Cruise missile streaks across Google Earth
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Utah flying munition caught on camera? Once in a while, something really interesting pops up on Google Earth, and we're obliged today to reader Christopher Wagner for pointing us the direction of this spendid find in the skies above Utah:â¦
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Google's real-time viewer allows users to watch as other users around the world make changes to locations on maps.
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DigitalGlobe, provider of imagery  for Google Inc.'s  interactive mapping program Google  Earth, said a new high-resolution satellite will boost the  accuracy of its satellite images and flesh out its archive.
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CAMBRIDGE -- Millions of Internet videos are being recorded worldwide, from the beaches of Rio de Janeiro to the US campaign trail. They're popping up on laptops, cell phones, and desktop computers everywhere.
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(InfoWorld) - Google is coming for you. In fact, Google's minions are driving Chevy Cobalts with roof-mounted 360-degree digital cameras, and they want to take your picture. Smile! You're on Googlecam. In an unprecedented campaign, Google is enhancing its Google Maps service with a new Street View feature that allows you to view crisp, navigable photos of roads in nine major cities across the United States, including San Francisco, New York, San Diego, and Denver. (To see the full list, go to maps.google.com and click the Street View link on the upper-right corner.) Once you zoom in close enough, you can click the Street View link and look around the location, or click an arrow to see the next Street View photo. To snap the pictures, Google mounted digital cameras on the roof of passenger cars -- reportedly Chevy Cobalts, according to the tech blog Gizmodo -- and drove around San Francisco and San Diego. The Mountain View, Calif.-based company partnered with Immersive Media for the underlying photo technology and has worked with third-party firms for street-level photography for the additional cities outside of California. Only San Francisco and San Diego use high-resolution street-level images, however. Other cities use lower-res captures. Street View could be a boon for "landmark drivers" who prefer driving instructions such as "Turn left at the large brick church, and drive until you get to the pizza place on the corner" as opposed to "Meet me at Second Street and Fourth Avenue." It certainly reveals how far Google will go to prove its mapping prowess -- and, incidentally, attract users to more localized advertising. According to Greg Sterling at Sterling Market Intelligence in Oakland, Calif., Google has a Business Referral Representative program that sets a precedent for localized involvement. That program involves Google representatives providing local business information and photos to Google for a fee. Sterling said that precedent for collecting local information and photos is being continued with the Street View program. Street View is "about creating more utility for consumers, which in turn will lead indirectly to ad revenue over the longer term. Google has long focused on small businesses and local users, so this is just trying to take those efforts to the next level," Sterling said. Still, regardless of whether Street View is purely a mapping enhancement or a new play for ad revenue, there is tough competition from Microsoft and others. There are also some nagging privacy issues to deal with, plus the sheer magnitude of the project. The story so far ... Of course, Street View is not a new idea. Amazon.com tried a 360-degree street-view mapping feature in its A9 service that it subsequently abandoned. Microsoft has provided a Bird's Eye View feature in Live Virtual Earth that allows you to zoom in on a location, albeit not quite to the street level. (There is a preview of Microsoft's "street side" technology that does allow you to see street-level views, but only for portions of Seattle and through a rather clunky interface.) Another competitor, EveryScape.com in Waltham, Mass., has mapped out the Union Square section of San Francisco with 360-degree street-level views and plans to "virtualize" four more cities this year. Users can sign up to become "scape" artists who drive city streets with roof-mounted cameras. There's a strong user-participation angle, but EveryScape doesn't have Google's funding or advertising incentive. Street View is an audacious project that, according Michael Gartenberg, an analyst at JupiterResearch in Darien, Conn., will likely expand to every major American city and even to higher-population rural areas. "Google is adding cool and interesting features to their mapping service as a way to enhance their core services and generate new revenue," he said. While Google has no set plans to update street-level photos on a regular basis, according to Google Maps product manager Stephen Chau, it does have policies for updating aerial shots on a regular basis that could set a precedent for Street View updates. Google fandom reaches new heights Google is immensely popular, of course, but Street View seems to have attracted an unprecedented level of interest, some of it perhaps even slightly obsessive. One Wired blog allowed users to submit odd Street View sightings, including a man being arrested and another urinating at a roadside. Other sites, such as Street View Gallery and Street View Spy, also allow users to post strange Street View sightings. There's even a Cafe Press T-shirt for those who don't want to be photographed. Google's