Bing Maps Steals The Cool Crown From Google

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On the road again ...
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The Empire Strikes Back ...
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First, Bing Maps is introducing “Street Side” in 56 US metro areas, with the ambition to go global eventually. This is the Microsoft answer to Google Street View: immersive street-level photography that, like Street View, allows users to “walk down the street” and explore neighborhoods in cities. Microsoft began Street Side at roughly the same time as Street View but hadn’t released anything (to date) other than this limited demo site.

The environment that Microsoft has created is richer than Street View and brings “augmented reality” into Maps in a compelling way. Microsoft has also utilized its 3D mapping assets in creating the new experience. Here’s how the Microsoft press material describes the technology behind the new Maps experience:

Photosynth and Silverlight are the underlying technologies in Bing Maps that connect everything and help provide the more seamless experience. Based on Seadragon and Photo Tourism concepts, Photosynth lets us literally “stitch” together photographs to provide more realistic view of locations as they appear in real life. Photosynth-enabled Streetside imagery is built on geometric models that are reconstructed underneath the imagery to provide a truly 3D experience that shows locations as they are in real life.

The one “catch” is that you need to install Microsoft Silverlight to make it all work. But once installed the new Bing Maps beta site enables a wide range of experiences, search and discovery tools that haven’t been available (or maybe possible) previously.

In addition there’s an “apps gallery” that enable data overlays directly on the map. All of the current modules are Microsoft created but the company will enable third parties to integrate their content into Bing Maps (e.g., Yelp reviews) in the near term.

[...]

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Read more: http://searchengineland.com/bing-maps-steals-the-cool-crown-from-google-31005

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Cloud of Atlases

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Gæt et kort ...
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Maps without legends ...
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If you’ve ever picked up an old globe in a thrift store, you already know the sport of trying to determine its age based on where certain borders are demarcated and how territories are designated. And if testing your combined knowledge of history, culture, and cartography sounds like your kind of fun (it’s our kind of fun), you may enjoy what we’ve got in store.

We’ve removed the legends and all other telltale labels from the maps below, and challenge you to guess what each map depicts using only clues contained within the maps: the color-coding, names, landmarks, and whatever else you can detect. Here’s one clue to get you started: None of the maps represent gross national anything. [...]

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Read more: http://www.themorningnews.org/archives/diversions/cloud_of_atlases.php

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GISHowTo.com

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Med tiden et site med megen god information ...
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Could become a site worth a visit ...
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Welcome to GISHowTo.com, your source for GIS tips and tutorials. As your guide to the GIS world, I will provide tutorials on creating data in ArcGIS and tips on how to create aesthetically pleasing maps. This site is geared toward helping students of all levels and professionals in the industry.

My goal for this site is driven by my passion for GIS and for teaching others about this fascinating field. It is my idea to gather tutorials that I have put together, and include others from the web onto one site. This site will cater to the GIS student, as well as professionals in the field. I will promise to keep this site current and up to speed on the advancing technology of GIS.

Cheers! AC

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Read more: http://www.gishowto.com/

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Google Model Your Town Competition

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Noget for din indre bygge mand bob?
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We built this city ...
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What makes your town an incredible place to live?
Show your civic pride (and maybe win a prize) by creating a 3D portrait of your community and sharing it with the world. You have the power to get your town on the map – and there's no bigger map than Google Earth.
See what other towns have done (Google Earth file)

The Google Model Your Town Competition is open to people from all over the world.
All you have to do is build 3D models of the buildings in your community. Model whichever structures you think are necessary to show the planet what's special about your town.

Be recognized by your community for doing something great.
Having a 3D model of your town in Google Earth helps residents and visitors understand it in a way that flat maps and photographs can't. You can be a local hero by making a contribution to your town's future.

Getting started is easy.
You can enter on your own or recruit up to five of your fellow citizens to help you form a team, and the software tools you need are free.
Get started today

[...]

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Read more: http://sketchup.google.com/competitions/modelyourtown/index.html

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Google Dumps Gears for HTML5

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Google Gearløs ...
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Time to shift gears ...
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It's official: Google is ditching its homegrown Gears offline web app API in favor of backing HTML5 for the win.

Now that the Chrome browser is becoming available for Mac, and the Snow Leopard OS doesn't play nicely with Gears, a Google rep confirmed the company has decided to trash the whole works and wait for HTML5, even though the spec isn't yet ready and isn't supported by commercially available browsers. Oh, the humanity... or rather, the machinery.

In the mists of time, back when Gears first launched, we wrote, "We've written many times before about the need for offline web app access... And guess who is most at risk with this announcement? Yes, Microsoft. Google after all has many of the top 'best of breed' web apps now."

This was before Google's Chrome browser had hit the scene, and the Gears project was a collaborative effort between Goog, Opera, and Mozilla.

But in our coverage of last year's Google I/O conference, we wrote of Gears, "We question whether offline access is even necessary. After all... in today's world, you're never too far from an internet connection. We concluded that offline access is important now, but less important with each passing day."

Not only could Gears be used to take online data offline; Google had more in store for Gears users.

