• Japan to ask Google to delete disputed islands' Chinese name on map – Monsters and Critics
  Japan's government should be above this:

  "Japanese Foreign Minister Seiji Maehara said Thursday the government was to call for Google Inc to remove Chinese names for a disputed set of islands in the East China Sea from the company's mapping service."

Starting in 2006, The Canadian Eric Enno Tamm retraced the steps of an expedition undertaken exactly 100 years earlier by the Finnish soldier and spy Gustaf Mannerheim, from Russia to Peking via the Silk Road. The result of Tamm’s trek is a newly released book, part travelogue and part history, that examines how China has (and hasn’t) changed in the intervening century. It’s called The Horse That Leaps Through Clouds.

I can’t wait to get my hands on a copy, because Tamm wrote a chapter about Kashgar, my favorite disappearing city. On the book’s website there is a web page about the chapter, which shows an intriguing map — a sketch map depicting Kashgar in 1908, as drawn by a Brit, a certain Captain A.R.B. Shuttleworth stationed at the British Consulate there.

Tamm had a go overlaying the map on Google Earth, but it seemed to me like a better fit was possible, so I asked him for the original scan of the map, which he had found in the British Library in London. He graciously sent it over.

The result is this KMZ Google Earth file (full resolution, 2.7MB), which shows the map both in its original form and as a inverse transparency:

It’s clear from trying to position the map that in places it is not topographically accurate. But by anchoring the North, South and East gates to their modern-day locations, a good number of landmarks match, including large parts of the city wall. Right away, it also becomes clear that the river’s course used to lie further East, across lowlands that are now decked in relatively modern buildings. The maps’s main discrepancy can be found in the size and orientation of the settlement to the Southeast of the city; the fortress to the west is also larger than life. In the Eastern half of the cities, the topology of the mapped alleys is tantalizingly familiar, though without producing accurate matches.

The overlay makes a great companion to the KMZ Google Earth file produced from the week I spent in Kashgar this past summer documenting the ongoing demolition of most of the old city. With this “new” old map, it’s even clearer how much of the destruction is going on inside the circumference of the old city walls.

(As always, play with the transparency slider to get the most out of the various layers in the Google Earth files linked to above.)

• North Korea Appears Capable of Jamming GPS Receivers – Voice of America
  "Defense officials in South Korea and military analysts elsewhere are expressing concern about what they call a new type of threat from Pyongyang. The North Koreans, according to South Korea's government, are now capable of disrupting GPS receivers, which are a critical component of modern military and civilian navigation."

• Google Maps – Location of Scud missiles near Adra, Syria
  Two Scud missiles are plainly visible in satellite imagery take on March 22, 2010, and visible in Google Earth/Maps. This is the link to the view in Google Maps. (As reported by Haaretz).
• Hezbollah militants training in Syria missile base, satellite images show – Haaretz Daily Newspaper | Israel News
  "The [Google Earth] photos show five 11-meter-long missiles (the length of both the Scud B and the Scud C ) at the Adra base. Three are on trucks in a parking lot. Two others are in a training area where 20 to 25 people can be made out along with about 20 vehicles. One of the two missiles appears to be mounted on a mobile launcher; another is on the ground."

• Time Zones | HiLobrow
  Philosophical musings on how Google Earth not just captures places, but places in time.

On iPhones sold outside China and used outside China, the Google domain that gets used by Safari’s Google search bar depends on your chosen region format setting (under Settings > General > International). If your region format is set to Belgium, your results are served via google.be. If your region format is set to the United Kingdom, you get google.co.uk. Etc. This makes sense.

