Ogle Earth

Status report

stefan.geens@gmail.com — Tue, 24 Jun 2008 17:12:17 +0000

This past week, While I've been enjoying the splendid weather and watching football in Berlin, my MacBook Pro has been having its second brain transplant in less than a month (thank goodness for the extended AppleCare warranty plan). Now I've just found that it won't be fixed in time before I set off on two weeks of travelling to assorted weddings and baptisms across Europe, which I've sort of wrapped into a vacation.

The upshot: Some severely limited blogging on Ogle Earth, until around mid July.

The silver lining: I'm pulling out all the stops to move almost all my daily productivity rituals onto the cloud, so that a computer failure no longer cramps my style. My move to browser-based Gmail was painless. And now that Google Gears is around for Mac, I see no more reason to use Microsoft Excel and Word. But my switch to Google Reader, which I've been exploring today, will go a bit slower: I don't want to downgrade my tools just because I'm moving to the cloud. But I'm almost there (with the big exception of photo editing).

A word of caution: I'll be testing living off the cloud these coming weeks (by necessity), and depending on how it goes, I might find myself posting more often than I promised.

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Links: Stereoscopic Google Earth, Zimbabwe violence maps

stefan.geens@gmail.com — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 14:08:51 +0000

Stereoscopic Google Earth in your browser! I again have no access to a Windows system, so I can’t test this, but I suspect that José Antonio Meira da Rocha’s implementation of a stereoscopic Google Earth in the browser by placing two instances of the Earth side by side but moving the point of view a little should be fantastic! José writes that he hacked the China Syndrome example om the GE 3D web plugin API site to get the result. Remember, the 3D GE plugin is not yet functional in Firefox 3, so try it on a Windows machine with Firefox 2 or Explorer. (Via Ogle Earth comments)

Mapping Zimbabwe’s election violence: On June 27, Zimbabwe’s opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai will face the disastrous incumbent dictator Robert Mugabe in a run-off election that will no doubt be heavily rigged. Tsvangirai’s attempts to campaign across the country this month are being hindered at every opportunity, as his supporters are threatened or attacked... but one thing that can be done is to document these cases, and linking them to the places where they happened. Much of Zimbabwe is visible in high resolution on Google Earth, so Charles Worringham’s constantly updated KML layer of Tsvangirai’s campaign is an especially useful way into the details of how this election is progressing. Sokwanele’s “Mapping Terror in Zimbabwe: Political Violence & Elections 2008”, meanwhile, is a comprehensive Google Map of political attacks this year. Each placemark has a story attached. (Via This is Zimbabwe)

iPhone as unmanned drone brain: That was fast: iPhone Controls Robot Plane Squad. The video shows somebody inputting coordinates of a target a flying drone goes to photograph, eventhough the GPS iPhone won’t be out for another few weeks. Might they have used an external GPS? Video is worth watching. (Hat tip: Ed Corkery)

Poolcrashing: UK newspapers are all in a tizzy about how teenagers are using Facebook to organize to gatecrashing pool parties:
The craze involves using the Google Earth programme, which provides high-quality aerial photos of Britain and other countries.
If I were a teenager scoping for a pool to gatecrash, I’d use Microsoft’s bird’s eye view imagery — you can take a gander from all four sides, and likely also check the depth of the pool and the height of the fences — but youth these days obviously is not at resourceful as we used to be:-) (Spatial Law blog wants to know, But Is The Water Cold? Good point! Where’s our infra-red satellite view, so we can hunt the heated ones?)

Geo-marketing mania: Mike Pegg over at Google Maps Mania ends his tenure at the blog he started... to take a position at Google’s geo-marketing team. Congrats, Mike.

Mystery holes: In the Utah desert, some DIY geographers go investigate some strange circles they’ve spied on Google Earth.

Y! Geo? Y! Geo is “The Yahoo! Geo Technologies Blog … the place for Place”, though so far it’s only had one entry, and it’s from June 5. (Via the James Fee GIS blog)

Microsoft OS 7 touch UI: CrunchGear has some closeups of demos of how Microsoft’s upcoming surface technology can be used to, among other things, browse and edit photos geographically.

