Want to help model a city?

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In an effort to get more cities modeled in 3D, Google has created a new category in the 3D Warehouse titled “Help Model a City“.  They’re encouraging users such as yourself to go in there and help create some of these models.  So far they have five cities listed — Ann Arbor, Michigan : Amherst, Massachusetts : Astana, Kazahstan : Brookline, Massachusetts : San Jose, California.

It seems like a good way to encourage more people to help model the buildings.  I still expect Google to create a semi-automated process to handle this (similar to how Virtual Earth does it), but in the meantime this could help get more buildings up there.

The Google Lat Long blog has more information.

Stephen Chau, product manager for Google Maps, addresses Street View privacy issues

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Freakonomics has an interview with Stephen Chau, the product manager for Google Maps.  Their questions all address the new Street View feature of Map.  In the interview, Chau addresses some of the privacy concerns that have been raised.

Some snippets:

  • “At Google we take privacy very seriously. Street View only features imagery taken on public property and is not in real time. This imagery is no different from what any person can readily capture or see walking down the street.”
  • ” …we respect the fact that people may not want imagery they feel is objectionable featured on the service. We provide easily accessible tools for flagging inappropriate or sensitive imagery for review and removal.”
  • “We routinely review takedown requests and act quickly to remove objectionable imagery. “

Nothing too groundbreaking in there, but it’s a good read.  You can read the full interview here

.

Factory in Malaysia is offering ad space on its roof

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Kumomo

, a Malaysian company that owns a large factory, is offering up ad space that would be viewable in all of the various mapping systems (once the area gets updated again).  They’ll be using a company in California, RoofAds, to do the installation.

I imagine that we’ll be seeing quite a bit of this kind of thing as time goes on.  In this case, however, there are a few other issues to consider that were raised in an article by the Natural Search Blog:

  1. This is apparently the factory in Google Maps – completely obscured by smoke/clouds.  If it’s a cloud, odds are pretty good that it won’t be there next time.  However, if it’s smoke from the factory then that would likely be there every time.
  2. There is a good deal of child labor that occurs in Malaysia.  You’d want to make sure that this isn’t happening at the factory where your ad would be placed.
  3. The ad space will go up in November.  Why then?  I can’t imagine they know when any new satellite photos will be taken.  I guess that’s just when they’ll put up the ad, and then it’ll show in GE, GM, VE, etc — eventually.

It’ll be interesting to see how this plays out, as well as to see how many other companies try the same thing in future months.

JetBlue providing Google Maps in seatback TVs

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The Google Lat Long Blog just announced

that JetBlue is now providing fliers with Google Maps in their “signature seatback TVs”.  On top of that, they’re asking customers to take pictures out the window during their flight, note the location with Google Maps, then send the pictures in.  The top 10 photographers will win roundtrip tickets for two to anywhere that JetBlue flies.

Having recently been on a Delta flight with a seatback TV map, I can see how cool this could be.  The Delta map was neat, but it was very static.  It would show the map in a full-US view, then in a zoom view, then some statistics, then more statistics, then back to the full-US view, etc.  Being able to control the map would have been very cool.

I’ve never used JetBlue, but I continue to hear good things about them.  Maybe I’ll have to try them for my next trip.

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Microsoft unveils “instant answer” for MSN.com and Live.com

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Following on the heels of both Google and Yahoo, Microsoft’s “Live” search now shows an interactive map as the top result if you search for a precise location (full story on their blog). While its noticeably later than Google or Yahoo’s implementation, I must give them credit for taking it a bit further than either of the other guys has.

On Live, when the map comes up it’s a fully interactive scrollable map. On both Google and Yahoo, it’s just a screenshot of the map. You need to click it to get to the “real” map.

Here are links to search for “1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, Washington, DC” on all three search engines (that would be the White House, if you weren’t aware):

Live.com
Google
Yahoo

This technique has been Microsoft’s mojo for years now – wait and see what the other guy does, then copy it and do it just a bit better. Sadly, it tends to work. They’ve failed miserably in search thus far, but they’re always someone to keep an eye on.

Maybe Google Earth really IS aiding terrorists

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This story might end up getting blown way out of proportion…

The Smoking Gun is reporting that one of the men arrested in the recent JFK airport terror plot had been using Google Earth to get details on the facility. Apparently the terrorists used Google Earth to share information about various physical aspects of the airport, including the distance from the street to the fuel tanks.