If you use an iPhone sold outside China inside China, the results depend on whether you use a VPN service. If you do, your region format continues to determine your Google domain (in these screenshots set to Belgium):

Hong Kong iPhone 3GS, VPN enabled, region format: Belgium:

If you do not use VPN, however, all searches are automatically redirected to google.cn and are served from that domain. This is odd, because Google earlier this year announced it had stopped serving censored search results via google.cn, instead asking people to click through to google.com.hk. This is clearly not the case on my iPhone 3GS: mobile google.cn searches still work (just try this URL to see for yourself):

Hong Kong iPhone 3GS, VPN disabled, region format: Belgium:

So is Google still serving censored search results on Google.cn, despite its promise to stop, or are these search results uncensored, in defiance of Chinese law? I’m not sure, but a search for Dalai Lama yields a results page that links to the homepage of the Tibetan government in exile, and this is a website blocked in China that almost certainly would not make it into Google’s censored search results.

On the new Chinese iPhone 4, using Safari’s Google search bar leads to a different outcome. On this iPhone, it doesn’t make any difference what your region format is, whether you use VPN or not, or where in the world you use it — you are not returned your results immediately, but instead get a landing page on Google.cn that you need to click manually before you are redirected and shown your results on Google.com.hk:

Chinese iPhone 4, VPN disabled, region format: Belgium:

Chinese iPhone 4, VPN enabled, region format: Belgium:

In other words, the Chinese iPhone 4 ignores your region format setting, and always returns a google.cn landing page that manually redirects you to google.com.hk. This is just aggravating, because just as with any other iPhone, you can still type in google.co.uk or .com or .be into the address bar and search that way. (And if you use VPN, your search queries won’t be filtered for sensitive words by China’s great firewall.)

As for the crippled Maps app discussed in the previous post: In response to various comments, here are some more screenshots illustrating their lack of usefulness:

In Paris, all street names are in Chinese only:

The same goes for Montreal:

Ditto for Sydney:

In Rome, there are no street names at all (as is the case in much of the rest of Europe):

As for the Spratley islands in the South China Sea, they are definitely Chinese, as is Taiwan for good measure:

By comparison, here is what the map fit for global consumption looks like, on the Hong Kong iPhone 3GS:

The solution is clear, at least to me: First, Google needs to go bilingual in its Chinese map dataset. Most likely the missing street names are just an oversight, and an upcoming update will address this issue with refreshed map tiles. No iPhone software update is needed for this.

Then, in iOS 4.2, give the Maps app a settings pane that lets you choose which Google Maps dataset you want: International, Chinese, or Indian. (The Indian government also has issues with Google’s borders, and demands a separate semi-fictional dataset for maps.google.co.in, where all of Kashmir is Indian-controlled and Arunachal Pradesh is not disputed by China.) I don’t care what the defaults are, as long as I can change them.

Failing that, let the region format setting determine which map gets served. Choose China, and the Chinese map dataset is served. Choose India, and get the Indian dataset. Every other region gets the reality-based map, where lines of control and disputed regions are accurately depicted.

As for Safari’s Google search bar: If I can’t choose the Google search domain via the region format or via a settings panel preference, then please add an option to remove the search bar wholesale. I’ll use Google’s search app with instead, thank you very much.

Is that too much to ask? It would appease paranoid governments while giving users the ability to choose the information frameworks most pleasing to their own personal biases.

[Update 2010-09-28 13:06 UTC: As far as I can tell, the map dataset hardwired to my Chinese iPhone is identical to the one being served at ditu.google.cn, so you can explore it for yourself if you like. On a desktop computer, the lack of street names is perhaps not so glaring an omission. On a mobile device traveling to one of these cities, however, it’s a dealbreaker.]

The iPhone 4 officially landed in China yesterday, so I bought one from the new Apple Store at Xidan in Beijing. In China, Apple sells its iPhones unlocked and without a contract (16GB = USD747, 32GB = USD895), so you can pretty much stick in any sim card and go. This is how I like my phones — and why I skipped buying an iPhone 4 in Sweden or the US (contract-only) or Belgium (hefty VAT markup).

I soon discovered that the Chinese version of the iPhone 4 comes with an aggravating quirk, though: The built-in Maps app is crippled. My phone’s base map is hard-wired to Google Maps’ censored dataset for China, where the depiction of China’s borders complies with the official propaganda of the Chinese government. It does not, for example, show the region of Arunachal Pradesh as being disputed by China and India. On my phone, it belongs to China, even though the facts on the ground belie it — it is currently administered by India.

