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Message from the Editor -
Welcome to GISWeekly! Michael Jones, Chief Technology Officer, formerly of Keyhole which is now Google Earth, took time out this week to talk to GISWeekly about the June 12 announcement of the new version of Google Earth, and updates to Google SketchUp and Google Maps. Read about it in this Week's Industry News.
GISWeekly examines select top news each week, picks out worthwhile reading from around the web, and special interest items you might not find elsewhere. This issue will feature Industry News, Top News of the Week, Announcements, Contract Awards, Awards, People, New Products, Letters to the Editor and Upcoming Events.
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Best wishes,
Susan Smith, Managing Editor
Industry News
New Version of Google Earth & Updates to Google Maps Announced
by Susan Smith
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CLICK TO ENLARGE |
According to the press release, Google Earth has had more than 100 million unique downloads in the past year and over 30,000 websites have used Google Maps API to create mashups. This announcement represents one year's worth of work. The announcements of the updated database, is shared by Google Earth and Google Maps. Google Earth is a web-browser based product, and Google Maps is a client product.
The Database
The enormously popular products, Google Earth and Maps, are using the same database, i.e., the same road, the same routing, local information, the same satellite imagery. “What you see now in Google Earth is what you also see now in Google Maps,” explained Jones. “It is a greatly more detailed database than previously. It's always been a global database. We always had the whole earth, so it's not more of the earth, it's that more of the earth is now at a higher resolution than before. The sub meter, high resolution imagery, where the pixels themselves are smaller than a meter, and that's about .6 meter comes from our partners, Digital Globe. Also higher resolution aerial photography comes from many partners around the world. There are three or four aerial photography companies in one country. Our update in this last database solution provides about four times as much 1 meter or better data than we had before. That equates to about 20% of the land mass of the entire earth.”
The coverage of about 20 % of land mass in submeter imagery is centered on big cities About 1/3 of the people of the earth have their home in submeter resolution.
Jones does note that unfortunately 1/3 of the people don't have broadband internet. The belief of Google is that they'll “grow into it” and ultimately understand their neighborhood and the surrounding world much better than before.
Progress is being made, however. Jones said that their research has revealed that all but 5 or 6 countries have high resolution data now. Also, countries that used to be low on the list of activity are now very high on the list of activity because there is now data on their homes. India and China are among these countries.
Google Earth 4 -
Google Earth 4 is the culmination of a year's worth of work, including the satellite imagery update but also Support for multiple languages - the product is being internationalized and localized to different countries and cultures. So far it is available in French, German, Spanish and Italian, and that process is being extended to other languages and cultures. The Google Local search team gathers all the local information in those countries such as routing directions, local restaurants and taxonomy of restaurants, etc.
In addition it runs on different operating platforms and new ones. The new version runs on Windows PCs, Power PC Macs, Intel based Macs, and on Linux.
Google SketchUp with textured buildings - SketchUp added the ability to draw textured geometry, which was arbitrary in Google Earth. Now users can make models of cities with phototextures of the buildings facades, and download Google Earth and fly around the models.
The pay-for version of SketchUp always did support textures as part of the professional architectural modeling, but now that feature is a part of Google SketchUp.
Google Maps
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There are many more people who would use Google Maps than Google Earth since it does not require as much computer power. This will give GIS departments a new way to publish GIS data such as overlays of the polygons from shapefiles to web browsers via Google Maps.
Support for geocoding - More than 30,000 people have applied to Google to be able to use the Maps API to build their own websites. They want the ability in their applications to accept a text string describing a location, like 123 Main St. Wilton, Conn. and then have it turn into a latitude longitude. “It lets you type in your address and put a dot there, and show the address of a delivery for example,” said Jones. Geocoding is also in Google Maps for France, Italy, Germany and Spain. It also has a simple API and a robust API.
The robust API will parse out the address for you, type in arbitrary address and in the case of the U.S., it will come back with what city, state, zip code, etc., all the information that you might want to fill out an application form or database.
Google Maps for Enterprise - The API license agreement is extremely flexible and free, but is specific as to what you can and can't do, noted Jones. “We're serving the public by helping you to deliver data to the public, but if you want to use it internally in your company on a private internet, with no public facing aspect to it, you can pay us money and then use it the way you want. For that, we have a new Google Maps for Enterprise program.” Jones pointed out that this is not a very visible aspect, but we have already seen companies such as PlaceBase developing alternatives along these lines in the geospatial space.