Chau said the company encourages user participation, but only through the My Maps feature. "We get offers from people to drive the [camera] cars almost every day," he said. For users who want to participate through the My Maps feature, they can geo-tag their photos (adding location data) and post them in public forums. For example, after the bridge collapse in Minneapolis on Aug. 1, users posted photos of the fallen bridge and aftermath. Why the fandom? For photographer Charles Bandes in Boston, it's the community aspect -- the fact that a large company might be visiting. "I am fascinated by the idea that Google is taking snapshots of my community, and the idea that they might actually take a photo of me if they make a map of my neighborhood is even better." For Bandes and others, it's an opportunity to meet Google face-to-face. Meanwhile, from Google's standpoint, camaraderie with users could help them capture out-of-the-way locations. "I think user participation would be a great idea as Google simply can't do the level of coverage required alone," adds Rob Enderle, principal analyst at Enderle Group in San Jose, Calif. Right-to-privacy controversy Yet, the idea of photographing the entire United States one street at a time is a monumental undertaking, even for Google. It's also controversial, especially for privacy-rights advocates. For example, BoingBoing users argue that it's wrong to take photos in public places and use them for commercial gain, that it's "creepy" for cars to be prowling city streets, and that -- if the government were monitoring the public with photographs on public streets, there would be more of an outcry. Tom Austin, a Gartner analyst covering Google, said that anyone can take photos in public places, but the privacy issue could become a problem when Google expands to foreign countries where photographing people on public streets requires a signed waiver. Google's Chau did say that the company filters out some photographs that might be perceived as inappropriate and that individuals can request that the company remove specific photographs. That kind of user-specific filtering could be a death blow to Street View, however, once it expands to hundreds of U.S. cities, because monitoring such a vast library would be nearly impossible. Whether the local advertising monetization works or the privacy issues persist, or whether many more metropolitan areas become "Google-ized" this year are all interesting questions waiting to be answered.
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OTTAWA (CP) - An unmanned surveillance aircraft that could one day be used to patrol Canada's sprawling coastline will start zooming through the skies over the Atlantic and the Arctic within days.
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Airspace bar from surface to 'unlimited' altitude The US military has issued a warning notice barring flights above a large area of the northern Pacific for two and a half hours early on Thursday morning. The stricken spy satellite marked for destruction by US warships will pass over the taped-off area just at this time, indicating that the first shot will take place then.â¦
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A rocket carrying a next-generation Earth-imaging satellite blasted off Tuesday on a mission that promises to zoom in on objects as small as 18 inches across.
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By Julio Ojeda-Zapata, Pioneer Press, St. Paul, Minn.  Feb. 7--WWhen Jesse Vig pored over satellite images of rooftops on the Google site, he saw all the letters of the alphabet. One St.
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(InfoWorld) - Google is offering a rare public glimpse of China's new ballistic-missile submarine, according to a researcher at the Federation of American Scientists. "The new submarine was photographed by the commercial Quickbird satellite in late 2006 and the image is freely available on the Google Earth Web site," wrote Hans Kristensen on the Strategic Security Blog. Kristensen identified the submarine, pictured alongside a naval pier, as a Jin-class vessel, one of five that China is expected to build. Comparing the Google Earth image with a picture of China's existing Xia-class submarine, Kristensen was able to discern some of the features of the new submarine. "The Jin-class appears to be approximately 35 feet (10 meters) longer than the Xia-class [submarine], primarily due to an extended mid-section of approximately 115 feet (35 meters) that houses the missile launch tubes and part of the reactor compartment," Kristensen wrote. But the picture was not clear enough to resolve a debate over whether the Jin-class submarine has tubes for 12 or 16 nuclear-tipped missiles. Discovery of the submarine image is likely to cause consternation within China's military, which generally keeps as low a profile as possible. If so, it wouldn't be the first time that Google Earth has caused worry inside China's government. In 2006, government officials reportedly expressed concerns over Google Earth imagery of the Zhongnanhai leadership compound in Beijing, an area normally off limits to prying public eyes.
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Last week's historic flyby of Mercury by NASA's MESSENGER spacecraft gathered 500 megabytes of data and more than a thousand high-resolution photos covering nearly six million square miles of previously unseen terrain.
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Insurance companies are using satellites to identify homes at high risk of fire damage because of their proximity to brush &#151; a development that alarms some state regulators and privacy advocates.