Silverlight Map Viewer: It doesn’t do anything that the Google Maps API or Microsoft’s own Virtual Earth API can’t do (yet), but IDV Solutions have released a mapping demo that uses Silverlight to access and view Virtual Earth tiles. If this is going to compete with Adobe Air and the EarthBrowser that was built with it, then there is still some work cut out for them, however:-) (Via Virtual Earth, An Evangelist's Blog, which BTW has an interesting comment stream about licensing and Microsoft’s own integration of VE with Silverlight.

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Links: Pachube, Dokuwiki maps, JSKML, Second Life maps

stefan.geens@gmail.com — Sun, 15 Jun 2008 13:20:42 +0000

Pachube: This has the makings of something brilliant. Make Blog points to Pachube, a geo-savvy aggregator and browser of sensor data to which you can add your own data streams or use others’ as input for your own projects. The sensor web’s domain even includes virtual worlds like Second Life. Do read the about page for much more info. With a compatible Arduino sensor device costing around US$35 these days, I may have to put up a decibel meter outside my apartment in Cairo:-)

Web Google Earth for Dokuwiki: Dokuwiki is a wiki app for the web “aimed at small companies’ documentation needs” with a “simple but powerul syntax” that can be extended by plugins. One such plugin, by Chris Smith, lets you add Google Maps instances to your wiki. Martin Meggle-Freund of Munich has noticed that with the release of the Google Earth API extension to Google Maps, you can now change the type parameter to “Earth” to get browser based Google Earth instances. He makes good use of it on his kmlwiki.net site, where anyone can add, annotate and edit maps and 3D views. Edit a page and look at the markup code to see how easy it is.

PDF to KML: Tech-savvy phylogenist Roderic Page over at iPhylo does the sort of thing that one day, in a far-off fully semantic future, we will look back at and chuckle: Extracting location data from a PDF and returning it as a KML file.

Doppler does GeoNames: The first and last place I look when I really, really have to find an obscure placename’s location is not Google but GeoNames. Now trip planning aggregator Dopplr has begun using GeoNames data, which is available to all under a Creative Commons License, so now I can start visiting really out-of-the-way places:-) (And their integration with Yahoo!’s FireEagle makes a lot of sense. I only really want to update my trip plans once, and everybody else should just talk amongst themselves.)

New (old) blog: Henri Willox, who often used to find and post great new neogeo content on his Blogue du LFG (Guadalajara, Mexico) before disappearing, has popped up again, this time in Conakry, Guinea, with a new blog: Le Technoblog du LAC. Update your newsreaders (if you understand French).

Google Earth spam alert: Some of the Google Adsense ads on this blog and others are weird: They advertise Google Earth but aren’t from Google. I used to think the game was to attract surfers via cheap cost-per-click adwords, only to show them a website with ads for high cost-per-click adwords, and then pocket the difference. But Joe Wein comes across a new reason for these ads: some lead to sites that sell “subscriptions” for what is actually a free product to gullible and unaware surfers.

Solar KML layer, anyone? Dean Ervik, manager of renewable energy projects at Australia’s EcoWorld, is looking for a KML layer that can show “global (or Australian) solar irradiation or radiation onto the Earth’s surface that may or may not be animated across a year (or uses an ephemeris).” If such a layer does not exist, he’d be up for paying a KML developer to make one. I think there are some interesting visualization opportunities here. Contact details on ecoworld.com.au.

Tom Tom has Nav app for iPhone: MacNN has a spokesman for Tom Tom confirming that the company has a prototype GPS navigation program running for the iPhone, and that he does not think Apple’s iPhone SDK’s terms of use prohibit such an application... but he isn’t sure. You’d think they’d contact Apple and find out:-)

JSKML: JSKML “is a simple translator to translate KML input into the JSKML format or an identical format in JSON notation if that is what you need.” Because sometimes, you need to access content in a KML file via javascript. By EarthBrowser’s Matt Giger.

Kenya roads: Google’s Ed Parsons points us to news that the results of the Google-sponsored Kenya mapping project are now available on Google Maps. The road- and point-of-interest mapping project was completed by seven local university students, together with a team from India, presumably the one that is responsible for a similar project in India.

