‘Google Earth’ a Potential Space Threat is the ominous title, dated March 14 2008. Where might this shot across the bow come from? Nationalist-conservative hacks in India? Irate Bahraini princes? A desperate despot in Zimbabwe?

Try the news on Military.com, “the largest [US] military and veteran membership organization”. The article’s uncritical tone centers around this paragraph:

Lt. Gen. Michael Hamel [who manages space and missile systems development for the Air Force] told Military reporters at a March 11 breakfast meeting in Washington he is pressuring [US] domestic licensing authorities to force satellite imagery providers to reduce the resolution of their images in areas where American troops are engaged, or to delay their image feed so that an adversary can’t get up-to-the-minute information on U.S. and allied military moves.

Who gave him the right to try to dictate public policy like that? Hamel seems to have forgotten that US law already gives the government “shutter control” over US commercial remote imaging companies, preventing them from taking images of US troop maneuvers or sensitive deployments and determining the timing of their release. It’s Hamel’s job to abide by that policy, not to concoct one he’d prefer and try to ram it down the throats of civil servants.

What’s new is that Hamel would like to be able to arbitrarily reduce the resolution of satellite imagery. One reason such a constraint has never been placed on US imagery providers like DigitalGlobe is that other non-US commercial providers would sell it instead, and legally so, not being bound by US law. Hamel knows this, of course, and that’s why he comes up with this splendidly exceptionalist counter-argument:

But international commercial operators who aren’t beholden to any U.S. laws might balk at protecting America’s security interests in the face of cold hard cash. [The bastards!] So Hamel hopes to either beat them into space and edge them out of the neighborhood, or cajole them into sticking to the American licensing standards.

“It’s part of our national interest to ensure that we set the conditions not only for U.S. companies but also set some of the norms in terms of how systems on an international or allied basis are used,” he added.

Ironically, the Indian government is trying to get the UN to do something just like it, except for all counties, not just the US. Then we’d just have to ask North Korea or Sudan for permission before taking a snapshot of their dirty laundry. Perhaps Hamel is angling for an ambassadorship in New York?

PS. Hamel isn’t the first one trying to put the genie back in the bottle. Back in May 2007 the director of the US National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA), Vice Admiral Robert Murrett, attempted something similar, despite there being a clear and generous US policy in place promoting the widest possible distribution of imagery for the common good.

It’s fun to come up with a thesis and then squeeze the facts to make them fit. it might even be fun to listen to. But is it any use beyond polemics as entertainment? We Make Money Not Art‘s Régine Debatty covers a talk by Lisa Parks from the Film and Media Studies at UC Santa Barbara about the social impact that satellites have had, including how they have affected our perceptions of conflicts. She frames her questions thus:

How have satellite images been used to represent global conflicts in the public sphere? Where does the authority to use and interpret satellite images come from? What kinds of phenomena and events do satellite images represent? Have satellite images increased public awareness and knowledge about global conflict? How have practice and meaning of “intervention” changed in the digital age?

There is a lot of potential there. Parks looks at the historical use of satellite imagery to influence public opinion, in Rwanda, Bosnia and in the run-up to the last Gulf War. Google Earth makes an appearance, and so does the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum’s Crisis in Darfur layer, but this is where I think she draws flat-out wrong inferences. Do read the whole thing, but I’ll quote part of Parks’s thesis (as dictated by Régine) and then comment.

Since 2005, Google Earth presents us with a “mosaic’ed” version of the world using satellite images coming from various sources. But while the logo of Google is always clearly visible on the images, no matter how blurry they are themselves, we are kept in the dark regarding the satellites used to compose these images. Google Earth is a great opportunity to educate the public about satellites but instead GE tends to almost erase the existence of the satellites.

No information about satellite imagery in Google Earth? Actually, read the very next paragraph:

DigitalGlobe provides date information for satellite images that are part of Google Earth using color-coded squares and “I” icons. By clicking on “preview,” you enter a meta-browser featuring the single satellite image captioned with information about how to purchase it or others from DigitalGlobe. DigitalGlobe is thus providing date information as part of a marketing strategy. GE becomes a billboard.

