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3DWH: RT @gearthblog: 3D sounds with the Google Earth Plug-in http://dlvr.it/4bgkl

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3DWH: RT @googlemapmaker: New Map Maker data update on Google Maps, including Mexico for the first time!

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We’ve just launched Tripline (http://www.tripline.net), and we’re excited to talk about how we’re using Google Maps. We’ve been laboring for months in solitude, so it feels great to finally talk about what we’ve built.

Tripline is all about maps. The Tripline concept goes back to 2005 when I started manually creating map-based plans to visualize upcoming trips. I’m one of those people who can stare at the moving map on an airplane for the duration of a long flight, so my desire to understand travel from a geographical viewpoint is inherent, and I think quite common. And, as we so often see in movies, a moving line on a map is a great way to tell a story.

The Tripline Player uses the Google Maps API for Flash and animates progression from point to point using a simplified KML-like data structure. We chose Flash primarily because it was the best platform to combine the maps, animation, and soundtrack elements that were part of the design. It also means that trips are shareable, as you can see from the example embedded above. We chose the terrain view because we think it best conveys the feeling of an adventurous journey. One of my favorite things to do is to press play, enter full screen mode and just sit back and watch a story unfold. The Google Maps API for Flash helps make that experience smooth and beautiful. It’s essential to our product.

The player represents the end-product of a created trip, but what about the creation process itself? Our goal was to make trip-creation as simple and flexible as typing a bullet list, and we spent a lot of time working towards that goal. We’re using many different Maps API components in our trip editor, including geodesic polylines, custom markers and custom infowindows. To add places, we’re using the Google AJAX Search API and the Geocoder API, and for trip thumbnails, we’re using the Google Static Maps API.

Speed and reliability are also essential. Users will forgive a lack of features and even bad design, but if your application is slow, you’re dead. The Google Maps APIs are always on and always fast, which is something that very few services can guarantee. That’s one of the key reasons why we use Google services to support the core capabilities of our product. We’ve been live now for just under a month, and it’s been smooth sailing. We’re also hard at work on our next release, so stay tuned for more. Thanks Google.

Posted by Byron Dumbrill, Founder & CEO, Tripline

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With the wellhead capped this is rapidly approaching old news, but it’s still worth admiring the cartographic virtues of the Times-Picayune’s interactive map of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, with a timeline from April 20 to July 28. Via Andrew Matranga.

The Times-Picayune’s Interactive Oil Spill Map first appeared on The Map Room: A Weblog About Maps on September 2, 2010. Copyright © 2010 Jonathan Crowe. Distributed under a Creative Commons licence.

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At the IFA consumer electronics show in Berlin today, Navteq announced a new form of voice navigation called Natural Guidance:

NAVTEQ Natural Guidance leapfrogs today’s linear navigation instructions — e.g. “turn right in 50 meters on Kurfürstendamm” — by guiding the way humans instruct each other, through descriptions of orientation points such as distinctive points of interest and landmarks — e.g. “turn right after the yellow shop” or “turn right at the traffic signal.” Research shows consumers desire more intuitive and practical directions because it is easier to follow and allows the user to keep their eyes on the road. NAVTEQ Natural Guidance enables applications to use recognizable and easily understandable points of reference close to the decision point to highlight the next maneuver.

Landmark-based navigation isn’t the only way people navigate. I’m probably highly weird in that I tend to navigate by streets and highway markers, not by landmarks — I’m not going to turn left at the Wendy’s because I’m not looking for or at restaurants when I drive. Having said that, people who navigate like me — all 12 of us — are already well served by voice-based turn-by-turn directions. I imagine that people who use landmarks will much prefer this sort of navigation — assuming Navteq can get it working properly.

It’s available for eight cities so far, with plans to expand. No word in the press release about the devices on which Natural Guidance will be available. Via CNet.

Navteq Unveils Landmark-Based Navigation first appeared on The Map Room: A Weblog About Maps on September 2, 2010. Copyright © 2010 Jonathan Crowe. Distributed under a Creative Commons licence.

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The Google SketchUp team is listening and wants to hear what you have to say about SketchUp 8!

