Tag Archive for 'Google Earth'

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Emperors

Published on August 8, 2006 in Geomensch and Random Box. Closed Tags: Democracy, Geoinformation, Google Earth, Politics, Public Information.

…don’t want the public to sneak a peek into their palaces. Otherwise why would the Ministry of Information order the Bahrain Internet Exchange to block all access to the Google Earth servers?

Authorities usually don’t get tired telling us again and again that who has nothing done bad, has nothing to hide and nothing to fear when it comes to privacy critical issues like video observations, biometric security or data mining projects (hello AOL!). So I’m wondering what is it what the Kingdom of Bahrain wants to hide from its people. Have you done something bad Bahrain?
Read some more details in this post.

Information means power, free information is the key to a free world.

(via OE)

Where 2.0 warm-up

Published on June 13, 2006 in Geomensch. Closed Tags: Google, Google Earth, Google Maps, Googleplex, Where 2.0.

I just got back from the Where 2.0 warm-up at Googleplex, the Google’s Geo Developer Day.

It was really great to see the team behind Google Maps/Earth and to meet up with so many other people sharing the same geo-interests. Of course conferences intend to bring people together, to enable networking, but it was a very friendly atmosphere at Googleplex. Thank you Google team!

If Where 2.0 goes on like this first warm-up day did, it’ll be an amazing conference.

One of the best things today was actually to talk to a few people which I only know from certain blogs or websites.

Mike Pegg said in his talk that Eric Schmidt suggested him and Frank Taylor to put photos on their weblog, so that people know what they look like.

But, where would be the fun if we all would know what we look like.

It wouldn’t be possible talking to someone, after a while asking “Are you related to Brian Timoney?” and getting the answer “Hey, I am Brian Timoney.” (the badge was turned around all the time so I couldn’t read the name on it…).

Apart from the social aspects at Googleplex, Google announced a few more things today:

Google Earth version 4 as Universal Binary for Mac OS X, for some Linux distributions and they are still supporting Windows.
a huge imagery update around the globe
the release of KML 2.1
KML integration within Google Maps
Google Geocoder as part of the Google Maps API

Btw, all the presentations of today were done in Google Earth. A very nice way if you want to avoid usual presentation methods.

Looking forward to a great Where 2.0 conference tomorrow!

Update:
In the meanime the video of the initial presentations and talks is available on Google Video:

No Google Earth for GIS professionals

Published on May 4, 2006 in Geomensch. Closed Tags: ArcGIS Explorer, GIS, Google Earth.

After reading this post it seems clear that there is no room for Google Earth in the professional GIS world. Unless your clients are either home users or equipped with $400 Google Earth Pro licenses. I guess that’s the point where ArcGIS Explorer will join the game.

Yet another Google Earth security risk

Published on April 7, 2006 in Geomensch and Random Box. View Comments Tags: Geoinformation, GIS, Google Earth, Politics, Scud, Security.

Scud missile The german IT news site heise is reporting (in german) that a security expert called Klaus Dieter Matschke blames Google Earth to be a potential security risk for the upcoming FIFA World Cup 2006 in Germany. He claims that with the help of Google Earth’s accuracy on certain places in Germany it would be easy for terrorists to point russian Scud missiles onto various public targets.

These missiles are accessible on the international weapon black market for years. Their range is approx. 300 kilometers and, according to the US anti-missile defense authority, they can also be launched from cargo ships. Above all, Iran is suspected to have such missiles in cargo ships installed. (no further comment needed…)

All that are probably correct facts and the coordinates shown in Google Earth could be used as target information for missiles. But, if I have the power to buy Scud missiles and equip cargo ships with them, I won’t have any problem to get accurate target coordinates. This information is not unique in Google Earth. I guess the problem is that Google Earth is publicly available. As you notice even security experts managed to access Google Earth. They now see that there is something called geographic information out there which might result in security issues, meaning business to them.
Somebody has to tell them that GIS and accurate digital geographic information already existed long before Google Earth did!

So if we are confronted with security issues based on public geographic information, what should we do? Forbid and ban every kind of GIS and accurate map except for authorities (and security experts of course)? Oh wait, it reminds me of something: can it be that less censorship, better public information and knowledge within countries and governments is, let’s say, an improvement that came along with democracy and modern society?

Update #1:
Read the full (german) article at Technology Review. Remarkable detail in this article is the paragraph where Prof. Reinhard Zölitz-Möller, University of Greifswald – Dept. of Geography, claims that the German National Mapping agency only provides coordinate information for city centers, but not for buildings. I couldn’t believe that and checked it on their website: just in case they forgot to map buildings in their 1:5.000 vector model than you’ll for sure be able to pinpoint buildings in their orthophotos.

Georeferencing photos

Published on April 3, 2006 in Geomensch. Closed Tags: ArcGIS, Extension, Georeferencing, Google Earth, Photos.

