Microsoft WorldWide Telescope already here, stunning
Microsoft's WorldWide Telescope ("Spring Beta") has just launched and is available for download for Windows XP and Vista. I was able to take it for a quick spin on a very underpowered system before it crashed but even so it left a truly stunning impression. This is an amazing tool. If you have a well-specced Windows machine (not Parallels or VMWare on the Mac like me) then drop everything and lose yourself in this for the next few hours.
Compared to Google Sky, you can really see the advantage of a building a dedicated astronomical browsing tool. I have to agree with Scoble (much as I hate to :-) — this is easily the most impressive thing I've seen Microsoft do in a long time, and it stands head and shoulders above the competition. It may even force me to go back and reinstall Windows on my Mac via Boot Camp, because I suspect that's the only way I am going to get to use this application. (Thanks Jonathan for the heads up)
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ConnoteaDishPointer.com
What use is all that fancy 3D building stuff in Google Earth? Well, for one, it can help you find out if you are in the line of site of a particular geostationary television satellite. DishPointer.com has just created a really innovative use of Google Earth’s increasingly accurate rendering of urban cityscapes: Not only will the site calculate the direction you need to point your dish at to catch a certain satellite from your location on Earth, it will now also draw the line of sight for you in Google Earth, and show you if it cuts through nearby buildings (in which case you’d be out of luck).
Here’s how it works: Enter your address on DishPointer.com and choose a satellite. You get back a Google Map with the relevant dish setup data.
(Move the marker to fine-tune.) But Google Maps can’t show you 3D buildings, which is why just below the map you can now open the view in Google Earth. The resulting KML file draws the exact line of sight from your location to the satellite.
As you can see above, in case you wanted set up a satellite dish beside Trinity Church on Wall Street, you’d be out of luck.
You can zoom out all the way until you see the satellite yourself.
My one big feature request: I’d like to be able to set the height above ground that my dish finds itself at. Many dishes are are not at ground level but on the roof of an apartment complex, and this matters in line-of-sight calculations. Still, Dishpointer.com's use of Google Earth is a really novel idea.
Links: Rumsey, Where 2.0, South Africa tourism
- New Rumsey Historical Maps: 100 historical maps from David Rumsey’s collection have been added to Google Earth as overlays, for a grand total of 120 maps. The collections is now also more manageable — click on icons on the globe to download your overlay of choice. There are some truly fantastic maps in this layer, including some of Egypt — but the color scheme of the popup windows makes the text almost illegible (on a Mac).
- Where 2.0 preännouncements: All Points Blog gives us a preview of what companies will be announcing at Where 2.0. EveryScape is really worth watching out for.
- South Africa tourist layer: South Africa’s tourist commission releases a polished KML collection of tourist sites, including stadiums for the 2010 World Cup. I suspect this layer will soon find its way into Google Earth’s default Travel and Tourism layer — it’s a lot better than Egypt’s effort.
- Using Second Life for Cityscapes: Fresh from his planetarium-building spree in Second Life, Swedish SL programming virtuoso Magnus Zeisig is now setting his sites on using SL to mimic historical cityscapes. A Swedish museum is interested in exhibiting such cityscapes in a virtual world, so Magnus has made an extensive study (PDF) of what is out there in SL right now in terms of cities, appended with some of his thoughts. Not surprisingly, he’s found that computer algorithms for building cityscapes are more realistic-looking than manual builds.
Of Chinese submarine bases, scoops and censorship
The Daily Telegraph has another “scoop”:
China has secretly built a major underground nuclear submarine base that could threaten Asian countries and challenge American power in the region, it can be disclosed. [...]
The images were obtained by Janes Intelligence Review after the periodical was given access to imagery from the commercial satellite company DigitalGlobe. (My italics)
The main problem with this article is that the underground submarine base has been visible on Google Earth since at least August 2006, when it was mentioned on Ogle Earth. The article misrepresents what is new information. Jane’s Defense Weekly has indeed commissioned a new image of the base from Digital Globe, much like we all could if we have a few thousand USDs to spare, and not surprisingly the imagery shows the submarine base being used by, wait for it, submarines.
Click to enlarge
It’s always good to get access to updated imagery, and JDW’s commissioned imagery is from February 28, 2008, vs Google Earth’s from January 14, 2006. Comparing the two, you can indeed see that land access tunnels that were under construction in 2006 have now been completed.
However, when newspapers pretend they are at the forefront of intelligence gathering when in fact they are the laggards, is it any wonder they’re being subsumed by the web?
In a related matter, the question of Chinese sensitivity to having its military “secrets” splayed out on the web is now becoming increasingly relevant. I have already linked to the AFP article indicating a new harder line on maps the Chinese government does not approve of, but the issue is worth revisiting in detail. This is the first time Google is specifically named in an investigation, along with its Chinese search competitors Baidu and Sohu.