Given that such technology has the potential to transform the well-being of locals not previously privy to free online and mobile maps, I hope Google open-sources the data, so that other valuable group mapping projects, such as Tracks4Africa and OpenStreetMap.org, don’t end up duplicating efforts, and so that the data gets the widest possible exposure. After all, Tracks4Africa is in Google Earth; why not return the favor? (Currently, the new Kenya road layer is not yet in Google Earth — when it is, we’ll be able to compare them.)

Google Maps in Second Life: Second Life developers Daden Limited have played with Google Maps before... but now they've taken advantage of a relatively new feature in Second Life to create a intriguing collective map viewing tool. In Second Life you can now use a website as a texture for an item such as a screen; Daden have created a Google Maps page controlled via the API, and then linked controls in Second Life to the map via the API to change the map view. Everyone nearby sees the same map, to which you can add geoRSS feeds. One featured suggested use is a quiz game, where contestants have to be the first to identify the landmark in the zoomed-in satellite imagery. That could become addictive. (Via Not Possible IRL, which (mistakenly) ascribes the above to the Google Earth API.)

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Zooming in on scalable zooming tools

stefan.geens@gmail.com — Sat, 14 Jun 2008 12:31:32 +0000

Microsoft has come out with Deep Zoom, a method that uses the Silverlight 2 plugin for navigating around large online images. Deep Zoom uses the same technique as that used in online maps and virtual globes — showing a hierarchy of ever-more detailed imagery tiles as you zoom in. Hard Rock Café has an early example of the technology in action.

And to prove the point about the similarity with maps, Deep Earth uses Microsoft’s own map tiles to create a Deep Zoom version of Virtual Earth. What’s the difference between the two? Virtual Earth doesn’t really zoom smoothly but does wrap around, Deep Zoom zooms but doesn’t wrap around (at least not in the examples given).

The London-based Center for Advanced Spatial Analysis (CASA) has had a similar tool for a while, except that this is a Java application that uses the Google Maps API: The Google Maps Image Cutter. It’s main advantage over Deep Zoom is that this application lets you make your own instances of zoomable gigapixel images. (I haven’t yet seen a tool that lets you create and publish your own Silverlight-powered gigapixel imagery.) [Update: There is a tool for creating Deep Zoom images, see comments.] The main disadvantage is that it doesn’t zoom smoothly — instead, you have to step between discrete zoom levels. And once you’ve zoomed smoothly, there isn’t really any going back.

It makes a lot of sense to publish gigapixel images to the web with a technology that only downloads the bits you’re actually zooming in on. (Zoomify is another example.) But what about 360-degree panorama images? These wrap around, just like an imagery dataset for a virtual globe. Here too, CASA has come to the rescue, with PhotoOverlay Creator, which produces KML that lets you explore a 360-degree panorama in Google Earth. This java app also uses a pyramidal hierarchy of tiles.

There are several ways of publishing panorama images on the web using Flash, such as Flash Panorama Player and Lucid. But such tools have lacked support for the piecemeal loading of high-resolution panoramas. One solution has been to become a member of and upload your panoramas to a site like Gigapan which uses server-side processing to deliver up the imagery piecemeal. But for DIY types, there is now also a relatively new Flash-based panorama publisher on the market that does provide multi-resolution tiling: KRPano. Expect to see a lot more development in this space.

So now we have scalable online viewers for both Euclidian and elliptic large imagery datasets. But where is the viewer for hyperbolic imagery? :-)

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UI roundup: Multitouch and 3D

stefan.geens@gmail.com — Sat, 14 Jun 2008 10:58:13 +0000

Three innovative ways to navigate virtual globes:

Cheap 3D LCD monitor: That was quicker than I thought: The Hyundai W220S, a sub-$1000 LCD screen that goes 3D of you wear polarized glassed. Engadget reports that it comes bundled with “Google Earth 3D”. I can actually afford one of these! (Though it doesn’t fit in my backpack.) I wonder if such screens will make better gamers of people — that will be the true test of their usefulness.

