Tibet in the News - Spreading the Word

Tibet News...

Shifting StreetViews

This is a short story about this camera, Point Grey's Lady Bug II

versus this other camera, Doduca from IMC.

Or how IMC made millions by dealing Google out?

StreetViews immersive imagery as introduced on Google Maps is captured by stitching together five or more video camera feeds resulting in 360 degree moving panoramas termed as "immersive video". Immersive video prior to Google's interest was very much a niche media type and just another "wazzo-camera". Immersive video is a very cool digital product and its pioneers include iMOVE, Point Grey Research, and IMC or Immersive Media Company. And there are a number of new entrants coming along as well...

Links: iMOVE, Point Grey Research, IMC.

Google sometime in earily 2007 made a deal with the Canadian company known as IMC. Immersive Media Company has been pushing and trying to find a market place for a very complex immersive video camera they call a "do-de-ca" or dodecagon or dodecahedral spherical camera or 12 sided. But at 2.5 megapixels per frame and 30 frames a second, well it just didn't have that necessary internet snap. Further, IMC provided an exclusive license with Google to use their collection of immersive video for a number of US cities. I guess this sort of a deal could be called a loss lead as Google received content to kick-off Streetview and IMC got PR and a stock blip? Google announced Streetview around the 5th of July 2007.

"Trading of Immersive Media stock was halted the day the Streetview functionality was announced. This was to prepare for massive stock activity that the announcement of Immersive Media's licensing their image data to Google would generate. What instead we see from the stock price is a steep rise a week before the announcement followed by a brief peak and then a decline in stock price. I guess the insiders who bought up stock before the announcement managed to unload it all in a day or two." Artificial Intelligence and Robotics

Just ten days later, IMC continued to make hay on their "special" but mysterious deal with Google...

Calgary, Alberta, July 12, 2007 – "Immersive Media Corp. [TSX-V: IMC] (the "Company") announced today that it has closed its previously announced underwritten private-placement. The underwriters exercised their option to increase the size of the offering by 1,023,000 common shares, resulting in the issuance of 4,116,000 common shares at a price of $4.85 per share for aggregate gross proceeds of approximately $20 million. The net proceeds of the offering will be used by the Company for general working capital purposes. The common shares are subject to a hold period of four months from closing." IMC

As you can see from the stock chart above, even on the announcement of StreetViews and the increased interest in IMC, the stock just did not perform. Why? Apparently IMC had given Google exclusive access to its content but Google had no exclusive deal with IMC? They reserved other options on populating StreetView with content. Enter Point Grey Research and its Lady Bug spherical video solution...

The Ladybug®2 is the next generation of spherical digital video cameras from Point Grey Research. The system has six HD cameras that enable the system to collect video from more than 75% of the full sphere (lower blue sky index), and an IEEE-1394b interface that allows streaming to disk at 30fps.

With the Internet's excitement for StreetView, Google rapidly expanded its use of Point Grey Research's LadyBug cameras over IMC's "Dodeca-camera". Rumor was they could equip ten cars for the cost on one Dodeca camera without all the licensing strings IMC demanded. So the only way out was for IMC to terminate their once promising opportunity with Google... ouch!

October 1, 2007
GeoImmersive™ Google Imagery Content Licensing Agreement
ends on December 27, 2007

Calgary AB – October 1, 2007 – Immersive Media Corp. announces the termination of its content license agreement with Google Inc. effective December 27, 2007. Although IMC may experience some modest decreases in revenues in the short term as a result of the termination of the agreement, in the medium and long term, management of IMC does not anticipate that the termination of the agreement will have a material adverse effect on revenues.

But all is not lost for IMC. A most interesting comment appeared on December 28, 2007 from a stockholder that attended the recent Annual Stockholder Meeting for IMC...

The first half hour or so, was dry, dealing with election of directors and other typical business affairs. Once this was concluded, Myles McGovern took center stage and discussed every major transaction from the beginning of the year, to the end. Juices started to flow. Two graphs were presented and these caught the audience's attention, the first showing the share price run up to July or thereabouts. The second, the decline from July to Dec/07.

