Around the World in 80 Seconds
After dinner at the Reform Club yesterday I took a seat in the reading-room beside the open fire. I was soon joined by my usual five whist partners.
It was during the ensuing conversation that I somehow found myself betting twenty thousand pounds that it was possible to travel around the world in 80 seconds using the newly opened Google Earth browser plug-in.
What follows is my attempts to circumnavigate the globe in less than 80 seconds …
Other Book Related Maps
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Spanish website Blog Urbanismo is reporting that there will be a press announcement on Tuesday, October 28th, about the release of Street View imagery in Spain. They say that they received this invitation for a press conference on Tuesday.
PRESS CONFERENCE ON GOOGLE LAUNCH OF STREET VIEW IN SPAIN
You’re invited to the briefing presentation in Spain of Street View next Tuesday Oct. 28 in Madrid.
Javier Gonzalez-Soria, Director of the Division of Tourism Spanish Google, Olga San Jacinto, Director of Finance, Real Estate and Google Local Spain and Fernando Delgado, Google engineer in Zurich will be responsible for presenting alongside Pablo Bautista, manager of the Municipal Promotion of Tourism in Madrid; Monica Espina, Director of fotocasa.es and Juan Vallejo, Director General of lanetro. (Google Translate)
If Google do release Street View for Spain on Tuesday it will be exactly a fortnight after the release of Street View in Lille, Lyon, Toulouse, Marseille and Nice.
Fotocasa.es
Fotocasa.es is a Spanish real estate website that uses Google Maps to show the location of properties. If you look at the screen shot above you will see that Fotocasa.es have already added the Street View button and icon to their maps.
Via: Google Earth Blog
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A message sent out last week by E-mail to the press has stirred the anticipation of Street View imagery coming to Spain. The E-mail was posted on a Spanish blog called Blog Urbanismo and says there will be a press announcement on Tuesday, October 28th, about the release of Street View imagery for Spain. I’ll be keeping a close eye on both Google Earth and Maps for the impending release (which usually happens several hours before Google makes a press announcement).
While you’re waiting, you might want to check out the new Street View imagery in France released on the 14th of October.
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New BBC Weather Maps (Beta v1.0)
The BBC are looking into revamping thier current weather service for 2009.
The are currently looking into adding more interactive features the visual weather portal.
New Features: *subject to feedback and beta status.
A ‘one-stop shop’ (no need to wait for another page to load)
Better Navigation to Maps in the users ‘area of interest’
Flash based maps - animation is smoother and faster [tested with Flash Player 10]
More updates from the Met Office = Better accuaracy and currency of weather.
More localised weather particularly in the United Kingdom.
Maps are now embedded in Flash - faster loading and smoother animations.
BBC Weather is now location based vs the old version by type of forecast.
“all forecast information is now organised by location rather than by type of forecast it might look like there is less information on the site.”
More to be added in later beta versions
“The map presenter will also be more interactive and you will be able to view maps for surrounding areas without leaving the page. Later in 2008 we will be adding embedded video forecasts.”
“We are currently sourcing forecast temperatures for coastal waters and will add these to the site when they are ready.”
Try the BBC Beta Weather Maps
(click the image to view)
Please review the site and request new features like - georss, archive weather maps by date, 3D option, transparent overlays (cloud+radar etc) are just a few as examples.
maybe rainfall charts, wind factor, chill factor…
More information
http://www.bbc.co.uk/weather/bbcweather/features/website_redesign.shtml
Mapperz
Mapperz News Blog
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You can read the details but essentially, a driver, blindly following his satnav got stuck on the railroad tracks in Bedford Hills, New York and a train hit the car. No one was hurt.
Two items of importance fall out of the story:
(1) The driver called 911 for help instead of the MTA number posted at the crossing. The MTA number currently includes letters and numbers, perhaps making it more difficult to call when under stress. The MTA is considering changing it to all letters. That’s probably a good move, but how are they going to get drivers (or anyone) who is panicked to call it over 911? The 911 operator who does receive such a call must then forward it to MTA officials sometimes losing precious time. In this case, the 911 call occurred one minute and the call from 911 to MTA happened in the next minute. That’s not too bad in my book.
(2) This is scary: “The state Department of Transportation and the Department of Motor Vehicles, the National Transportation Safety Board and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration do not keep statistics on GPS-related traffic accidents.” Why not? I think it’s time someone did! An MTA spokesperson noted 4 accidents at that crossing since 2000; the last two involved GPS devices.
