In+ersec+ion for Spatial People

Here's the recent Google-related geonews.

From official sources:

• Discussed over Slashdot as a story named Google To Allow Location Service Opt-out, Google effectively now allows you to opt out your wireless access point (such as your wireless router) out of their Google Location Server database
• The developer blog introduces the new Maps API Drawing Library: "The Drawing Library provides a toolbox which enables users to draw markers, lines, and shapes on the map, much as they would in any drawing application. The tools can be used for collecting annotations from users, or for selecting regions to search or highlight. Applications can listen for events when overlays are added and respond accordingly, such as issuing the search query or saving the annotations to a database."
• Less clicks: you can now see your rated places and discover new ones directly on Google Maps on your desktop or on Android
• You can apparently follow robotic wave gliders crossing the Pacific in Google Earth, here's what it looks like

From other sources:

• A story ran over Slashdot Monday about China Building Gigantic Structures In the Desert and seen in Google Earth, I waited to publish about it since I was expecting a followup, I was right (I'm not always right ;-), here's the entry named Giant Chinese Desert Mystery Structure Solved - and to spare you clicking, it's apparently spy satellite calibration targets, the GEB shows a screenshot of the very strange and large structures
• The GEB informs us how to Build your own Liquid Galaxy with the Fluid Nebula, what? In short, it allows you to get Google Earth running on multiple screens at the right angles and control movement via your smartphone or tablet
• APB reports that Adwords location targeting interface got updated
• SS mentions "the possibility that Google might deploy robots to photograph streets for Google Maps"
• Ogle Earth blames Google for photography regulatory scrutiny in Slovenia
• Kurt Schwehr announced he's joining Google to work as a GIS Data Engineer on oceans
• The GEB also posted entries on Exploring Mauna Loa in Google Earth and the Duke University unveiling an excellent 3D Campus Map

Wemo Media Unveils Global Art Entertainment Experience: theBlu.com

Academy Award Winners, Top-Tier Universities and Digital Creators From All Around the Globe Join Wemo Media's mission to Create the World’s Largest Art and Entertainment Project

LOS ANGELES, CA - October 18, 2011 – Wemo Media (http://www.wemomedia.com), collaborating with digital industry leaders, including Avatar Academy Award winning animation director Andy Jones and MIT Media Lab director Joichi Ito, announced today the launch of their “Maker Media” platform, which enables artists and developers around the world to peer-produce globally shared media.

Wemo Media's first project, theBlu (http://theblu.com), bringing the Ocean to life on the web, is a global mission to create art and entertainment on a scale that was not possible before the Internet. Using the Maker Media Platform, theBlu engages people from around the world to create and experience shared art in real time online.

“I’ve always thought it would be cool to create a simulation of the ocean with all the vast variety of species, but every time I would consider it, I’d realize that it was just too ambitious,” said Oscar-winning Visual Effects Supervisor and lead member of theBlu, Kevin Mack. “But theBlu makes this possible because you have thousands of artists from all over the world collaborating.”

theBlu promises to marry the Web’s billions of points of interaction with the Ocean’s millions of diverse elements in a nexus where the Web is, itself, a new medium for artistic expression. Imagine hundreds of thousands of aquatic species in tens of thousands of underwater habitats – all beautiful works of art created by artists and developers all over the world, swimming across the Web via phones, tablets and computers from Los Angeles to London, Madrid to Mumbai and Sao Paulo to Seoul.

Wemo Media Leadership Team member and Academy Award Winner Louie Psihoyos, Director of The Cove states, “One of the biggest problems that the oceans face is that people don't see what's going on in the Ocean. This project is a way for people to put their heads under the water without getting wet, a terrific way for people to not only see the Ocean but actually create it.”

theBlu is the first of many such Maker Media titles that Wemo Media will be releasing through its groundbreaking Maker Media Platform. This disruptive media creation platform welcomes all types of creatives – artists, software engineers, animators, composers – to collaborate from all over the world. Currently in private beta, the Maker Media Platform has already been embraced by top-tier universities around the world, including MIT, USC and CMU, whose students are some of the first “Makers” on the innovative platform.

Director of the MIT Media Lab, Joichi Ito, and advisor to Wemo Media said, “My life, and now even more so with the MIT Media Lab, has been about pulling together things that aren’t normally together. The really interesting thing about theBlu is how it brings together the biology, the activism of conservation, the beauty and the artistic elements as well as the grassroots, participatory maker media movement. I'm very excited about the possibilities ahead.”

