Google Grabs 3-D Mapping Startup
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Google Inc. on Wednesday branched out into 3-D digital mapping with the acquisition of Keyhole Corp. In its second acquisition this year, Google has bought a startup company that connects consumers, businesses
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GoogleÂ is acquiring Panoramio, a photo-sharing Web site based in Spain that lets people upload photos and identify where they were taken by placing them on Google Earth or Google Maps, where they can be viewed by the public.
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Google Inc. has added more video and other bonus features for users of its popular three-dimensional mapping software to unearth even more information about destinations around the world.
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Google launches an add-on to its 3D mapping tool which allows star gazers to explore images of millions of stars.
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(InfoWorld) - Microsoft has enhanced its Windows Live Search Maps with a 3D map of New York, the first of several cities in the U.S., U.K., and Canada that will be featured in 3D through the service. Throughout the day Tuesday, Microsoft also plans to release 3D cityscapes of U.S. cities Austin, Texas; Cape Coral, Florida; Cincinnati; Indianapolis; Savannah, Georgia; and Tampa, Florida. Northampton, England, and Ottawa, Canada, also will be featured as 3D cityscapes through the service. The free online map of New York provides a photorealistic view of New York, including landmarks like Times Square, Central Park, Wall Street, and Rockefeller Plaza. As with other locations mapped through Windows Live Search Maps, users can get Yellow Pages listing, locations of businesses and other landmarks as well as contact information; driving directions, and reviews for New York businesses, restaurants and the like. In addition, users can get real-time traffic incident information integrated with driving directions in the city and can share and access custom maps and lists of notable places in New York that other users have created. Users also can create their own lists of favorite maps and locations in New York. Users can access the new 3D maps on the Live Search Maps Web site. Windows Live Search Maps is one of the new Web-based services Microsoft has been rolling out over the past year and a half to drive its online advertising business, a segment it is hoping will become a significant source of revenue for the company. Links to businesses or locations found through Windows Live Search Maps include paid-search advertising links, one area where Microsoft is hoping to gain round on Google. In the meantime, the company recently said it would purchase digital marketing services company aQuantive Â to boost its advertising strategy. The purchase will differentiate Microsoft from Google by the acquisition of Avenue A/Razorfish, a full-service design and advertising agency owned by aQuantive.
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Google Inc. has added a feature to Google Maps that lets users watch edits made to locations in real time.
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Google has bought digital map maker Keyhole Corp., extending the search engine leader's bid to fend off rivals with a toolbox that can catalog almost anything in the world.
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By Zhang Kun  SHANGHAI:  Move over Google Earth, there's a new kid in town.  Shanghai scientists have developed a three-dimensional (3D) mapping system that will allow users to see the sides of buildings, which is not possible to do using Google Earth.
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Google Inc  is considering a  Canadian launch of its Street View map feature, which offers  street-level close-ups of city centers, but would blur people's  faces and vehicle license plates to respect tougher Canadian  privacy laws, the Web search firm said on Monday.
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Moving ever closer to its dream of being able to catalogue almost everything in the world, Google Inc. has just bought digital map-maker, Keyhole Corp.
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(InfoWorld) - Google is partnering with Discovery Networks, the U.S. National Park Service, and others to enrich its Google Earth mapping application with text and multimedia about geographic locations. With its Featured Content for Google Earth, announced Wednesday, Google will provide links to articles, images, blog postings, and videos that inform about topics like the environment, cities, attractions, parks, and landmarks. Other partners include the United Nations Environmental Program and the Jane Goodall Institute. This is the latest in aÂ string of enhancementsÂ for Google Earth, one of the company's most popular products. In recent months, GoogleÂ ported the applicationÂ to Linux and the Mac OS and integrated it with the company's SketchUp 3D design tool. Google Earth's user interface was also overhauled and itsÂ index of images significantly expanded. Google Earth, lauded by users and industry experts, is a free, downloadable application that taps into a massive database of satellite images. Its video game-like interface lets users "fly" around the globe, zooming in and out of cities. Google acquired the software in 2004 when itÂ bought Keyhole. The Google Earth product family also includes more advanced, fee-based versions of the application designed for commercial uses.