A pin could of been head, if one was dropped. This was what everyone came to hear. Why and what was going to be done. To no ones great surprise, the finger was pointed at the general market environment and the loss of the affiliation to Google..... Formerly and Frankly , I was quite disturbed by the slide of the share price but once I got my mind wrapped around tax loss selling and the direction of the company, I was quite relieved. Hammeron2 - an IMC Stockholder

Walk On Dude!!

(Microsoft used LadyBug to document Katrina's destruction of New g Orleans....)

A short story on Panoramio

Panoramio Beautiful Geo-Images (blog)

"To see our small project grow from its birth for year and means has been a hallucinating experience, with this step and the continuous support of the users, we hoped that it grows still more." (translated from spanish by Google) - Jose, Joaquin and Eduardo, May 31, 2007

(c) Kyryrl

Eduardo's spainsh Blog - Look him up on via Google and you can get a translation too! (Eduardo writes Panoramio's Changes/Innovations Blog)

September 20th, 2007 by Eduardo Manchón

Yesterday 300,000 new photos from Panoramio were added to Google Earth, that means that the total number of photos in Google Earth is 2 million right now.

August 21st, 2007 by Eduardo Manchón

Good news! Finally photos up to ID 2,900,000 have been added to Google Earth. This means that more than 500,000 new photos have been added to Google Earth and this is the biggest update we ever did. Now the total number of photos from Panoramio in Google Earth is 1,7 million. Next update will be around September 20th.

June 27th, 2007 by Eduardo Manchón

Yesterday around 200,000 new photos were added to Panoramio’s layer inside Google Earth. Now the number of photos from Panoramio in Google Earth is around 1,2 million. With some exceptions, photos up to ID 2,000,000 have been included. This means around 2/3 of all photos uploaded to Panoramio up to this ID have been sent to Google Earth (e.g. photo with URL: http://www.panoramio.com/photo/1892099 has ID: 1,892,099).

If your photo has a higher ID than 2,000,000 you need to wait some weeks until the next update, expected for middle July, that will be larger and I hope will help catch on the delay.

June 27th, 2007 by Eduardo Manchón

Only three months ago we announced that Panoramio had reached one million photos. Today I am very happy to write that the number of photos has doubled and reached 2 million.

May 31st, 2007 by Eduardo Manchón

We are very (and we mean very) happy to announce that Panoramio will be acquired by Google.

April 24th, 2007 by Eduardo Manchón

Finally the new update is done. We sent to Google Earth a selection of photos up to ID: 1,710,000. Approximately 3/4 of the photos uploaded to Panoramio were sent to Google Earth. Thas is almost one million photos (973,949), the double number of photos than the previous update that reached ID: 655,000.

February 17th, 2007 by Eduardo Manchón

Today Panoramio’s layer at Google Earth was updated. Previously there were 80.000 photos from Panoramio visible in Google Earth by default, now 400.000 photos are included. There is a great chance to find photos from almost every place on Earth.
The selection of the 400.000 photos included photos until ID:655.000

December 11th, 2006 by Eduardo Manchón

Official Google Blog announced last Saturday that Google Earth has added a new “Geographic web” layer that includes articles from Wikipedia, comments from GE community and photos from Panoramio.

August 25th, 2006 by Eduardo Manchón

Thomas de Lange Wenneck has a GPS attached to his camara. When he takes a photo the coordinates of the place are automatically stored in the EXIF information of the image file. Later he just needs to upload his photos to Panoramio and they are automatically located in the map. No need to map the photo manually with Panoramio’s drag and drop interface.

July 5th, 2006 by Eduardo Manchón

We were adding some new features to Panoramio the last week:
- Photos with geodata in EXIF are automatically located in Panoramio, so you don’t need to do anything but upload the photo if it has the GPS coordinates in their EXIF tags.
- Mislocated?. Suggest a new location: Since there are many people correcting wrong

November 28th, 2005 by Joaquín Cuenca Abela

He asked, I deliver.
Do you have a ton of photos that you want to show in a map? Worried your pictures will soon fade away from the home page of panoramio to some hard to find page?
Now you can restrict the photos in panoramio to those of a particular user.