Upgrade to the SketchUp Warehouse
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Not surprisingly, the Google Earth support for arbitrary geometry and textures is not limited to SketchUp. Google picked a new file format that Google Earth supports called Collada that was developed by Sony Corp. to be the file format that could hold models of sufficient richness that it would make PlayStation 3 look good. “It's free open and open sourced, it's specification is owned by a public refereed group called the Chorus group,” Jones said. “We chose to use it because if you can build models from Google Earth, you can build them from 3D Studio Max, from Maya, from Softimage, from Blender, and pretty soon you will be able to build them from Archicad and Bentley, basically all architectural CAD programs and all the game modeling programs, all the movie animation programs, and should be able to export models in this format that Google Earth reads. We haven't seen a lot of these models yet because it takes some time to sink in. We've seen a lot of models from SketchUp and seen some models from 3D Studio Max.”
Summary
In terms of the more technical audience, will you deepen the product's reach to the point of geospatial analysis for some users or will it remain more of a development tool for a commercial audience?
“I would split that - people who really need to do deep analytics with ESRI software will still do that because that's great software for people to do that with. I think a lot of GIS is deep analytics, and a lot of what is called 'GIS' is people taking the result of some analytics, done by a GIS expert and then building either a map, or a presentation board or a set of facts to make a case to others. All the people who decide where the sewer line goes are the people who actually use the GIS software to do that, the one expert per city, but the people who actually argue about it: the council members, the mayor and the public, there are hundreds or millions of these. The one was already well served by traditional GIS software. Our role is to serve the millions. We've addressed the needs of the millions.”
Jones suggested that the real question still remains: what about those people in the middle - the 20? “I imagine as we get richer, we'll address their needs a little better, but not all the way to the one. People who want to deeply examine the result of policy decisions, will be increasingly driven to the features we have in Google Earth, but they won't take them all the way to analytics.”
Google Earth 4 addresses what was a major omission in Google Earth 3, which was, if you had data, how would you use your data in Google Earth? “In Google Earth 3, you could put an overlay on top of our data, but that overlay image had to be of a size that would fit in texture memory all at once, like 2000 x 2000. But if buy an image from Digital Globe or another photo company, it's going to be a multi-Gigabyte 10,000 or 20,000 pixel square picture, which will never fit in the graphics hardware of anybody's computer. How would you overlay that onto Google Earth? It turned out that was kind of an ugly situation for people who were in the middle.”
To solve that, “We added this new feature (launched also on the 12th) called the Region Based Network link, that is a mechanism in Google Earth that allows developers, just through building their data through a Perl script or a C + program, to generate a database they can serve from a web server such as Apache, that would let their users fly over an arbitrarily big image. So people have already started posting USGS orthoquads, USGS topos, giant images produced out of traditional GIS programs,” explained Jones. “If you use the program to produce a watershed map for your county, and that map is gargantuan in its entirety, you can already start buying tools or look at Open Source tools that will take that picture, dice it up and prepare it to be streamed to Google Earth clients, so everybody in your DOT or constituency can actually fly around that in Google Earth on top of the regular data, but do so smoothly and fluently.”
Top News of the Week
ESRI announced the availability of a new version of the GIS Portal Toolkit. GIS Portal Toolkit 3 includes improved installation and configuration, better metadata management and access control, and integration with ArcGIS Desktop.
The GIS Portal Toolkit is a technology and services solution for implementing local, regional, national, and global spatial data infrastructure portals. GIS portals organize content (using metadata) and services such as directories, search tools, community information, support resources, data, and applications.
NOAA scientists have discovered areas of deep-sea corals in the Olympic Coast National Marine Sanctuary off the Washington state's Olympic Peninsula during a recent 12-day scientific research mission on board the NOAA ship McArthur II. Results from the surveys were dramatic. At least six species of soft coral and one species of stony coral were observed. In some areas scientists encountered fields of erect soft corals known as "gorgonians" with individual colonies as high as three feet and in other areas isolated patches of coral colonies associated with scattered boulders. Corals observed included giant cup corals, branching soft corals such as "bubblegum coral" and the stony reef-building coral Lophelia, discovered during the earlier pilot cruise in 2004.
