Posts Tagged ‘Maps’

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Helplessness, despair, and Street View come together in ‘GeoGuessr’ Google Maps game

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Google Maps is usually for helping you navigate, but a new game based on Street View is about being almost hopelessly lost. GeoGuessr drops you at a random Street View location across the earth, leaving you to move around the map as much as you’d like before ultimately taking a guess at where you’re actually standing. Though you’ll occasionally get lucky and start off right in front of a hotel billboard printed with a city’s name on it, for the most part you’ll be wandering around country roads, scrounging hints off of signs and license plates, and trying to make it back to civilization. Though GeoGuessr a relatively simple game, it almost recalls the confusion and wonder of Myst, right in our own world. The game runs through five rounds…

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Updated Gmail for iOS links directly to Chrome, Google Maps and YouTube apps

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The official Gmail app for iOS has been available since 2011, but up until now, links to Maps and other Google utilities have directed users to the browser rather than to the respective programs. A just-released update to Gmail for iOS lets you jump into Chrome, Google Maps, YouTube and other native programs directly from links in your inbox. Those who prefer to keep things browser-based, however, can turn off this new functionality via the app’s setting menu. Version 2.2.7182 (granular, much?) also lets you sign out of a single Gmail account rather than having to sign out of them all — a boon to those of us juggling work and personal identities. Hit up the source link to download the update.

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Bing News for Windows 8 updated with custom RSS feeds, Bing Maps gets local search feature

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Microsoft is releasing fresh Windows 8 app updates this week. News, Maps, Travel, Sport, and Finance are all being updated with new features. The News app now includes a customize option that lets users add their own RSS feeds to the top stories section of the app. A pin option is also included to place custom feeds on the Start Screen. Custom feeds are displayed in a similar format to other curated feeds within the app, but unoptimized feeds will open in a browser.

The Windows 8 Maps app, powered by Bing, has been updated to include an improved local search option. Categories, including restaurants, hotels, and hospitals, are all displayed as local search options when you search within the app. Options to track location automatically…

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The design history behind the iconic ‘Pegman’ of Google Maps

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The images utilized in Google Maps is so usual at this point that it’s easy to forget that it didn’t just jump into presence fully-formed; it really needed to be made. Buzzfeed takes an appearance at the process behind developing among the most familiar aspects of Google Maps: the humanoid “Pegman” character utilized in Road Take. Initially, Google’s designers dabbled the concept of using an icon of an eyeball in order to suggest the viewpoint, however rapidly understood it was neither aesthetically pleasing nor specifically effective. That caused a lot of design versions, consisting of female variations, robotics, and a Pegman in a fit and dress shoes. To get the full tale of how Pegman became– and to see some of the easter eggs that …

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Microsoft’s WorldWide Telescope Maps Deep space With NASA’s Information

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Jonathan Fay and WWT

The Microsoft Research team is developing an impressive map of deep space using data and photographs collected from the numerous telescopes worldwide, consisting of NASA ’ s Hubble Area Telescope. They call it The WorldWide Telescope.

There are about 300 billion stars in the Milky Method Galaxy, and about the same number of galaxies in our world (give or take a couple). With the WorldWide Telescope, experts and developers have pieced together an in-depth 3D view of the world that lets a user do a fly by of any world, star or galaxy known to guy. You can even see the whole world in a solitary frame, which makes us all seem insanely irrelevant.

But the WorldWide Telescope is more than simply a neat exploration tool for astronomy and physics nerds. Program Director Dan Fay hopes NASA can utilize it as a research tool which students from the elementary to graduate levels can utilize it as an instructional resource. The Microsoft Research group has made it basic to manipulate data on a touch surface or desktop. With the touch of a few buttons and squeeze to zoom, you ’ re off and flying through the world. The team prepares to bring this miracle to mobile devices quickly.

Microsoft has actually additionally released an API to permit designers to build custom trips and lessons. I was fortunate sufficient to be offered a tour of the nebula of the Milky Means Galaxy, and undoubtedly it was stunning. The lessons can be as easy as a fly by of every planet in our solar system, or as complexed as assessing photographs of the inmost known space items. The map likewise lets you look at any component of the sky in a lot of light wavelengths, including infrared and X-ray.

