Google has announced additional Street View imagery for several cities including Orlando, FL.. now you can get up close imagery of Disney, Epcot, Sea World, etc… maybe I’ll head over to Pleasure Island later ;0) Google announced just today the imagery is now available for San Diego, Los Angeles, Houston and Orlando. In other updates from Google recently, the Google Maps API team announced that they enabled geocoding in the API for India, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Singapore, and Ireland. From the crew… “That means there are potentially 1.1 billion more users that might now be able to locate themselves on your map – that’s about 1/5 of the world’s population.” SWEET! See www.google.com/maps/
Above is a Street Side image from San Diego, CA – cool.. next year at the ESRI UC maybe we’ll be captured when they do an image update!
Archives for August 7, 2007
so, you want to work for Google – how about Google Local Business referals
This comes via Google.. see google maps, then click the “Get paid to visit businesses” link – lower-left area. Google is offering “googlers” a chance to take part in growing their information holdings by acting as a local business referal agent. Simply apply (some restrictions apply) and you could get the call. You’ll then be charged with providing information like business descriptions, photos, ratings, etc… to help add even more useful information to the google local business directory. Note.. as a comment suggests, this is an opportunity to work for google as a contractor, not as an “employee”- see http://www.google.com/local/referral
Will CraigsList ever slow down? More map mashups will be a great plus for this resource
I can’t get over the amazing capabilities of CraigsList… I’ve been a fan and a user for a long time now (I found my Ft Collins short term rental using it) and lately I’ve unloaded loads of stuff using this incredible local search / classifieds utililty. Obviousy the “local” component and the immediateness (is that a word??) make CraigsList a very powerful resource. To compare… I had a car advertised in a local paper and received virtually no response to the ad.. what a waste of $50! Contrasting that is the flurry of activiry I received from a CraigsList posting. Being able to target ads to locations that are more relevant (eg. sometimes I advertise on the Boulder or Denver list, depending on the item) which brings amazing reasults when used appropriately. Ideally I’d like to see more mapping in the UI, however, to date it doesn’t seem to limit the usefullness… more mobile integration would also be very cool.. ie. post from a mobile or contact me via my mobile etc… although there are simple ways to get around this or provide a hack. The map mashups of CraigsList housing adverts have been huge to say the least – see http://www.housingmaps.com/ or http://www.myapartmentmap.com/ but I’d like to see more or even map driven mashups that incorporate all the CraigsList listings. Do you know of such a mashup? Anyone getting these kind of results fromm Google Base? I found an amazing Apple iPhone map mashup that enables users to locate ebay listsings for Apple iPhones.. way cool. I envision this being much more useful by being able to mash ebay and craigslist into the map and change the search parameter to include any kind of product… imagine… search craigslist for computers neara zipcode 80528… that’s what I want to see! Gotta go.. I have a guy coming over to buy a desk that’s been sitting in my garage… kaching $$
Project Freewheel 3D/2D ShareNow from Autodesk
Some cool technology out of Autodesk Labs with FreeWheel and the 2D/3D share now utility. IT’s officially being unveiled later today (more to come on this) but we got some sneak peeks from the LAB website… About FreeWheel – These utilities publish a design from AutoCAD, Inventor, or Revit to the Project Freewheel server. With one click of the ShareNow icon, your design application will publish a DWF file of your current design, upload it to Project Freewheel, and invoke the browser with a view of your design. You can then leverage all of the benefits that Project Freewheel has to offer – without installing additional software. Collaborate with your team members on Microsoft Windows, Apple Macintosh OSX, or Linux. They can use Internet Explorer or Firefox. They can use a PC, Mac, PDS, Cell phone — whatever has a compatible browser with an internet connection. Stay Tuned for more!
Q and A: Where can I obtain VMAP data? Here’s a tip
This is a common one.. today I got a common request from a reader.. “where can I obtain VMap data? My response which may help some of you asking the same thing:
See the following:
VMAP1 and other global datasets are available from the NGA Raster Roam –http://geoengine.nga.mil/geospatial/SW_TOOLS/NIMAMUSE/webinter/rast_roam.html
To access VMAP1 data see http://geoengine.nga.mil/geospatial/SW_TOOLS/NIMAMUSE/webinter/vmap1_legend.html
see also these useful help docs:
Free Download of VMAP1 – Vector Smart Map FTP links http://www.gisuser.com/content/view/5535/
The search on GISuser yields some great results and you can try this custom Google GIS Data search DB that I developed
I would urge you to be careful buying this data online as most commercial resellers simply download from these FTP sites, cut to a CD / DVD and send to you.. save your $$. There’s many online sources of these data but these tips should get you started and atleast pointed in the right direction.
Q and A: Where can I obtain VMAP data? Here’s a tip
This is a common one.. today I got a common request from a reader.. “where can I obtain VMap data? My response which may help some of you asking the same thing:
See the following:
VMAP1 and other global datasets are available from the NGA Raster Roam –http://geoengine.nga.mil/geospatial/SW_TOOLS/NIMAMUSE/webinter/rast_roam.html
To access VMAP1 data see http://geoengine.nga.mil/geospatial/SW_TOOLS/NIMAMUSE/webinter/vmap1_legend.html
see also these useful help docs:
Free Download of VMAP1 – Vector Smart Map FTP links http://www.gisuser.com/content/view/5535/
The search on GISuser yields some great results and you can try this custom Google GIS Data search DB that I developed
I would urge you to be careful buying this data online as most commercial resellers simply download from these FTP sites, cut to a CD / DVD and send to you.. save your $$. There’s many online sources of these data but these tips should get you started and atleast pointed in the right direction.
Question: Where can I get Vmap data?
This is a common one.. today I got a common request from a reader.. “where can I obtain VMap data? My response which may help some of you asking the same thing:
See the following:
VMAP1 and other global datasets are available from the NGA Raster Roam –http://geoengine.nga.mil/geospatial/SW_TOOLS/NIMAMUSE/webinter/rast_roam.html
To access VMAP1 data see http://geoengine.nga.mil/geospatial/SW_TOOLS/NIMAMUSE/webinter/vmap1_legend.html
see also these useful help docs:
Free Download of VMAP1 – Vector Smart Map FTP links http://www.gisuser.com/content/view/5535/
the search on GISuser yields some good results and you can try this custom Google GIS Data search DB that I developed
I would urge you to be careful buying this data online as most commercial resellers simply download from these FTP sites, cut to a CD / DVD and send to you.. save your $$
Microsoft Live Labs Photosynth… capturing the image DNA in 3D
I learned about this amazing research project via a recent press release from Microsoft .. the technology is being used to create
3-D images of the space shuttle Endeavour and surrounding buildings at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida
With Photosynth you can:
– Walk or fly through a scene to see photos from any angle.
– Seamlessly zoom in or out of a photo whether it’s megapixels or gigapixels in size.
– See where pictures were taken in relation to one another.
– Find similar photos to the one you’re currently viewing.
– Send a collection – or a particular view of one – to a friend.
how it works:
Each photo is processed by computer vision algorithms to extract hundreds of distinctive features, like the corner of a window frame or a door handle. Photos that share features are then linked together in a web. When the same feature is found in multiple images, its 3D position can be calculated.
Imagine storing the image DNA. Photosynth could then show you other photos that have similar features to the one you’re currently viewing. Imagine capturing a photo of the Statue of Liberty for example… you can then immediately access information about the feature via WiKipedia etc…
See Microsoft Live Labs – http://labs.live.com/photosynth/
