So Nokia buys Trolltech. What’s in it for me?

Trolltech develops Qt, the cross-platform development framework that Google Earth is built upon, so that it’s easy to come out simultaneous versions in Windows, Linux and Mac. As the Nokia press release makes clear,

The acquisition of Trolltech will enable Nokia to accelerate its cross-platform software strategy for mobile devices and desktop applications, and develop its Internet services business. With Trolltech, Nokia and third party developers will be able to develop applications that work in the Internet, across Nokia’s device portfolio and on PCs.

Let others speculate whether this is a response to the Google’s upcoming Android mobile platform — as far as I am concerned, Nokia believes it is in the business of making computers that just happen to be very small (hence its slogan for the N series, “It’s what computers have become”.) The sooner near full-fledged versions of your desktop programs can make it to a Nokia S60 type phone, the sooner you might use it as a desktop alternative….

So when does Google Earth make it to a Nokia S60 near you? The major challenge: Graphics chips eat batteries for breakfast, and current mobile phone CPUs are too puny to do software emulation for 3D. Another few years, perhaps?

Meanwhile, however, I’m beginning to suspect that on a mobile phone, plain-vanilla maps are the obvious killer apps, simply because of the overhead required to render virtual globes on to such a small device.

Ethiopia was incredible. So was the email backlog that awaited me when I got back. That’s now been taken care of, so here’s what’s been happening during the past two weeks:

• Greenscreen + Google Earth redux: Remember my little Google Earth + greenscreen experiment from last summer to do a DIY weather forecast? Well, Gapminder’s Hans Rosling takes this to a whole new level in his exposition of the Bangladesh Miracle. Must see. (Thanks Stu Smith for the heads up.)
• Kenya violence: ReliefWeb has new satellite imagery showing the effect of the recent interethnic violence in Kenya, dated 19 January. But why is it presented as a PDF? This would make much more sense as a KML file, especially as Google Earth imagery is used as a reference.
• Star Viewer: Fantastic early use of the Google Sky API. Also exists as a KML file (YouTube videos currenly require PC version).
• Virtual Volcanology: On YouTube: Virtual Volcanology – Exploring volcanoes in Google Earth, A Google TechTalk by John E Bailey, from the Alaska Volcano Observatory & Arctic Region Supercomputing Center, University of Alaska Fairbanks.
• 360-degree Arctic panoramas: University of Alaska Fairbanks’ Matt Nolan goes beyond the call of duty and produces beautiful georeferenced 360-degree panoramas from northern Alaska (and here and here too). See them in Google Earth. I’m jealous.
• ExtGPS: “Symarctic ExtGPS allows you to use your phone’s built-in GPS module externally on laptop via Bluetooth. It is mainly targeted for Nokia N95, E90, 6110 Navigator handsets, allowing you to use existing, more sophisticated GIS applications.” I haven’t tried this yet, but this should mean I can use my Nokia N95to pinpoint my position on Google Earth on my laptop. Add a wireless data modem and bingo, I should be all set for live positioning on Google Earth while sailing down the Nile:-) (Via Nokia N95 Blog)
• Star icons: Hevelius style Star Icons for Google Sky, by Stephanie Lange. Incorporates an interesting alternate use for the time slider.
• Korea map war: Google Earth comes under fire for showing some South Korean towns as being part of North Korea. (Via Search Engine Land)
• IFC to SketchUp: Do you use pro 3D modelling apps like ArchiCAD, Revit and Microstation? Cadalog has a beta of an IFC plugin for SketchUp for you to test. If you can import it into SketchUp, you can export it to Google Earth.
• Google Moon? Eagle-eyed Alberto Conti notes that Eric Schmidt’s talk at the NASA 50th anniversary bash shows the moon being viewed via the Google Earth client. A preview of an upcoming release? (1m50s into the clip)
• Flickr maps explained: Ur-geoblogger and Flickr map guru Dan Catt will be talking at O’Reilly’s Web 2.0 conference in April, discussing “A Flickr Approach to Making Sense of the World“.
• ViewFlip: Barry Hunter’s ViewFlip, for those unfortunate souls without a Space Navigator 3D mouse, let’s you easy look around you from a specific location on Google Earth.
• Google Earth Design: Video of the talk Richard Treves gave at the American Geophysical Union annual conference in December 2007, discussing good KML design.
• Google Earth as canvas: A Dutch artist makes a work of art for satellite sensors.
• CyberCity lives! This from CyberCity 3D LLC‘s CEO, Kevin DeVito:
  

  Our company currently plans to place over 500,000 buildings on Google Earth through various channels. We have an extensive KML database already completed. Most importantly, we have added our first collection of terrestrial-mapped buildings (UCLA Campus) to the Warehouse. We were formerly a subsidiary of CyberCity AG (Hamburg model is on Google), but the Swiss company shut down and we (CyberCity 3D LLC) purchased all the assets.