October 23rd, 2005 by Joaquín Cuenca Abela

Stefan Geens suggested to publish a KML Network Link with the latest pictures of Panoramio.
I did not know what is a KML Network Link, but it sounds cool, so I looked up the documentation, and implemented a KML Network Link for Panoramio.
How does it work?

September 27th, 2005 by Joaquín Cuenca Abela

Some people have asked in the forum for a way to have Panoramio on
their site. So I went for an easier solution for all of you. I just
cooked a mini panoramio version, ready to be used on iframes outside
Panoramio.

An example is:

This is what you need to write in your site:
<iframe src=”http://www.panoramio.com/plugin.php?
lt=43.406295&amp;ln=-2.686586&amp;z=3&amp;k=1″ width=”446px” height=”300px”></iframe>

The world on your mobile?

"Geobrowsers are a stunningly effective means of visualising the planet. But they are just one part of a broader endeavour, the construction of a “geoweb” that is still in its infancy, much as the world wide web was in the mid-1990s. The web did away with many geographical constraints, enabling people with common interests to communicate, regardless of location. Yet placelessness jettisons some of the most useful features of information, which are now attracting new attention.'

"At present the most feverish excitement surrounds the combination of virtual maps with other sources of data in “mash-ups”.'

The world on your desktop
Sep 6th 2007
From The Economist print edition

Google Mobile and Maps

Berg Insight writes that the number of mobile subscribers accessing maps and downloading routs using their mobile handsets in Europe and the U.S.A. is around 4 million. Over the next ten years the number of map subscribers is expected to increase at a compound annual growth rate of 61% to reach 43 million users in 2012.

Big names in the mobile industry are gearing up for mobile phone navigation. Nokia launched its GPS-enabled N95 for the European market this year. The U.S. has evolved further with GPS being a standard in all CDMA-handsets. Sprint Nextel and Verizon Wireless have attracted millions of subscribers to navigation services. Google and Yahoo! are extending their existing search and map propositions with Mobile Web 2.0 applications.

Traditionally, Google mobile and non-mobile web surfing declines in the summer months as people go on vacation. (At least in North America). This year traffic on mobile devices utilizing Google has increased 35%. Mobile devices looking at Google Maps has increased as much as 50%. This appears to point to a trend, in which people use their mobile devices for information while taking time off from work. This shows how attached people are to such devices, when they are willing to take them along on vacation.

“I think this is sort of a sign that people are becoming savvier with their mobile devices, and that there are better devices” available for the Web, while away from computers, Mayer told reporters after a presentation to marketers at the Search Engine Strategies Conference in San Jose. “The technology curve is catching up,” she told reporters after the presentation. “The phones are just better.”

The number of Google searches done on mobile devices are tiny compared to those done on PCs, but the summer increase in North America shows that people are realizing the usefulness of mobile search engines. Maps and other information can enhance the vacation experience. Getting lost or visiting uninteresting places may become a thing of the past.

Berg Insight predicts that ad-funded services will account for an increasing share of the mobile navigation market. Local search applications can open the door to new ways for businesses to target consumers. MobileCrunch reported last month that more Americans are taking their mobile devices along on vacation to access map technology.

Blue2CAN - Wintec - HoudahGPS for Apple Geotagging

HoudahGPS - Blue2CAN and Wintec WBT-201 data logger

HoudahGPS is a front end to the open source command line tool GPSBabel.

Features

HoudahGPS allows you to transfer track log and waypoint data from your Garmin, Magellan or Wintec GPS devices. It connects via USB to the Garmin and Magellan devices. It interfaces with the Wintec WBT-100, WBT-101 and WBT-201 devices using Bluetooth.

