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May 27, 2009

New "Businesses" layer for Google Earth and iPhone Google Earth

Google has added a new "Businesses" layer visible in both the desktop Google Earth application and iPhone Google Earth. For the savvy desktop Google Earth user, this isn't exactly "new". You could have (and still can) show most of the same placemarks by turning on the "Places of Interest" layer folder which is hidden near the bottom of the layers list. However, the new "Businesses" layer is found under the top layer folder called "Geographic Web" along with the Panoramio and Wikipedia layers (which are also available in Google Maps and the iPhone Google Earth. This just makes it a tad easier for people to find useful placemarks for businesses in any given area, and makes available all this info to iPhone Google Earth users for the first time. (Just a little nit: I don't like the fact the layer is underneath the "Places" layer folder - it should be right below the "Wikipedia" layer IMHO).

The layer lets you see different placemarks for different types of businesses (fork and knife for restaurants, shopping cart for stores, etc.), and clicking on the icons provides reviews and other details and links to get directions. On the iPhone version you can even click on the business phone number to call them with a single click!

This new layer feature was announced during the Google I/O conference going on right now in California. I hope we get a couple of other announcements for the Google Earth platform today or tomorrow. Meanwhile, I'm envious of the Google I/O attendees who all got a free developer Android phone for attending!

Posted by FrankTaylor at 2:23 PM | Comments (0)

May 27, 2009

More on Disney Paris, Street View Cave, Data.Gov, Space Imagery Enhancement

• More on 3D Disneyland Paris - GEB reported on the new 3D Disneyland Paris on Sunday (two days before the announcement). Here's some other news: Google's announcement reveals that the collection includes incredible detail - every "...bench, light post, tree, bush, planter box, street sign, fence, street curb, fountain, rock, bridge, table & chair are included." The rides are also very accurate (except for the parts that go inside the buildings - unfortunately. Here are a collection of excellent HD movies at YouTube showing details of some of the rides and parks. Note that the author of these movies is Concept3D, who are a professional 3D modeling shop and probably had a lot to do with the Disney modeling projects.

• Street View Cave - While I was visiting the Googleplex last week, I was shown a very cool "cave" (a room surrounded by computer screens) giving an immersive experience of Street View. What is especially cool about this Street View cave is that the imagery is at full resolution (much sharper than what you see online) AND the cave when put in motion is more like a video with many frames per second instead of the few frames shown online. I was so much in awe, I forgot to pull out my camera and take pictures/video. I could have spent all day playing with it. Thankfully, 360Cities.net creator Jeffrey Martin actually took a panorama of the Street View cave.

• Data.Gov - While at Where 2.0 last week, Googler Ed Parsons brought to my attention that the new Data.Gov site has released an amazing archive of US Government data in KMZ/KML (Google Earth) formats.

• Space Imagery Enhancement - FreeGeographyTools blog talks about a cool app someone uploaded to the GEC which lets you grab satellite imagery from Google Earth and perform image enhancements on it. I've done similar things by grabbing screenshots and processing them with image tools like Picasa (see imagery comparisons of London Eye) to try and improve shots shown in GE.

Posted by FrankTaylor at 8:03 AM | Comments (0)

May 26, 2009

Google MapMaker - 64 New Countries Google Maps and Google Earth

Google announced today the release of 64 new countries with map data thanks to the efforts of hundreds of people around the world contributing map data for countries which until now had little or no map data online. Last year, Google released Google Map Maker to make it easier for people to contribute, and moderate, the introduction of map data which would ultimately be included in Google Maps and Google Earth. One thing the announcement didn't say is that the new road data is not only visible in Google Maps, but also Google Earth (if you turn on the Roads layer). Other data in the maps (points of interest marks in the new maps such as schools, museums, etc. - don't appear to have been moved to the Google Earth "Places of Interest" layer yet). Here's the list of 64 countries with new roads in Google Earth:

