The City of Portland, Oregon’s GIS (Graphical Information System) team just announced public availability of their KML (GE compatible) files allowing access to several layers of GIS data for their city. This includes things such as crime statistics, zoning, earthquake data, flood plains, and a lot of other useful data.
The neat thing is that these are network layers and are based on your current view of the city. It takes a bit of time to get used to, but you zoom to the area of Portland you are interested in, and a couple of seconds later an image loads showing that layer’s data. You need to turn off a layer (click on it’s checkmark box in the Places box), before loading another one or things become confusing.
So, you can go to their web site at: www.portlandmaps.com/google.cfm.
If you’re just curious, I suggest scrolling down on this page and viewing their screenshots, and clicking on the corresponding KML file for the layer that interests you. Or you can click here 
to see the Zoning layer shown here.
This is yet another example of serious business applications using Google Earth as the visualization tool.
Applications
EarthPlot – Commercial Software
EarthPlot is a brand new software product which is intended for use with Google Earth. It was announced at the BBS there will be a demonstration version, and a full version will be available for $29.99. I looked at some of their screen shots and their sample GE File, and it looks like the product has some potential. It allows some sophisticated graphing and data visualization features and the import of data from a variety of formats.
What I find significant is that the beta version of Google Earth is already resulting in several new business opportunities. I’ve seen a few other ventures as well, and will be writing more about these new business opportunities in a blog entry later this week.
First of Many Games in Beta
This is just the beginning, but the guys at GoogleEarthHacks have created a game using Google Earth. This is a war game which they claim is largely text-based. The object is to grow armies which you place at various cities and try to hold the cities. There is a GE KML file which lets anyone view the “action” (more like a status) of the game.
This is the first of many games I’m sure will be created using GE as a visualization tool. I expect to see more direct, or interactive, use of GE to play a game soon.