Multitouch 3D Wall: Take the Java version of NASA World Wind, add a 2m x 2.5m multi-touch wall and anaglyph mode, and voila, a soon-to be open-source multitouch 3D virtual globe, courtesy of the Institute for Geoinformatics Münster.

Is this the first case of 3D and multitouch simultaneously? (Via LBird)

NeuScreen: Yet another experiment involving the Nokia N95 — in this case it is made to read two penlights to add multitouch interaction to the screen, including for 3D objects. (Impressive, but isn’t it easier to just buy an iPhone? It reminds me of the sword fighter that Indiana Jones shoots with a gun:-)

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Satellite imagery for China, sort of

stefan.geens@gmail.com — Sat, 14 Jun 2008 10:24:21 +0000

The Virtual Earth/Live Maps blog reports that national broadcasting behemoth China Central Television (CCTV) is using Virtual Earth to show off the locations of the Euro2008 stadiums in Switzerland and Austria, and is planning to use the same tool for the Olympics in China. The sites are in Chinese, aimed at a Chinese audience. Two things of note:

For some strange reason, the controls are identical to those of Google Maps, although the maps are Microsoft’s.

The implementation uses Microsoft’s non-censored, non-Chinese map database, and it has a button to show the full set of glorious high resolution satellite imagery, including of China. (Microsoft’s Chinese Virtual Earth doesn’t do satellite imagery at all, and neither does Chinese Google Maps). Once you’re zoomed in on an Austrian stadium, there is nothing keeping you from heading on over to China and zooming in on your house or keeping tabs on the People’s Army.

In other words, the Chinese state’s own broadcasting organization thinks that the state-mandated censorship of maps is useless and in need of circumventing. This example also illustrates the ease with which such circumventing can be achieved, and the long-term futility of restricting access to mapping tools from behind the Chinese firewall.

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iPhone SDK restriction on GPS use — what's the motivation?

stefan.geens@gmail.com — Wed, 11 Jun 2008 22:00:42 +0000

Electronista goes rummaging through the license agreement of iPhone’s SDK and comes up with this clause restricting allowed uses of the included location-based APIs:

Applications [that use location-based APIs] may not be designed or marketed for real time route guidance; automatic or autonomous control of vehicles, aircraft, or other mechanical devices; dispatch or fleet management; or emergency or life-saving purposes.

The blog then goes on to speculate that this may be a way for Apple to prevent rivals from building navigation software for the iPhone.

That clause sounded very familiar, however. In fact, it is nearly equivalent to a clause in the Google Earth license agreement and the Google Maps API terms of service:

You may not use the Service with any products, systems, or applications installed or otherwise connected to or in communication with vehicles for or in connection with: (a) real time route guidance (including without limitation, turn-by-turn route guidance and other routing that is enabled through the use of a sensor); (b) any systems or functions for automatic or autonomous control of vehicle behavior; or (c) dispatch, fleet management or similar applications.

Their similarity prompted me to suspect that perhaps there is a regulatory cause for such clauses, rather than an attempt to stifle competition (which frankly, makes no sense, not for Google and certainly not for Apple, which is invested in making the platform a success. It would as nonsensical as prohibiting video editing applications on Mac OS X to protect Final Cut Pro.)

After some asking around, however, it’s been suggested that there are two other reasons why a clause restricting the use of mapping tools might find itself in a license agreement:

Liability protection: There is no need for government regulations preventing unsafe use of a tool when lawyers are all too happy to punish corporate “enablers” of such uses via lawsuits. Hence a ban on uses that may put you or others in harm’s way.

Licensing issues: iPhone’s built-in map tools use Google Maps tiles built with data from third party providers. It’s a standing assumption in the GIS world that such data is cheaper to license by Google et al. if it does not end up repurposed to compete with professional tools.

Of those two mooted reasons, I prefer the first, because the iPhone is a platform, not a dataset. Location-based iPhone networking application Loopt, demoed at the launch of the new iPhone, uses Microsoft Virtual Earth data, and surely that map is not governed by the Google Maps terms of use.