American Samoa, Anguilla, Armenia, Aruba, Azerbaijan, Bahrain, Belize, Benin, Botswana, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Cameroon, Cape Verde, Cayman Islands, Central African Republic, Chad, Christmas Island, Cocos (Keeling) Islands, Comoros, Cook Islands, Costa Rica, Cote d'Ivoire, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Djibouti, El Salvador, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Gabon, Gambia, Ghana, Guadeloupe, Guinea, Iran, Kyrgyzstan, Madagascar, Malawi, Martinique, Mauritania, Mongolia, Montserrat, Mozambique, Myanmar (Burma), Nauru, Netherlands Antilles, Niger, Nigeria, Niue, Northern Mariana Islands, Pakistan, Reunion, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Samoa, Sao Tome and Principe, Sierra Leone, Solomon Islands, Somalia, Togo, Tokelau, Tonga, Turkmenistan, Tuvalu, Uzbekistan, Wallis and Futuna, Zambia.

Don't forget to try other cool layers in Google Earth such as Street View, Geographic Web, and really cool stuff under the Gallery layer folder.

Posted by FrankTaylor at 8:53 PM | Comments (6)

May 25, 2009

Video of New 3D Disneyland Paris for Google Earth

I found the following promotional video by Disney introducing the new 3D Disneyland Resort Paris now available in Google Earth's 3D Buildings layer:

NOTE: Click on the video to view the larger HD version at YouTube.

Read this story for more details.

Posted by FrankTaylor at 2:31 PM | Comments (5)

Memorial Day - Map the Fallen in Google Earth

Back in November of 2005, a Google Earth Community member posted the first version of a map showing US and Coalition soldiers who made the ultimate sacrifice in the Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts. He worked with other members of the Google Earth Community to refine the map over time - and worked hard to focus on just providing a memorial to these fallen soldiers - not provide a political statement about the war. Since 2005, Sean Askay worked on his master's thesis involving Google Earth and sensor networks to monitor a protected wilderness, and after landing a job at Google, has been working for the Google Earth Outreach team helping organizations create content to make people aware of environmental and human issues around the world.

Meanwhile, using his 20% time at Google, Sean continued to refine the casualties map, and his knowledge of KML has also advanced. He has produced one of the most sophisticated, yet elegant, and very informative KML files I've seen to date (and I've seen a lot of KML in the last 4 years!). View the map here (Google Earth 5 required) which appears on his Map the Fallen blog. According to Google (which posted this on their Lat Long Blog):

Sean uses over 24,000 placemarks, 6,000 folders, 2,500 screen overlays, and line arcs with over 250,000 vertices, all to create an immersive and compelling user experience. By making extensive use of Google Earth 5.0's new features, including iframes, CSS and JavaScript support in balloons and time-based navigation, you can now fly to a place and time. With a blend of navigation methods, people can look up information about servicemen and women alphabetically, by age, location or chronology.

You should read what Sean himself says about the collection. Sean worked with GEC moderator Warrant Officer Frank McVey, a retired member of the UK's Royal Air Force, who worked many hours to help with the collection.

Posted by FrankTaylor at 7:02 AM | Comments (0)

May 24, 2009

3D Disneyland Resort Paris in Google Earth

Almost a year after Disney released Walt Disney World in Orlando in 3D for Google Earth, the Disneyland Resort Paris is now also available in amazing 3D detail! The entire park area - including trees, rides, signs, even Mickey Mouse!; and also the Disney Studios - are all in amazing 3D detail for Google Earth. You can simply turn on the "3D Buildings" layer in Google Earth and search for "Disneyland Paris" to see for yourself. For the impatient, here are a couple of screenshots to whet your appetite (video will be forthcoming):

NOTE: Because of the detail of the park, it may take a while (depending on your computer and especially bandwidth) to load all the sights. HINT: Mickey Mouse can be found beneath the tallest building. I also found Captain Hook hanging out.

via 5Kingdoms Blog

Posted by FrankTaylor at 9:16 PM | Comments (0)

May 21, 2009

Where 2.0 - Day 2 - Short Summary

The Where 2.0 event is stock full of all kinds of talk about mapping technologies, research, and interesting tales of map development. This time I'm just going to write about highlights:

• Air Force Plea for Help - an intelligence officer from the US Air Force described some of their challenges to incorporate the rapidly advancing mapping technologies into the military. He made an impassioned plea to the developers at the conference to offer their services to the organizations like his who desperately need more modern integrated solutions. He said he would be available throughout the day to talk to developers. It must have worked because I heard many people asking where to find him throughout the day.