- LoHud.com
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In November there will be a general election between Helen Clark and John Key in New Zealand. New Zealand’s public broadcaster, TVNZ and YouTube have come together to organise the ONE News YouTube Election Debate between the two nominees. This will be the first time that the head of a national government and a challenger will face YouTube video questions in an official live TV debate.
Google have created an Elections ‘08 Map Gallery to highlight Google Maps mash-ups covering the 2008 US race for the Presidency. As yet I’ve seen little evidence of an elections gallery for New Zealand but I have found this excellent New Zealand electorates boundary map.
New Zealand Electorates Boundary Map
This Google Map mash-up allows users to select any of the New Zealand electorates. When an electorate is chosen from the map sidebar a shaded polygon displays the electorate boundary on the map. If you click on any of the displayed electorates an information window opens indicating which electorate has been clicked.
Hopefully this is the first of many New Zealand election Google Maps mash-ups. For example, it would be very easy to colour the electorate boundaries on this map to indicate which political party currently holds the seat.
Via: iWang
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A long time ago I had a summer job as a road surveyor with a local authority in the UK. The job involved walking around the county entering the details of road damage into a hand held computer. Twenty years later, as I drive around the county, I would swear that some of the potholes wrecking my suspension are the same ones I recorded all those years ago.
What local government needs is some method for citizens to directly report the location of local problems. Perhaps something like Google Maps.
Better Pune
Better Pune have a mission to help improve the condition of roads in Pune, India. They believe that the the quality of roads in the city is pretty poor and reflects a failure of the municipal and political institutions in Pune.
Better Pune uses Google Maps to allow local citizens to report on the location of poor road conditions. All the reported problems are then shown on one large Google Map. It is possible to select the type of road hazard you wish to view by selecting from ‘potholes’, ‘drain cleaning’, ‘water logging’ and ‘others’. Clicking on an individual complaint reveals the date the complaint was filed and its current status.
Via: Google Earth Blog
FillThatHole
This UK based website allows anyone to report a road hazard by entering the location on a Google Map. The site also has a Google Map showing the location of all the reported hazards on UK roads. When you click on a tagged hazard you can retrieve information about the progress of the hazard, for example whether the council has actually fixed the problem or not.
There is no reason why local government couldn’t introduce reporting systems for all types of local problems using interactive maps in this way. Yesterday the Google Earth Blog reported on a Google Earth file from the DC Water and Sewer Authority which reports on both working and non-working fire hydrants throughout the city. It is even possible to report broken hydrants directly from Google Earth to the authority.
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In their recently released Magic Quadrant for Email Security Boundaries (published September 11, 2008), Gartner Inc., an information technology research and advisory company, placed Google in the “Leaders Quadrant.” Quadrant leaders, as Gartner defines them, are “performing well today, have a clear vision of market direction, and are actively building competencies to sustain their leadership position in the market.” Quadrant leaders also “offer a comprehensive and proficient range of email security functionality, and show evidence of superior vision and execution for current and anticipated customer requirements.
Leaders typically have relatively high market share and/or strong revenue growth, own a good portion of their threat or content-filtering capabilities, and demonstrate positive customer feedback for anti-spam efficacy, and related service and support.“ The report goes on to say that “The email security market is rapidly maturing, yet continues to show strong growth and remains a ‘must have’ security purchase.”
We’re pleased to be included in this report and recognized in the leaders quadrant, as it underlines, in our opinion, the importance we attach to protecting against email-based threats and the ways we’re helping our customers do so. Since the integration of the Postini email security product line in 2007 into Google’s Enterprise Apps, Google has continued to innovate these products with functionality for our customers, including a new early detection quarantine that uses our own heuristics to detect new virus strains before virus signatures are available. We have also added new content filter types, policy prioritization for messages that trigger more than one policy, and new policy engine interface features.
The Gartner Magic Quadrant is copyrighted 2008 by Gartner, Inc., and is reused with permission. The Magic Quadrant is a graphical representation of a marketplace at and for a specific time period. It depicts Gartner’s analysis of how certain vendors measure against criteria for that marketplace, as defined by Gartner. Gartner does not endorse any vendor, product or service depicted in the Magic Quadrant, and does not advise technology users to select only those vendors placed in the “Leaders” quadrant. The Magic Quadrant is intended solely as a research tool, and is not meant to be a specific guide to action. Gartner disclaims all warranties, express or implied, with respect to this research, including any warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose.