In sum, Apple doesn’t want to get sued for people with iPhones doing dumb, dangerous or daring things, such as flying one’s ultralight using an iPhone autopilot. (I’d really like to see somebody try that, though:-)

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Links: KML validator, GE API Google Group, Géoportail 3D goes Mac

stefan.geens@gmail.com — Mon, 09 Jun 2008 23:21:05 +0000

A real potpourri of content here — some of it old, and listed here more for my own reference, but that is the inevitable consequence of a gorgeous summer week in Sweden and a full work agenda.

3G iPhone does GPS: No surprises there. Apple's page on the GPS functionality, and Apple's page on GPS + Google Maps. Interesting feature:
If GPS is available, iPhone displays a blue GPS indicator. But if you’re inside — without a clear line of sight to a GPS satellite — iPhone finds you via Wi-Fi. If you’re not in range of a Wi-Fi hot spot, iPhone finds you using cellular towers.
My Nokia N95 doesn't do that. I wonder: Will Google come out with a version of the web API that also works on the iPhone's browser?

Kyoto sights: In the Disney news crush from last week, another layer got overlooked: In the Travel and Tourism folder of Google Earth you'll now also find the Kyoto Tourism layer, by the Kyoto Tourism Council. Understated, but extensive.

Earth browsing: Is there are a thaw in Earthbrowser developer Matt Giger's frosty view of Google? First, he gets invited to present a talk at Google about his Earthbrowser, next he has kind words for the Google Earth API...;-)

KML Validator: Galdos Systems Inc announces the free KML validator. Unlike existing KML validator Feed Validator, Galdos's validator can handle KML 2.2, according to Galdos's Ron Lake.

Geoblogging Sudan: Michael Graham, of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, has a new post up on World is Witness, their geoblog, this time from South Sudan.

Google Earth web flight sim: Jim Stafford of Barnabu.co.uk comes out with a simple flight sim using the Google Earth web API. He's also responsible for an interactive bouncing ball demo.

Hello Earth: How to build a simple Hello Earth application with the Google Earth web API, courtesy of the new Google Geo Developers Blog.

Flickr KML feed as a Google Earth web plugin: A simple page that loads a Flickr KML feed into an instance of Google Earth for a web browser. (See video demo.) You can easily copy the code and alter the feed URL (but get your own API key) to make your own version. This example is a nice way of learning the ropes.

GE API Google Group: Not previously mentioned here, but there is an active Google Group that deals specifically with the Google Earth web API.

Géoportail 3D goes Mac and Linux: The French state's national GIS portal Géoportail gets 3D support for Mac (Safari only) and Linux (Firefox) via new plugins for the TerraExplorer technology by SkyLine Systems.

Cities in 3D for Europe. A program to get cities to contribute their own GIS data to Google Earth has now gone multilingual, aimed at European local governments. Not just ortho photography and terrain DEMs are welcome, but 3D models as well.

The more the merrier, of course, but the accompanying video showing the purported benefits of contributing 3D models seems to me like an mix of both wishful thinking ("Airport management and contractors, for example, would have a shared tool for more effectively providing maintenance services or coordinating deliveries" &mdash, with a static 3D model? How?) and unambitious goals ("Tourists can discover great places to stay, such as this hotel.") I think rich contextual data is far more important to tourists than a pretty 3D model; fortunately Google is getting good at rich georeferenced data as well.

Flash Earth no longer does Google: An Eagle-eyed reader notices that Flash Earth no longer sports the option of showing Google's map tiles. Likely culprit is the unorthodox means by which Flash Earth uses the tiles, which no doubt contravened the TOS.

Mobile Second Life client: A 165KB java app by Vollee does the trick. I get 2 frames per second on my Nokia N95, but there I am flying through Second House of Sweden on my mobile, chatting with the locals. As a technology demonstration, it's impressive.

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New Disney layer "the next best thing to being there"? Er, no.

stefan.geens@gmail.com — Fri, 06 Jun 2008 21:33:34 +0000

Greetings from Sweden, where everything is lagom.