So, in fact, you do get satellite imagery metadata after all, but now it’s called marketing? (Meanwhile, Spot Image has similar information available.) I agree that there is not enough metadata about the imagery in Google Earth, especially the aerial imagery, but surely what is there is sufficient for basic forensic neogeography, and it is much better than nothing.

Google Earth teamed up with the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum to create the Crisis in Darfur mapping initiative which collects and diffuses visual evidence of the destruction in Darfur.

On the surface it looks like an admirable project but in several ways it missed the opportunity to represent the conflict in all its complexities. It uses tropes to represent African tragedy (images of suffering children carried by their mother). There is no visible effort of providing a political and economical education about the tragedy.

I was (marginally) involved in helping to make that layer a reality. Tropes? I saw some of the imagery that didn’t make it in — plenty of corpses bloated in the heat and charred skeletal remains. But Google Earth is used by children, and so what you see is necessarily a PG version of the humanitarian crisis. As for not making an effort to provide a political and economic education — that’s not what was lacking. What was lacking was a geographic education, and this layer has done a good job of driving home the scope of the crisis using the best free canvas available.

With the slide i pasted below, Lisa Park claims to demonstrate that earlier media news provided more opportunities for education:

Image by Régine Debatty

My comments: DigitalGlobe and Spot Image do both date their imagery. Spot Image dates it to the nearest second. And the major omission by Parks, in my view, is not mentioning that post-Google Earth we are much less at the mercy of governments feeding us their own interpretations and unique views. Back in 2003, we were not able to counter Colin Powell’s presentation to the UN regarding the existence of WMDs in Iraq. These days, we can make our own investigations about similar claims in Syria.

Problems of GE Crisis in Darfur layer:
– obscure satellite imagery,

??? The high-resolution imagery is mostly DigitalGlobe imagery, with dates provided. There is always credit given for all the imagery visible in a Google Earth view, at the bottom of the screen.

– represents the “past perfect”, because it show what we monitored from space but didn’t do anything about at the time,

How does this argue against the layer? It argues for it and Google Earth having existed sooner, so it might have spurred public support for intervention sooner.

– involves the branding of global conflicts (no matter how blurry the image, the Google brand is always conspicuous),

Right, shoot the messenger. Analogous claim: Microsoft brands the Holocaust because you can visit websites about it using your computer while the Internet Explorer logo is showing in the browser and the Windows logo on the Start menu.

– exemplifies neoliberalism (David Harvey) and disaster capitalism (Naomi Klein),

I can only speculate as to what she means here: Does she mean to say that these images are more prone to make us intervene, and by doing so we would import a western capitalist reconstruction industry that would breed dependence on aid and western loans? And that it would thus be better not to show satellite imagery of burned villages, as otherwise the danger is that we’d move to prevent massacres, thus making things worse by involving capitalism? At this point, I quickly double-checked the talk was not given on April 1.

– from CNN effect to Google Earth effect? In order to get world attention will an event have to appear on Google Earth?

Would that be so bad? Google Earth is a browser, not a channel; and it is a canvas onto which anyone can publish their own unmoderated geospatial content for others to view. It’s remarkable how Parks completely misses the real revolution that is Google Earth: Zero-cost low-effort content generation and publishing (and even hosting) for all users via KML, accessible to hundreds of millions of viewers and billions of web clients via Google Maps.

What does it mean for a US corporation to reproduce foreign territory as they want and without asking permission (some nations actually complained that GE causes a serious security concern.)

What is so special about the nationality of a corporation? Spot Image is French. The Russians also sell imagery. Is commercial remote imaging by a US company somehow more ominous? On the contrary, until Google Earth, such imagery was largely the domain of big-country governments, their militaries and proxies, without opportunities for citizens to check and balance the games played by the big boys. Today, we have volunteer-generated layers of all the world’s surface-to-air missile sites, and ones pinpointing North Korean prison camps. Is the fact that the widespread availability such information was facilitated by US companies operating in a capitalist environment so repugnant to Parks that she prefers to side with the opaque autocracies of the world, who see transparency as a threat to their authority? Google Earth levels the playing field in favor of the little guy, of every nationality. It makes the world a more democratic place, and yes, we largely have an American-owned initiative to thank.

