee as well – to say nothing of the Jews of Syria, Egypt, Libya, Morocco, Algeria, Turkey and other countries who were forced to flee their homes, abandoning their property (my family still has title deeds to much land in Syria). I hadn’t noticed any information relating to the nakba (catastrophe) conducted by the Arabs against the Jews – you won’t find anything about the 1929 massacre of Hebron Jews on Google Earth.

Of course, the Google people will say that anyone who wishes to catalog the Israeli side of the story is welcome to. But if Google wants its tools to become the vehicles that supply us with the information we need, it has a responsibility – because of its respectability – to ensure that the balance is there, and not leave it up to “volunteers.”

I don’t have time to post blog material and map notations all day long – I have to work for a living, unlike, perhaps, some of these anti-Israel types who sit around writing blogs and posting talk-backs all day long, and apparently are getting an income from somewhere. Where, I wonder? But that is a story for another day.