The other announcement today (#1 was NASA + Google) involves Google announcing the purchase of Endoxon, brought to my attention by Jonathan Crowe at The Map Room.

What is Endoxon? It’s a Swiss “Internet mapping solutions company”, as Google describes it. Endoxon’s website has been replaced with a page with some more details. For example:

Why is Google acquiring Endoxon?
Endoxon’s assets and its European network bolster engineering and technical resources for Google. This acquisition of Endoxon will enable us to leverage their analysis capabilities and will help us build out and improve the functionality of Google Earth and Google Maps across Europe.

Why did Google acquire only three of Endoxon’s six business units?

Google acquired Endoxon’s internet, mapping and data processing business units. Unlike the others, these complement Google Earth and Google Maps technologies and services.

“The others” are Data, Cartography and Direct Marketing, which are being spun off into another company, Mappuls.

What did Endoxon’s website say up until yesterday? Google’s cache doesn’t have it, which is why it’s always good to have some competition. From MSN’s cache, here is how Endoxon presented itself until recently:

COMPANY

Since 1988 Endoxon AG has impressed with ground-breaking solutions for data, cartography, the Internet and mobile communication. Endoxon AG not only offers a platform for every conceivable geographic need but also has positioned itself as the market leader in the development of the cutting-edge technology thanks to its convincing and successful innovations.

This pioneering enterprise is responsible for the first MMS service and the first independent mobile portal in Switzerland for SMS, MMS, WAP and WEB. And also created another landmark for the Swiss Museum of Communication and Transport: Swissarena, the l argest aerial photograph of Switzerland and the nation’s second largest depiction after the country itself.

The name Endoxon stands for quality, creativity, and innovation strength around the world.

I also emailed a Geneva-based friend up on Swiss tech companies, and here’s how he responded to my question about what all this means:

Looks to me like a body shop for rendering and processing map data into usable applications like map.search.ch. It takes ages, apparently. I don’t think any wow new products are going to come of it straightaway.

The idea of Endoxon being a processing resource for Google fits with Google’s own statement that the acquisition will “bolster engineering and technical resources for Google”.

I first came across Endoxon’s work last year, using map.search.ch, the Swiss Post’s web mapping service for Switzerland, which did all of the niftiest scrolling, zooming, layering and address-searching since the early days, sometimes long before Google Maps and the others were doing it. In that sense they are true innovators. Do check it out, and take note of the ability to turn on layers of points of interest in a way that is very similar to what Google Earth currently does. An indication, perhaps, of how some of Google Earth’s functionality might one day bleed back into Google Maps?

One is left to wonder whether today’s two announcements are related. On one end, Google agrees to organize NASA’s information, which involves close cooperation and more access to data. On the other end, Google beefs up its processing prowess via the acquisition of a Swiss company. In other words, a bastion of geospatial digital analysis and processing expertise is being gathered.

ESRI, are you watching? What if Google ends up doing all the analysis and data storage server-side for us, cheaply? Wouldn’t that put a chink in ESRI’s ArcGIS offerings?

[Update 1006-12-19: Christian Spanring points out that the acquisition now has some of Google’s European competitors relying on Google. Sneaky!]

It’s announcement day today in the Google Earth ecosphere. Announcement number one we were expecting, though the precise nature of its content we were not: A formal relationship between NASA and Google “to work together on a variety of challenging technical problems ranging from large-scale data management and massively distributed computing, to human-computer interfaces.” You can read the rest of the press release here. (Here’s another, on NASA.gov)

No mention of iEarth, though it is very much part of what is envisaged — it’s just that the agreement encompasses so much more, including “Real-time weather visualization and forecasting, high-resolution 3- D maps of the moon and Mars, real-time tracking of the International Space Station and the space shuttle”. (Excellent news about Mars and the Moon — I was certainly hoping for that.)

The challenge:

“NASA has collected and processed more information about our planet and universe than any other entity in the history of humanity,” said Chris C. Kemp, director of strategic business development at Ames. “Even though this information was collected for the benefit of everyone, and much is in the public domain, the vast majority of this information is scattered and difficult for non-experts to access and to understand.

And since Google’s mission is to “organize the world’s information”, this is exactly the kind of challenge it excels at; namely “technical problems ranging from large-scale data management and massively distributed computing, to human-computer interfaces.”

A NASA World Wind developer’s blog, The Earth is Square, broke the news, though its take is that NASA World Wind already does most of what the agreement sets out to do. Indeed, current Mars and Moon imagery is available in NASA World wind, and some other features, like live positions of spacecraft, are available now as a plugin in both Google Earth and World Wind. But that leaves out terrabytes upon terrabytes of data that is just waiting to be processed and made usable. And that’s not something an open-source 3D viewer project is going to crack anytime soon.

