Google Earth for charidee
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Money for nothing and your maps for free Google is offering charities and not-for-profit organisations the chance to use Google Earth without paying the earth.â¦
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According to this new post on Pierre-Alain Joye's blog today, a new version of the GD graphics library has been release - version 2.0.34.   It took a lot of work to get this version released. Version 2.0.34 is a bug-fix-only release (all known security issues have been fixed), and upgrade is strongly recommended. It is also my very first GD release (hopefully, the first of many to come), and marks the official freeze of the 2.0.x tree, only security-related fixes will be made on this tree from now on. Please find the release announcement here.   He also invlites any language binders to contact him about hosting for a project if it's not available.
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By MICHAEL LIEDTKE SAN FRANCISCO - Google Inc. bills the latest twist on its online maps as &quot;Street View,&quot; but it looks a bit like &quot;Candid Camera&quot; as you cruise through the panorama of pictures that captured fleeting moments in neighborhoods scattered across the country.
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Plus: How Google maps the world. Read these stories and more from around the Web on News.com Extra.
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By Elise Ackerman, San Jose Mercury News, Calif.  May 30--"Google wants you" to help it win the mapping war, John Hanke, the director of Google Earth and Google Maps, told a crowd of location-obsessed technologists Tuesday at the Where 2.0 conference in San Jose.
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NEW online maps which let users zoom in on photos of roads and homes has shocked the US.   A car loaded with 11 cameras drove 50,000 miles filming for Street View on Google's Earth maps. The Big Brother-style pictures show faces and even look into windows.
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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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(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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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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Blog: Google acquires Panoramio, a Spanish photo sharing site that maps photos on Google Earth
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Google on Wednesday plans to deliver an update to its Google Earth application that includes content from a number of premium sources. The features are overlaid atop areas in a map so users can learn about their significance. Photos: View images of the Google Earth features
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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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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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Technical accident enrages local mayor The mayor of the German town of Bad Toelz, Germany, is angry with Google Earth for its reference to a nearby "Mount Hitler".â¦
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SAN FRANCISCO -- Google Inc. bills the latest twist on its online maps as "Street View," but it looks a bit like "Candid Camera" as you cruise through the panorama of pictures that captured fleeting moments in neighborhoods scattered across the country.
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(InfoWorld) - A photo that purports to confirm the existence of a new class of Chinese ballistic missile submarine could torpedo Google's aspirations in the world's second-largest Internet market. Users of Google Earth in China should enjoy it while they can. On July 5, researcher Hans Kristensen posted what he believes is the first photo of the Jin-class submarine to the Strategic Security blog on the Web site of the Federation of American Scientists, a nuclear weapons research and opposition group. The photo,Â taken from Google Earth, is accompanied by coordinates for six other Chinese submarine bases on the same page. Although it was the People's Liberation Army Navy that docked the alleged new sub outdoors, in full view not only of the commercial satellites that Google uses but also those employed by the U.S. and other militaries, that doesn't mean that China's growing blue-water force will take kindly to being put on display. The sub photo made headlines, with a story appearing on the front page of a newspaper called "Global Military Affairs Weekend," accompanied not by the Google Earth image, but a picture of a sub so old it looks like it fought in World War II. The article stated that the submarine captured by satellite was "China's newest submarine, the Yuan class." Google hasn't fared well in China, even before the sub photo surfaced. It trails rival BaiduÂ in the local search market, and earlier this year admitted that it hadÂ "inadvertently" usedÂ part of a database from Chinese portal Sohu.comÂ to create a Chinese-language search tool. The company has come under fire for knuckling under to Chinese Internet censorship policies, such as excluding politically sensitive results from the Chinese version of its search engine. None of this includes the other difficulties Google has encountered in China, including occasional blocking of its main search engine, the blocking of its Blogspot blogging site, the inaccessibility of cached pages from its main site, and limited access to Google News. In fairness, China isn't the only country that has had weaponry and military sites laid bare by Google Earth. The North Koreans must be thrilled that most of their naval bases can be viewed by anybody with a PC and a broadband connection. That's not to mention the new security risks presented to military installations in the U.S. and elsewhere, now that hostile forces, be they terrorists or regulars, have an easily accessible aerial view of each site. For situations like this in China, rarely is the reaction immediate. With Beijing's 2008 Olympic Games just over a year from now, China isn't eager to court negative press as it seeks to present itself as more open and tolerant. Its response may also not be so public. Despite being outed by a piece of software, Google's troubles will more likely occur if it attempts to expand in China via investment or acquisition, or if it attempts to move into other business areas, especially anything involving online video. A Google spokeswoman in Beijing did not respond to a request for comment on how the submarine photo may affect the company's fortunes in China. Â
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Led by John Hanke, Google Earth and Google Maps are delivering cartography tools to the masses.