• Google Maps Announcements - Googlers Lior Ron and Steve Lee did the Google Keynote. Lior started by showing the rapid pace of growth of both map data and features for the Google Maps platform. He had some great animations showing how people have contributed to create maps of countries all over the world using Map Maker. He also described the new capabilities allowing people to edit map details in Google Maps (which was later mocked by one of the other presenters because of its complexity). And he went on to show Google My Maps, and Google Latitude and the upcoming built-in location feature of Firefox 3.5. Google announced two main things: Google Maps Data API, and Google Adsense Ad Unit for Maps (see my comments on this in my post on monetizing your maps).

• Live Lidar - The guys from Velodyne had a live spinning Lidar unit in the conference hall. This definitely was the biggest crowd-pleaser. Their technology derived from doing the Darpa Challenge - the contest for autonomous cars driving over the desert. Apparently their technology was used by most of the contestants. Since then, one company has been using the technology to help DOT organizations map roads in an amazingly useful way. But, the biggest hit was when they turned it on and mapped the audience live in 3D. They even had us do a crowd "wave" which was captured in a video. Hope to add a link here of the resulting video. Very cool!

• Mobile Augmented Reality - There was a cool panel session on using the mobile platform to offer augmented reality. I think this already happening with maps and Street View. But, these guys were talking about some pretty cool stuff with annotations on Street View like views as you walk down the street. The iPhone Google Earth could do a lot of this if Google would start enabling other layers to be shown. Haven't heard any rumors about this yet, but I figure its been nearly a year since iPhone GE came out...

There was a lot more going on throughout the day. But, I'll leave it to other bloggers to fill in the gaps in my summary. I had some cool discussions with the guys from 360Cities.net, spoke to someone from Gigapan (who I hope to use for the Tahina Expedition), and met lots of interesting folks throughout the day. Had some good feedback on the workshop, and lots of people asking questions about the sailing trip. So, I really enjoyed the day!

I guess this is a not-so-short summary. :-)

Posted by FrankTaylor at 9:56 AM | Comments (1)

Links: Geography Bee, Developer Marketplace, Monetize your Maps

• Geography Bee - The National Geographic Society hosted it's 2008/2009 National Geography Bee in Washington DC yesterday. Moderated by Alex Trebek, the winner was 7th-grader Eric Yang from Texas who won $25,000, a lifetime membership to National Geographic Society, and a trip to the Galapagos Islands. Very appropriately, Google Earth was the sponsor of this year's event. Brian McClendon, Director of Engineering for Google Earth and Maps, was on hand to speak at the event and he posted the announcement at the Official Google Blog. You can watch the winning moment here.

• Developer Marketplace - Google Earth Outreach has added a place where developers who are interested in offering their services to non-profits can list themselves at the site.

• Monetize your Maps - Google has finally added a better way to monetize your Google Maps API applications. You can now have an ad unit which appears on the map. The ads turn out to be quite relevant to your location. They not only pick an ad based on your current view (zoom level and coordinates), but also figure out what people are typically searching for in that location to determine the ads that appear. The important part is that you can tag the ad to your Adsense account and derive revenue from clicks to those ads. I'm hopeful they'll do something similar for the Earth API plugin and provide mechanisms to turn on/off the ad on a programmatic basis so you can avoid the ads if something important is going on in the scene.

Posted by FrankTaylor at 9:23 AM | Comments (0)

May 20, 2009

Where 2.0 - Day 1 - Workshops and Ignite

Yesterday was the first day at O'Reilly's Where 2.0 conference in San Jose, California. This is my fourth year of attending Where 2.0, and I've always enjoyed the opportunity to see interesting mapping related technologies, and meet people from around the world interested in this exciting fast-developing field. O'Reilly runs a fun conference for techies with lots of innovative conference extras such as tech fairs, free public fast-paced tech talks (called Ignite), and open to all kinds of techie speakers (not just big companies).

