I’m on my way to San Francisco to attend ISDE5, but the layover at Newark is proving to be a perfect interlude for blogging:
- Adobe Photoshop CS3 Extended gets a free plugin that lets you search Google 3D Warehouse for content, download it and edit from within the program. Download here.
- Nokia Sports Tracker gets updated to version 1.49, with some improvements to the KML export function.
- Did Google Earth help NYC terrorists? “The answer is an unequivocal no.” (Regarding terminology in common use right now: If you plan on murdering someone but you are caught before you do so, are you a murderer? If you plan a terrorist act but are caught before you execute your plan, are you a terrorist? When everybody is a terrorist, nobody is.)
- Regarding the censorship of French imagery: The Map Room and others do remind us that this imagery is censored at the source, not by Google (it’s good to repeat this) but one thing Google still can do is choose not to buy Spot Image’s censored datasets. DigitalGlobe’s data isn’t censored over France. Is it a question of cost? Is France giving Google an offer that it can’t refuse? (I’m asking, these aren’t rhetorical questions hinting at a conspiracy.)
- Magnalox, a site for storing and publishing GPS tracks, has been announcing some cool new features: First came free live tracking for GPS-enabled mobile phones (both Windows Mobile and Symbian S60) to Google Maps and Earth (though you may have to buy the tracking software), then came the ability to embed the Google Maps tracker on any site, and today also a Mac OS X dashboard widget version of the Google Maps tracker. Here’s a live embedded tracker for a person riding his motorcycle through the Alps (and who is okay with publicizing the data):
[Removed.] Hmm, looks like that particular implementation of doesn’t play nice with Google Adsense code. Here is the link instead.
About the censoring in France… that simply come from a old law of the 40’s who prohibit to take aerial pictures from french strategic sites… this law was never deleted from the “Code de l’Aviation Civile” (Civil Aviation Code), the CAC is very restrictive (ex. if you strictly follow the law, it’s not permited to take a picture from a plane without the permission of the owner…lol). If Google continue to buy french datasets all the bases will be blured very soon… :o(
But in fact… it’s pure stupidity and a little bit of paranoïa :o)
Unfortunate that I had no plans of upgrading to CS3 anytime soon. I would really love to check that plugin out. :*(
That was also probably the most appropriate write-up I’ve seen in the debate that only appears to be targetting Google – and no one else (*cough* Virtual Earth (especially TerraServer which has been around for years) *cough* Worldwind *cough* ArcGIS Explorer).
It’d be lovely to finally see those who are bent on market manipulation by waging wars of disinformation against a company, finally be held accountable for such behavior. (Are you hearing me SEC, DOJ and DOD?) It really does kind of throw a monkey wrench in the idea that Social Security should be privatized in the same way we were all privately hood-winked out of pensions back in the 70’s and transitioned to a privatized (and highly corrupted) system.