I discovered this quirk because the first thing I did after activation was to do a wholesale install of the backed-up contents of my old iPhone 3GS, bought in Hong Kong. On my 3GS, I knew exactly how the Maps app worked: If I went online in China without a VPN, the Google Maps dataset was an English-language version that nevertheless had borders which complied with Chinese law (i.e. they show Arunachal Pradesh as being Chinese). As soon as I turned on my VPN to tunnel into San Francisco, the refreshed base map automatically showed the proper international version, the one which the rest of the world gets to see. You could make the case that Apple and Google just want to comply with local Chinese law — even though the legality of Google’s mapping service in China is even now in question, as it still needs to comply successfully with a new Chinese law that requires a license to publish online maps in China.

Hong Kong iPhone 3GS online in Beijing, no VPN

Hong Kong iPhone 3GS online in Beijing, VPN enabled

But my new Chinese iPhone 4 does things differently, even though ostensibly it is meant to be running exactly the same software as my old phone. The Maps app always shows China’s borders as the Chinese government would have them — regardless of whether I use my VPN or not. If I take this phone to the US or Europe, it will still show the same crippled, semi-fictional base map. And there is no way that I can change it.

Chinese iPhone 4, online in Beijing, VPN enabled

(The Chinese iPhone 4’s dataset is slightly different from the one served inside China to my Hong Kong iPhone 3GS, however: on my Chinese iPhone 4, place names outside China are both in Chinese and English (and sometimes also in a local script, such as Arabic). San Francisco, for example, is accompanied by its Chinese name, ÊóßÈáë±±. That’s not the case on my Hong Kong iPhone 3GS — all names outside China are just in English (and sometimes also in a local script).

Hong Kong iPhone 3GS, online in Beijing, no VPN

Chinese iPhone 4, online in Beijing, VPN enabled

In other words, Google keeps and serves two base map datasets that comply with Chinese law — one in English, and one in Chinese.)

This is not the first time Apple has willingly crippled its iPhones to legally access new markets. In Egypt, the first iPhones lacked a GPS receiver to comply with a local ban. The first Chinese iPhones lacked wifi. iPhone 4s currently sold in the United Arab Emirates lack the Facetime feature, possibly to abide by VOIP regulations.

The question is whether crippling the Maps app on Chinese iPhones is a legal requirement, or whether it’s a case of Apple (and Google) going beyond the call of duty. Is it really illegal to sell a phone where the software settings allow you to choose a base map different from the default? In any case, is it a good idea to rely on a map that may not ever get a license to be legally served in China? Shouldn’t that possibility argue for the ability to choose different base map datasets (OpenStreetMap, for one, perhaps Bing Maps)? Right now, the Maps app reminds me of those cold-war era Soviet radios, without a dial, able to receive just one (propaganda) channel.

Because Apple’s own apps are not deletable, I’ve now buried the Maps app in an obscure folder, and instead replaced the icon with a direct link to maps.google.com, whose mobile-enabled mapping template is just great: Compared with Apple’s app, it serves up a reality-based map in China even without VPN, has much better search (with suggestions) and content such as Wikipedia and Panoramio photos. (Directions are lacking in the mobile version, though.) Another option is to use Google Earth for the iPhone, which looks simply awesome on the iPhone 4’s screen.

Luckily, routing around censorship on the internet is still easy, though not with any help from Apple, in this case.

[Update 2010-09-27 06:00 UTC: As a commenter points out, the map is useless in other ways: In Canada, street names are only shown in Chinese characters – there is no Roman script whatsoever. In other places I’ve checked, such as Belgium and Italy, streets have house numbers, but no names at all – neither Chinese characters nor Roman letters. The base map on my 3GS does not have these shortcomings.]

[Update 2010-09-28: A new entry here on Ogle Earth addresses the Chinese iPhone 4’s curious hardwired Google search results, and adds more Maps screenshots].