Version 4.0 of GPS-Photo Link, an ArcGIS Extension to locate photos along GPS tracks, now directly supports Google Earth. We used it quite a lot to build and manage comprehensive photo documentations of some project areas. A well working and, for our purposes, very useful tool. It’s a free upgrade for existing users.

H5N1 distribution maps

Published on March 25, 2006 in Geomensch. Closed Tags: Avian flu H5N1, Geoinformation, Google Earth, Map.

In contrast to several media scare stories about avain flu you’ll find here a well edited H5N1 distribution map by Declan Butler. A great example of how to use Google Earth for information dissemination.

Streetart in Google Earth

Published on February 21, 2006 in Geomensch and Random Box. View Comments Tags: Art, Flickr, Google Earth, GPS, Graffiti, Stencil, sticker, Streetart, Urbanism, Vienna.

For anybody interested in streetart (like stencils, stickers, etc.): I made the ongoing streetart exhibition “Streetart – The Readable City” available through Google Earth. Actually only the outdoor part is available in Google Earth (indoor it wouldn’t make sense, lack of GE’s accuracy, once Galileo is operating we can talk about mapping pictures inside of galleries). The outdoor part is a short walk through the 7th district of Vienna, along some streetart works. I did this walk with a turned on GPS, so that I could later at home geocode my photos and load them into Google Earth. That probably sounds pretty geeky, but I ensure you that I’m going for walks without the GPS device as well. Sometimes. However, playing around with Google Earth, GPS and Flickr was fun and I got a nice photo set with clean GPS EXIF entries.

Here you find the Network link for Google Earth.

On Flickr I put a few more pics from the indoor part too. It’s a free exhibition and I guess it was allowed to take pictures, at least nobody complained so far. If somebody feels like his intellectual property is violated by publishing this photos online please let me know.

Streetart
Die lesbare Stadt

11.2 – 20.3.06

Freiraum / quartier21
MuseumsQuartier
Wien Museumsplatz 1
1070 Wien

Have a look at the official website of the exhibition.

Bon vivant Google Earth

Published on February 14, 2006 in Geomensch. Closed Tags: Geomarketing, Google Earth, Wine.

Actually today we were talking how great it would be to have maps about wine regions, vineyards, etc. to get some information about the origin of the wine. This collection is a pretty good start! (via Google Earth Blog)

Publishing strategies for 2006?

Published on February 14, 2006 in Geomensch. Closed Tags: Arc2Earth, ArcGIS, ArcGIS Explorer, Geomarketing, GIS, Google Earth, Webmapping.

A few days ago I discussed with a colleague ways to publish maps, analysis results or to provide analysis tasks within an organisation. We were talking about a quite common corporate geomarketing challenge (I suppose, since we’re no geomarketing experts): a specialised department analyses spatially distributed marketing data and provides other departments with their results. Whereas the presentation of results should be somewhere in between PowerPoint slides and a full functional desktop GIS client. Honestly it was quite hard to seperate various publishing options, identify the optimal tasks and features and combine them to the best individual publishing solution. Along with recent developments on server-side GIS software, powerful new generation geo viewers like the popular Google Earth or the upcoming ArcGIS Explorer offer content providers quite an alternative to well-established map publishing solutions like mapservers do for instance.

So today I tried to sum up a few map publishing solutions I know and figure out their pros and cons, their qualities. Just to clarify: this list is not exhaustive. It’s an overview and the result of a short brainstorming to have a note for further discussions on that topic in my pocket. Comments or suggestions will be highly appreciated!

ArcGIS Publisher & ArcReader

Pros:

Out of the box viewer
Local map viewer
Optional 3D (ArcGlobe)
“Familiar” GIS application interface
Advanced map layouts
Data encryption
Viewer customisation

Cons:

Viewer installation
Local map file
Limited base maps (e.g. provided by geography network)
Extension for map authoring needed
Limited viewer functionality

Google Earth, ArcGIS Explorer (upcoming)

Pros:

Out of the box viewer
3D
already integrated access to base maps
OGC Webservice support (upcoming in GE?)
Local data support (KML, Shp, PGDB)
Customised tasks (AGX)
User acceptance (GE)

Cons:

Viewer installation
3D only
Mainly data viewer
Limited map layout authoring
Internet/Intranet access required or recommended
Ads (upcoming in GE)

Webmapserver e.g. Mapserver, ArcIMS, deegree,…

Pros:

Out of the box browser interface
Platform independent
Customisable user interface and functionality
OGC Webservice support (embed or provide)
Access to base maps by third party API (Google local, ArcWeb, Yahoo!, etc.)

Cons:

Browser interface
Last & performance
Development effort

ArcGIS Server, GRASS, GDAL, etc.

Pros:

Browser interface
Platform independent
Customisable user interface and functionality
Customised advanced tasks

Cons:

Browser interface
Last & performance
Development effort