A few short months later, Google announced a geolocation API for mobile devices running Gears. We wrote, "We think that location-aware software is going to be one of the most interesting markets to watch in the near future and as as location-aware devices become more ubiquitous, we will hopefully see a lot of new and innovative services make use of them." [...]

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Read more: http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/google_dumps_gears_for_html5.php

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Organizational Facets of GIS

Book

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This book seeks to illuminate the organizational and social dimensions of Global Information Systems. It provides a broad and historical perspective on the developments of the geographic information society and on its connection to the information technology field, so as to better understand the issues and problems associated with the implementation, the diffusion, and the social use of GIS in organizations. Then, the reader is invited to explore various organizational and social contexts of GIS implementation from a thematic perspective of consultation and participation, related to different geographic and cultural fields in Europe, the United States, and Canada.

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Buy: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/184821085X/

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Introducing a new OSM editor… Potlatch 2

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FYI
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FYI
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OpenStreetMap users will know all about Potlatch, the online editor that appears when you click the ‘Edit’ tab on the site. Well, there’s a whole new version coming soon!

Potlatch 2 is a complete rewrite still with the same principle in mind: an editor which hits the right balance between speed, ease-of-use, and flexibility. It’s under very active development at the moment and I’ll include a link at the end of this post where you can have a look.

But there are four big new features – and one behind-the-scenes change – to tell you about first.

New feature – friendly tagging system

Potlatch 2 has a friendly, intuitive tagging system. The mapper can use graphical menus, dedicated fields, and icons to get the tagging just right – without the need to remember tag names and values.

For example, you can choose highway types from a set of icons, then add a speed limit by selecting the appropriate restriction sign.

All this is fully customisable using a straightforward presets file. Using this, you can create your own favourite tag combinations.

New feature – WYSIWYG rendering

Potlatch 2 has an all-new rendering engine far in advance of the current one.

With road names, patterned fills, rotated icons, and much more, the editing experience can be like working live on the familiar Mapnik rendering, the cyclemap, Osmarender, or anything you like -making it much more approachable for the beginner.

Just like the tagging, the rendering is easy to customise. It uses a special form of CSS, called MapCSS, which lets you create wonderful-looking maps with just a few lines of text. The tagging and rendering together make Potlatch 2 ideal for ‘vertical’ mapping applications, such as a cycle-specific editor or a building/addressing editor. Stylesheets aren’t just about making the map look pretty: you can create stylesheets to help your mapping, such as one that highlights roads without names.

The rendering engine (Halcyon) is available as a compact (<100k)>

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Read more: http://www.opengeodata.org/2009/11/30/introducing-a-new-osm-editor-potlatch-2/

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World file calculator

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Følg linket til en kørende version af world calculator ...
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Follow the link to get to a working calculator ;-)
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Enter the coordinates of opposing corners of the image. Geographic coordinates should be positive with N/S and E/W chosen for direction from the equator and the prime meridian. For UTM enter either positive or negative numbers for northing and easting, and leave the selectors on N and W. The results can be copied and pasted into your world file. Rotations are not handled in this implementation, so the second and third values will always be zero.

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Calculate Worldfile

Use “N” and “W” if entering northing and easting
instead of latitude and longitude.

First corner:

N S W E

Second corner:

N S W E

Image size:
width:

px height:

px

worldfile:

To use, worldfile name should
match image basename with
proper one of these for the suffix:

fw – gif
.tfw – tif
.jgw – jpg
.pgw – png

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Read more: http://egb13.net/2009/03/worldfile-calculator/

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STREETS CLOCK

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Skab din egen tidszone ...
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Get your own time zone ...
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Microsoft Demos Augmented Vision

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Microsoft udvider horisonten ...
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Microsoft to augment the horizon ...
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Better computer-vision algorithms overlay digital information on the real world.

Today, Microsoft researchers will demonstrate software that can, in real time, superimpose computer-generated information on top of a digitized view of the real world.

Altered vision: This laptop is running augmented-reality software developed by Microsoft engineers. It can recognize a person’s location using the built-in camera. In this demonstration, virtual bubbles lead to a virtual pot of gold. Credit: Microsoft

Adding additional visual data to a video display is a technique known as augmented reality. Michael Cohen, principal researcher at Microsoft Research, in Redmond, WA, says that the approach could add another dimension to future smart phones. "You could be out on the street, hold the device up, and it could recognize a restaurant and deliver ratings and the menu," he says. A smart phone featuring an augmented-reality display could also overlay a bus route and an estimate of when the next bus is due on top of a particular street. "It essentially becomes your portal to information," Cohen says.

Cohen and his colleagues will demo the augmented-reality technology at TechFest, an annual showcase of Microsoft's research projects, in Redmond. Their software, which runs on a small portable computer, analyzes scenes from a camera, matches to those stored in a database, and overlays supplementary information on the display. The researchers note that a smart phone with augmented reality could help allow engineers to "see" the pipes or electrical cables below a street. In the demonstration given at TechFest, the software will be used to lead people on a treasure hunt to a hidden prize of a (virtual) pot of gold. [...]

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Read more: http://www.technologyreview.com/computing/22218/?a=f

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