GlobeXplorer's AirPhotoUSA announced the first comprehensive collection of 1-foot resolution aerial photography for the nation. The new offerings will be the highest resolution off-the-shelf seamless imagery commercially available on a nationwide basis. Guided by a '3C' mantra of industry-leading clarity, coverage, and compatibility, GlobeXplorer and AirPhotoUSA will make this data available through a combined suite of online and offline products.
Agreements/Alliances/Acquisitions Traffic.com, Inc. announced an agreement with Garmin International Inc. to serve as the exclusive real-time traffic provider in the continental United States for the Garmin Mobile(TM) 20 -- a GPS automotive navigation system that delivers Garmin's voice-prompted, turn-by-turn directions using Bluetooth wireless technology on Smartphones. Garmin is the market leader in the North American personal navigation device (PND) and is a recognized innovator in GPS technology and consumer electronics.
NAVTEQ, global provider of digital map data for vehicle navigation and location-based solutions, and Roscartographia (The Russian Federal Agency for Geodesy and Cartography) have executed a Memorandum of Understanding and Cooperation to support the growth of the digital map industry in Russia. The memorandum acknowledges a mutual desire to promote the industry and raise awareness of the wide uses of digital map applications.
Announcements
University scientists using Global Positioning System software, developed by NASA, have shown GPS can determine, within minutes, whether an earthquake is big enough to generate an ocean-wide tsunami. This NASA-funded technology can be used to provide faster tsunami warnings.
A team led by Geoffrey Blewitt of the Nevada Bureau of Mines and Geology and Seismological Laboratory, University of Nevada, Reno, demonstrated that a large quake's true size can be determined within 15 minutes using GPS data. This is much faster than current methods.
MWH is hosting a Coastal Cities Climate Change Workshop in New York City on July 13 and 14 at the Grand Hyatt Hotel. The workshop will focus on sustainability issues and the effects of climate change on infrastructure, water supply, wastewater effluent discharge, socioeconomics and policy, and other issues unique to coastal cities and communities.
The workshop will allow participants from coastal cities and regions to exchange information, while also presenting to them the latest information on pertinent political, technical and academic global warming issues as they relate to water supply and wastewater infrastructure. Space for the workshop is limited but still available. Interested coastal region representatives are encouraged to call (303) 533-1932 to make their reservations today.
Telcordia announced that the UAE's Emirates Telecommunications Corporation- etisalat- is the first to deploy the latest release of Telcordia(R) Network Engineer to drive operational efficiencies and lower total cost of ownership, supporting its goal of aggressively deploying new technologies and services to its customers in the region. This highly sophisticated, award-winning solution is helping etisalat optimize its fibre network in order to quickly roll-out services, such as IPTV, and streamline its operations with Network Engineer's automated processes.
Wherify Wireless, Inc., developer of patented wireless location solutions and services for family safety and communications, announced it has completed the integration of SiRF Technologies Holdings, Inc.'s next generation SiRFstarIII GPS chip set solution into the Wherifone(TM) GPS locator phone. This will provide improved GPS performance and features. The improved Wherifone is being evaluated by select customers for pre-launch field trials and acceptance testing, and is expected to be commercially available by Fall 2006.
HP announced the expansion of its product return and recycling program to reach more customers and create new ways for people to discard used or unwanted electronic equipment in a convenient and environmentally responsible manner.
The company will host a series of product collection events in the United States throughout the summer to raise awareness and increase the rate of electronics recycling among consumers.
The collection events, which will accept a range of products from any manufacturer, will be held from June through September in Colorado, Connecticut, Illinois, Maryland, Minnesota, New Mexico and Oregon.
DigitalGlobe announced that it appointed SOVZOND, of Moscow, Russia, as the exclusive distributor for its QuickBird satellite imagery in the eight CIS countries of Azerbaijan, Armenia, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan.