By far the most mainstream news coverage of Google Earth this week was gained by Disney's foray into modelling its amusement park properties in 3D as a default layer in Google Earth. Yawn. I think it is time we start being underwhelmed by such cases of "more of the same", especially if we're looking at information-poor corporate PR stunts. The models are highly detailed, yes, perhaps some of the best yet (save for the trees), but above all this launch to me serves to highlight the limits of the current technology — or rather, last year's technology.

To wit, Google Earth's Disney Land does not let you try the rides; Nor can you natively explore Disney's properties with somebody else, virtually. Instead, you get a static, unpopulated representation of a theme park, devoid of any information you might actually want to use, such as where are the toilets, or what are the opening hours of this restaurant, or what is the current queueing time for this ride right now?

The new Google Earth API will go a long way to providing a 3D programmable environment, much like Second Life does, so that you could try a ride or explore with a friend far away.

Such 3D programmable environments are much more amenable to making a 3D virtual representation of a theme park actually useful. With the Google Earth API, you could build, by way of example, a service that, given which rides you want to see and how much time you have, solves the travelling salesman problem for you and then shows you the shortest route, taking into account current waiting times for rides. Now that would be innovative.

Jay Rasulo, Chairman of Walt Disney Parks and Resorts writes on the Official Google Blog:

Last May, Eric Schmidt and I met to talk about The Walt Disney Company’s focus on technology. We started to explore innovative ways we could work together to bring one of the world’s most magical destinations to Google Earth’s millions of users…

And ends with:

... we invite you to explore the Walt Disney World Resort in Google Earth. It’s the next best thing to being there.

Making a 3D model of your properties or a town in Google Earth sure is fun, but let's be clear: It's no longer innovative, and it is certainly not "the next best thing to being there".

(PS. I probably would be kinder to this layer if people weren't screaming from the rooftops about it.)

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Links: The happiest place on Earth, mini Korea, GPS iPhone

stefan.geens@gmail.com — Sun, 01 Jun 2008 10:46:46 +0000

The happiest place on Earth: The happiest place on Earth is this island, according to the BBC.

North Korea Intel: North Korea Economy Watch's meticulously researched KML layer pinpointing every conceivable feature in North Korea, including the gulags, nuclear sites, military sites and elite areas, has just been updated. What's causing a bit of a tizzy is the discovery of an island that looks remarkably like Korea:

Well, it's not an exact miniature, but it looks completely natural, and I can appreciate that if you've been staring at maps of Korea all day while making this layer, these kinds of similarities will pop out at you:-) Find it in the "Other Stuff" folder of the KML file. (Via DPRK Studies, via ROK Drop)

iPhone to get GPS? GigaOm has sources giving the GPS chipset contract for the next iPhone to Broadcom, which corroborates other circumstantial evidence of a GPS-enabled iPhone: Built-in photo geotagging, and VC funding for Pelago's Whrrl, a location-based context service for the iPhone.

Test ad for Google Sky: This Google ad was recently spotted on Ogle Earth:-)

F-Secure: Finnish internet security firm F-Secure monitors the origins of worms, spam and malware using Google Earth.

Where 2.0 Disaster tech video: O'Reilly Radar has the video of the Disaster Tech talk at Where 2.0 by Jesse Robbins and Mikel Maron, and links through to pretty much all projects and organizations currently involved in pushing this envelope.

Hasselblad's Phocus: Hasselblad, makers of the drool-inducing GPS-capable 39 megapixel H3DII DSLR camera, has now gotten its own dedicated RAW image processing software. Phocus (Mac only at the moment, Windows version promised) looks superficially similar to Apple's Aperture, and can produce KML for a photo with coordinate metadata to show it on Google Earth. (At these prices, shouldn't it do more, such as create smart collections based on proximity searches?)

Below, some more early adopters of the Google Earth view in the Browser. No cases yet of interesting uses of the API, but any week now...

Metropix: Metropix, the automated floor-plan-to-3D service, now also shows the results of its service via the Google Earth plugin embedded. For example.

GIS Planning: GIS Planning Inc has added the embedded Google Earth view to a number of Google Maps sites it has developed, such as Nevada Site Search.