Posted by Adam Swidler, Google Enterprise Product Marketing
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[Cross-posted from the Official Google Australia Blog]
Australia is home to many geographical treasures, and the Great Barrier Reef has to be one of my favourites. There’s a magnitude, a depth, and a diversity of marine life that just leaves me in awe of this ecosystem that stretches more than 2,500 kilometres along the Queensland coast — from Bundaberg up to Cape York.
You can now use Google Maps to find and explore the largest reef system in the world. Through close collaboration with the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority, we now provide map data and updated satellite imagery of the islands, reefs, cays, and rocks in Google Maps.
You can plan holiday travels, scope out your dives, engage your students, and visualise the reef with greater interactivity. Of course you can also overlay your own information on the reef system and share with family, friends, or the world.
It’s also my hope that in line with the goals of the International Year of the Reef 2008, the addition of the Great Barrier Reef to Google Maps will help strengthen awareness, improve understanding, and generate action to help conserve our international treasure.
If you’re lucky enough to have visited the reef, enjoy reliving your memories. If you’ve not yet been, happy discovering.
Posted by Raul Vera, Head of Geo Products, Google Australia
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I was thinking the past week about a project that we will start working on soon. Simply put, it is updating a MapObjects IMS application we deployed almost 10 years ago, that is still working. When I saw that it was not only still running, but it was still a critical part of their business workflow, it started me thinking about why such an application was so successful. It obviously wasn’t the technology. Sure the back end runs on Oracle, but even the most ardent MOIMS supporter can’t claim that the VisualBasic application was cutting edge even back then. So that must mean there was something else going on that kept it running when most MOIMS sites are long gone.
Won’t someone please think of the users?
History of GIS applications tells us one story that repeats itself again and again. There is a horrible habit of pushing over-engineered applications that are not used by the target audience because no one has time to figure out complicated tools. GIS vendors have not discouraged such habits and in some cases encourage them. The GIS world is really good at writing GIS applications for GIS professionals. I think this used to work before GIS and mapping became important in our everyday lives, but now that everyone everywhere is looking at deploying spatial applications focus needs to be put on what the end users are going to be doing with the application.
So back to that old MapObjects application, it did a really good job of doing what it was supposed to do. Display information in a context that the users were comfortable working (the interface was familiar to them) with and meet their requirements (which were obviously well developed), fit within their websites, scaled well (even VisualBasic does that apparently) and wasn’t an obstacle to their workflows. With MOIMS depreciated and the need to connect to more modern ESRI servers and Oracle databases the application needs to be updated, but not because it restricts their business practices and workflows.
Foisting this application on users of a bus system was poorly thought out, but the Google Transit version released a few weeks ago hits the target users right on. The heavy GIS website might meet needs of users in the organizations internally, but externally it really highlights missed opportunities and wasted resources. I’m personally really excited to see if we can replicate the success of the earlier MOIMS application with JavaScript APIs, KML downloads and other new technology and still keep is simple. The key is listen to what the client really wants and be agile enough to deliver simple, focused, and fast products.
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“Fantasy is like fruit and desert, and reality is like meat and potatoes and green beans,” says Renaldo Kuhler. The 76-year-old artist is speaking at the beginning of a trailer to an upcoming documentary called Rocaterrania. Kuhler spent his working life as an illustrator, earning a living rather than a reputation. But the uncelebrated illustrator, sporting the long, white beard of unheeded prophets and out-of-fashion philosophers, had another career, a brilliant and secret one.
For many decades, Kuhler has been pouring all his private anguish and artistic energy in a project that has remained secret up until now. That project is Rocaterrania, an imaginary country somewhere between the Adirondack Mountains in upstate New York and the St Lawrence River on the border between the US and Canada.
The boredom and isolation of a youth spent on a ranch out in Colorado drove the young Kuhler to fill notebook after notebook with illuminations of his own private country -. Despite the slightly latinate name, the country was founded by Eastern European immigrants (Kohler himself is the son of a German immigrant). And despite the somewhat saccharine sound of its name, the country was all but peaceful, prosperous and quiet.
Reflecting his own inner turmoil, Rocaterrania experienced revolutions aplenty, suffering under the successive rule of presidents, dictators and czars. Many figures are as stark and tragic as any in a Dostoevsky novel. And then some. There even was a female ruler who went around the streets, catching urchins to castrate them.
“Each person is a nation unto himself, and what he does with that nation is up to him,” Kuhler explains at the end of the aforementioned trailer, that offers a brief and intriguing glimpse into the grim fairytale he constructed in the far reaches of his imagination.
It’s no wonder Kuhler was reluctant to publicise the existence of his troubled ‘inner country’. But it is a shame - the illustrations of the people and places in Rocaterrania look fantastic. And in any case, now there’s the upcoming feature-length film by documentary-maker Brett Ingram.