HoudahGPS may also be used to convert between the GPX, NMEA and KML log file formats. The Sony GPS-CS1 track logger uses a special variant of the NMEA format which may also be read.

Benefits

Possible uses of HoudahGPS include:

- Creation of backup copies of track log files for later use with HoudahGeo
- Conversion of track logs to KML for visualization in Google Earth.

Screenshot

HoudahGPS is freeware

HoudahGPS is available FREE OF CHARGE.

GeoTagging With NIKON

Put a Billion Dollar System to Use

From Zombie Dinosaurs by Dave Johnson... you know the one?

A few years ago, I went on a little photo trek and showed off the photos. I vividly remember getting grilled about the various locations by a friend of mine. “Where were these taken?” she asked me about a particular set of photos. “Hmm,” I replied, “I don’t remember. I took so many photos, I can’t keep track.” If only there was some automatic way to tag my photos with location information, so they’d be able to tell me where they were taken. Yet another thing I’d never have to remember ever again!.....

I’ve recently been experimenting with what is surely the most elegant geotagging tool ever made. I’m talking about Red Hen’s Blue2CAN.

In my experience, a better geotagging solution does not exist. It’s a small gadget about the size of your thumb that plugs into a small port on the front of several Nikon Digital SLRs, including the D200, D2X, D2Xs and D2Hs. It communicates wirelessly to any Bluetooth GPS receiver (like the kind that comes with inexpensive navigation programs and sits on your dashboard).

Top- Growth Sites for Google and Yahoo - Statistics

Comparing HOT sites for Google and Yahoo...

Microsoft and Yahoo might make finally good use of Virtual Earth ... if they can get together and their bloggers decide they will not (or can not) mash to Google Earth/Maps? It interesting that Flickr didn't make it ot Yahoos top sites...

Ricoh Geo-Imaging and FREE Google Earth Viewing

Calling all Ricoh Geo-imaging Pointographers
FREE Google Earth Geotagged Image Viewers - SAVE $200!

Got Ricoh geotagging? If you do, your geo-image map making just became FREE. No more need for a $200 ouit-of-date software...! If you are an owner of one of Ricoh's Geo-Imaging products like the Capio RR1, the Capliio RR30, the RDC i700 or their newest model the Ricoh Caplio 500SE you do not really need a geotagger software. What you do need is either Google's Picasa Photo Catalog or Red Hen's IsWhere utility. Both solutions are free and allow the user to display and review his geotagged images on Google Earth.

Picasa is a great tool that resides on your PC, handles the cataloging of your images, has great tools and features including the ability to post and share some of your local photos with friends via Picasa.NET. Most importantly for you "pointographers" is that each goetagged image is identified by a geotagged symbol and when needed can be displayed via its position on Google Earth. Picasa 2 Free Download and Net Storage

Alternatively if you have already settled on a image cataloger like ACDC, Microsoft Image, or one of the many others, you can download IsWhere and there-after have immediate access to geotagged images via Google Earth. Drag and drop a image or a selection of images or just browse and highlight the directories you would like to display on Google Earth , hit the &lt;CR> and Google Earth is loaded, and any geotagged image in your selection is placed. Simple and to the point....

IsWhere - Take the Picture - Get the Point

Hoot's Dugong Adventures with Nikon D200 GeoTagging

Where are the dog-gone dogongs?

In collaboration with researchers from the Centre for Dolphin Studies, South Africa, we will be conducting aerial surveys of the Bazaruto dugong population. The work forms part of an ongoing environmental impact assessment that is being carried out to determine the potential impacts of planned offshore gas exploration activities.

The flights will cover the area between the Rio Save mouth and the southern end of Bazaruto Bay and will be conducted three times a month, from April 2007 up to and including November 2007.

Click here to find some Dugongs

A company aircraft will be stationed at Vilanculos or Inhassoro for the duration of the work there.