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(InfoWorld) - Is a picture really worth more than a thousand words? A Dutch company believes so. Tele Atlas NV is amassing data for 3-D views of roads and their surroundings to be featured in a new generation of satellite navigation systems that could give voice-centric devices a run for their money. The company is venturing into 3-D digital navigation maps in a move to expand beyond providing data for the highly competitive market for 2-D maps. Tele Atlas has sent off a fleet of 22 orange-colored camper vans equipped with cameras, laser sensors, GPS hardware, and computers to snap pictures, determine the height of bridges, and record the slope of roads around the globe for 3-D digital maps. Data for 3-D maps is already complete for several cities, including Berlin and Rome, with 50 cities currently in production. Maps of the United States and Asia could follow as early as next year. Unlike two-dimensional navigational maps that show lines and arrows, 3-D maps show actual roads, flanked by buildings, trees and traffic signs. "3-D maps render a very realistic picture of a street and its surroundings," said Tele Atlas database director Georg Fisch. "If a friend tells you to look for a familiar store or restaurant at a specific corner, you're going to see it." The data-gathering process involves a two-person team steering the camera-equipped van down roads, including highways and city streets, and snapping pictures along the way. Belgians Stijn Ulenaers and Gudrun Vanlaar welcomed a group of journalists in Neuss, Germany, last week to hop in their Tele Atlas mobile mapping van and accompany them on a small trip to record street data in the area. The van is fitted with two PCs, two detachable hard drives, a GPS system, a gyroscope, a tablet computer, and a mobile data card. The pen-operated tablet PC, mounted between the driver and rider, shows in separate windows what each camera is recording and can also overlay a road map of the area, together with the vehicle's location. Six cameras -- two in the front, one on the side, and three in the back -- snap pictures every three seconds. The wide-angle lenses are configured to produce a 360-degree perspective. The digital photos, together with their GPS positions and odometer readings (necessary in tunnels), are stored on two master and slave 250GB drives. The van can travel at speeds up to 130 kilometers per hour on highways when the sun is shinning but also as slow as 80 kilometers per hour when the weather is bad. The fleet of Tele Atlas vans currently cover around 360,000 kilometers of roads a year, generating 250TB of data, which includes 2.8 billion digital pictures. The data is compiled in the Geographic Data File (GDF) format but can be converted to nearly all formats used by navigation system vendors and providers of mapping services, including TomTom International, Navman Europe, Google, and Microsoft. All pictures are sent to India, where Tele Atlas employs several hundred people to map the images to existing road maps, aerial photographs, and other road information to ensure accuracy. Could 3-D navigational systems add to the stress drivers already have, particularly on crowded, speedy European roads? Tele Atlas key account manager Sven Peters doesn't think so. Voice instructions will remain a key feature of next-generation navigation systems, he said. What will change as a result of 3-D maps, however, is the quality of information that drivers receive when they look at the navigation screen. Tele Atlas is not the only company working on developing 3-D maps for navigational systems. Navteq is one competitor. It's still unclear, however, when consumers can expect to see 3-D navigational maps and what they'll cost. "We're busy compiling the data now, but it's difficult to say when suppliers of navigation systems will want to invest in next-generation maps," Peters said. "Many of them are still making good margins on their 2-D systems and don't see a need right now to plunge into 3-D."ADVERTISEMENTIBM Information On Demand 2006Industrial Industry Leaders, please join us at IBM's premier information management global event, IBM Information On Demand 2006, October 15-20, Anaheim, CA. More IBM business and technical solutions content in one place than ever before! Select from  over 800 sessions. Register today!
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Hoping to make it even easier to turn its online maps into collages of local information, Google Inc. is introducing tools that will stitch together applications from a hodgepodge of Web sites.
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Google Inc. now provides a searchable index to the millions of Google Earth layers on the Web.
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Blog: Google just picked up Zenter, a presentation creation service.
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(InfoWorld) - GoogleÂ is acquiring Panoramio, a photo-sharing Web site based in Spain that lets people upload photos and identify where they were taken by placing them on Google Earth or Google Maps, where they can be viewed by the public. The companies have already beenÂ working togetherÂ since the start of the year, when Google made Panoramio the default photo layer for Google Earth. Panoramio has seen its usage surge since then, recently passing 1 million "geo-located" photos. In a blog posting Wednesday, Google said it was buying the company to integrate its services more closely with its own -- although it isn't saying exactly how yet -- and to boost its own technical resources. It should also help to strengthen Panoramio's infrastructure, leading to more reliable service for end users. Financial terms of the acquisition, which is pending, were not disclosed. Google said it planned to keep operating the site for now and that there won't be any immediate changes for Panoramio's users. The move should help to strengthen Google's position against Yahoo for providing online photo services. Yahoo owns the popular Flickr photo-sharing service, whose users can also locate their photos on Google Earth, although they don't appear as the default layer. Panoramio said it was "very (and we mean very) happy" to be acquired by Google. "To watch our little project grow since its conception one and a half years ago has been an amazing experience," cofounder Eduardo ManchÃ³n wrote in a blog posting. Panoramio was launched in October 2005. About 300,000 people had signed up for the service as of March this year, and in February the site had 4 million unique visitors and 30 million page views, according to Panoramio. The company released an API (application programming interface) recently that lets other Web sites include Panoramio functionality in their site. It gave its users the option to remove all their photos and personal data before they are transferred to Google.
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In an attempt to level the playing field with Google Earth, Microsoft has scooped up Caligari, makers of 3-D rendering software.