Ultimately, this announcement is not about the client, but about the content, and I for one am very excited about the prospects. The Earth is Square is right, albeit graceless, when it writes, “But let Google spend its millions.. they do the hard work and because the data has to be in the public domain.. it will be in World Wind in no time.” Indeed, and users will then get to decide if they want to view the data on a souped-up atlas with social software skills and high resolution imagery as context, or in a realistic-looking, open-source virtual globe. There’s room for both.

Looks like Christmas came early: Not content with merely releasing an update to the application this weekend, the Google Earth team also just went ahead with an update to the imagery and the terrain: From this post on Google Earth Community:

Terrain update:

In the first time in quite a while, we’ve updated terrain with a high resolution (3m) terrain inset for Mt. Saint Helens, Washington.

Imagery updates:

• Digital Globe updates all over the globe with the most notable being large content additions in Somalia and Australia
• Updated US states: Indiana and Delaware
• Miscellaneous high res cities and counties in North America: Monterey Bay, CA; Yakima County, WA; Summerland, Canada; Greater East Wenatchee, WA; Polk County, IA; Warren County IA; and Bay County, FL
• Small high-res updates in the UK (Swansea, Edinburgh, Doncaster, Gwent) and expanded London coverage
• High-res update in Bremerhaven, Germany.
• Newer imagery for Lanzarote (Canary Islands)
• Google Earth Blog-supplied XPrizeCup flyover and the Sanford, NC airport
• Cabo San Lucas, Mexico
• Foo Camp @ O’Reilly Headquarters in Sebastapol, CA

There’s something for everyone: Frank Taylor’s own flyover imagery from the XPrize Cup is included, while the good residents of the Canary Islands get updated and uncensored imagery (they weren’t happy earlier this year when their data got older and censored). And the fantastic city of Edinburgh, which was a murky greenish brown blur in Google Earth when I visited last week, is now in glorious high resolution.

But perhaps my favorite updates are all the obscure, low-population density places that Digital Globe imagery brings into focus. It’s there that the surprises loom.

[Update 22:11 UTC: Wow — what a difference a 3m-resolution height mesh makes. Look at that plug dome on Mount Saint Helens:

If you want to see what the “terrain quality” slider in the options does, Mount Saint Helens is a good place to try it. At the highest setting, the resolution is exquisite, but your frames per second will likely suffer. As more high resolution terrain becomes available, this will become a more and more important setting to get right.]

[Update 22:32: Some great new Digital Globe high res in the Hunza valley, in the Karakorum: Baltit Fort and the Ultar II glacier are now ready for their closeup.]

[Update 23:30: Apparently, this happened in the next-to-last update, but I only just noticed: Easter Island is now in high resolution, where you’ll find the best beach ever.]

Short news:

• The NASA-Google announcement is now set for Monday, Dec 18, 11:00 PST reports ZDNet, citing a NASA press release. It doesn’t get much sparser than this:
  

  WHAT: Media briefing announcing details of Space Act Agreement with Google, Inc.

  What is a Space Act Agreement? In the case of Google, it’s a private-public partnership. That’s the second one in a week involving Google Earth. BTW, everybody’s money is still on iEarth being announced.

• Frank Taylor gives a great write-up of the special sessions on virtual globes at the American Geophysical Union’s (AGU) annual conference in San Francisco. Day 1, day 2 and day 3.
• The patent tussle between Google and Skyline Software Systems appears to have taken another step. I got this in my newsreader today:
  

  Complaint, Counterclaims Filed In ‘Google Earth’ Patent Case

  BOSTON – In response to a first amended complaint (FAC) filed by Skyline Software Systems Inc. alleging patent infringement by Google Earth and related products, Keyhole Inc. and parent company Google Inc. (Google, collectively) have filed an answer alleging patent invalidity (Skyline Software Systems Inc. v. Keyhole Inc. and Google Inc., No. 06-10980 DPW, D. Mass.). Full story on lexis.com

  Nothing more is given away without us first ponying up some cash. Anybody with a Lexis subscription care to take a look? I’m interested, but not $25-dollars-interested, if you catch my drift. (Bloggers are cheap.)

• A few days ago, a big phallic symbol discovered in Google Earth imagery of a British school’s roof caused a frisson online. It wasn’t worth a post, though one line in the story has now caught my attention:
  

  Google said: “If users spot something offensive we would consider having it removed.”