Depending how the press decides to run with this story, Google may face some serious heat. Of course, if Google Earth (and Maps) didn’t exist, there’s hundreds of other places where terrorists can get this data. It’ll be interesting to see how this gets portrayed in the coming days.

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Some other tidbits about Google Maps from last week.

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Mike Pegg at Google Maps Mania just posted a short summary of new features

in the Google Maps API that were revealed at the Google Developer Day last week.  There are a number of items in there, but the main one I missed was the ability to add live traffic data to your API map.  It’s very simple to do, so kudos to Google for that.

It’s worth reading the full article on his site

when you get a chance.

Microsoft and KML support

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Whether or not Microsoft’s Virtual Earth will ever support the KML format is becoming an interesting topic.  Logic would seem to point to “yes”, but that’s not necessarily the case.

This topic was brought up at the “birds of a feather” meeting at Where 2.0 last week (discussed here

).   Their response was not great.

When the subject of KML support was brought up, the speaker from MS was in disbelief.  He said something to the effect of “no, not in our plans”, but had the look of shock that we would ask such an outrageous question – he almost seemed offended that such a topic would be raised at all.  Of course

they won’t support KML.

That being said, I’ve heard from other sources that KML is likely in their plans.  It makes a lot of sense for a number of reasons, but I could see it going either way.  It’s far too hard to share cool places in Virtual Earth, so using KML or some proprietary format to make sharing places easier would be a good move.

Why did Google create Street View?

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The more I think about it, the more I question why Google spent so much time and money implementing “Street View”. Sure, it’s neat — but isn’t it just a temporary (and unnecessary) step?

With the advancements in 3D buildings in Google Earth (and Virtual Earth, for that matter), making your own “Street View” of any street anywhere is getting easier. For example, look at the comparison shot below in Denver:

Downtown Denver - StreetView vs. Google Earth

Street View looks a bit better if you zoom in tight, but Google Earth is very close. It simply seems to me that Google would be better served improving their 3D models rather than going off on this temporary side project.

Of course, there are three good reasons why they might have decided to make Street View, even with the objections I have.

1 – Good press.

It’s not a big news story to say “the 3D models in Denver are now a little bit sharper than they were before”, but Street View has generated a ton of news hype (and therefore traffic and revenue).

2 – It’s in a browser. Google Earth is a standalone client and not as easily accessible for everyone. Of course, maybe Google Earth will end up in a browser some day and that will be an irrelevant point. However, Google hasn’t indicated that at all so it might never happen.

3- Maybe they’ll be using the Street View data to map onto 3D buildings, and this is just a temporary interface into it.

What do you think? Is Street View just a temporary stop on the way to something else? Or is it the way of the future?

The state of Google Earth

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This was going to be a pretty boring post, since Google hasn’t revealed much about Google Earth lately.  I expected some big news last week at either Where 2.0 or the Google Developer Day and there was almost nothing said.  It was quite a let down.

Then this morning Google announced a huge image update! In addition to a ton of new images, they also updated the terrain layer for a few areas as well.  This makes pretty 3D terrain (like the Grand Canyon) even better.  Here is more info about the new imagery and here is more info about the terrain update.

So where does that put Google Earth?  I’d say it’s still a class above Virtual Earth (even before this update), but Microsoft is catching up quickly.   What does Google Earth need to do?

In my mind, the biggest missing feature is more HTML in the description bubble.  It seems like a small thing, but the implications are huge.  Imagine if you could drop a YouTube video in there so show what you looked like skiing down the mountain that someone is looking at.  It’d be great!  Or how about forms?  You could leave comments on files or change settings on a network link without ever having to leave Google Earth (or use the little browser that doesn’t work on many systems).

Next up is better 3D building support.  I agree that Google’s 3D buildings look better than the ones Microsoft has.  However, Microsoft has thousands more buildings, thus giving them an edge.  In addition, I like how Microsoft loads them.  Fly to a city and the buildings will pop up pretty quickly in very low res.  As you zoom in, the higher resolution data is loaded on top.  In GE, it’s high-res or nothing, which can mean quite a wait when you first visit a 3D heavy city like Denver.  Once nice thing that GE does that VE is still missing is give you a loading status.  In Virtual Earth, you never know if 3D buildings are going to come up in a minute or not – with GE, at least you know.

I consider Google Earth the king, but I love the fact that Microsoft is going to make them work real hard to stay on top. 🙂