In a nutshell:

The public remains relatively uninformed about satellites, their uses and their impact on everyday life even though citizens taxes subsidize satellite developments.

If anything, the phenomenal success of Google Earth has finally brought discussion about remote surveillance somewhat into the mainstream. For the first time ever, last year, the launch of a new DigitalGlobe satellite became a mainstream news item, largely because its imagery is eventually destined for Google Earth.

And re taxes: I don’t know if DigitalGlobe gets tax subsidies, but Google certainly pays taxes; and it was Google’s decision to start buying and making freely available all this satellite imagery over the past few years that spurred this present revolution — not anything DigitalGlobe did (other than to agree to sell to Google on such a massive scale).

PS: Just noticed that the site of the Israeli bombing raid in Syria just became hi-res with this latest update, dated April 1 2008. Imagery is from August 18, 2007, courtesy of DigitalGlobe’s metadata layer — just a few weeks before the raid took place. Detail is much higher than anything we’ve seen until now. The new imagery is not yet available in Google Maps, but from there you can click through to Google Earth.

Late in 2006, Adil Yoltay and a small team of developers in Turkey wrote in to show off CitySurf, a 3D city viewing application for PCs with support for textured buildings that was the best in its class at the time.

The CitySurf website for that version of the application is still up, but that doesn’t mean that Adil and his crew have been standing still. This week, they sent me the newest version of the application, CitySurf Globe. It’s a true virtual globe (in that it shows the entire Earth in 3D relief, not just a small region) and I took it for a spin. It’s not ready for release yet, but they were happy for me to blog it. It turns out to contain some very innovate ideas. Here are some I like:

First thing to notice is that the UI has gotten a lot slicker, simpler, and is in English. (No more guessing at Turkish:-). They’ve also got a very nice take on the compass/controller: Nudging the ball in the middle doesn’t move the point of view as others do but instead rotates and tilts it simultaneously. I like it.

But what I really like is when an obviously good idea appears: The option to search just the visible region instead of the entire world. It happens often to me when searching for a specific place in Google Earth, say for a town in Egypt, only to suddenly find myself flying to Indonesia to a similarly named place that I wasn’t looking for at all. CitySurf Globe fixes this problem:

Also news is that CitySurf Globe has grown much more webfriendly, incorporating georeferenced Wikipedia- and weather sources. Most impressive, it can parse and display GeoRSS feeds — something that’s been promised for Google Earth for nearly a year, but is still not available there.

One reason that Adil was happy for me to blog CitySurf Globe is that they are still looking for sponsors. They have an efficient rendering engine, he says, but the small team can’t afford good global datasets. If you’re looking for a base onto which to build your virtual globe empire, you can always get in touch with them…