This week at 3D Basecamp, selected SketchUp enthusiasts will gather in Boulder CO, to meet the SketchUp team and discuss all things in nature. One of the perks of attending 3D Basecamp is that users are presented with the opportunity to speak with SketchUp engineers face to face. They can ask their most pressing questions and share their most brilliant ideas for improving SketchUp.

Well guess what? This year, we are happy to announce that there is a way for every SketchUp fan (whether at 3D Basecamp or not) to be heard by the SketchUp team.

Today, we are launching our Google SketchUp Questions and Ideas moderator series where all SketchUp users can post questions and share ideas directly with the SketchUp team. The team is looking to clarify any questions you may have related to SketchUp 8 and is interested in hearing suggestions and ideas for improving SketchUp. We’re interested in hearing all your wildest ideas, so don’t be shy! While you’re on the series, also make sure to vote on other users’ questions and ideas. The SketchUp team will address top submissions publicly at 3D Basecamp and responses will also be posted directly in the series and in subsequent blog posts.

There are a few things to keep in mind when using the series. The series will have two different sections: one for asking questions about SketchUp 8, and one for posting any suggestions or ideas you have for making SketchUp better. Make sure you are posting in the appropriate section. Secondly, Please search for your question or idea FIRST to make sure it hasn’t already been posted. If it has, you should vote for it instead of writing in a duplicate. Also make sure to only submit one question or idea at a time, so it’s clear to your fellow users’ what exactly they are voting on. Following these rules will allow for more accurate voting results, and the SketchUp team will be able to comment on the questions and ideas you really care about.

The SketchUp team looks forward to hearing from you!

Posted by Carolyn Wendell, SketchUp Support Team

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Hodder Geography is running a map doodle competition: they want entrants to draw “your own map of your world, real or imagined,” scan it and send it in. Via Thierry Gregorius.

Not the first hand-drawn map competition, not by a long shot — I may have to create a new category. Previously: Mapplers, an Online Atlas of Hand-Drawn Maps, Seeks Contributors; Slate Receives Hand-Drawn Maps; Slate Wants Hand-Drawn Maps; Londonist Wants Hand-Drawn Maps; Hand-Drawn Map Assoociation Book and Contest.

Hodder Wants Your Map ‘Doodles’ first appeared on The Map Room: A Weblog About Maps on September 2, 2010. Copyright © 2010 Jonathan Crowe. Distributed under a Creative Commons licence.

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googlemaps: Hot off the satellite: 9/1/2010 imagery from @BurningMan ‘@GeoEye Featured Imagery’ layer in @googleearth http://bit.ly/4S5cW0 #burningman

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3DWH: #3dbasecamp enters its second day. 200 SketchUp enthusiasts enjoying the event in Boulder, Colorado.

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3DWH: Hello, Lahaina! West Maui filling out in 3D http://bit.ly/d8oV1w

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Recently I have been lugging around my camera, gigapan, tripod and numerous batteries on most of my trips. I always feel the further I carry it, the more I deserve to get a great panoramic image. And of course it never works out like that… I have realised that the ‘zoomability’ of a gigapan panorama, marvelling at the number photos you took to make it and feeling pleased that you spent 3 hours hiking up a mountain to get to the vantage point is just not enough to create a compelling panorama scene.

At its core I believe that taking a GigaPan is really just like ordinary photography, the whole image needs to have a good composition and look great in its own right. In fact a panorama which is full of technical errors can still be a great composition and compelling to viewers because of it.

Take this example. I hiked for over 3.5 hours to get to this mountain to take the image. My rucksack was heavy with all the gear. It is a fantastic vantage point overlooked by the Nordkette ridge and looking down on Innsbruck and the Inn valley. One of the best views in the area. It was tricky to set up the gear. As it was windy I had to weigh down the tripod with rocks in the snow. It was complex to setup the extent of the 360 gigapan as there were objects in close view. As the wind picked up I got colder. I had to restart taking the GigaPan sevral times as the unit kept on switching itself off (something to do with the batteries?). I took 1092 photos and got colder and colder while I waited. So I really deserved to get a good panorama!