After the trial, I took a trip of a scale model of the James Webb Area Telescope, which is because of introduce in 2018. The telescope has to do with 100 times more effective than Hubble and about seven times as huge. It consists of a 21-foot reflective mirror and a slew of instruments to research the sky.

NASA intends to look with dust clouds bordering the formation of celebrities using the onboard infrared instruments to lastly see how stars are born and to look far enough through deep space that they will get a much better sense of how all this madness is shaped. It will additionally have the ability to detect water vapor in environments outside our solar system, and where there is water, there ’ s a considerable possibility at life.

(mind = blown).

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Google Maps Engine Lite beta lets amateurs craft their own location sets

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Google Maps Engine Lite beta lets amateurs import their own points of interest

Pros have long had access to Google Maps Engine if they require to highlight anything from regional shops to natural resources. Today, Google is satisfying the rest of us potential cartographers with a beta for Google Maps Engine Lite. The web service lets daily individuals draw objects and import locations for their own reference, whether it’s roughing out favored hiking tracks or determining worthwhile put on an upcoming trip. Map makers can stylize the maps and share them with others, if they such as– the Lite tag mostly restricts users to “small” spreadsheet imports and a maximum of three information sets for contrasts. As long as you can live within those prescribed borders, you can try the slendered down engine today.

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Google Maps Goes Hiking: Views from Earth’s Highest Peaks

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Google Maps Goes Hiking: Views from Earth's Highest Peaks

As part of its Maps application, Google has actually unveiled 360-degree mapping pictures of some of the world’s tallest mountain peaks, consisting of Mt. Everest and Mt. K.

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Scandalous!: Woman Calls Things Off With Fiance After Spotting Him On Google Maps With Another Woman

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Note: It wasn’t actually Google Maps, it’s the Russian equivalent called Yandex Maps. I just said Google Maps in the title because because if I’d said Yandex you’d be all, ‘Dammit, the GW’s been drinking again’ (which I have but I’m trying to play it off).

A woman in Russia recently called things off with her fiance after stumbling across a shot of him holding hands with another woman while looking up an address on Yandex Maps. Or was she purposefully looking for him? DUM DUM DUM!

Marina Voinova told LifeNews.ru that she was looking up an address using the website’s “street view” feature when she happened across a man who looked like Alexander, her boyfriend of five years, with his arms around a woman who did not look like her.

“When Sasha came home, I immediately called him to computer and asked him to find that address in the map,” she told the news portal. “When the image loaded, Sasha’s face changed in color. I looked in his eyes, waiting for explanations.”

Alexander immediately confessed to everything, Marina recalled. He told her he had made a mistake and did not love the other woman, but Marina had already made up her mind to end their relationship.

I’m surprised dude didn’t even try to lie. Oh, her? That’s my sister. “But I thought you didn’t have a sister.” Crazy right? Turns out she was long-lost. She just contacted me and we got together for lunch. Are you buying any of this this? Listen — please don’t destroy my stereo system, I paid a ton of rubles for that.

Hit the jump for a local news report but make sure to have the captions on unless you’re Russian or can speak Russian or just don’t care what anybody is saying.

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Google Maps for iPhone updated with contacts integration and improved local search results

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The brand-new Google Maps for iPhone is an all-around exceptional mapping app, but Google simply released an upgrade that improves its wax a bit, especially if you’re currently bought the company’s environment. If you have addresses added to your Google contacts, you could now directly search for those contacts in the app and get directions to their location. This was one of the only major missing features in the iOS Google Maps, so we’re delighted to see it dealt with– address book details has constantly been incorporated into the default mapping app on the iPhone. Obviously, this just works if your Google account’s contact info depends on date, so take a minute to review that if you’re going to provide this a shot.

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How Google And Bing Maps Control What You Can See

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Behind the scenes of the most powerful maps in the history of the Earth. And how Google, Microsoft, DigitalGlobe, and the world's governments decide what does — and doesn't — belong on its surface.

In early February, Wired published a satellite photo of a desert structure in southern Saudi Arabia. The image, screencapped from Bing Maps, corresponded with a report that the CIA had built secret drone bases in the region. The site was available on any computer with a web browser, but appeared to be legit — Bing Maps, which is owned by Microsoft, had effectively outed a closely guarded intelligence secret.