Makers in theBlu select the species and habitats they want to create, and submit their art on the Maker Platform for curation. Makers showcase their art to a global audience while they connect with a community of peers, receive direct feedback from world-class digital makers, like Kevin Mack and Andy Jones, and get paid for their contributions based on the popularity of their creations.

“We’re just getting started. TheBlu is in private beta and we invite you to join early and become a seminal part of this global collaborative art and entertainment movement,” said Founder and CEO Neville Spiteri. “We are passionate about the enabling power of the social web, we are moved by creations that strike global chords, like Nirvana’s “Nevermind” album and Google Earth, and we are inspired by the great storytellers of our time, like James Cameron and John Lasseter. theBlu represents a new art form where the canvas is the web and the topic and the inspiration is nature, the Ocean; an amazing combination of ‘code + data = art’, with everybody contributing from all over the world, together, on the web.”

With 3D GIS in the news, here's an ongoing series working though a public 3D subsurface petrodata set from desktop modelling to web broadcasting. While BIM and geodesign have been grabbing the 3D GIS headlines, subsurface datasets for fluid flow are explore here. They will become increasingly important not only in petroleum but also in, say, water resources and underground contamination monitoring, or underground  fault and earthquake tracking.

Is Apple positioning itself as a Google Street View and Microsoft Bing Maps competitor? Apparently, Apple recently acquired C3 Technologies' also offer Street View and Interior views.

From the entry: "In addition to 3D maps, C3 also makes awesome street level imagery captured using "an advanced multiple camera system with overlapping viewing angles to capture the entire surroundings in stereo. [...] As well as increasing its geographic range, C3 is expanding into interior settings. With a special camera rig, they can also create a 3D model of the interior of a building using the same photo stitching they use with their aerial or street level maps."

I used to share the most interesting - yes that's subjective - Directions Mag articles once every month or two. From now on, I'll try to integrate them in the pseudo-weekly "batch mode" edition instead. You'll then get those articles quicker. Here's the recent DM articles for the past month.

• Here's nine elements of geocoding accuracy and why it pays to be accurate 
• Shared a month ago, here's a review of MapInfo Professional Version 11.0, which was released last Summer
• Here's an aggregation of links, serving as a Recap of News from the 2011 GEOINT Symposium, held in Texas in October where 4,400 geospatial intelligence professionals convened, and here's an article on the growth predictions for geospatial intelligence
• Even if the tips aren't surprising, here's Five Ways to Make Your Geospatial Cover Letter and Resume Stand Out
• Here's a short article, but with a screenshot that explains it all, named Visualizing Crime - A “Data Rose” Blooms
• Here's an analysis of how geospatial companies are using Twitter
• Here's an Introduction to the Second International Workshop on 3D Cadastres
• Here's an article named Virtual City: a Cost-effective Approach to Information Sharing for More Secure Borders

Here's the recent Google-related geonews. Nothing major this time to be honest.

From the official sources:

• Here's an entry on the latest additions of parks in Street View using their trike
• We already mentioned the new feature, but here's another entry on Street View available inside businesses, such as restaurants 
• For SketchUp users, apparently 2 millions of them, Google started the Make Ideas Real project, showcasing bringing ideas to life with SketchUp
• Here's the short recap of the Google Geo User Summit that took place in Barcelona on October 12-14th

From other sources:

• APB informs us Google is now blocking GPS jammer ads at the request of the FCC
• Today was released new imagery for Google Earth

Over the weekend, MacRumors shared news of the confirmation that Apple Did Acquire 3D Mapping Company C3 Technologies.

From their entry: "C3 Technologies made a big splash at CES 2011 when it began demoing its technology on both Android and iOS devices. The company uses formerly classified missile targeting technology to achieve its impressive 3D mapping effects. The company's official YouTube videos have been pulled, but some examples remain."

Head to the website for videos and screenshots. We did mentioned C3 Technologies three times since 2008.