Here it is:

OK so it is big, it stitched relatively well and you can zoom in and see some cool things. But the whole panorama looks crap. Why? It is just simply a bad composition. It looks odd, boring and nothing draws your eye. I was so focused on the technology and conditions, I just missed the simple rules for composing an image. And not surprisingly its ‘Explore Score‘ on gigapan.org is 0.

Then take the next example. It was a leisurely trip to get there. I had had a nice bit of cake with schnapps in the Alm below. I was drinking a cup of coffee as I took it. It was not that many photos in the panorama (800). Easy! So I did not really deserve a good panorama.

Here it is:

When I look at it I see quite a few technical flaws. The sun was going in and out, so you can see ‘stripes’ where the exposure varies (see the grass on the right). I was using autofocus so there are some obvious joins. Some of the mountains in the left distance are over exposed. However it is a compelling scheme to explore. This is reflected by the fact that at the moment it is my gigapan with my highest ‘Explore Score’ on gigapan.org.

So what is the difference? In my mind it is just simple composition. It the 2nd panorama your eye is drawn to the interesting Alm Building with all its clutter. The image is framed on both sides by the grass slopes and then trees. You feel like you want to spend time exploring and experiencing this interesting Alpine scene. It’s not a masterpiece, but I a pleased with it.

With the 2nd panorama the difference was my approach and outlook. I took my time. I did not worry too much about the GigaPan tech in it’s own right, it is juts a tool. In fact while I was eating my cake in the Alm below I started planning my scene and the experience I wanted to capture. For me the Mountains were important, but I wanted the slightly chaotic and lived-in detail of this real alpine agricultural building to be the focus. Therefore it had to be framed by the scenery. Then (while I had another Schnapps) I started to think about where the best vantage point would be. Then I spent a good 20 mins tramping around on the slope behind the Alm to find the best vantage point, the right angle and the right distance. The trickiest bit was getting the extent and alignment of the scene just right. With a GigaPan you cannot just look through a viewfinder and see what you are going to get. You have to be able to imagine it in your head. That’s what makes it so much fun! So all the time I was thinking ‘composition’.

Recently I have noticed that with my photography in general I have been falling into the digital trap of just taking 100s of thoughtless pictures of a scene (while randomly changing a few parameters) and hoping one will turn out well . If you do not think about it, why should it! I have been inspired by a documentary I saw recently that (among other things) featured David Golblatt taking a picture. He spent ages scouting out his scene he wanted to capture, planning it and then getting everything juts right. The he just took one exposure as he was so confident that he had prepared everything so carefully. Here is one example of his approach. More thought on composition and less snapping is what I am now trying…

So that is my GigaPan tip for today: “Composition is everything”

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Kashgar, in China’s remote far-west Xinjiang province, lies on a fertile crescent at the convergence of ancient caravan routes linking India, Central Asia and China. For over a millenium, this fabled city was a crucial link in the Silk Route economy, and its culture thrived.

I have long wanted to visit Kashgar. In May 2009, traveling there took on some urgency when it became apparent that the Chinese local government had begun implementing plans to demolish 85% of the remaining old town. The New York Times sounded the alarm; the news raised hackles from preservationists around the world, because Kashgar’s old town was until then regarded as “the best-preserved example of a traditional Islamic city to be found anywhere in central Asia.”

I finally managed to visit Kashgar in late July 2010, and stayed for over a week, walking through practically every alley I could find, documenting the the old town’s transformation and photographing its people.

Click on Kashgar photos to enlarge

The photos I took are up on Flickr, but a project like this is made to be published on Google Earth, so I georeferenced the photos using GPS. I also mapped the demolished areas as I walked through them. The resulting files — georeferenced photos, GPS tracks and a superimposed map — can be downloaded as a KMZ file for Google Earth. This is a documentary snapshot of Kashgar circa August 1, 2010.

What did I find? I can report that almost half of the remaining old town has been razed, and much of the rest is set to go. Most of the buildings facing the old town’s main streets have been preserved, but the areas behind them are being hollowed out. Many alleys now end in wide-open spaces, empty save for the occasional denuded hold-out home whose exterior walls show the interior decorations of vanished neighbors. Here and there, a lone tree marks the spot of a demolished courtyard. Children have colonized these open spaces as a massive romping ground, for now.