If you went to the same location in Google Maps, however, you’d find nothing but desert.

A few months before, Bing Maps (as well as Apple Maps) had revealed a temporary replica of the compound in which Bin Laden was killed. The training facility was located thousands of miles away from the Arabian Peninsula, in North Carolina, but didn't show up on Google Maps either.

In both cases, Google and Microsoft were using imagery collected by the same satellites. Yet one reflected the reality on the ground, and the other didn't.

“Does anyone know,” asked writer Adrian Chen shortly after the Wired post went up, “why Bing maps often shows sensitive satellite images censored by Google?”

It's a good question, but one we may never get a clear answer to — Microsoft, in fact, admits that it censors map data while Google vehemently — though narrowly — denies it.

But it's a question that also gets at a bigger problem with how digital maps get made, and who controls what makes it into your web browser. Maps censorship, it turns out, is very real — just not in the ways you think.

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Asked directly if Microsoft censors satellite images, a spokesperson declined to offer specifics: “Microsoft follows a complex process for blurring that aligns with legal requirements for various countries,” a spokesperson tells BuzzFeed. “Based on where, when, and how we acquire imagery the blurring procedure occurs at different points in our production pipelines. Due to various agreements with governments, Microsoft cannot comment on the specifics of blurring processes, algorithms, or procedures.”

The spokesperson appeared to be referring to streetside imagery — that is, imagery collected on the ground, that might capture identifying information such as faces or license plates. But she clarified: “Yes, the [policy] applies to satellite imagery as well.”

Google, on the other hand, officially denies that it censors map data, telling BuzzFeed, “in occasional instances in which we receive government requests to blur portions of our imagery, we are always open to discussing those requests with public agencies and local officials. To date, none of these conversations has resulted in our blurring any imagery.”

But there's a serious caveat: “Google Earth is built from a broad range of imagery providers, including public, government, commercial and private sector sources — some of which may blur images before they supply it to us.”

Google owns the rights to what may be the most comprehensive and wide-ranging database of the Earth's surface ever recorded, but the company doesn't own a single satellite. To build its maps, Google licenses imagery from a handful of commercial satellite operators, the largest of which is Longmont, Colorado's DigitalGlobe. DigitalGlobe currently operates four satellites, with a fifth coming online next year, and submits new imagery to Google on a frequent basis; Bing, too, re-ups its data almost constantly, though its contract specifics and update demands are likely different from Google's, and unknown to its competitor .

Stefan Geens, technologist and longtime Google Earth expert, has been writing about commercial satellite imagery at his site, OgleEarth, for over five years. It's these differing contracts, he suspects, that account for Google's exclusion of the the drone base in Saudi Arabia.

It's most probably, he says, that “they have different update schedules, and Microsoft got the data a little bit earlier.”

“It will be interesting to see if Google Earth updates in the next few weeks,” he notes. Using the Google Mapmaker project, a Saudi Arabian citizen has already updated Google Maps' metadata to include an official placename for the base:

Screenshot snapped by Stefan Geens

Yet there is a second, far more intriguing possibility — to Google, rather than blurring imagery of a secret base at the behest of the U.S. or Saudi Arabian government, simply declined to update it. The base, which is in the middle of the desert, is just a few kilometers outside of a high resolution zone.

This, says Geens, is not a smoking gun. But it wouldn’t be unprecedented. One of the few concrete examples of censorship-by-exclusion committed by Google was documented in 2007, when Google rolled back imagery in Basra, Iraq, after reports that insurgents had used it to attack British troops. Numerous tiles were rolled back to 2002-era, pre-war imagery, as documented extensively here.

At the time, a Google spokesperson was less defensive: “We have opened channels with the military in Iraq but we are not prepared to discuss what we have discussed with them. But we do listen and we are sensitive to requests.”

Since then, evidence of an unofficial policy at Google has slowly mounted: “Ever since [Basra],” says Geens, “it's very difficult to find recent satellite imagery in Afghanistan and Iraq.” This problem has been echoed elsewhere on multiple occasions.

One strangely poetic post on Google's support forums, dated 2011, reads “Google please update Iraq's Satellite images. They are 7 years old and a lot has changed.”

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There are clear, well-documented cases censorship in both Google and Bing's maps. For example, take this royal palace in Amsterdam:

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