• Geoimmersive video redux: Barely a month after Immersive Video showed it’s possible, 360Cities shows us a wonderful proof of concept: georeferenced immersive video from atop car driving around Prague, embedded into Google Maps, with the placemark moving to reflect the location at the time. Great stuff! 360Cities’ Jeffrey Martin says the quality and quantity will improve a lot in the coming weeks.
• Earthquake sensor web: How’s this for thinking out of the box: MacBooks and Thinkpads have accelerometers, so why not let them detect and report Earthquakes in their spare time? So reasoned seismologist Elizabeth Cochran of the University of California at Riverside, and the result is Quake Catcher Network. Can’t wait for the live results as a KML network link:-)
• New Google Earth imagery: Google’s going to make you guess of what, though, for a while. (Wales goes hi-res.)
• US Storm Surge maps: Florida’s The News-Press reports: “The National Hurricane Center and Google Earth are joining to create a free Web-based program that allows computer-users to zoom into street-level storm surge maps. They are the same satellite views as regular Google Earth, but color-coded according to storm surge categories.”
• 3Dcamp in Limerick May 24: Virtual Worlds, Mirror Worlds, mashups, GPS… The usual suspects. One day, everyone welcome, and it’s free. More info. (Via KenMcGuire)
• Blogoversary: Congratulations to The Map Room‘s Jonathan Crowe on his blog’s fifth anniversary. (Like dog years, are there blog years?) His was the first map blog I read, long before I ever considered piling in with this here blog. The Map Room is the ur-mapping blog, and may it remain so:-)
• Microsoft Mobile Live Search coming: Searchable Maps will come to Windows Mobiles and Blackberries this spring, says Microsoft. It’s a bit of a catch-up effort, but one thing you will be able to do that you can’t currently with Google Maps for Mobile is show off maps (“collections”) that you’ve made while logged in to your account, or those that your friends have shared with you. That’s because Google Maps for Mobile doesn’t currently link to your gmail account.
• Microsoft Virtual Earth 6.1 coming: Improvements include walking directions in the US and EU, and “new cross-browser support”, according to Nate Irwin, citing a source. ETA is April 10. Intriguing.
• Street View for Google Earth: Google Street View is coming to Google Earth in a few weeks. So says Webware, citing a source. (It’s getting leaky around here:-) This development is expected, but welcome. As Street View is a Flash application, it won’t run on the Mac version of Google Earth, unless Mac support is ready to be rolled out by then. (Via Digital Earth Blog)
• libKML news: Andrew Turner at High Earth orbit updates us on the state of libKML, and what it’s good for.
• From amber to 3D insects: Not strictly neogeo but very 3D and very wow: “Secret ‘dino bugs’ revealed“, basically by looking at it with a 135m wide microscope. Watch the video to the end.

The following is an Aperture 2 for Mac georeferencing tip, so it’s not useful to everyone…

Aperture 2 is a great piece of software, though one thing that is lacking is support for georeferencing tools: If you let Aperture manage your photos, there is no way (yet) to update EXIF coordinate metadata once you’ve imported those photos.

Presumably, this is about to change. Aperture 2.1, an update released yesterday, comes with a greatly expanded plug-in architecture, one that should enable developers to build tools that can directly alter the EXIF metadata of managed photos.

However, if you keep your photos in a separate location somewhere and only have Aperture reference them (as opposed to manage them, where they get swallowed up in Aperture’s library) then you are in luck. If you alter the EXIF metadata of a referenced photograph, Aperture instantly knows about it.

Try this: Import some non-georeferenced photographs into a new project, making sure to “Store files: In their current location”. Select one. Note that the “Show on Map” option is grayed out.

(Alternatively, if you’ve edited the metadata views to add Latitude and Longitude, you’ll see they’re empty.)

Now switch back to the Finder, and use a georeferencing tool to add coordinate metadata to the original photograph file. In my case, I started up Google Earth, zoomed in on the location where the photo was taken, and then dragged the photo to Craig Stanton’s Geotagger.

Switch back to Aperture 2.1. You’ll notice the photograph’s coordinate metadata fields are now filled in, and the “Show on Map” menu item now works, sending you to a view in Google Maps. Most important, however, is that if you now export your photos to a geosavvy photo sharing site like Flickr, the metadata gets put to work seamlessly, without any further intermediate steps.

Alas, I’ve been letting Aperture manage my photos, so the above doesn’t help me much — I’m going to hold out for a plug-in. But if your workflow involves referenced photos, then you’re all set:-)

The imagery of the disintegration of the Wilkins Ice Shelf on the Antarctic Peninsula is really awesome — check out the video of the massive icebergs floating in formation below — but the implications, of course, are somewhat dire.

The US National Snow and Ice Data Center has the info, including satellite imagery from MODIS. Here is some of this imagery as an overlay. It looks great on top of the high-resolution LIMA base imagery of Antarctica, which alas is now out of date:-(

The KMZ file comprises two overlays, one of them at a higher resolution, both carefully positioned to minimize distortion. Do play with the opacity sliders to see the before-and-after effect.