There are two separate issues: One is maps that show borders and labels which do not represent China’s official position — the disputed border with India, showing Taipei as a capital city, not showing the Spratleys and the Paracel Islands as Chinese... The other is satellite imagery of Chinese military bases or sensitive sites, along with user-generated content that meticulously identifies these features, such as on the Google-hosted Google Earth Community, whose annotated placemarks are automatically visible in Google Earth.
That both China and India should demand that Google Earth show their mutual border to their own liking is of course an absurdity, and one that is impossible to reconcile on one global map. But Google has a potential way out in China: It already has a local Chinese variant of Google Maps, and as a study from 2007 shows, the Chinese Google Maps does alter its borders with India to reflect Chinese sensibilities. As for avoiding showing satellite imagery of sensitive areas? Easy — the Chinese Google Maps shows no satellite imagery at all; the button is simply missing from the map.
This indicates that Google has preëmptively slaked China’s hunger for censorship in its local mapping product. There remains the question of Google Earth, however. Google is pushing Google Earth in China as an alternate means of following the Olympic torch around China. Does this mean that China’s censors will find fault with Google Earth? And what would the result of such official displeasure be?
Ars Technica suspects that there will be changes made to Google’s global mapping database, to satisfy China: “We wouldn't be surprised to see some ‘alterations’ made to Google's maps of China in the coming months.” Myself, I strongly suspect that this will not be the case. I could definitely see Google Earth being kept out of China by authorities via its great firewall, and that would be a loss for Chinese surfers but not for everyone else.
Instead, I expect Google to resist pressure from national governments — not just China but notably also India and Iran most recently — and instead to formulate clear policies as to how it will draw borders and label features. We’ve already seen Google’s naming policy for water bodies published, with a promise of more such policies being published soon.
Of course, China could play hardball with Google. Because Google has an extensive presence on the ground in China, China’s government has all manner of judicial means to pressure Google into changing its global map database. If it should ever go this far, I sincerely hope Google simply closes up shop in China and calls it a victory for free expression over censorship, even if the cost is high. Censoring Chinese citizens to satisfy local laws is one thing. Censoring the rest of the world to be allowed to do business in China would be a completely different matter.
Seero embeds video, streams live from Where 2.0
Seero, the service that lets you stream your own live georeferenced video to the web, has just made itself embeddable. To illustrate how this works, Seero is attending Where 2.0 this week as a member of the press, where it will be reporting live on the proceedings. You can watch Where 2.0 live, embedded, right here on Ogle Earth:
Until the live broadcasts start at Where 2.0, you’ll be watching a pre-recorded on-demand playlist. Even if it turns out that GPS tracking doesn’t work so well indoors, it is wonderful to be able to stream Where 2.0 live to the web. (You can make your own embedded stream like the one above here.)
Links: Nargis, Mesh4x KML, China to censor online maps?
Well, the “throat infection” was actually a misdiagnosed pneumonia, and it ended up taking a wee stay in the hospital to beat that into submission. (I found myself mouthing the lyrics to Lloyd Cole & the Commotions’ Lost Weekend — though to be fair, the price of the medicine is quite reasonable here in Cairo.) I’m recovering well, so it’s time to dive back into the blogging...
- Nargis links: Paul Currion over at Humanitarian.info has collected a long and useful list of Burma/Myanmar-related links related to how GIS-related technologies are (or rather aren’t yet) being used in the disaster relief effort. That’s in addition to the links on Google Lat Long and Google Earth Blog.
- KML syncing: One challenge facing relief workers: Updating local data and then sharing it. InSTEDD’s Eduardo Jezierski’s built Mesh4x KML Adapter, a syncing tool for KML files that should solve precisely this problem. Comes with a bonus monster KML file containing everything you’ve ever wanted to know about the Central African Republic, and then some.
- China gets that urge to censor maps: Reports AFP:
According to Min Yiren, vice head of [China’s] State Bureau of Surveying and Mapping, authorities hope to get rid of online maps that wrongly depict China's borders or that reveal military secrets, the People's Daily said Monday.
Too bad that that horse bolted from the barn back in 2005. Chinese military secrets have been a free-for all on Google Earth Community (GEC) since day one of the launch of Google Earth. It would be a pity if Chinese surfers were to be cut off from Google’s mapping resources. But I very much doubt that Google will ever remove three years of collective intelligence gleaned from Digital Globe’s high resolution imagery on GEC or begin restricting new such info for the rest of us. Still, a battle between Google and China’s government over this could be quite bloody. - Find a missing Mars lander: The Mars Polar Lander was lost just as it was about to land near Mars’s South Pole in 1999. There are now some excellent sub-meter resolution images of the region taken by the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, and you’re being asked to help comb those images to find the Mars Polar Lander. The setup is not as sophisticated as Amazon’s mechanical turk, used in the search for Steve Fossett and Jim Gray, but then again the task is not as urgent. (Via Bad Astronomy)
- Google Vue de la Rue: Google Street View car spotted in Paris.
