Creating KML markup for Google Earth links

Things aren't standing still in the world of KML, which is used to save and annotate points of interest you'd like to share with the audience of your website from a Google Earth session. I am looking to add satellite imagery for each day's cycling on our ride along the Kystriksveien last year to supplement the rather scanty images saved during May 2006. Already I can see that GE has picked up new and improved images for Northern Norway, and changed the format of KML files to 2.1, which means that the KML files I wrote last year need updating. I'm particularly interested in getting my own icons loaded from the website into the annotation, partly because they look better than the default, but mainly because I'd like to find out if users actually use GE when they browse through the site (if they do, I should see the KML files feature more in the weblogs). Here's a useful KML syntax guide.

Google have updated the documentation available for KML file creation, and O'Reilly also provide (via Safari) a 56-page "Introduction to neogeography". The latter provides an overview of resources available to the cash-strapped, and how to geo-tag photographs using tools such as Google's picassa.