It's raining outside, so this morning was the perfect opportunity to sit down, browse through all my boarding pass stubs and enter them in a new application I'm testing.

Flightmap is a flight logging program that keeps track of every flight you have taken. You can log the flight number, aircraft type, airline and geeky things like the aircraft registration number and your seat number. Frequent fliers can even keep track of their award and status miles.

The application has an internal database that calculates the distance between all airports in the world, and naturally, it can also convert airport names into airport codes.

Once you have entered all your flights, you can view a summary that displays your most frequently flown routes, the longest and shortest flights you've ever taken as well as your most popular airline.

The best part of Flightmap is the ability to generate high resolution maps of your flights. In fact, Flightmap can generate stunning maps up to 32 megapixels large, which is great if you want to print them as a poster. If the built in map colors don't interest you, then you can even export your flight history as a Google "KML" file, which can be imported into Google Earth (which is totally useless, but oh so cool looking).

Once you have created a map, it is fairly easy to save the image file and set it as your new desktop background so you can show all your colleagues what a well traveled individual you are.

Flightmap is a very slick, easy to use application and the interface is nice and clean. You can view a guided tour of Flightmap here. The application costs 19.90 EUR ($30) but a try before you buy version is available on their site, albeit with several limitations; maps are "defaced" and you can only export your first 10 flights.

All in all, it's been great to finally have a nice place to save my flights. There are some other services with similar features, but this is the first one I've come across that is not web-based (which means it's easy to take along with you). Now if you don't mind, I've got some more flights to enter!

A quirky media dust-up this week brought a lot of attention to one mom 'n pop website: Google Sightseeing. Their motto is "why bother seeing the world for real?". What they've done is managed to collect a huge database of sights that you can actually see from Google Earth.

But one sight you won't be seeing (or at least in anything more than a super blurry blob) is the world's largest palm tree, whose discovery was announced this week. The scientists had claimed it "can even be seen in Google Earth." That turns out to be a bit of a stretch.

There are, however, plenty of things you can see from Google Earth. You can, for instance, be a virtual tourist and zip around Easter Island, the abandoned city of San Zhi, and the site of the world's largest fingerprint.

Since online monopolizing giant Google bought YouTube last year, it's not surprising to see them incorporate YouTube into their Google Earth program.

I'm yet undecided as to my privacy concerns when it comes to Google Earth, since I love zooming and peering into friend's homes, hotel rooms, offices and other random spots -- (yeah, and you don't? -- admit it!). I think the ability to be able to see related YouTube videos of the spot you are nosing into is a welcome application, although not particularly necessary; I guess the need of another press release was in order.

I was going to add -- who would get onto Google Earth to watch YouTube videos? But then, why wouldn't you? -- specially if they are readily available and accessible from Google Earth. Who will upload, connect and tag these videos to Google Earth? The same crazy people who make them -- we are all attention seeking maniacs who will put in extra effort to link where ever we can and be seen where ever we can.

There is a spanking-ly funny video on YouTube that gives a perfect example of what we have already gotten ourselves into with Google Earth, now difference is that videos will be more geographically connected and sorted.

In this week's creepy chapter of Big Brother Watching You, Google has just started supporting searches for airplanes. Not carriers websites or airplane photos, airplanes currently up in the sky.

I suppose the technology has been around for a while; flightaware has semi-accurate flight routes if you ever want to see how you got from point A to B. It's just that Google has now made checking the location of your boss over the Atlantic easier than checking your email.

All you have to do is search by the carrier and the number. In the above photo, I typed NW49 into Google and it gave me three options: Expedia, Travelocity and FBOweb as tracking agents. FBOweb supports tracking over Google Earth, which is pretty neat if you have it installed, but for the bulk of you who just want to know when you have to pick up your friend at the airport, the others should do just fine.

Happy stalking!

Google Earth has changed the way we go about observing our world.

Occasionally the satellite photos reveal some very cool new areas to explore. Other times they reveal oddities not visible from the ground.

This was the recent case with the Naval Base Coronado near San Diego, California. The building, constructed in 1967, happens to be in the exact shape of a swastika. Navy officials admitted to having discovered this many years ago but since there is a no-fly zone above the navel base, they figured no one would see it.

Well, the eagle eyes of Google Earth miss nothing. The naval base has become a favorite virtual destination for Google Earth fanatics, who are always seeking out bizarre sights buried in the reams of footage.