Senators Seek Better Defense Imagery
Senators Seek Better Imagery

Committee Wants More Photos, Video and Maps Available to Troops in Field

By Walter Pincus

Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, June 6, 2006; Page A13

The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence wants to expand the mission of the nation's imagery intelligence agency so that it can provide U.S. forces on the ground with laptop computers that display still pictures and video of what may lie over the next hill.

"New products including full-motion video and ground-based photography should be included with available positional data [such as maps] in National Geospatial-Intelligence libraries for retrieval on Defense Department and intelligence community networks," the Senate panel said in its report on the fiscal 2007 intelligence authorization bill.

The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence wants to expand the mission of the nation's imagery intelligence agency so that it can provide U.S. forces on the ground with laptop computers that display still pictures and video of what may lie over the next hill.

"New products including full-motion video and ground-based photography should be included with available positional data [such as maps] in National Geospatial-Intelligence libraries for retrieval on Defense Department and intelligence community networks," the Senate panel said in its report on the fiscal 2007 intelligence authorization bill.

"The committee wants troops to be able to dial up what the route ahead will look like and where potential ambush points may be," said John Pike of GlobalSecurity.org, an expert in satellite- and ground-based intelligence. He said digital still photos taken by military attachés and Special Forces teams that have slipped in and out of potential target countries such as Iran and North Korea as well as video footage taken by unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) have been collected for years, but have not been integrated into the main data libraries maintained by the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA).

"The NGA's current library of geospatial products reflects its heritage -- predominantly overhead imagery and mapping products," the committee wrote in its report. "While the NGA is beginning to incorporate more airborne and commercial imagery, its products are nearly devoid of FMV [full-motion video] and ground-based photography," it added.

The panel's solution is to give the director of national intelligence authority to direct the NGA to "analyze, disseminate and incorporate" into its national system "likenesses, videos, or presentations produced by ground-based platforms including handheld or clandestine photography taken by or on behalf of human intelligence collection organizations."

The new visual materials would be available along with traditional mapping data for retrieval by mission planners and troops in the field. "The route to and from a facility or photographs of what a facility would look like to a foot soldier -- rather than from an aircraft -- would be of immense value to our military personnel and intelligence officers," the report said.

Sensitive to the unique roles played by human collectors, including Special Forces teams and clandestine CIA operatives, the report made clear that the NGA's new mission would not give the agency authority to "manage or direct" the collection or set the technical requirements for "handheld or clandestine photography." The human collection agencies would also control the classification of their photography as well as how and to whom it is distributed.

Instead, the panel encouraged the NGA, whose database includes the exact location of where images are taken and the timing, to work with the other collection agencies so their data can easily be retrievable from the National Geospatial data libraries.

Pike said, however, that technical difficulties exist in finding ways to integrate the new collection into the NGA data libraries. "Lots of still-camera imagery does not have time and place stamped into it as do the satellites," he said. He also noted that full-motion videos, where a UAV can be traveling 100 mph, creates a problem in stamping locations so viewers know the start and finish of the target.

An NGA spokesman said the agency does not comment on pending legislation such as the Senate intelligence committee's version of the authorization bill. But the NGA has been making changes in its databases over the past few years. More commercial imagery has been purchased and some video from UAVs such at the Predator and Global Hawk have gone into the system.

Last December, Director of National Intelligence John D. Negroponte gave the NGA responsibility for overhead, non-imagery infrared and space-borne collectors of measurement and signature intelligence, which involves sensors that, among other things, gather signs of chemical, electronic, nuclear or other radiations emitters.

The NGA also has linked elements of its group with the National Security Agency, whose satellites and ground-based facilities collect electronic messages. Negroponte recently praised this step as "linking our nation's 'eyes and ears.' "

In a presentation last September, retired Lt. Gen. James R. Clapper Jr., the head of the NGA, described his view of "geointellingence" as seeking to answer such questions as "Where am I? Where are the friendlies? Where are the enemies? Where are the noncombatants? Where are the obstacles, natural and manmade, and how do I navigate among them? And what is the environment?"

Clapper, who became director of the NGA in 2001 when it was still the National Imagery and Mapping Agency, plans to retire this month.

