Technologizer » maps

C3′s Astonishing 3D Model Technology–Now Part of Apple?

Harry McCracken — Sun, 30 Oct 2011 07:04:36 +0000

In March of 2010, I went to a tech conference and saw a Swedish company called C3 Technologies demo its system for turning aerial photographs of cities into 3D worlds, with very little human intervention required. The video I linked to in the original post has disappeared from YouTube, but here’s another one:

I said in that post that C3′s work knocked my socks off and that I couldn’t wait to see it show up in commercial products. Now it sounds like it might make its way into the iPhone and iPad: 9to5 Mac’s Mark Gurman is reporting that Apple has bought C3. If it has, it’s acquired itself some amazing technology.

New Google Earth: Better Street View and More

Harry McCracken — Mon, 29 Nov 2010 18:00:32 +0000

Google is announcing version 6 of Google Earth, its geographical-exploration software for Windows, OS X, and Linux today. The update follows version 5.2, which was released last June, and while the revisions aren’t enormous, they look neat. (The company gave me a sneak peek last week.)

There are three major changes:

Google Street View’s street-level photographic imagery is now integrated with Earth’s maps, satellite photos, and computer-generated renderings in a much more seamless fashion–if you just keep zooming or drag the Pegman icon to a spot, you’ll land in Street View mode if it’s available. (Until now, Earth has offered Street View through odd bubbles which remind me of the one Glinda the Good Witch used in The Wizard of Oz.)
Earth’s computer-generated scenery now includes not only buildings, but…trees! They add to the realism of forests, parks, and other habitats rich with greenery, and Earth is smart enough to render detailed replicas of appropriate local species in Athens, Berlin, Chicago, New York City, San Francisco and Tokyo, with more to come.
Earth already had past ~~satellite~~ satellite and aerial imagery from the recent (Haiti before and after the 2010 earthquake) to the historic (London in 1945 and Warsaw in 1935). But it was tough to find unless you already knew to look for it. Now it’s easier to spot, thanks to a notification that appears in the status bar when old imagery is available.

The new version is available now. It’s worth a look whether you’re a Google Earth addict, a past user who hasn’t tried it lately, or someone who’s unaccountably unfamiliar with one of Google’s finest freebies.

Here’s Google’s own video overview of the update:

New Google Earth Recreates Your Adventures

Harry McCracken — Mon, 14 Jun 2010 19:44:22 +0000

Google is unleashing a new version of Google Earth, version 5.2, today. It’s the biggest update since Earth 5.0 added the oceans and Mars in February of 2009–and while it’s not that big, it’s got one major cool new feature and one modest-but-useful one. Google gave me a sneak peek of the new version last week.

The major cool new feature is aimed at folks who like to go adventuring and take a GPS navigation handheld along. If you tote a GPS unit such as the ones from Garmin and Magellan to track a hike, bike ride, sailing trip, or any other excursion, you can transfer the data to Google Earth once you’re home. In the past, doing so involved creating thousands of points of geographic information, but the new version of the software can create simpler plots of where you were at any given point in time. And it lets you view this data as birds-eye animations that track where you went, recreated with Earth’s wealth of geographic photography and 3D imagery. You can also share the reconstructions with other Google Earth users or publish them using the embeddable version of Earth.

For now, the feature only works with data captured by standalone GPS units supported by Google Earth–it’s compatible with hundreds of models–but the idea of it tying into Google smartphone apps like Latitude and the mobile version of Google Earth itself is intriguing.

You can dress up your reconstructions by importing a vehicle model such as a bike or boat from Google’s 3D Warehouse, but this requires massaging a text file by hand, and therefore isn’t for Google Earth newbies. It would be neat if a future version of Earth made it a point-and-click process.

Previous versions of Google Earth let you view local information on businesses you found within its maps, but launched your Web browser and sent you to Google Maps to do so. The new version of the software sports an embedded WebKit-based browser, so you can browse around without leaving Google Earth.

Most of us know Google Earth in its free form, but Google also sells a Pro edition for $400 a year, aimed at people with a professional interest in geographical information. It too is getting some new features, including more built-in sets of information such as demographic data and land parcels. And it lets users import maps stored as mammoth, unwieldy image files, then graft them into Google Earth in a manner that’s as fast and easy to explore as any other aspect of the program.