This map shows the location of Rociterrania on the St Lawrence River, and its borders with the US and Canada. Multicultural Rociterrania possesses a corridor to the river, in which is located the town of Katerin Shtot (sounds Yiddish, or at least looks like it because of the phonetic spelling). A large, uninhabited area to the west is called Westerwald (German). A town on the east bank of Lago Eldorado (Spanish) is the town of Novo Tyumen (Russian), on its west bank is Biala (which sounds more Polish), and further west are places called Serbia, East New Serbia and Black New Serbia.
All of this - an New World dystopia with an Eastern European flavour - is somewhat reminiscent both of The Yiddish Policemen’s Union (Michael Chabon’s allohistorical detective novel set in an Alaskan Jewish state) and The Jew of New York (a graphic novel by Ben Katchor about a real-life, failed attempt to found a Jewish homeland in… upstate New York). And all of that reminds me that I urgently need to find a good map of Birobidzhan - Stalin’s gift of a homeland to the Soviet Union’s Jews… Generous enough, if that ‘New Israel’ hadn’t been located in Siberia…
Many thanks to Brett Ingram for providing me with this map of Rocaterrania, made by Mr Kuhler. And many thanks to Jonathan Zuber for putting me on the trail of this wonderful country. More information on Rocaterrania, the documentary here on Mr Ingram’s website (here’s a link straight to the trailer).
(Illustration by Renaldo G. Kuhler. Used with permission from the Collection of Brett Ingram)
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The AP is reporting that New York’s Governor Patterson has signed legislation that will give residents information about the cause and location of cancer. The new bill “requires health care providers and the state to collect more data on cancer patients than the federal Centers for Disease Control mandates. The data will be used by the state to create maps of cancer incidence for the public.”
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Officially known as the Jatiya Shangshad Bhaban, the National Assembly Building (Wikipedia) in Dhaka, Bangladesh is one of the world’s largest and most unique seats of Government.
The building and 200 acres of surrounding grounds were designed by noted architect Louis Kahn. At first glance the bare concrete walls and giant geometric shapes, along with the massive staircases leading to the main building, can cause it to appear quite imposing, but extended viewings reveal the beauty and impressiveness of the design. Some good images appear on Wikimedia.
Construction started in 1961 with the building intended to serve both East and West Pakistan. One liberation war and a couple of decades passed before the complex was completed in 1982 to house the government of the still relatively young country of Bangladesh.
The central part of the building is 47 metres tall and contains the main Parliament Chamber, while the surrounding 8 wings are 33 metres tall and include offices, meeting rooms, store rooms and all the other necessities of officialdom.
Surrounded by lush grounds, lakes and smaller buildings containing offices and residences for MPs, the whole area appears to be an oasis of calm in an otherwise very crowded and bustling city. However, despite being surrounded by a very low fence, and Wikipedia’s comment that the complex is open to visitors and ‘popular with joggers and skaters’, when I visited in early 2008 the grounds were utterly deserted. Tight security surrounding the military government means the whole area is off-limits to the estimated 20 million residents of Dhaka.
To the north, past the crescent lake lies the mausoleum of Ziaur Rahman, a revered President of Bangladesh who was assassinated in 1981.
Read more about architect Louis Kahn and former president Ziaur Rahman at Wikipedia.
Thanks to James.
Locations: Bangladesh / Categories: Buildings, Monuments
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We’re delighted to announce that the Google Sightseeing team now has two new writers!
Ian Brown manages a fair trade retail store in Ottawa, Canada, and says he spends his spare time perusing maps to find new routes to ride on his orange bicycle. Meanwhile John Andresen is resident of the US state of Alabama, a librarian and a writer, who describes himself as a lover of literature and music.
Expect to see exciting new posts from both authors in the coming days, and with two new authors Alex and I will hopefully have more time to develop new features for the site, while maintaining our established regular schedule of weekday posts.
Meanwhile, everybody’s favourite aeroplane fanatic Rob will continue to write for the site, despite being headhunted for the job of news editor by his Student Union.
Please join us in welcoming John and Ian, and congratulating Rob!
If you think that you might have what it takes to write for Google Sightseeing then please get in touch!
Categories: Site News
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An earlier post covered MapUpload, a free program for uploading .img files to a Garmin GPS; another option for this operation is IMG2GPS. This is actually a limited front-end to the command-line program SendMap (included in the IMG2GPS install package), but it supports most of SendMap’s upload features you would normally use. You don’t select .img [...]
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