In other parts of the old town, where the bulldozers were only just beginning to venture, I found families busily gutting their own homes, dragging out metal staircases, recovering bricks, salvaging what is salvageable for use in their new home. They looked resigned but not despondent, and were always happy to have me around taking photos. (Kashgaris are extraordinarily friendly and engaging, young and old alike.)

I have learned from living in Shanghai and now Beijing that Chinese authorities — and to a certain extent mainstream Chinese culture — do not attach much importance to protecting traditional vernacular architecture. Imperial palaces and grand religious temples are worthy of preservation or even reconstruction, but not on the whole the hutong of Beijing or the lane houses of Shanghai, which are deemed too ordinary, especially when there is money to made building high-rises in their stead.

In Europe, by contrast, entire towns can remain unmolested, from Óbidos to San Gimignano to Visby. The West’s record is not unblemished, of course: In New York City, Robert Moses was able to do some damage before he found his match in Jane Jacobs, whose 1961 book The Death and Life of Great American Cities redefined how we view and value lower-income urban communities. In Europe, wars did far more damage than Moses ever could, but even there the destruction set in place a process of valuing what was lost, with towns like Ypres and Dresden choosing to meticulously reconstruct their destroyed cores.

Moses might also have had a go at Kashgar, so we Westerners shouldn’t feel too smug; as recently as 1961, when Jane Jacobs’s book was educating us, the Chinese had far more pressing concerns, namely avoiding being among the 35 million who perished through famine in Mao’s Great Leap Forward.

As anyone who has been to Kashgar can attest, the alleys do not divulge much by way of opulence. The public-facing walls of the old town’s homes are bare — made of mud- or baked yellow brick rising 2-3 stories. A wooden door, if open, reveals a curtain preserving the privacy of a shady courtyard inside. The exteriors are not beautiful in an aesthetic sense, though that is not where the effort lies; it’s on the inside that these homes reveal their real wealth, through the ornate woodwork on covered verandas and the intricate stucco interiors.

As old Kashgar is dismantled, the remaining homes are losing their shared exterior walls, affording just for a brief moment a view into their covered courtyards. It’s a swan song, however; soon enough these homes too will disappear, once compensation is agreed to.

(Or if their owners hold out indefinitely they’ll be denied electricity and water until their cause is made irrelevant by “facts on the ground”:)

How are these empty spaces being refilled? It is already possible to discern a two-pronged strategy. Encroaching on the perimeter of the old town, contiguous to main roads or previously built modern construction, 4-6 story medium-rise residential buildings are sprouting. Meanwhile, in the interior of the old town, work crews are constructing 2-3 story reinforced concrete frameworks, at roughly the same scale as the structures they replace. In at least a few cases, I saw new owners filling in the walls themselves with bricks recovered from their old homes. The new construction I’ve seen differs from the old in three ways: It does not in the main conform to the traditional layout of a central covered courtyard; the new alleys are wider, allowing vehicle access; and because they are wider, there is little opportunity to expand homes by building across alleys, as was often done with the old homes.

Work is progressing rapidly. The most recent imagery in Google Earth right now, dated October 26, 2009, shows just the beginning phases of the demolition. When a section has been demolished, crews start prepping the ground for new construction while the next section is cleared. The razing and rebuilding of Kashgar is thus happening concurrently. At this pace, it looks to me like they can get all of it done by mid-2012.

But why does this need to happen at all, let alone so quickly? Some reports (such as the one in Time Magazine) espouse theories portraying the demolition of old Kashgar as an attempt by the majority Han to better subjugate the Uyghurs. The problem with this theory is that demolition on such a scale is not just foisted on China’s ethnic minorities. In Beijing I cycle daily past newly demolished hutong districts. Here too, the process is not transparent, residents are not consulted, and in general are told only at the last possible moment when to vacate homes up for demolition. (Michael Meyer’s The Last Days of Old Beijing is a great read if you want to know more.)