CEVA, Inc., licensor of digital signal processor (DSP) cores, multimedia, Global Positioning System (GPS) and storage platforms to the semiconductor industry, announced the divestment of its GPS technology and associated product line to a new U.S.-based fabless company, GloNav in return for an equity ownership of 19.9% in GloNav on a fully diluted basis. The new company also has licensed the CEVA-TeakLite DSP core for the development of its GPS chipsets. GloNav concurrently acquired the radio frequency (RF) technology, assets and team of RFDomus Inc., a U.S.-based company.
On the occasion of 10 years of Map India series of conferences, GIS Development is announcing a global meet of geospatial leaders known as Map World Forum. MAP WORLD FORUM will be a medium of convergence of various stakeholders of global geospatial community and its integration with end users of geospatial information. Map World Forum will be a combination of activities in the form of seminars, workshops and panel discussions covering technology to policy to user oriented themes at global level.
ATI Technologies Inc. announced financial results for the third quarter of fiscal 2006 ended May 31, 2006. Revenues(1) for the third quarter were $652.3 million. Gross margin percentage was 30.1%. Net income determined in accordance with Canadian generally accepted accounting principles (GAAP) for the quarter was $31.9 million ($0.12 per diluted share). Non-GAAP adjusted net income(2) for the quarter was $42.5 million ($0.16 per diluted share). See press release
Intergraph Corporation, global provider of Spatial Information Management (SIM) software, announced that it has filed patent infringement actions against Fujitsu-Siemens Computers, NEC Corporation, and Toshiba Corporation.
The action against Fujitsu-Siemens was filed in Hamburg, Germany and alleges that certain computer products sold by Fujitsu-Siemens infringe the Company's European Clipper system patent.
Contract Awards
ESRI announces that its ArcPad mobile GIS platform will be a component of the Field Data Collection Automation (FDCA) project for the 2010 U.S. Census.
Harris Corp. of Melbourne, Fla., has been selected by the U.S. Census Bureau as the system integrator and prime contractor for a $600 million, five-year program to develop and implement an automated system for field data collection. The FDCA program will support census field enumerators who will follow up and collect survey data from households that did not return their census forms. The field enumerator will be equipped with GPS-enabled mobile devices, which will include ESRI's ArcPad software. ArcPad enables field personnel to capture and display geographic information in near real time. Its characteristics for performance, productivity, enterprise GIS integration, and customization make ArcPad an ideal solution for the FDCA project.
MapText Inc. has added several prestigious clients to its customer base in Australia, the company announced .
After a thorough evaluation of MapText's label placement solutions, the Queensland Department of Natural Resources (DNR), decided to purchase Label-EZ, MapText's flagship text placement product, and Label-Contour for their topographic mapping.
Northern Territories DNR procured the Label-Map engine to embed in their workflow based around FME to automatically label their high-quality maps for output to PDF. And most recently, New South Wales Police has decided to augment all of their MapInfo installations with SmartLabel, MapText's integrated text placement solution for MapInfo Professional, in order to generate high-quality police maps efficiently and cost effectively.
Awards
Bentley Systems, Incorporated announced that WaterGEMS V8 XM Edition has won the People's Choice Award for "Most Useful New Product" at the American Water Works Association (AWWA) 2006 Annual Conference and Exposition (ACE06). The show was held June 11-15 in San Antonio, Texas.
Tensing, an international provider of mobile and GIS solutions, announced that it has earned status as a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner. Tensing achieved this program status in two competency categories - ISV/Software Solutions and Mobility Solutions.
People
Michael Baker Corporation announced that Richard W. Giffhorn has resigned his position as president of the company's Baker Energy business segment effective July 10, 2006. He will be available to assist the company for a period of time on transition issues and other matters as appropriate. John D. Whiteford, presently executive vice president in the company's Engineering business segment, will assume Mr. Giffhorn's responsibilities as head of the unit.
Baker Engineering, Inc., an engineering unit of Michael Baker Corporation, has announced the promotion of Kevin P. Hayes, P.E., R.A., to assistant vice president and office manager of its Chicago, Illinois location.
New Products
Safe Software Inc.- provider of spatial data translation and data transformation solutions - announced the release of FME 2006 GB, the latest version of the company's Feature Manipulation Engine technology. Among the hundreds of user-requested enhancements included in this release, FME 2006 GB offers important customization options to enhance security, increase work efficiency, and assist with processing ever-increasing data volumes.