Nikon GeoTagging DX-GPS

The Red Hen Systems DX-GPS is an integrated solution for tagging Nikon digital still images with GPS data. Using a consumer, off-the-shelf GPS, Garmin Geko 301 unit and the industry leading Nikon D2Xs, D2X & D200 camera, the DX-GPS allows users to directly capture geospatially referenced images in the easiest, most reliable collection method today.

Information captured in the EXIF metadata of the JPEG image file can be read by Red Hen Systems’ MediaMapper and PixPoint for ArcGIS to create map features linked directly to the photo file.

Features & Benefits

• GPS mounts on top of the camera putting it in full view of satellites for maximum accuracy.
• Records Latitude, Longitude and Altitude data to EXIF header of each JPG image.
• Physical integration provides for hands-free use.
• Instantly inspect and view GPS data on the camera LCD.
• User interface on GPS allows for setting adjustments, verifying satellite acquisition and accuracy.
• Industry standard GPS-data tagging offers compatibility with most GIS systems.

Requires a Nikon D2Xs, D2X, D2H or D200 camera.

One Billion Cameras -

What Happens When A Billion People Worldwide Become Equipped With The Tools Of Visual Communication?

In the past four years the number of cameras in people’s hands worldwide has increased by 600%. It will double again over the next five years. Total number of cameras of all kinds sold in 2000: 85 Million units. Projected 2008 sales: One Billion units. Pervasive, web-connected imaging and the explosion of user-generated visual content are transforming how we communicate with each other in our personal, work, and community lives.

What happens when a billion users of many cultures, and scores of engineers and entrepreneurs, focus on new ways to enrich customers’ lives through imaging? What happens when R&D is fueled by an order-of-magnitude increase in economic reward? And what happens to the industry’s business models and value formulas?

FutureImage - 6Sight

ISDE5 - aka International GeoTaggers Conference?

Calling all photo-geographers, geo-photographers, and pointographers!!
.


The "earth first" potential of the NASA/Google alliance takes on additional significance given the wide blog-o-sphere announcement of the International Symposium on Digital Earth get-together in San Francisco in this coming June.

On June 5th 2007, the 5th International Symposium on Digital Earth (ISDE5) will open in the Bay Area of San Francisco, California, USA. The symposium will span four days and will address a broad national and international audience across a spectrum of industry, academic, government, and citizen attendees. All individuals who share a common interest in the concept of a digital Earth are urged to participate and attend. The Digital Earth vision embraces a philosophy that any citizen of the planet, linked through the Internet, should be able to freely access a virtual world of information and knowledge resources.

This philosophy supports the dream of ubiquitous education for the people of the planet. A rich convergence of technological advances, active visionaries, and recognition of the paramount need for humans to better understand the Earth and its systems comprises the character and history of this dynamic and exciting enterprise.

This international vision encompasses the virtual and 3-D representation of the earth with vast amounts of scientific, natural, and cultural information that is partially referenced and interconnected with digital knowledge archives from around the planet to describe and understand the Earth, its systems, and human activities.

The Digital Earth community is dedicated to building a virtual global commons to promote "down to Earth" solutions supported by cooperative web-based protocols using standards, databases, analytical and visualization tools that will foster the creation of appropriate applications for a sustainable future. A consortium of global experts founded the International Society for Digital Earth in 2006 to promote the evolution and implementation of the Digital Earth vision.

5th International Symposium on Digital Earth

ISDE5 Nominations

I would like to nominate two candidates that should be IMHO noted contributors to the "down to earth"contributions.

Global Biodiversity Information Facility
(with Google Earth bio-mash)

The GBIF GE Bio-Mash - or where are all those critters?/

The Global Biodiversity Information Facility is building a Internet accessible link to literally millions of "specimens". Most of the world's biologic diversity is located in the developing regions where as the dominate archive of those bio-diverse regions are held within developed nations. Essentially the GBIF is geotagging as much of the known via Google Earth. Put a time line on the collection and its classification and patterns may emerge? Give a HOOT! Don't pollute!