Workshops

The first day was dedicated to workshops. They actually expanded the number of workshops compared to previous years. The workshops are longer sessions (1 hour and 15 minutes), and are intended to be more interactive discussions. There were actually four parallel workshops sessions, so unfortunately I wasn't able to attend but a few. Not only that, but I was running a workshop on "Extending Google Earth".

The goal of my workshop was to try and raise awareness of the multitude of ways you can leverage Google Earth to create more sophisticated content or visualizations. I focused on three main areas: more sophisticated KML, the Google Earth API, and the new GE Tours mode. I also managed to slip in some talk about my upcoming 5-year sailing circumnavigation - the Tahina Expedition - and how I'll be using Google Earth on the trip. Naturally I talked about many great examples of extending Google Earth which have appeared in GEB over the years. But, I was most excited to demonstrate the new Ships simulator by Paul van Dinther which I posted about on Monday. This Ships sim has been a hit in the blogosphere, and the audience enjoyed seeing it in the workshop. There were lots of questions in the workshop, and I have to thank Googler Mano Marks who helped back me up on some of the trickier Google-related questions.

I attended a few other Workshops including:

• Google Maps workshop which highlighted two case studies of a weather data mapping tool called iMapWeather and the Trulia real estate site's use of Maps. I love weather maps, so I enjoyed that And, I'm selling our house soon, so the Trulia presentation gave me some ideas on how to better promote our house.
• Workshop on Cartography Design by Cartifact's Bruce Daniels. He had a great talk on the design of online maps. This was more about the aesthetics and design of maps as opposed to technological implementation. Richard Treve's would have enjoyed that one. Cartifact also upgraded their own public experiment with online maps to 1.1. They have that cool "map lens" gadget I mentioned before.
• KML Techniques Everyone Should Know - the last workshop I attended was by Mano Marks of Google. This session covered some great subjects on creating better Google Earth content (and was a natural follow-up to my workshop - which I should have pointed out). It covered regioning, network links, Tours, dynamic KML, and more.

After the workshops, and a quick dinner with Googler Ed Parsons, we attended the Ignite sessions. Brady Forrest runs these great public speaking events where techies get only five minutes to give a talk or demo something. Their presentations slides automatically advance every few seconds, so you have to talk fast or be very succinct.

Some notables from last night's Ignite:

• Waze - an effort to leverage location-aware mobile phones, crowd-sourced mapping, and mapping technologies to both map a city and get live updates on traffic conditions. In return, participants get re-routing advice in real-time around bad traffic areas. Currently in Alpha in Israel only.
• TwitterVision update - David Troy - the inventor of TwitterVision, was on hand to discuss his project last fall to leverage his concepts to build an election monitoring process. They monitored crowd experiences with voting and were able to give real-time, and post-analysis of voting conditions around the US. They had open-sourced projects that even produced an iPhone app which let folks make audio annotations of their experiences. The resulting data is now part of the Library of Congress. I spoke to David afterwards and suggested he should look into the GE API for some of his future work - he was receptive.
• Joker Racer - Probably the night's biggest hit. Two guys from Japan came to show their really cool idea. They have a web site - under development - giving tips on how to build your own remote controlled car which is essentially a mobile Linux web server with a WIFI interface to the Internet. You can control the car over the web or with an iPhone application. The cars have built-in video too, so you can watch the cars. See video example.

That's all for now folks!

Posted by FrankTaylor at 10:22 AM | Comments (1)

Google Earth Outreach Upgrade

Google Earth Outreach is a group within Google dedicated to providing assistance to non-profit organizations wanting to use GE to reach their target audiences with visualizations about their favorite subjects. During the past three years, the Outreach team has created many useful tools and tutorials to help anyone create better Google Earth content, and to understand how to use more advanced features.

Outreach has just upgraded their web site with a new design and lots of interesting new content. They have a new version of their showcase which highlights content from non-profits who have used Outreach. They also have a section to help non-profits find grants and join the community of non-profits working with GE. And Outreach has their own grants program that some organizations may be able to utilize. And finally, GE Outreach has updated their tutorials section with several new tutorials such as this one on "Creating narrated Tours in Google Earth":

via Google Lat Long blog

Posted by FrankTaylor at 9:20 AM | Comments (0)

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