  I certainly hope that was a lie. Why go through all the trouble of standing up for freedom of speech, transparency, accuracy, impartiality, etc… when at the first sign of a lewd use of this freedom, it is given up. This is a slippery slope, it is.

• A Norwegian site reports that local Norwegian company, Blom, has licensed its pictometry database to Microsoft — used for bird’s eye imagery. Blom’s own site shows it has plenty of images of Italy, so we can stop guessing as to where Microsoft got its Italy data from in the update last week. Also, there are some interesting details about the deal on Blom’s site, here:
  

  The agreement will give all Microsoft’s clients world wide the right to use Blom’s data for commercial purposes. The agreement will give Blom access to all Microsoft clients and their substantial sales force and network. Blom will receive an agreed portion of the revenue Microsoft will earn from their customers use of Blom’s database.

  Blom is the first Norwegian company to enter into such an agreement with Microsoft, and the parties agree that the database will form an important enhancement of Microsoft’s database for geographical information, and support their determination to provide the best web based services for location based services in the future.

  Blom will actively market the Pictometry database for other companies all over Europe that prefer a direct access and/or full functionality. Blom will also support Microsoft in their efforts to increase the number of clients and improve the quality of the database they are offering.

  Note the revenue-sharing agreement — would that be from the ad revenue in Virtual Earth?

Remember WPF/E, that new Microsoft web interaction and display technology that surfaced as a preview a few days ago? It is supposed run on both Mac and Windows (XP and Vista), and in IE, Firefox and Safari — the clearest indication yet that Microsoft understands future successes on the web will require platform neutrality.

I wondered then if WFP/E might not be a useful mapping tool in combination with Virtual Earth 3D. As for the 3D part, the jury is still out (as it requires Windows-only software), but when it comes to the 2D component of Virtual Earth, Mike Taulty’s already got a proof of concept up on his blog:

What he’s done is add a new layer over the Map using WFP/E to capture mouse movements, translating these into an different navigation mode. Mike also superimposes a new graphic. The upshot: it would be very easy to make some very nifty custom user interfaces for maps using WFP/E.

To try it out yourself, go to Microsoft’s WPF/E download page and download the installer, either for PC or for Mac (it’s a “technology preview”). Run it, restart your browser, and then try out Mike’s demo, here.

I’ve found that it only really works in IE for PC at the moment, but on Safari for Mac it definitely looks like it wants to work. So it’s early days yet, but this is promising. Plus, from poking around on the WPF/E website, I see no reason why this can’t be used in conjunction with Google Maps’ Javascript controls.

A new version of Google Earth 4 beta is out: 4.0.2693 for PC, 4.0.2694 for Mac. Go get it.

Of note are numerous bugfixes, performance tweaks, and improved options, but the one main feature addition that will make life easier for those of us who want to use Google Earth for presentations is that tours can now be made to display balloons. (Google announcement)

Complete change log below the fold. (Thanks Frank!)

Continue reading Google Earth 4.0.26xx Beta out →

The fates of Google Earth and SimCity have been intertwined before. Back in August, we had news of gamers using Google Earth as a visual reference for the accurate recreation of real cities in SimCity 4. We also heard of a method to convert SketchUp models to SimCity models.

Fast forward a few months, to an interview in BitsBytesPixelsSprites with Elliot Hanson, who is recreating the entirety of New York City pixel by dimetric pixel in SimCity. The interview has some stunning images, but there’s even more on Elliot’s own blog, The New York City Journals. I especially like how some projects are seasonal or event-driven, animated by scripts built into the objects — for example, there is a Thanksgiving day parade, and a recreation of 9/11.

Not surprisingly, Elliot is also playing with Google Earth, collecting models from 3DWarehouse of New York Buildings. All this leads to an obvious question: Might it not be possible to export SimCity content as a SketchUp model, ready for positioning in Google Earth? Pixel art in Google Earth would be quite a trip, and a layer in Google Earth with Elliot’s work in it would definitely give it wider exposure. We know it’s possible to export 3D content from Second Life and World of WarCraft, as shown by Eyebeam’s OpenGL Extractor, so why not with SimCity?

And thinking further ahead, if/when Google Mars comes out, the opportunities for populating that planet with SketchUp models should make for some excellent collaborative creativity. Anybody up for a chalet with view overhanging the edge of Valles Marineris? It would make for an interesting mirror world/virtual world hybrid, especially as the Mars imagery won’t come with pre-existing infrastructure on it. Hmm, Martian Chronicles, the MMORPG. Isn’t it great we live at a time when such ideas aren’t outlandish?