Good managers of natural resources and policy-makers know that their best decisions are based on results from the most accurate scientific analyses. Such analyses are based on solid, documentable data that have been recorded directly from the observation of nature. Such records are called 'primary' data. Biodiversity is a handy, one-word name for all the species on the Earth, the genetic variety they possess, and the ecological systems in which they participate. Another way of thinking about biodiversity is as the 'living resources' portion of 'natural resources'.

A large part of the primary data on biodiversity are the 1.5 - 2.0 billion specimens held in natural history collections, as well as many geographical and ecological observations recorded by various means and stored in various media. In making living resource policy and management choices, decision-makers are often forced to rely on analyses that are not based on primary data. This is because the world's store of primary data about biodiversity is not at present readily and easily accessible.

Biodiversity is found around the world - there are micro-organisms between granules of rock 3 km below the Earth's surface, rootless plants in the Atacama Desert, thousands of species of beetles in a single rain forest tree. However, biodiversity is not distributed evenly across the face of the planet. An estimated 75% of all species are found in the developing world.

Information about biodiversity (natural history collections, library materials, databases) likewise is not distributed evenly around the globe. Three-quarters or more of data about biodiversity are stored in the developed world. However, most of the data that may be needed can't be transferred because either they are not digitised, or capacity to handle digital information is lacking, or both. Facilitating digitisation and global dissemination of primary biodiversity data, so that people from all countries can benefit from the use of the information, is the mission of the (GBIF).

Conservation Air Patrol
(With National Geographic geotagged images)

Conservation Air Patrol

My second nominee group, the Conservation Air Patrol, transverses Africa counting animals, documenting environmental degradation, and from what I hear swatting flies while getting the job done. Read about then add the National Geographic "MegaFlyover" to your Google earth via National Geographic and Wildlife Conservation Societies, “MegaFlyover”. This team plus National Geographic should be considered as enabling one of the original Mash-up".

Google and NASA - geoTagging via GE just gets better

http://www.prnewswire.com/cgi-bin/stories.pl?ACCT=104&STORY=/www/story/12-18-2006/0004493013&EDATE=

NASA and Google to Bring Space Exploration Down to Earth
MOFFETT FIELD, Calif., Dec. 18
/PRNewswire/ --

NASA Ames Research Center and Google have signed a Space Act Agreement that formally
establishes a relationship to work together on a variety of challenging technical problems ranging from large-scale data management and massively distributed computing, to human-computer interfaces.

As the first in a series of joint collaborations, Google and Ames will focus on making the most useful of NASA's information available on the Internet. Real-time weather visualization and forecasting, high-resolution 3- D maps of the moon and Mars, real-time tracking of the International Space Station and the space shuttle will be explored in the future.

"This agreement between NASA and Google will soon allow every American to experience a virtual flight over the surface of the moon or through the canyons of Mars," said NASA Administrator Michael Griffin at Headquarters in Washington. "This innovative combination of information technology and space science will make NASA's space exploration work accessible to
everyone," added Griffin. "Partnering with NASA made perfect sense for Google, as it has a wealth of technical expertise and data that will be of great use to Google as we look to tackle many computing issues on behalf of our users," said Eric Schmidt, chief executive officer of Google. "We're pleased to move forward to collaborate on a variety of technical challenges through the signing of the Space Act Agreement."

Recently, teams from NASA and Google met to discuss the many challenging computer science problems facing both organizations and possible joint collaborations that could help address them. NASA and Google intend to collaborate in a variety of areas, including incorporating agency data sets in Google Earth, focusing on user studies and cognitive modeling for human computer interaction, and science data search utilizing a variety of Google features and products.

