The Telegraph is reporting a story that they have evidence British troops are being attacked in the Middle East based upon aerial imagery found in Google Earth/Maps. One can logically assume this is being done against US troops as well. It’s no secret to anyone with any sort of sense of history that technologies can be used for both beneficial and nefarious purposes. Even though the consequences are great, I hope this doesn’t lead to wider scale banning or retardation of these technologies.

This handy, dandy little application will allow you to find other Wii owners in your area. It’s a pretty nifty Google mashup that tracks where Wii’s are around the world. You can click on the “Request” button once you’ve found someone in your area. I’m not sure exactly what happens after that, as you have to be registered from that point forward (and I don’t own a Wii).

So, in the event you’ve just been majorly powned in Call of Duty 3 or online bowling, you can now find the the town where “L3371-3873821″ lives and Jay and Silent Bob’em! (assuming, of course, you haven’t gone Jay and Silent Bob on yourself playing the Wii)

Here’s a nifty idea from a startup in Chicago. Their software/interface allows you to search for a parking spot before you get there. They also have plans to act as a clearinghouse for parking spaces for those looking to rent/lease/buy/sell a more permanent place.

Of course, I have no idea what happens if the space you’ve found is taken by some random person who chose to spend their time looking for an actual available space in real time instead…. but presumably that’s outside the purview of the ParkWhiz people.

One of our faithful listeners, Ed, emailed us about Outside.In, a project that is seeking to bring together the myriad of local information that can be available on the Web, using location as a unifying theme: “The problem is: there’s no single place that unites all those different voices, that grounds them all in specific locations. With help from you — suggesting and tagging neighborhood data, and suggesting ways that we can better organize the web geographically — we think outside.in can help unify the divided space of hyperlocal content.”

Outside.In is currently U.S. only, but there are 56 cities and over 3000 neighborhoods represented. The key difference, I think, between Outside.In and a project like Platial is that Outside.In is focusing on offering a central location-based platform for gathering, organizing and presenting information like local news, events, and issues, while Platial focuses on users identifying and sharing places.

Outside.In has some real heavyweights behind it, including founder Steven Johnson, who is the author of The Ghost Map, and John Seely Brown, a former Chief Scientist for Xerox and director of PARC. They’ve got a good idea and I especially like the local neighborhood blog roll for some of the cities. Outside.In has a lot of potential and they’ve already made a good start, so it will be interesting to see how they do in the long term in the increasingly crowded social networking space. The really cool thing would be to take Outside.In mobile, and provide the local information to people who are actually visiting or moving about in the neighborhood.