Google has just made some changes to the organization of the Layers in Google Earth, as seen below:

The biggest change involves the "Places of Interest". Not only did it move from the bottom of the list to nearly the top, but it's undergone some major changes. In the previous version, it had a huge list of subitems you could select. Those are gone, in favor of a single checkbox.

Google has also redone the icons in Google Earth, as well as the way they appear. When you're high in the air viewing an area, you'll only see icons for major attractions (stadiums, museums, airports, etc). As you zoom in closer, you'll see smaller items, such as restaurants and and hotels. There are still a lot of items that show up in the middle of the street, but hopefully people will continue to reposition the markers to make things more precise.

Other changes in the list include:

• Panoramio getting top-level treatment instead of being buried in "Geographic web".
• Traffic moved from the top-level into the "More" category.
• Quite a bit of reordering (see the screenshot above).

This is the first major change to the Layers list in quite a while, and it seems like it was very well-planned. What do you think of the changes?

Google has just created a few files to help show off the venues for this year's NCAA Basketball Tournament. All of the venues in this tournament are in 3D in Google Earth and are quite impressive to view.

You can view them all by downloading this KMZ file, or you can view them all in a special MyMap that they've created. In addition, you can view the 14 venues by downloading this KML tour or browsing them all in EarthSwoop.

Earlier this year, we showed you the iPhone app that we had created. We're pleased to announce that our Android app is now available too!

The app is very similar to the iPhone app -- it shows you our recent entries, videos and Tweets. Once again, we thank MotherApp for making it possible.

If you have an Android-powered phone (Droid, Nexus One, etc), you can find the app from the Android Market on your phone. Give it a shot and let us know what you think!

Here's a quick video tour of some new 3D models in San Sebastian-Donostia, Spain, created by SketchUp user Gipuzkoa3d. He built the movie, which shows off models that he and others have created.

Update: The video was removed from YouTube (I have no idea why), but you can still view the awesome models using the KML file below.

To get there you can search for "San Sebastian-Donostia, Spain" in Google Earth, or just use this KML file.

(via SketchUp Island)