Web Site's 3-D Maps Offer Virtual Visits
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By JESSE NOYES  EveryScape is hoping people will see the world from its perspective.  The Waltham-based start-up is in the midst of building online 3- D maps of nine big cities, including Boston.
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3D Connexion introduces a new peripheral that helps users navigate virtual 3D spaces.
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The new Ask3D interface aims to align Ask's search results pages more closely with the way people actually search.
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New widgets help personalize maps with dynamic content from diverse sources.
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Wachovia is working on a project of staggering scope:&#160;a 3-D map of the firm&#39;s datacenter operations.The effort has been underway for about eight months, said Jacob Hall, a Wachovia vice president and head of the company&#39;s platform design and datacenter, technology products group.To generate the 3-D models, the financial services company is using geospatial data and also partnering with a pair of vendors, Tideway Systems and Intepoint, as well as the University of North Carolina-Charlotte, which has a visualization center.Tideway makes Foundation, a tool for mapping dependencies among applications and hardware, and this week released version 7.0 of the product. Intepoint&#39;s focus is on visualization and event simulation for IT systems.Right now, Wachovia is rendering 3-D models down to the level of individual servers in buildings, Hall said. Given enough data, the system could eventually generate even more detailed models, according to Hall.Wachovia hopes the project will provide better visualization of IT assets, their power consumption, and other details; the ability to identify &quot;critical nodes&quot; in the network; and the means to predict the business impact of various scenarios, such as a power outage in a city.The company also hopes the 3-D maps will help them run a&#160;greener IT department. &quot;This gives us the facts to go out and rearchitect our systems,&quot; Hall said.However, Wachovia is not collecting data in real time. That is largely unnecessary, Hall said. &quot;It would create too much traffic, and people would just try to shut it off. I think static snapshots are good enough.&quot; One future possibility could be to provide real-time data on demand, he said.Hall said there are plans to make the tool Web-based, allowing for integrations with other data types, such as IT trouble ticket information.Drue Reeves, vice president and director of datacenter strategies with Burton Group, said the value of modeling datacenters in 3-D form probably depends on an organization&#39;s size. &quot;I think it&#39;s for the larger enterprises. For the guys who have NOCs [network operations centers], it&#39;d be very useful. But I do wonder if it would be a little pricey for the average SMB,&quot; he said.Ultimately, Reeves noted, Wachovia&#39;s effort involves system visualization, not the actual instrumentation of IT devices: &quot;It&#39;s more for the person than the machine.&quot; But IT departments should consider any means that could help them run their operations more efficiently, he stressed.
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(InfoWorld) - Microsoft will work with 3D design and visualization software developer Dassault SystÃ¨mes, to add a new dimension to its Virtual Earth mapping and satellite imagery service, the companies announced Tuesday. Through this partnership, Microsoft will be able to invite users of Virtual Earth to contribute their own 3D models of buildings featured on the maps, much as Google already does with the "3D Warehouse" layer in its Google Earth software and the free modeling tool Google SketchUp, now at version 6. To encourage development of models for inclusion in Virtual Earth, Dassault SystÃ¨mes has built an online community, 3dvia.com, around consumer uses of its and other companies' 3D modeling tools. The community began life as Teapotters.com, a creative project set up by a group of Dassault employees, but opened its doors as 3Dvia.com As a demonstration of what's possible, Dassault SystÃ¨mes is offering a free 3D model of a much sought-after electronic gadget -- not partner Microsoft's Zune music player, but the iPhone to be launched by Apple on Friday. The iPhone model can be viewed using the 3D Life Player browser plug-in from VirtoolsÂ of Paris and, if you catch the angle just right, offers an unexpected view of the inside of the gadget. Dassault SystÃ¨mes also announced partnerships with two French companies, RealvizÂ of Sophia Antipolis and Allegorithmic of Clermont Ferrand, to make their technology available to members of the 3dvia.com community. Allegorithmic will allow community members to use its procedural textures to decorate their models. Procedural textures are patterns of shading created according to a series of rules or algorithms to resemble real-world surfaces such as rock, foliage or sheet metal. They are often used to render more realistic scenery in video games without the need for storing voluminous image files. Realviz makes software used by film makers and game developers to create photorealistic 3D images. One of its applications, VTour, can be used to construct three-dimensional models of scenes from a single photograph. Dassault SystÃ¨mes will integrate VTour with 3dvia, allowing users to combine their 3D models with 3D backdrops created from photographs. Dassault SystÃ¨mes also plans a business side to the 3dvia community, called SupplierSource, to help designers find manufacturers for their products. The SupplierSource site, which the company said will appear at http://www.suppliersource.3dvia.com/, is not yet live.
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Details of a new Microsoft Web analytics tool are available online.
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A free web-based tool is launched that allows people to build a virtual world in less than a minute.
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Yahoo MaxMixer pulls from different mapping sites to creat a composite map; Shop by Color is a new feature on its shopping site.
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WICHITA, Kan. _ A few summers ago, Matthew Vines had a whole lot of time and not much to do, so he created a Web site.  This summer, that site is his ticket to a grand adventure.
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Updated Windows Live Search Maps features a 3D map of New York, with other cities to follow.
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New service will compete with sites like Travelocity.com and Expedia.
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Real-time maps showing the "health" of the Internet, including its speed, traffic numbers, and the rate of attacks, are now freely available to the public.
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Virtual reality might finally be the medium that unites the passive experience of watching television with the interactive potential of the Web.
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Google Maps can be a bit of a shutterbug these days.
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Teen-friendly virtual world books musicians for in-world appearances.
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A new feature in Internet Explore 7 displays Web sites with security certification in a green-filled address bar.