- Berlin Wall Guide: Berlin has introduced the Mauer Guide, a handheld GPS-enabled device that help you trace the course of the Berlin Wall, much of it now demolished. Just like in a museum, it tells you about what you see around you, except that it knows where you are via GPS. Very cool. (Via Spiegel Online)
- 3G? I want my 4G iPhone: Sweden awards five 4G mobile licences. How fast will 4G telephony be? More than 100mbps, according to one of the bidders.
- Géoportail launches API: France’s National Geographic Agency’s Géoportail gets the promised API (beta). It’s built on open source OpenLayers tech (wow) and lets web developers incorporate French cartographic data into their web apps. Only 2D at the moment, and only 100 page views per day are allowed, among other restrictions. In other words, for beta testing purposes only.
- Google Ocean: CNet reports that Google is planning to come out with a 3D bathymetry tool called Google Ocean. The Earth is Square can’t help but point out that Google is playing catchup to NASA World Wind, which has had 3D bathymetry since 2004.
- World Wide Telescope gets a launch date: Bill Gates says Microsoft’s World Wide Telescope will be launched by the end of May.
- Microsoft Pro Photo Tools 1: A Windows application that lets you edit the EXIF metadata of your photos, including RAW photos, with a special focus on georeferencing. You can marry your photos to a GPS tracklog, or place photos on Virtual Earth, and then get the name of the place via reverse geocoding. There are other georeferencing tools out there for Windows, but none that do so much for free. (Via Ars Technica)
- LoadMyTracks 1.3: Mac GPS utility of choice LoadMyTracks gets a pretty solid update. Free.
- JetPhoto Studio 3.0.1: This update to the Mac photo georeferencing/CMS tool adds searching for photos by location.
Service announcement
This past week I've been laid low by a throat infection whose bacteria responsible is putting up a fight against the antibiotics. I may need another week before blogging resumes. In the meantime, there's plenty of news in the excellent blogs in the sidebar, on the right. Back soon — Stefan
Spherical displays - a reader question
A friend has been asked to make a purchasing recommendation for a large British scientific organization regarding spherical displays — spheres onto which you project video to display moving images of round bodies like Earth or Mars.
He knows of two, but was wondering if there are more on the market worth investigating.
The first is the PufferSphere by Pufferfish, a British company whose displays are also used at concerts and for art projects, but which seems to have a magical effect on children when displaying the Earth, as evinced by a video from this year’s Ocean & Earth Day at the UK National Oceanography Centre:
Pufferfish @ the National Oceanography Centre, UK. from Pufferfish on Vimeo.
Another is Global Imagination’s Magic Planet, which has a variety of sizes of globes, and can include a range of premade globe software, for example a version of NASA World Wind. It can be run from a PC. You can download a video from this page. (Not having embedded video in 2008 is a bit negligent, no?:-) And so is the 2004 copyright.)
I also found the OmniGlobe by ARC Science Simulations. It also offers a large globe, and comes with pre-installed software that facilitates the showing of planets and adding your own content. See videos of their globe here:
So the question to readers is: Are there other commercial manufacturers of such products you know of? Have you had any experiences with any of these? None of these three manufacturers are willing to quote prices for their devices up front, but my guess is that a big determinant involves the kind of content you want to display — if it needs to be custom-created, it will cost a lot more.
Links: Concharto, Bambuser gets a maps mashup, GPS iPhone?
Back in Cairo after a brief layover in Rome that was definitely Not a Roman Holiday. Here’s what I’ve been reading this past week:
- Concharto: The previously lauded Time Space Map changes its name to Concharto, and has been nominated for the 2008 Prix Ars Electronica in the digital communities category (which, er Wikipedia won in 2004:-).
- Map tiles as a KML overlay: It’s been done before back in 2005, but for whatever reason the service never survived: Google Maps tiles as a KML network link overlay in Google Earth, courtesy of Cristian Streng over at Mobile GMaps. But this time round, not just that tile is available — pretty much any map that is served over the web via tiles is supported: content from Windows Live Maps, Yahoo Maps, Ask.com Maps and OpenStreetMap.