Google Earth is available in Windows, Mac, and Linux versions; in any incarnation, it’s one of Google’s most amazing offerings, and well worth revisiting if it’s been awhile since you last explored it. Here’s Google’s blog post on 5.2.

Bing Maps’ New Beta: Interesting, Promising, Erratic

Harry McCracken — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 21:38:50 +0000

At a press event in San Francisco this morning, Microsoft demonstrated recent, brand-new, and upcoming features it’s adding to its Bing search engine. The big news: The company is launching a beta of a major upgrade to Bing Maps. The beta is available here–and for the sake of comparison, here’s the existing version of Bing Maps, which remains the default.

From my experience so far, the new Bing Maps may be a true beta in the “we’re still working on making it work” sense: It sometimes performed very slowly, or conked out altogether. (Disclosure: I’m trying it on an EVDO connection, which probably doesn’t help.) The new version requires Microsoft’s SilverLight browser plug-in to work, which will be a source of controversy: There are folks who dislike plug-ins in general, and some who have a particular distaste for SilverLight. And since SilverLight is far from universal, there’s a good chance you’ll need to install it before you can test-drive the new Bing Maps.

It is, of course, inevitable that any discussion of Bing Maps will use Google Maps as a frame of reference. The new Bing Maps preserves some features that Google Maps doesn’t have, such as birds-eye aerial photography that shows cityscapes in perspective, not from above. It finally adds a counterpart to Google’s Street View street-level photography: Bing calls its version StreetSide, and it’s available for 100 U.S. metropolitan areas to start. (The interface is really similar to Google’s down to the use of a doppelganger of Google’s Pegman to help you navigate your way around.)

And it tries to surge ahead of Google Maps in some respects–my favorite of which is Map Apps, a series of optional map overlays provided by Microsoft and others. They include everything from maps of major world cities to offbeat roadside attractions.

Oh yeah, there’s also a Twitter Map app, which lets you view Tweets for a neighborhood you’re perusing–pretty nifty.

The new Bing Maps also integrates Microsoft’s clever Photosynth 3D photocollage feature. But clumsily so, at least in my encounters: It devotes prime real estate to promoting Photosynths near your geographic searches, but doesn’t indicate what the Photosynth is of until you click on it. (When I did a search for San Francisco’s Fairmont Hotel, high atop Nob Hill, Bing Maps kept urging me to view a Photosynth which turned out to show Union Square.)

So is there any benefit from Bing Maps’ use of SilverLight, versus Google Maps, which depends on open-standard AJAX programming techniques and doesn’t require any browser plug-ins? Yes, at least a little: Bing’s maps zoom in and out more fluidly, and wandering around StreetSide views provides a more smoothly-rendered experience than Street View, which can get choppy. SilverLight also enables the Photosynth integration. I said in a Tweet that the new Bing Maps might be the first (non-Olympics-related) SilverLight app good enough to induce a lot of people to install SilverLight, but now I’m not so sure: I wanna see if the slow and erratic experience I’m getting is a temporary quirk or an ongoing issue. (And if you’re the type with a deep, instinctive dislike of plug-ins, I’m not sure that there’s anything in Bing Maps that’ll make a believer of you.)

In any event, I’m rooting for Microsoft to keep plugging away at Bing Maps in particular and Bing in general until the world sees them as serious rivals to Google’s offerings. With Yahoo’s planned exit from the search innovation wars, Bing is the closest thing that Google has to serious competition. Even if Google remains the leader, I’d love to see it running scared, at least a little bit.

If you check out the Bing Maps beta, let us know what you think.

5Words: An Apple Mapping Mystery

Harry McCracken — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 15:32:15 +0000

What’s Apple doing with maps?

Google translates Web sites automatically.

Walt Mossberg likes HTC’s Hero.

Is Comcast kicking NBC’s tires?

Sony PSP Go, games arrive.

Hands-on with Google Wave.

BlackBerries finally sync with Macs.

Verizon dumps its Hub gizmo.