Tagzania: The developers behind geobookmarking site Tagzania, currently hard at work on behind-the-scenes changes, nevertheless took the time to add the 3D embedded Google Earth view for maps of individual locations: Here's a 2D example, and here is the 3D equivalent.

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Healthy Planet (beta) goes live

stefan.geens@gmail.com — Sun, 01 Jun 2008 09:23:24 +0000

Healthy Planet, the geocharity where you can adopt a national park globally (much like you can adopt a highway in the US) has now gone into a live beta, writes Mark Mulligan of King's College London:

The Healthy Planet guardian scheme is now online and ready for donors to adopt plots as we work on the next phase of development (projects, voting, feedback, one hectare plots, mapping and communities). A publicity drive will be carried out over the coming months building up towards a major launch at Christmas

The KML for choosing a plot in Google Earth is quite a piece of work, circumventing the lack of an API via the judicious use of network links with radio buttons and view-based refreshes, albeit at the cost of lengthy instructions. It strikes me that the Google Earth browser plugin's API, due to be fully cross-platform by August, is just the ticket for giving this kind of project the user interface it deserves for broader adoption by non-neogeogeeks.

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See a 3D map of Stockholm today in any OS, browser

stefan.geens@gmail.com — Thu, 29 May 2008 21:10:41 +0000

Want to see a 3D map that is OS independent today? Swedish search and mapping site hitta.se has just added an embedded 3D map of Stockholm to its web offering — one that only requires Java and works with Mac, Linux and Windows browsers. It is remarkably accurate and looks like this:

While Hitta.se has the working example, the 3DMaps EX software powering it is by Agency9, which in turn uses technology by C3 Technologies, a subsidiary of Saab, the Scandinavian military technology giant.

The technology is different to what Google and Microsoft are pursuing. Best to let the C3 site explain:

The technology is based on high-resolution aerial photography with carefully calibrated cameras. For every picture, the camera’s position and angle are calculated with extremely high precision, using a very advanced navigation system. This is what enables us to give each pixel its geographical position with decimetre accuracy. Then, using stereovision technology, we combine two sequential pictures to measure the area’s height profile.

The result is an aerial photograph with each pixel positioned in three dimensions. Over an entire city, thousands of such photos are combined into one coherent 3D model – through an automated process in our unique 3D-processor.

Thanks to all this, there is no one today who can take pictures with the same precision and speed as we can. One example is when we filmed all of Stockholm in October 2007 and created a realistic, yet zoomable and turnable, 3D model of the city in just 3 days.

Hitta.se's FAQ is especially keen to explain how it is different from Google Earth. Translating and abridging severely now:

Google Earth's 3D city models are built by traditional means. Because the used images are flat, Google Earth often misses out on displaying heights for buildings and trees. Hitta.se's technology is completely automated. Any object larger than a VW bus is included in 3D in the final image. Google Earth has a limited numbers of buildings in each city. Hitta.se will show all the buildings in a city automatically.

Do go explore Stockholm for a while. My own take is that this technology is great for suburbs and wooded areas, where trees do make a difference. As for Hitta.se's 3D buildings, they sometimes seem suffer from slightly misplaced textures, which gives them that Daliesque molten clock look. Still, this looks very scalable, though it is not clear how fast the Java engine is compared to Google's just released browser plugin. I still prefer the details of Google's and Microsoft's "traditional" 3D models over 3C's output, but I definitely prefer 3C's output over a raw height mesh (DEM) model. (Via Dagens Nyheter)

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Links: Cartographica interviews Avi Bar-Zeev; new Google Geo Developers Blog

stefan.geens@gmail.com — Thu, 29 May 2008 20:18:02 +0000

Cartographica interviews Avi Bar-Zeev: Georgia State University's Jeremy Crampton writes:
Just to let you know that an interview with Avi Bar-Zeev has been published in Cartographica. As you know, Avi was co-founder of Keyhole before it became Google Earth and has worked for Linden Labs and many other graphics visualizing companies. He runs the Reality Prime blog.

The journal has kindly made the interview available for free (normally it's subscriber only) and we are keen to let people know about this in the geospatial blogosphere. Here are the links to the issue and the interview (pdf).
It looks like a long and involved interview, so I will save it for the weekend.

