Lord Satri - Slashdot User

Submission + - The Google Satellite to Be Launched This Week

Submitted by

Lord Satri

on Tuesday September 02, 2008 @04:28PM

Lord Satri writes: "Don't believe the CNET headline, it's not really a Google Satellite that we'll see in orbit this week, but almost! Google signed an exclusivity deal with GeoEye regarding GeoEye-1, the most advanced high resolution civil remote sensing satellite to date. This can be annoying to normal high-resolution remote sensing data users since Google already has an exclusivity deal with DigitalGlobe, the other major civil satellite imagery provider. From the CNET article: "Under the deal, Google is the exclusive online mapping site that may use the imagery, said Mark Brender, vice president of corporate communications and marketing. Google uses satellite imagery in its Google Maps and Google Earth product. And as a little icing on the cake, Google's logo is on the side of the rocket set to launch the 4,300-pound satellite in six days from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. Terms of the deal weren't disclosed. GeoEye-1 will orbit 423 miles above Earth, but it will be able to gather imagery with details the size of 41 centimeters, Brender said. Google, though, is permitted to use data only with a resolution of 50cm because of the terms of GeoEye's license with the U.S. government.""

Submission + - Microsoft, Google and Yahoo! Now Support GeoRSS

Submitted by

Lord Satri

on Thursday April 05, 2007 @12:27PM

Lord Satri writes: "This week, Microsoft announced their new Live Maps, in addition to supporting Firefox on Windows for 3D, now supports the GeoRSS standard. They join Google which recently announced the support of GeoRSS and KML mapping in their Google Maps API. In short, GeoRSS is a standard supported by the Open Geospatial Consortium that incorporates geolocation in an interoperable manner to RSS feeds. The applications are numerous. With Yahoo!'s support of GeoRSS, all the major players are in and the future looks bright for this emerging standard. As for KML, Google Earth's file format, this new Google Maps integration is not unrelated to the recent announcement of internet-wide KML search capabilities within Google Earth. From the GeoRSS website: "This site describes a number of ways to encode location in RSS feeds. As RSS becomes more and more prevalent as a way to publish and share information, it becomes increasingly important that location is described in an interoperable manner so that applications can request, aggregate, share and map geographically tagged feeds. To avoid the fragmentation of language that has occurred in RSS and other Web information encoding efforts, we have created this site to promote a relatively small number of encodings that meet the needs of a wide range of communities. By building these encodings on a common information model, we hope to promote interoperability and "upwards-compatibility" across encodings.""

Submission + - Virtual Earth 3D Beta Launched

Submitted by

Lord Satri

on Tuesday November 07, 2006 @06:19AM

Lord Satri writes: "An important Microsoft announcement, Virtual Earth 3D has launched. See also numerous screenshots and a Google Earth comparison from Spatially Adjusted. Read the Google Earth Blog on why he thinks it's not a treat to Google. Here's the CNET article and Microsoft's official press release (via The Map Room). Read more here from the development side or see the CBS reportage on Virtual Earth 3D. My main gripe: Windows and Internet Explorer 6/7 only. From the official press release: "When people visit Live Search, type a query into the search box and click the "Maps" tab, they get their search results in a map context that offers the option to explore the area using two-dimensional views (aerial and bird's-eye) or three dimensional models with Virtual Earth 3D. This new technology compiles photographic images of cities and terrain to generate textured, photorealistic 3-D models with engineering level accuracy.""

Slashdot Top Deals