Ooma launches Telo VoIP system.

Nokia’s Booklet: Best Buy only.

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Windows Geniune Advantage: Now Even More Advantageous!

Harry McCracken — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 23:14:34 +0000

I’m in Berlin at the moment, where I arrived today to be a speaker at IFA, Europe’s equivalent of the Consumer Electronics Show. More on that later this week, I’m sure; for now, here’s some stateside news.

WGA for XP Pro Gets an Update
Microsoft’s Alex Kochis has blogged about changes to the Windows XP version of the company’s Windows Genuine Advantage anti-piracy software. The post is in Microsoft-ese, so it’s not completely clear what’s going on. Kochis seems to say that installing new versions of WGA will be easier; that the new verion will only apply to XP Pro and variants (the most-stolen versions of XP); and that if Windows thinks you’re running a pirated copy of the OS, it’ll change your wallpaper to a black screen every hour, and add an “Ask For Windows Genuine Software” logo to your desktop. I’m still deeply suspicious of WGA because of its tendency to think that paid-for copies of Windows are stolen–the Vista version did that to me a few weeks ago–and Microsoft’s patronizing policy of attempting to sell WGA as a favor it’s doing for paying customers. I think I’ve said this before, but if it simply changed the name to something like “Microsoft Anti-Theft Technology” it would be a large step in the right direction.

Read more at: Windows Genuine Advantage Blog

Mapquest? Mapquest?
Mapquest was once so dominant an online mapping service that its name became a verb, as in “I’ll Mapquest it.” Then Google Maps and other slick new mapping services came along, at the same time that Mapquest…well, at the same time that Mapquest hardly changed at all. This week, the service is rolling out a beta with new features, including a map on the home page (!), easier access to addresses you’ve already entered (!!), and a new logo that’s basically the old logo with a Web 2.0 reflection effect (!!!). At best, the changes bring Mapquest into this century. How about a version that does to Google Maps what Google Maps did to Mapquest?

Read more at: Webware

Google Gets Suggestive
The world’s biggest search engine is finally making Google Suggest, a longtime feature of its Google Labs incubator, into an official tool on the Google search home page. (The Google blog says it’ll appear to users gradually over the next week; I’m not seeing it yet, but I’m in Germany at the moment, so I feel lucky when I can understand my search results at all.) Google Suggest simply displays some suggestions of what you might be searching for as you enter keywords into the Google search box; Yahoo, Ask.com, and other sites have offered something similar for awhile now, so it’s more an instance of Google playing catchup than breaking new ground. You gotta wonder whether Google’s pervasiveness makes it move more slowly than smaller competitors in instances like this: It must be a big deal to make any change to the way the Google home page works, even if it’s a useful one.

Read more at: CRN

Psystar Strikes Back
Back in April, a tiny company called Psystar announced plans to begin selling PCs that could run Apple’s OS X–the first Mac clones since Steve Jobs’ return to Apple. In July, to nobody’s surprise, Apple sued Psystar. Now Psystar is suing Apple, saying that the company’a policy of bundling its hardware and operating system violates the Sherman and Clayton anti-trust acts. I find it hard to believe that Psystar will conquer Apple in any way that will result in Mac cloning becoming legit, although it’s an interesting scenario to contemplate.

Read more at: Venturebeat

Browsing InPrivate
Microsoft has confirmed recent rumors by announcing that Internet Explorer 8 will add a feature called InPrivate, which lets you quickly switch into a mode in none of the evidence of where you’ve searched or what you’ve done is preserved. Bloggers who reported on this jokingly called it a “porn mode” meant to help IE users conceal sleazy surfing from spouses. (Try saying that six times fast!) Weirdly, Microsoft’s IE Blog more or less addresses this directly, saying that “many users are concerned about so-called ‘over-the-shoulder privacy’, or the ability to control what their spouses, friends, kids, and co-workers might see.” Maybe Microsoft hopes to slow down Firefox’s market share inroads by appealing to married types who have something to hide? Tricky! I’m still looking forward to trying out the IE 8 beta 2 when it arrives–soon, according to Microsoft.

Read more at: All About Microsoft

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