MWH Soft, a global provider of environmental and water resources applications software, announced the worldwide availability of the V4 Generation of InfoSewer for power ArcGIS users.
softelec's new Version 2 of their VPmap Series software products has now been released and contains a number of considerable enhancements. Both products, VPmap and VPmap pro, provide a unique set of functions and features for capturing spatial data from scanned maps. VPmap Series V2 now comes with the new option for operation inside Autodesk Map 3D, while choosing to run the programs in "stand-alone" mode remains a standard.
GeoSage announced the availability of true-colour, medium-resolution global satellite imagery, offering a very low cost solution to a wide range of visualization-related applications.
This dataset is based on NASA's orthorectified Landsat ETM+ GeoCover 2000, which consists of 880+ mosaic tiles covering the entire earth land surface except Antarctica. Each mosaic in a compressed form contains three pan-sharpened, false-color bands at a spatial resolution of 14.25 m: Band 7 (mid-infrared), Band 4 (near-infrared), and Band 2 (visible green).
Around the Web
What if They Built an Urban Wireless Network and Hardly Anyone Used It? by Ken Belson, June 26, 2006, The New York Times (registration required) - Despite WiFly's ubiquity - with 4,100 hot spot access points reaching 90 percent of the population - just 40,000 of Taipei's 2.6 million residents have agreed to pay for the service since January. Q-Ware, the local Internet provider that built and runs the network, once expected to have 250,000 subscribers by the end of the year, but it has lowered that target to 200,000.
Adobe to be Google's latest Web search distributor, by Eric Auchard, Reuters, June 22, 2006, The Washington Post (Registration Required) - Adobe Systems Inc. (ADBE.O) said on Wednesday Google Inc. (GOOG.O) had agreed to pay the multimedia software maker a "significant" amount to distribute the Web search leader's software.
Upcoming Events
Summer Institute on Geographic Information Science
Date: June 26 - July 7, 2006
Place: Fattoria Montebeni Florence, Italy
Celebrating the fifth centenary of Vespucci's discoveries, the Vespucci Initiative recaptures his spirit of multi-disciplinary intellectual enquiry to explore new frontiers of knowledge. To that end it organizes and conducts a range of research and teaching activities, bringing together senior scientists and promising young researchers from around the world. This unique interdisciplinary mix creates what has been called the Medici Effect. (Perhaps it is no coincidence that the summer institutes are held in Florence!) What these particular researchers have in common is a special interest in the locational aspects of societal challenges.
AGIT 2006 -Conference and Exhibition on Applied Geoinformatics
Date: July 5 - 7, 2006
Place: Salzburg, Austria
Every year in early July, Salzburg is the centre of the German-speaking World of GIS: The 18th Conference and Exhibition on Applied Geoinformatics (AGIT 2006) serves as a venue for the exchange of ideas, learning about new developments and presenting innovative projects in Applied Geoinformatics.
Accuracy 2006 - The Seventh International Symposium on Spatial Accuracy Assessment in Natural Resources and Environmental Sciences
Date: July 5 - 7, 2006
Place: Lisbon, Portugal
Accuracy 2006 is the 7th meeting in a series of biannual symposia organized by the Spatial Accuracy Research Group, that focuses on how to measure, model and handle uncertainty in spatial data, specifically originating from the fields of environment and natural resources. This group involves both researchers and GIS specialists who share a common interest on the use of spatial data and the management of its uncertainty.
IGNSS 2006
Date: July 17 - 21, 2006
Place: Holiday Inn Surfers Paradise Gold Coast , Australia
This is a great opportunity to see the latest products offered in Australia by leaders in the field of equipment, services and applications in positioning, navigation and more.
GeoWeb 2006
Date: July 24 - 28, 2006
Place: Vancouver, BC, Canada
Make plans now to attend GeoWeb 2006, the premier conference for Web-based geographic information systems-featuring 13 half-day workshops, nearly 70 paper presentations, keynoters, and a products and services exhibition that bring together the world of professional GIS and the broader world of the Web.
You can find the full GISCafe.com event calendar here.
To read more news, click here.
-- Susan Smith, GISCafe.com Managing Editor.