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(InfoWorld) - Google is in talks with the Indian government to allay concerns that Google Earth may be jeopardizing Indiaâs security by showing high resolution images of Indian defense and other installations. âWe were pleased to have the dialogue, which was substantive and constructive but no agreements have been made," a spokeswoman for Google India said Monday. A Sunday report in The Times of India said that Google and the Indian government had arrived at an agreement to show âfuzzy, low resolution pictures and distorted building plansâ of installations that the Indian government considers sensitive. The Indian government has often expressed concern that the information provided on Google Earth could be misused by terrorists and Indiaâs enemies. The easy availability online of detailed maps of countries from services such as Google Earth can be misused by terrorists, India's President, A.P.J. Abdul Kalam said as early as 2005. Some of the developing countries, which are already in danger of terrorist attacks, have been singularly chosen to provide such high resolutions maps, Kalam said. Internet companies like Google and Yahoo are strengthening their presence in India ahead of an anticipated boom in online users in the country. Google offers search in Indian languages, and recently launched its Google AdWords advertising program in the country. It also does research and development (R&D) from India. Googleâs Orkut social networking site has however come in for criticism and even litigation from groups in India that have objected to criticism on Orkut of India and Indian historic figures.
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Tools from Google Earth and Amazon.com are being applied by users to help in the effort to find missing aviator and adventurer Steve Fossett.
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The Google Earth Blog (not owned by Google) reports that Nasa has released some new image overlay &#038; visualization data for Google Earth: NASA continues to add some great visualizations for overlaying in Google Earth. This time they have added some data again from MODIS (Moderate-resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer).  As recently reported, you can get near real-time [...]
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Leaked UN report, US gov says pranged Antonov was arming Janjaweed A crashed Antonov transport plane at the centre of US and UN allegations of gunrunning into war-torn Darfur is visible on Google Earth.â¦
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When environmental protestors boarded a Japanese whaling ship in the Southern Ocean, images of the action quickly flashed on the world&#39;s TV sets, followed by photos from the Japanese ship after the protestors were taken into custody. Getting these images out is crucial if either side is to win the global PR battle, but doing so can be problematic when you&#39;re at sea, thousands of kilometers from the nearest cell phone network or broadband connection.To solve their problems, both sides take advantage of digital video and photo technology to get the footage, then look to the skies and tap into the global satellite communications network run by London-based Inmarsat. The company specializes in providing voice and data services to maritime vessels and other users at sea, or in remote areas that traditional telecommunications networks don&#39;t reach.On Tuesday, as the protestors approached the Japanese whaling vessel &quot;Yushin Maru 2,&quot; a digital video camera was rolling onboard the small inflatable craft sent from the Sea Shepard Conservation Society&#39;s ship, &quot;Steve Irwin.&quot; The camera caught the moment when two of the conservationists jumped aboard, and within seconds the video was speeding back toward the Steve Irwin on the inflatable.Once back onboard, the video was fed into a Macbook Pro laptop and edited into a 13MB MPEG2 clip that was just 12 seconds long, said Jonny Vasic, a spokesman for the society.&quot;One of our big tools in these whale wars is these video and digital still cameras. They really help us expose the bad guys,&quot; said Vasic.The clip was then sent via satellite to the society&#39;s FTP server and made available to the world&#39;s media.The ship&#39;s satellite communications system is a $35,000 &quot;Sailor Fleet 77&quot; unit that was donated to the society last year by Australia&#39;s Bluetongue Brewery. It supports up to 256Kbps&#160;transmission, although actually getting that speed depends on several factors. In calm seas, a gyro-based mount keeps the antenna pointed at the satellite, but in heavy seas, maintaining a reliable signal can be a problem. Keeping the link gets increasingly difficult as the ship goes further south because the satellite appears very low on the horizon.&quot;It&#39;s about 90 percent reliable,&quot; said Vasic.Crew onboard the &quot;Steve Irwin&quot; are also using the satellite link to attempt to send e-mail to the Japanese ship, in addition to marine-band radio calls, in an attempt to secure the release of their two members, who remain aboard the &quot;Yushin Maru 2.&quot;The Institute of Cetacean Research, the Tokyo-based organization that operates the &quot;Yushin Maru 2,&quot; declined to comment on the technology at its disposal, citing security reasons.&quot;I&#39;m sorry to say, you might be Greenpeace posing as a journalist,&quot; said Gabriel Gomez, a spokesman for the group in Tokyo, when contacted by telephone on Thursday.The systems employed by the Japanese group don&#39;t appear as sophisticated. Only a handful of still images from the ship have been released by the group to the media, and they are a relatively low VGA (640 pixels by 480 pixels) resolution. No video has been made available.The satellite communications technology being employed by the two ships is increasingly being used by media, governmental and relief organizations in remote areas. Earlier this month, Cable News Network (CNN) won a Technology and Engineering Emmy Award for its satellite news gathering system based on Inmarsat&#39;s BGAN broadband system. The BGAN system offers a standard IP (Internet Protocol) connection as fast as 492Kbps and is small enough that it can be built into a backpack.