Google Geo Developers Blog: Google Maps API Blog is dead. Long live Google Geo Developers Blog. (Via Google Maps Mania)

Avi checks out the Google Earth plugin: Speaking of Avi — In a post on his blog, he sees some interesting possibilities for games.

IMINT & Analysis gets KML files: Excellent news from an excellent site.

WaterExplorer: General Electric now has a major corporate communications project up on their site: WaterExplorer, a series of KML layers highlighting the coming global water supply shortages and the GE technologies that can help mitigate them. It's a very slick site, and so is the KML.

Map spam: Search Engine Land interviews Carter Maslan, Google's Director of Product Management for Local, about the growing occurrence of "map spam" in Google search results.

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More early adopters of the Google Earth plugin

stefan.geens@gmail.com — Thu, 29 May 2008 17:15:16 +0000

Because it is so easy to add 3D to existing map mashups, this list is going to grow very quickly, but for today it is still worth pointing out some of the early adopters I've become aware of, so that you can go test the plugin.

Housing Maps: One of the early original mashups, Housing Maps, now has an Earth button (though it would be great if Mac users didn't get to see it. This goes for many of the sites in this post.) (via Trufflehoney)

walkhighlands.co.uk: In the comments, Paul Webster of walkhighlands.co.uk writes in with an interesting discovery:
Even better news is that the Earth plugin/ API fully supports kml network links with regions, unlike the Google Maps API.

This means you can run huge datasets using just kml, as the Earth plugin will load more kml files on the fly automatically if you have the regions set up to load when on screen and zoomed appropriately. We're working on making our site navigable using the new plugin - see here.

Google Earth Hacks: Mickey Mellen writes:
A page is up for every file on Google Earth Hacks, but many still have issues. When viewing any of our files, there is a link that says "New! GE plug-in" in the "Get File" section. Here is an example of a functioning one.
More info by Mickey here.

GolfNation: Mickey Mellen writes:
Here's another one I've converted - GolfNation.

It has Google Earth content for every course. Some items are simple placemarks and some are detailed layouts of each hole. All of them now offer the option to view details using the plug-in. Here is a sample page.

Travelpod: Mashable points out that travel blogging site Travelpod has gone 3D.

See Bournemouth: Mapperz sends us to See Bournemouth.

The Glacier Express: Google Maps Mania sends us to The Glacier Express.

Web applications that delve deep into the plugin's extended API will take a while longer... but when these show up, I'll try to post them.

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Early adopters: GMap-Track goes 3D

stefan.geens@gmail.com — Thu, 29 May 2008 16:31:26 +0000

If you visit this blog via a web browser today (versus, say, a newsfeed reader) then youmay notice a difference in the upper right-hand corner of the page: If you're visiting with a Windows machine, you'll see that the map has gone 3D. If you don't have the Google Earth plugin installed yet, you will be asked to install it.

What's interesting, however, is that if you're visiting with a non-Windows browser, then the map looks just like it always has. That's because Cristian Streng, the developer behind the Mobile GMaps/GMap-Track sites that lets me update my position on my blog via my mobile phone, was able to use a sniffer in his Javascript code to check my operating system before deciding which kind of map to return.

That's the way it should be from a usability point of view. Mac users like myself hate to be reminded of features they can't install. We'll wait patiently for a few months until the Mac version comes out, of course, but in the meantime we'd like to pretend it doesn't exist:-).

If you're a developer, please do the same if you're going to start using the plugin on your site — let it degrade gracefully for Mac users. Please don't inflict pop-up reminders on us for a Windows plugin we can't install.

If you want to know how to add Cristian's gracefully degrading 3D map to your site, here's what he has to say:

In order to enable it on your website change the map change in the embedded code from mt=s to mt=e . That means you should replace the iframe line with something like this:

<iframe scrolling="no" style="border:0;padding:0;margin:10px;" src="http://www.gmap-track.com/user.php?user=ogleearth&output=embed &zoom=13&mt=e&w=300&h=170" width="300" height="170">

An account on GMap-Track is free, of course. My parents love it:-)

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