• ArcGIS Explorateur? ArcGIS Explorer gets French localization.
• 1000 human lifetimes: Google’s Marissa Mayer presentation about Google Earth and Maps as reported by TechCrunch includes the tidbit that the equivalent of “1,000 human lifetimes have been spent looking at Google Earth.” Quick back-of-the envelope calculation shows that to be somewhat north of 600 million hours, which, if divided by the 300 million downloads of Google Earth comes to an average of about 2 hours per download. I think I’m over quota:-) BTW, Ogle Earth favorite EarthMine won the Crunchies award for Best Technology Innovation/Achievement. Congrats!
• Morocco: Morocco is still censoring Google Earth and Maps.
• Weather pics: AccuWeather.com’s 2008 weather calendar photos are available as a KML download.
• YourMap: Google Earth Hacks jumps into the map hosting space with YourMap. If all you want is a very simple map depicting a location to embed on your site, this will do the job admirably. Comes with a link to the location in Google Earth.
• Covered elsewhere: Also noteworthy, but already covered in other neogeography blogs: Google Code’s blog reviews recent developments in KML, procedural city modelling of Pompeii, Crysis game Engine for 3D city models, this:Irish town goes 3D in Google Earth, high-altitude ballooning viewable as KML, and last but not least, updated default layers in Google Earth.

As all of you who have used a GPS device (or a GPS-enabled device like the Nokia N95) know, there are two main problems with the current technology: Fixing and maintaining a position eats up battery power, and you don’t get an instant fix when you turn on GPS functionality. If only GPS chips were more energy efficient., you could keep them on all the time, which would make them useful in everyday photography situations…

Enter UK company Air Semiconductor, which says it has developed a chip that is 100 times more efficient than current systems, with the express purpose of putting it into digital cameras where they are “always on”, perfect for geotagging. Electronics Weekly has the scoop.

Over on Air Semiconductor’s website, you can read more about the chip, the Airwave 1, the “Always-On” technology behind it, and its intended use, geotagging photos. I am very much hoping this is not vaporware. (Jan 24 Press release)

It has dawned on many people that brave new world of free satellite imaging, GPS and ubiquitous internet (save for big bits of Ethiopia — Ed.) is bursting with potential for some kind of better global rescue response and disaster mitigation service — and that includes the smart people at the philanthropic arm of Google, Google.org.

Last week, Google.org’s Larry Brilliant announced which five initiatives in three main areas the new organization will focus its resources on in the coming years. (The Economist has a great profile on Brilliant and the difficulty of doing that triage.) It’s a pleasant surprise that one of the focus areas will involve funding research into making such a global rapid-reporting platform a reality, especially as it will make good use of Google’s newfound neogeographic prowess:

From the Economist:

Google.org has made a $5m grant to Innovative Support to Emergencies, Diseases and Disaster (InSTEDD), a non-governmental organisation that is building a rapid-reporting platform to connect people on the ground with those monitoring pandemics. It hopes to raise the quality of public services in poor countries by improving the flow of information both to those who run them and to those they serve.

Joshua Hill at the Canada Free Press has a bit more about InSTEDD, and the technologies it is harnessing:

One of the applications that this project will focus around is the ability that Twitter has to work between the internet and mobile phones. Using a location detection feature, a message sent from a phone from the middle of Africa, will tie in with a layer on Google Earth, pinpointing the senders location, with the text message requesting help. Aid workers from UNICEF or the InSTEDD’s headquarters in Palo Alto, California, could then read the message, and provide assistance.

“We can send an SMS message onto Google Earth in an emergency center, and it sees a dot with a color-coded response, with my name and date. Right underneath that, there’s a button that says reply, and (aid workers can send a note that says) we have the resources you need 2 miles north…Suddenly there’s a two-way conversation using nothing but a cell phone with one bar,” said [Eric Rasmussen, president and CEO of InSTEDD], adding: “We’ve done this.”

There are plenty of challenges — what to do in regions that do not enjoy internet or wireless telephony, how to secure communications, how to trust and verify reports, how to overcome local governmental suspicions of spying, how to make the reporting simple and error-proof — but these are precisely what the funding is intended for InSTEDD to address. I can’t wait to see it in action.

I’m about to head out the door for 10 days of trekking through Ethiopia, far away from computers, and often out of range of mobile phone networks. I’m parting from my laptop for the first time in living memory and will probably suffer severe withdrawal symptoms, but sometimes drastic measures need to be taken:-)

So if in the next 10 days Google releases Google Earth 5 with 3D bathymetry, an accurate polar projection, live mobile phone location search and global live video satellite imagery, you won’t read about it here:-) But before I go, here is the accumulated catch from the past week’s trawling through feeds and inbox, once again necessarily in telegraphese, as most of the week was spent travelling or being on TV!