One reason given to journalists for the demolition is that the whole region is earthquake-prone, and thus the only way to preëmptively save Kashgari lives is to destroy their unsafe homes. I mooted that explanation to a local Uyghur guide, who scoffed at it, pointing out that these buildings have survived for centuries. More likely, I think, is that Chinese bureaucrats surveying old Kashgar saw only embarrassing poverty, and unilaterally decided to drag it into the 21st century. These officials may never have been inside a meticulously decorated Uyghur courtyard home, or perhaps they visited a few but did not care much for them. The prospect of handing out building contracts could also have helped the decision to demolish.

But even if I were convinced of the need for a Kashgar makeover, why does it need to happen so quickly? Why not gradually renovate over a 10-15 year period, one neighborhood at a time, replacing just the most precarious structures and bringing modern amenities to the rest? To make a forestry analogy, why clearcut when you could fell selectively, removing just the dead wood, preserving the special character of an old-growth forest?

I can think of a few reasons. First, blunt instruments are cheaper. Second, just as in Beijing, speedy implementations of opaquely arrived-at demolition orders thwart opportunities for organized local resistance. Third, 10-15 year-long projects take too long to be compatible with the hoped-for career trajectories of the local Communist Party bosses, eager to take credit for their initiatives now. (Separately, I fear to think what happens to all the archaeological material that must become visible when an entire city strata is churned over. At this pace, there cannot possibly be time for proper excavations.)

Why hasn’t tourism been a better incentive for preservation? You do see the occasional westerner exploring the town, but the overwhelming majority of tourists in Kashgar are affluent visitors from within China, and they uniformly travel in bussed tour groups, deposited at various locales where they are led to photogenic spots by guides bearing portable loudspeakers. Among these destinations are the two officially protected parts of the old town, the 15% where bulldozers won’t tread. These neighborhoods have been turned into open-air museums, with an entrance fee (RMB 30, USD 4.40) that entitles access to various courtyard homes and souvenir shops. I suspect that the Chinese authorities think these two areas should suffice for the majority of tourists. Depressingly, they may be right.

But tourism alone shouldn’t motivate preservation. Traditional urban geography anchors local culture through the unique social interactions it facilitates; Kashgar’s alleys, with their many small mosques and nearby teahouses, foster micro-neighborhoods safe enough for bare-bottomed toddlers to play unsupervised. Preserving a token part of the old town for touristic purposes is of no value to the ex-residents who have lost their particular neighborhood.

Will old Kashgar’s urban culture survive the wholesale uprooting of its building stock? A number of residents are opting to spend their compensation on apartments in new high-rises at the edge of the city, which promise decent plumbing and insulation — as did one guide I talked to. (I too like my amenities, so I cannot blame them). Perhaps the new 2-3 story buildings at the center of the old town will be similar enough in scale and function that they can simulate the old urban geography. I hope so, though I fear that the character of old Kashgar will soon change irrevocably, not through necessity or war or natural disaster, but through fiat. And that would be a great pity.

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• Archaeology Magazine Blog – Beyond Stone and Bone » Google Earth and A New Generation of Archaeologists
  Heather Pringle blogs about her (paywalled) Science Magazine article which looks at how Google Earth is changing the field of archaeology.

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OMG Rainbows!

?? Google Map’s the only thing / To take you over the rainbow to the land where cartography is King. ??

I love discovering new uses for Google Maps and I’m pretty sure that this is the very first rainbow predicator to feature on Google Maps Mania.

The map uses the regularly updated National Weather Service radar mosaic to find where rain is falling and combines that with current solar elevation and azimuth to show areas that have a high potential for rainbows. The areas that have a potential for rainbows are shown in red on the map.

You can quickly zoom into an area marked in red or you can use the search engine to look for rainbows near your current location. And who doesn’t want to search for rainbows?

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OMG Rainbows!

?? Google Map’s the only thing / To take you over the rainbow to the land where cartography is King. ??

I love discovering new uses for Google Maps and I’m pretty sure that this is the very first rainbow predicator to feature on Google Maps Mania.

The map uses the regularly updated National Weather Service radar mosaic to find where rain is falling and combines that with current solar elevation and azimuth to show areas that have a high potential for rainbows. The areas that have a potential for rainbows are shown in red on the map.

You can quickly zoom into an area marked in red or you can use the search engine to look for rainbows near your current location. And who doesn’t want to search for rainbows?

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