And now that the secret is out, the Navy has announced that they will be spending $600,000 to alter the shape of the building into something less offensive, like a square, for example.

In their most paranoid state, the Soviets outlawed detailed maps of their country during the Cold War. As if this wasn't bad enough, the maps that they did produce for Soviet citizens were purposely wrong--entire cities were often left off the map or strategically relocated in the interests of national security.

The Cold War has been over for a long time now and the Soviet Union no longer exists. The law prohibiting maps with "precise geographical data," however, has remained on the books--that is, until last May when legislature finally removed this antiquated law and opened the door for Google Earth Russia to make its official, legal entrance onto internet servers throughout Russia.

Now every comrade in Russia can zoom right in all those weapons and nuclear "secret cities" which never officially existed, such as the nuclear warhead facilities at Penza-19.

Naturally, someone has already created a Google Earth mash-up of secret cities throughout Russia--some of which still remain closed to outsiders. Click here and pretend you're a CIA analyst trying to make sense of the mysterious sheds and facilities viewed from outer space. Hey, is that an ICBM?!?!?

Very cool! I could spend all day doing this.

Following the Where 2.0 conference (bringing together "the people, projects, and issues building the new technological foundations and creating value in the location industry") on May 29th, an enhancement to Google Earth will be available for download which enables binary sound files to be linked to geo-coordinates within the program. This means that along with all of the other cool features Google Earth offers, you'll be able to hear what a place sounds like -- from "the cracking of glaciers to midnight in the jungle."

The sound files will be provided by Wild Sanctuary, a company whose "worldwide collection represents over 3,500 hours of wild soundscapes and nearly 15,000 species." Hopefully future versions of Google Earth will allow user-submitted sounds, or integration with other GeoTag-supported sound file websites like Freesound. While we're at it, allow video too!

(Thanks, Mike!)

Designed specifically for integration with Google Earth, Trackstick II is a GPS device that lets you "keep a satellite scrapbook of all your travels and record your explorations." With Trackstick II, anglers can mark bountiful catch-spots. Campers can remember how to reach hidden gems. Globe-trekkers can let friends and family follow them as they wander through, for example, Amsterdam's Red Light District. Um, on second thought...

Powered by 2 AAA batteries, the unit's 1Mb flash memory can log months of travel histories. Later, Trackstick II's data can be downloaded to your (Windows-only) computer via USB and viewed on Google Earth's 3D model of the planet.

Google Earth Store sells the units for $169. However, if you're creepy, you might want to think about upgrading to the Super Trackstick. With its magnetic mount, you can surreptitiously attach it to that hot barrista's Vespa and find out what she does when she's not making your foam froth.

Google Book Search has begun to animate the information found in books by organizing the locations mentioned in them on Google Maps. Complemented by snippets of text from the book, Book Search links to the actual pages where the locations are mentioned. For example, in David Foster Wallace's excellent Girl With Curious Hair you can see that he seems to have fondness for the South and the East coast. Obviously, if you wanted to arrange a road trip to coincide with a favorite book, this would be an excellent way to do it. Travel tip: consider Around the World in 80 Days.

Matthew Gray is a software engineer for Google, and he recently developed a nifty little mash-up, showing the Earth viewed from books, where individual mentions of locations in books combine to yield an interpretation of the globe. The intensity of each pixel is proportional to the number of times the location at a given set of coordinates is mentioned across all the books in Book Search. If you wanted to plan a trip off the beaten path -- or, in this case, off the typed word -- just check out the map below. The lighter the map, the fewer words have been written about the place.

[Via GoogleMapsMania and The Map Room]

The great duo of Lewis and Clark trekked across unexplored territory without the aid of GPS, satellite radio, and No Doz. Suckers, indeed! Thankfully, it's the 21st century, and your roadtrips can be just as productive with less effort.

These days, the savvy traveler doesn't need to track his movements across these great United States in a leather-bound journal. All one needs is a GPS receiver capable of logging waypoints. Simply set the receiver to record, toss it onto a dash or onto a pack, and get moving. Once you've arrived at your destination, download the GPS data onto a computer and feed it into the free, web-based GPS Visualizer. GPS Visualizer analyzes this data and creates a map as a JPEG, Google Map, or a Google Earth file.

It really can't get much simpler to chronicle your travels, and with all of that extra time you've saved, you can think about how you just one-upped two of history's greats.