• MapChannels: This should get an own post, but Map Channels goes mainstream — think Google Maps API site that stays ahead of Google MyMaps by offering more features. There’s plenty of KML and GeoRSS support. Map Channels is more scalable than My Maps Plus, which is being phased out.
• Scottish highland routes: Paul from walkhighlands.co.uk writes:
  

  Don’t know if you’ve even seen our website about Hiking in the Scottish Highlands – www.walkhighlands.co.uk. It has every route (350 of them) downloadable as a KMZ file, or you can download all the routes into Google Earth from the homepage.

  Very nicely done.

• EarthBrowser: EarthBrowser 3.0 is coming out soon, and Matt Giger is promising that it “will revolutionize virtual globes for reason’s that will be obvious when you first run it.” I’m curious.
• GPS Photo Finder: GPS Photo Finder is a new type of georeferencing tool for photos: Have it with you as you take photos, then stick the camera’s memory card into the device to let it add coordinate data to the EXIF data of the files. Downsides: A limited list of compatible cameras (download the manual) and no support for RAW file formats, apparently.
• Yahoo Pipes + Google Spreadsheets for geocoding: Christian Spanring makes a Yahoo Pipe to geocode locations for use in Google Spreadsheets that create Google Maps. It’s easier just to see it in action.
• EditGrid: Valery Hronusov has been busy. In his own words:
  1. We made a new service. It’s a legend generator. This web service can generate image from text and we can use this service in screenoverlay or other rasters objects. Also see a legend example here.
  2. The Editgrid team has added its application to Facebook – very interesting.
• Multi-touch Earth: Yay. Hope this comes to a screen near me ASAP. James Fee has a demo video.
• 3D Mouse: Another CES, another 3D mouse by Sandio. Compatible with Google Earth or Microsoft’s Virtual Earth.
• Irish town in 3D: On 16 January, the town of Westport in Ireland will get lots of 3D buildings, The Register tells us.
• HoudahGeo: HoudhaGeo for Mac ($25) is up to version 1.4, and now allows you to geocode via Google Earth, much as Geotagger for Mac does.

I’m in Washington DC this week for one of my jobs and it’s a bit hectic around here, but just a quick note to let you know that Google Sky has gotten an update. Writes STScI’s Alberto Conti:

The American Astronomical Society 211th meeting is going on and Google has a workshop there.
So the GoogleSky folks added a lot of layers to Sky.

GoogleSky really looks much nicer now!

And indeed, if you now look at the default layers, you will find whole new series of folders: Featured Observatories, Current Sky Events, Education Center, Historical Sky Maps… Not all of them are filled yet, but I’m sure they soon will be. Enjoy.

[Update 2008-01-10: Google Lat-Long Blog now has the announcement.]

• 3D building maker: Dutch company 3dClearEarth is guessing your business may want to have a 3D rendition of its headquarters built as Collada-based KML, ready for inclusion in Google Earth. Packages start at ‚Ǩ300 for one building and go up past ‚Ǩ1,500 for a complex. The sample buildings are very detailed, so for a medium- to large business wanting to make sure that they’re spot on Google Earth is “covered”, this could be the ticket.

  If you read Dutch, local paper Eindhovens Dagblad has an article on the company. Just like everyone else, they need to submit their models to 3D Warehouse, so there is a delay before they show up on the base layer.

  I hadn’t seen pricing on Collada models before — I imagine the barriers to entry in this business are not that high, though one constraint would be the availability of high quality photography of the buildings to be modeled, which would need to be obtained locally if not already available.

• Mobile pollution sensor web: New Scientist reports that in Cambridge (UK), computer scientists have cobbled together a cheap mobile pollution sensor web using bicycle couriers, GPS devices, smartphones and phone-sized pollution sensors that record carbon monoxide, nitrogen oxide, and nitrogen dioxide levels. The devices all talk via bluetooth, and then the phone send the georeferenced data live to a server as the courier cycles about town.

  The bit that is especially interesting for this blog is that the result can then be visualized in Google Maps, and also as a path in Google Earth — with path height depicting pollution levels, as this picture on Daily Wireless shows:

  

  I’d love to try this out in Cairo, though I suspect the pollution sensor would probably just get clogged — if you haven’t been to Cairo, you don’t know the meaning of the word pollution:-) (Via Daily Wireless and Jon (thanks!))

• Highlighting flight paths: Another great bit of innovative KML authoring on Barnabu.co.uk: Flight paths between UK and Irish cities that become visible for each city as you hover its icon. Let’s hope Barnabu’s James Stafford gets to sell this wonderful visualization idea to RyanAir for lots of money — or at least lots of free tickets:-)