Some innovative KML content hit the web this past week while I took a family break (with results to show for!):

• Mybabytree.org: Pay WWF to plant a sapling in Indonesia’s Sebangau National Forest, get its precise coordinates as a KML. A steal at only US$5.50, especially if you don’t get paid in US dollars:-) Here’s the KML network link I got back when I bought a tree — I’m sure it will take few days before mine gets added:-)

  Just some feedback: Where is the non-Flash version of the site? I kept on wanting to “skip intro”. I think more baby trees would be born if impatient people got to sponsor them too:-). (Via All Points Blog)

• Craig Stanton on Seero: Live and on-demand video geotagging site Seero (previously blogged here) has emerged from private beta and is now accessible to all. One early user is Craig Stanton, author of iPhotoToGoogleEarth and an avid trekker. He’s posted his georeferenced videos of his walk from Mexico to Canada along the Pacific Crest Trail in 2007.

  Craig’s content focuses our attention on Seero’s revenue model: On-map pointers to “factoids” that include ads:

  

  I haven’t decided if this is overly intrusive or not, or whether I’ve just developed a blind spot to Google ads. (Or perhaps Google ads feel more relevant and hence feel less like ads and more like useful information?) Still promised by Seero’s developers: A KML feed.

• Global historical temperatures: Really nice find by Frank at Google Earth Blog: Global Temperature Station Data in Google Earth, dating back to the 19th century and beautifully charted in placemark pop-ups, with trend analysis. (I assume you read his blog, but adding it here just in case.)
• Improved KML labels: Never content to leave good enough alone, Valery Hronusov creates a web-based application for the automatic building of labels in KML.

A roundup of neogeo stuff that caught my attention in the past week or so:

• Impact news makes an impact down under: News about Hickman Crater hits the mainstream media in Australia, with an article in the Sydney Morning Herald… and the paper gets it! Accompanying the article is a 100% genuine interactive Google Maps view of the crater. Kudos SMH.
• Neogeo in print: Digital Urban‘s Andrew Hudson-Smith is coming out with a glossy-looking booklet, Digital Geography – Geographic Visualisation for Urban Environments, collecting “insights and tutorials on Virtual Earth, Google Earth, Google Maps, Panoramas and Second Life.” It’s a teaser for a thicker tome due out at the end of the year. I’ve got one reserved.
• FlickrExport 3 gets geosavvier (Mac): FlickrExport for iPhoto and Aperture, a plugin for exporting photos to Flickr (duh), already lets you turn the coordinates of the current view in Google Earth into Flickr geotags. Version 3 (Beta) now lets you integrate GPS tracklogs and add coordinate presets (for multiple photos at the same spot). But when oh when will somebody let me add or alter coordinate metadata in Aperture’s library of photos?
• Camera GPS shopping list (and wishlist): The Map Room points us to a review of a new GPS unit for Nikon’s pricier DSLRs: The Solmeta DP-GPS N1. Verdict: Works well. If you’re in the market (like me), also check out this forum thread over on Panoramio, where several more competitors are referenced. The field is getting crowded, and that’s a good thing for us consumers:-)

  Still, what I’d really really like is a normal GPS unit that I can sync with my camera at will before I offload my photos to the computer. A GPS unit really doesn’t need to be connected to the camera all the time now does it? And surely this is something that Nikon and Garmin can arrange amongst themselves, no? All I’d need is a mini-to-mini USB cable and firmware upgrade (or two).

• New Virtual Earth 3D Blog: Virtual Earth 3D is a blog “kept by the Microsoft 3D Integration team in Boulder Colorado.” (Via Angus Logan’s Blog)
• VE Imagery update: Microsoft Virtual Earth gets 43 TB of new data for March. That link has the list.
• Google I/O: Google I/O, a new developer event slated for May 28-29 in San Francisco, has a “Maps & Geo” component. $300-$400 for both days, or $50 if you are a student.
• ArcGIS 9.3 Server hearts KML: ESRI ArcGIS Server 9.3’s REST API supports KML natively. If it is going to be this easy, can we expect the floodgates to open re KML content from GIS pros?
• MapQuest hearts KML: mapQuest’s JavaScript API supports KML. Seriously. Here’s how.
• GeoRSS+?: Andrew Turner discusses improving GeoRSS so that it can represent collections of geospatial objects, which is useful when narrating a story that references more than one location. Sean Gillies isn’t convinced of the need to upgrade. Debate ensues.