- Live video maps mashup: Swedish live video startup Bambuser gets a live Google Maps mashup feature. The georeferencing is less high-tech than Seero’s, but Bambuser has the advantage that you can send video live from your mobile phone (which Seero can’t yet, and like Qik, which however lacks the mapping feature). Just missing the KML network link now!
- Second Life on the mobile phone: Second Life for the mobile phone is almost upon us! Vollee is the company behind that tour the force. But this also means a mobile version of Google Earth can no longer be considered a physical impossibility. Imagine adding iPhone-like touch-screen controls to that demo...
- Cool new KML editing tip: Richard Treves shows you how to consolidate style tags in KML created by Google Earth.
- Persian petition: Signatures for the petition Immediate and unconditional deletion of “Arabian Gulf” from Google Earth reach 598,615! Most signatories don’t seem aware that both “Arabian Gulf” and “Persian Gulf” are marked in Google Earth, with an explanatory note, but the petition text doesn’t feel the need to disabuse readers of that assumption.
- GPS iPhone?: So the 3G iPhone may include proper GPS positioning after all. That would make it far more useful for proper mapping applications than what the current technology provides (triangulation via cell phone towers). Geotagging of photos and geotracking would all be accurate to within a few meters. (Nokia N95 update — successive firmware updates to my N95 mean that a true GPS fix is now had within seconds anywhere in Europe and Egypt that I’ve tried... with a little assistance of a Nokia server that does the labor-ntensive raw GPS signal decoding). If the iPhone gets the same level of functionality as my Nokia N95, it will run rings around the rest regarding design and build quality. My N95 may be feature laden, but the build is is feeling rickety and the GUI is slooow.
- Google Sky horizon: a horizon for Google Sky — for any location on Earth, as a network link updated every 10 minutes.
- Sense of place: Ed Parsons looks at the latest version of Google Earth from the perspective of how it generates a sense of place.
- HoudahGeo updated: Mac photo georeferencing tool HoudahGeo (€25) is updated to 1.4.8, with “vastly improved Google Earth geocoding. Google Earth geocoding now provides readings of altitude in addition to latitude and longitude. It now also works when the Google Earth view is tilted.”
- JetPhoto goes geosavvy: JetPhoto Studio 3 is a major new release of a photo organizing and web publishing tool for both Mac and PC. It’s an interesting hybrid — there is a free basic standalone application, but also a PHP-based server component (not free). The standalone viewer reads GPS track data and generates Google Maps and KML. Worth checking out.
- KML for maps test: Fortius One’s blog Off the Map compares KML support by Virtual Earth and Google MyMaps. Elsewhere FortiusOne’s Sean Gorman updates us on their progress building a robust system for sharing and publishing metadata-savvy geospatial content.
- ArcGIS Explorer swipte tool: ESRI celebrated Earth Day showing off some features that other virtual globes can’t compete with — for example the swipe tool.
- Google Earth for Anthropology: I so hate giving money to Elsevier for scientific research that should be freely available to all, so does anyone have a backdoor link to this scientific paper: Google Earth, GIS, and the Great Divide: A new and simple method for sharing paleontological data? (Via ubikcan)
- Shocking: NASA World Wind developers and long-time Google-Earth critics “Bull” and Chad actually kinda like Google Earth 4.3 a little — lauding those additions I was the most lukewarm about.
- Late in reporting, but for the record: Brian Flood’s GETools is an API of sorts for Google Earth for PC. China satellite debris shown in Google Earth.
Sifting information from propaganda re North Korea, Syria
The UK Times of London has a breathless article about how North Korea is building runways under mountains, which it says was revealed by a defector, confirmed on Google Earth, and reported in the South Korean Press last week. Besides not linking to the the location in Google Maps (that’s so, like, 2004), the article has two main problems. One is that knowledge of such runways has existed since at least 2005 and was noted by Google Earth Community members then (note the date of the posting. Here it is, BTW:
The other is that if you go looking for the original South Korean article, it mentions the original source of the story to be... a Voice of America report last week, while the defector in question defected in 2006. All of which brings the timing of this news item into question.
The article goes on to debate whether the release by the CIA last week of purported evidence about Syria’s nuclear ambitions (which would have used North Korean technology) is meant to harm chances of a peace deal with North Korea (ostensibly at the behest of Dick Cheney’s “people”) or else is meant to improve chances of such a deal by in effect declaring on behalf of Kim Jong Il something he could never bring himself to do, allowing him to save face. I’m not sure. The Times has a botchy record on accuracy regarding the Syria raid and surrounding stories.
And in the interests of equal time, here is an interesting post on a Middle East blog I follow, arguing that the allegations raised by the CIA presentation don’t make sense...
{Update 19:54 UTC: Here is another tunnel airport, mentioned on Google Earth Community in June 2006.]
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