All posts by Stefan Geens

Google Earth Notables

Web design firm Vestal Design launches a nice-looking and easy-to-navigate subsite collecting some of the most interesting network links and layers for Google Earth, Google Earth Notables. Very nice way for new users to ease into the more impressive abilities of Google Earth.

Touch-screen geobrowsing demo

About 1 minute and 35 seconds into this mesmerising video demo (MPEG) of a future-tech touchscreen, we are treated to what I hope Google Earth will let me do in five years’ time. How very Minority Report.

Géoportail update

Geoportail_logo.jpgViolaine Paquereau points to an article about France’s upcoming map app that contains some extra details gleaned by actual reporters. Here they are, translated, for those of us who don’t speak Freedom:-)

The first 2D Google Maps-like version is due in June 2006 and is being developed by Teamlog and Digitek… The National Geographic Institute (IGN) says Google Earth currently only covers 20% of France at the resolution that GéoPortail will cover it at… GéoPortail will be a website, and not an application like Google Earth, and yet by 2007 it will have 3D capabilities.

Géoportail project chief Patrick Leboeuf (really) says that they’ve been thinking for years about how to present their datasets, but that it’s true that the arrival of Google Earth showed them that there is great demand by the public for this type of data. He also says that over time, he doesn’t exclude having commercial links to the site. “But such things would have to be much more separated than on Google,” he adds, cryptically. Finally, IGN says they expect to have 500,000 unique visitors during the first year, which sounds very low to me.

Mooting Google Sky

[Update 2007.08.22: Google Sky is now a reality. Read more here.]

Alberto Conti, an astronomer at the Space Telescope Science Center in Baltimore, writes on his blog about the potential for using the technology behind Google Earth to help visualize the wealth of astronomical information that’s available but not easily accessible, currently.

Alberto’s writes that he suggested “Google Sky” to John Hanke when they met a few weeks ago, and that he will be getting in touch with Google Earth VP of engineering Brian McClendon in the next few days to organize to set up a visit to STSC for some brainstorming. Ah, the combined wonders of blogging and search — Brian, you can head on over to Alberto’s blog now and preview his pitch:-)

Alberto also writes:

In my proposal, I also suggested we should look at planetary mapping implementations of Google Sky and at Google Starship, a flyby among galaxies (using redshift information)! Google-Simulations and Google-Wormholes are just around the corner! :-P

Yes, but what kind of ads is Google going to sell alongside Google Sky? The “problem” is that Mars currently lacks holiday destinations, real estate markets and shopping malls. There is plenty of incentive to provide mass browsing tools for Earth, but when it comes to space, I see more room for a government role or an open-source role. The audience for space, unfortunately, is not unlike the audience for opera — refined in taste but small in number.

(That said, I’d all be for a 3D Mars simulation game à la Second Life where we all get to settle and build on a terraformed Mars.)

PS. The free and multiplatformed Celestia is a great appplication, and comes with its own addon repository.

ArcGIS Explorer roadshow: London

Andrew Hudson-Smith over on Digitally Distributed Environments is our eyes and ears for an ESRI presentation given by David Maguire in London on Friday.

Maguire ran through the beta of ArcGIS Explorer: Andrew comes away very impressed. Those who see and use the closed beta of ArcGIS Explorer are reporting it to be in a different league to Google Earth, with analytical tools galore and features such as facade mapping.

Facade mapping will have to come to Google Earth, then, because I suspect Andrew will focus his 3D authoring efforts on whichever platform makes them look best.

But more broadly, what I think we’re seeing is an impending differentiation of roles for the different applications: Google Earth is bringing geospatial browsing to the masses, including people who until now might not have known their latitude from their longitude. ESRI ArcGIS Explorer, on the other hand, looks like it will democratize GIS among professionals who until now would have outsourced the GIS aspects of their projects.

Google Earth, then, will likely continue to focus on high-resolution content and social features, with time browsers and rich base layers so that it is the ideal presentation tool for 3D and spatial data authored elsewhere. ESRI ArcGIS Explorer will become Arc Desktop Light, a deft blocking move that raises the bar on entry by others into the GIS analytics market by making a subset of features — already developed and paid for — free.

The relationship between the two tools is likely to be virtuous, in that each enlarges demand for the other. If we’ve finally reached a point where improvements in computing power, internet access speeds and software authoring prowess are creating a tipping point for GIS as a mass market phenomenon, then the rising tide/lifting ships cliché will for once be apt.

Google Earth inspires France’s Géoportail

Geoportail_logo.jpgVia Le Blogue du CFM de Guadalajara comes news that France’s National Geographic Institute (IGN) has just announced Géoportail (“geoportal”), a mapping initiative that will make all of France available at 50cm resolution in a Google Maps-like GUI starting this summer. “3D navigation” is promised for 2007, without specifying how.

Over on IGN’s site you can download the press kit (PDF, French) whose introductory text reveals an interesting motivation behind the initiative (translated):

The world in the palm of your hand… What about France?

Navigating from Broadway to Bankok with a click of the mouse, comfortably installed in front of the computer screen… The 9.5 million French households with broadband connections to the internet (and those all over the world) last summer were able to practice flying around the planet with “Google Earth”.

This site [sic.] has demonstrated the strong interest by our citizens for this type of navigation and for access to a great variety of information. The National Geographic Insitute had to respond to this demand.

The images will be free to view, as will 1:100,000 topo map overlays, but 1:25,000 topo map overlays would require the purchase of a licence.

I’m not yet sold on this project. There is no mention of open standards, for example. And just as the existence of Google Print prompted France to agitate for a similar European project, Géoportail seems aimed at ensuring France is not viewed exclusively via “Anglo-saxon” geobrowsers.

Ideally, the focus should be on the content, with Géoportail merely a default viewer of data that is also served in open source formats for whoever wants it, and for any geobrowser. And why not licence a copy of the database to Google, Microsoft, NASA and ESRI at favorable rates, to spread geographic knowledge of France? For a state agency like IGN to lock content into one browser would be to repeat the mistake of Minitel, which so retarded the uptake of the real Internet in France.

GPS Visualizer learns yet another trick

overlay_thumbnail.jpgAdam Schneider’s GPS Visualizer is a collection of web apps that, among other things, converts GPS data into KML files. Now this workhorse learns yet another trick, letting you create overlays for areas you specify from USGS, Landsat or Canadian data, including topological and political maps. Behold the GPS Visualizer KML Overlay input form.

(USGS data availability (via TerraServer-USA.com) is spotty, Adam says, so for a sure result, experiment with the other data sources.)

[2006-02-24 00:20 UTC: Post edited to atone for my ignorance of the fact that GPS Visualizer in fact does far more than just cater to Google Earth. The question, rather, is what doesn’t it do? Check out the geographic calculators, many of which output to KML. And don’t forget the geolocator. And here is some eyecandy.]