"Our collaboration with Google will demonstrate that the private and public sectors can accomplish great things together," said S. Pete Worden, Ames center director. "I want NASA Ames to establish partnerships with the private sector that will encourage innovation, while advancing the Vision for Space Exploration and commercial interests," Worden added.
"NASA has collected and processed more information about our planet and universe than any other entity in the history of humanity," said Chris C. Kemp, director of strategic business development at Ames. "Even though this information was collected for the benefit of everyone, and much is in the public domain, the vast majority of this information is scattered and
difficult for non-experts to access and to understand. "We've worked hard over the past year to implement an agreement that enables NASA and Google to work closely together on a wide range of innovative collaborations," said Kemp. "We are bringing together some of the best research scientists and engineers to form teams to make more of NASA's vast information accessible."

NASA and Google also are finalizing details for additional collaborations that include joint research, products, facilities, education and missions. Google's innovative search technologies connect millions of people around the world with information every day. Google is headquartered close to Ames in Silicon Valley with offices through the Americas, Europe and
Asia.

For more information about Google, please visit:
http://www.google.com
For information about NASA and agency programs, please visit:
http://www.nasa.gov

Comming Soon....

GeoTagging Tourism

Dr Joe Berry dropped an interesting "photo-map-lett" on my desk today - geoTagging Tourism. The idea is to create, in this case, a resort "photo-map" of places within the resort and those adajacent so that guests can both find and see what might be available. The result is suggested below and is a HTML page generated by MediaMapper.

http://63.78.10.20/basis/MMMaps/LosAbrigados/

This example, a resort in the Southwest, was created by a walk-around geo-pointograher (non-professional point-and-shootist with GPS) and then assembled in MediaMapper. The images were geotagged and organized into two general groups: day-shots (red dot) and night-shots (black-dot). The black and white background imagery comes from Microsoft's Terraserver USA and the color block clipped from Google Earth and added/reqistered with in MediaMapper (this might be a strech on the GE license?). Some instructions were added and then the HTML generated.

Total time from start to posting the HTML - likley an hour or two no more - including the walk-about. Value to the resort - maybe not priceless but still valuable if seasonality or specialized content for a group's venue counts?

The resulting web page provides both tumb-nail and map cross-reference: click on a map point and the image is identified; click on an image and its placement is highlighted. Try the link above!

MicroSoft TerraServer USA - http://terraserver.microsoft.com/

Google Earth - http://earth.google.com/

Mediamapper - http://www.mediamapper.com

Dr Joe Berry - http://www.innovativegis.com/basis/

Correction - You get only back what you give

Wow my first response! And a need for my correction.

In the post below is a response from a geoTagger with Flickr. Apparently what ever you pass into Flickr in terms of EXIF content you get back? Also there is a hint that Flickr may soon pass along the Flickr Tags as an option but then again the potential compexity of the "tagging" might overwhelm EXIF standards?

EXIF has all sorts of potential but its design is a tad complex. Adobie has a companion file design that might be a "next step" standard? Will think about this a bit more and post some info in a week or so.

Time will tell....

Google Earth and IsWhere

IsWhere permits any selected geoEXIFed images to be viewed in Google Earth. These images we collected with GPStagIT. For example any geoEXIFed image created by the Nikon DX2 or Ricoh Spatial Cameras can be so posted.

Welcome

IsWhere for Google Earth, a simple, easy to use utility that displays where each photo was taken on a map. IsWhere uses spatially matched images, also called Red Hen Photos. A Red Hen Photo is any image that has Global Positioning System (GPS) data stored in the image's EXIF header. The IsWhere program now provides a method for photographers and photo analysts to quickly verify the spatial location where a photo was taken. Using a simple right click or drag and drop selection, users pass images into IsWhere to quickly display the image's location inside the Google Earth program.
IsWhere is a great way to see "what is where." Whether you are mapping out your vacation photos, documenting favorite restaurants or identifying potential building sites, IsWhere gives you the power to easily see where each photo was taken. Save the photos in your favorite places or email them to others for them to map and view. IsWhere makes it easy to SNAP, MAP, and SHARE your world.

IsWhere currently can post images to Google Earth from spatially smart digital cameras like Ricoh and Nikon.