Here's the geospatial-related geonews discussed over Slashdot during the last two weeks, in batch mode:

• Here's an "Holographic" Desk Allowing Interaction With Virtual Objects
• A Throwable 36-Camera Ball Takes Spherical Panoramas
• A discussion on the Time Zone Database Has New Home After Lawsuit
• The Origo prototype, 3D Printer For Your Kids
• There's a interactive population map attached to this Earth Officially Home To 7 Billion Humans story
• Google Releases Geothermal Potential Map of the US
• And another Google story named How Google's Autonomous Vehicles Work
• In order to reduce the costs of satellites, DARPA Proposes Ripping Up Dead Satellites To Make New Ones
• A recurring theme, Senator Introduces Bill To Stop Warrantless GPS Tracking
• Sensor Enables 3D Mapping of Rainforests

I haven't found much about it on the popular geoblogs, but I recently learned about the existence of Autodesk's free 123D 3D modeling software. It's at the 'beta 6' stage and available only for Windows. It clearly sounds like Google SketchUp competition from Autodesk. This reminds me of Project Butterfly, which got launched as AutoCAD WS, another free tool from Autodesk.

From the 123D about page: "123D is a free solid modeling software program based on the same Autodesk technology used by millions of designers and engineers worldwide. Not an engineer? No problem, with Autodesk 123D you can design precise and makeable objects using smart tools that let you start with simple shapes and then edit and then tweak them into more complex shapes."

Here's the recent geonews in batch mode. Some of those news seem important enough to deserve their own entries, but I dare share them in a single one. Yes, that's another unusually long post. Normal posting frequency should resume next February!

From the open source / open data front:

• SS shares an entry named MIT Releases Smartphone Data Tracking Tools as Open Source Software, it's called Funf
• There's now an OpenStreetMap Inspector, a quality evaluation service to help improve OSM data
• Here's a short entry on using OpenStreetMap data, tidbit: the entire database is 250GB
• Here's an entry on generating contours using GDAL (via shell or QGIS)
• Paul explains Indexed Nearest Neighbour Search in PostGIS
• Here's the FOSS4G 2011 WMS Performance Shootout 2011 slides, and I haven't shared this yet, James Fee's Guide to what was important at FOSS4G 2011

From the Esri front:

• Mandown reports that Esri updated their deprecation plans for ArcGIS 10 and 10.1
• SS indicates Esri Releases a Map Story on Global Carbon Dioxide Emissions

From the Google front:

• Finally, single-language labels made their way to Google Maps, that's making it much less confusing
• Here's in simple words why Google offers Google Maps / Earth
• Ogle Earth shares an entry on using Google Earth to hunt illegal mining in Goa, India

From the Microsoft front:

• Bing Maps added detailed airport maps, 42 U.S. airports so far 

In the miscellaneous category:

• SS reports that TomTom Launched a Geospatial Platform with Oracle: "The service will offer geocoding, vehicle routing and mapping information, all hosted on Oracle’s 11g database."
• V1 writes about INTERGEO, the German geospatial conference that attracted 17,000 attendees, making it one of the largest geoconferences in the world (the largest?)
• James Fee linked to the U.S. and Canadian top 10 largest cities GIS web maps
• We mentioned it before, but here's another article on the completion of the ERS satellite missions after 20 years
• O'Reilly shares an entry named Why indoor navigation is so hard and another entry on the state and future of local news
• If you have interest in the GTFS (General Transit Feed Specification), here's data model diagrams
• MapQuest launched a Mobile Flash Maps API
• VerySpatial mentioned the National Geographic Challenge game for the PS3, XBox360 and Wii
• On a more serious topic, VS shares an entry on The Geography of the Death Penalty

Slashdot discussed a few geospatial-related stories:

• Don't you wish you were a student again, Put On Your 3D Glasses — Class Is About To Start
• Not the first time we hear such news (from any OS phone), HTC Android Backdoor Leaks Private User Data, including GPS locations
• US Military Seeks Non-Cooperative Biometric Tracking Technology
• A story named California Governor Vetoes Ban On Warrantless Phone Searches, including GPS logs
• An on the same theme, a Senator Goes After 'Brazen' OnStar Privacy Shift
• With a search, you'll find plenty of similar stories, German Researchers Crack Mifare RFID Encryption, in other words, RFID can be of great use, but can't be considered secure 
• There's also a story about using stereo-vision mapping to visualize the oldest submerged city

In the maps category:

• TMR shares a few map books for Fall 2011
• Here's the first global map of ocean salinity
• Here's the Japanese tsunami mapped in detail for the first time

In the coming days, I'll be at Géomatique 2011, the major geospatial event in the province of Québec. Slashgeo is a media partner of the event.