News Blog

BURLINGAME, Calif.--Geography buffs tantalized by the quantity of geographic information hidden away among countless municipal computer systems have something to cheer about.

Combining Portland, Ore., geographic data and Google Earth can help show how long it takes to drive from a given point. Blue areas can be reached in five minutes, for example.

(Credit: Stephen Shankland/CNET Networks)

The new version 9.3 of the dominant geographic information system (GIS) software, sold by a company called ESRI, now makes it a relatively simple matter to expose that data for easy consumption over the Internet.

"We are engineering it so it plugs in. It becomes effectively a support mechanism to the geoweb," said ESRI founder and Chief Executive Jack Dangermond, announcing the change at the Where 2.0 conference here.

Showing one example of what can be done with the idea if detailed geographic information were more readily available, he used mapping information supplied by the city of Portland, Ore. Using Google Earth software, he showed a color-coded map that showed how far a person could drive in a certain amount of time from a specific location. Yellow was a short trip, blue took longer, green was another notch longer, and the areas were shaped according to driving speeds on different road types.

Another example showed a projection of the recent San Diego forest fires spreading into residential areas and evacuation routes that reflected up-to-date road closures.

ESRI CEO Jack Dangermond

(Credit: Stephen Shankland/CNET Networks)

GIS software long predates Internet-based mapping services such as Google Maps, Yahoo Maps, Google Earth, Microsoft Live Maps, and Microsoft Virtual Earth. The software is used for tasks such as recording housing property lines, telephone pole locations, sewer lines, and boundaries between residential and industrial zones.

Governments are naturally reluctant to reveal some details such as where the fiber-optic lines head into the New York Stock Exchange. But a lot of information is limited not by such constraints, but rather by the resources needed to process the data, argued John Hanke, head of Google Maps and Google Earth.

"It takes time and takes money," Hanke said. "If Jack can make it a one-click move for them, a lot more will do it."

The new ESRI software will let users export data as KML files, a Google format that's now a neutral format. KML data such as trails or 3D building models can be overlaid on online maps and with software such as Google Earth and Virtual Earth.

John Hanke, head of Google Maps and Google Earth, speaks at the Where 2.0 conference in Burlingame, Calif.

(Credit: Stephen Shankland/CNET Networks)

BURLINGAME, Calif.--Google added a new element to its search interface that will let others' Web sites use geographically linked information.

The company has opened up outside access to its Geo Search API (application programming interface), said John Hanke, head of Google Earth and Google Maps, at the Where 2.0 conference here Tuesday. That means other Web sites incorporating Google Maps will be able to find geographic features that are in Google's database but that previously were visible only through Google's own map site.

Google previously shared only some geographic data through its search API: businesses within a search of a local area. With the search API now producing broader results, a Web site could show not just the Marriott hotel near San Francisco International Airport but also nearby jogging trails, Hanke said.

"The API guys are on a more even footing with Google" when it comes to building a mashup that combines Google Maps with a third-party site via the interface, Hanke said in an interview after a speech.

Separately, Google added a new feature to Google Maps that can show the presence of geotagged information stored in the Wikipedia collaborative online encyclopedia. The map shows a "W" link for entries associated with a specific location, as the Google Maps Mania observed Tuesday.

Google Maps now shows Wikipedia entries.

(Credit: Google)

Google Street View now blurs some faces in Manhattan.

(Credit: Google)

BURLINGAME, Calif.--Google has begun testing face-blurring technology for its Street View service, responding to privacy concerns from the search giant's all-seeing digital camera eye.

The technology uses a computer algorithm to scour Google's image database for faces, then blurs them, said John Hanke, director of Google Earth and Google Maps, in an interview at the Where 2.0 conference here.

Google has begun testing the technology in Manhattan, the company announced on its LatLong blog. Ultimately, though, Hanke expects it to be used more broadly.

Dealing with privacy--both legal requirements and social norms--is hard but necessary, Hanke said.

"It's a legitimate issue," he said. He likened the issues some have with Street View to the ones that took place when Google introduced aerial views to Google Maps. It took time for the public, regulators, and Google to get comfortable with the feature, but, "It needs that debate. We see that and try to let it play out."

John Hanke, head of Google Maps and Google Earth, speaks at the Where 2.0 conference in Burlingame, Calif.

(Credit: Stephen Shankland/CNET News.com)

New jurisdictions, new rules
Street View poses other privacy issues besides just faces. Some people aren't eager to have their houses on display, for example. But much of the hubbub seems to have waned since Google launched Street View in May 2007, and indeed other companies such as Blue Dasher are working on similar technology.

Street View presents a view of dozens of United States cities from a driver's perspective (unless a plastic bag is stuck over the Street View camera). It appears Google has begun collecting imagery in Europe as well, along with detailed 3D maps, including Milan, Rome, and Paris.

A Pittsburg couple sued Google for allegedly photographing images on a private drive in April, but it's legal to take photos from public streets in the United States. However, standards vary.

"A just balance needs to be found between what can be publicized, in deference to the principles of freedom of expression and of information, and what has to be safeguarded from excessive public curiosity, so as to avoid infringing the individual's right to privacy and right to his or her picture," the French embassy observes.

Years of research
The face-blurring technology took a year to develop and is based on prior research that took several more years, Hanke said.

Face detection, which humans perform effortlessly with help from some dedicated neurons in the visual cortex, is a decades-old computer science problem. It's finally arriving in basic form in real-world applications, though, including digital cameras that use it to track and properly expose subjects or take a picture only when subjects are smiling.

There are some potential complications for Google Street View, though. False positives that blur billboards or works of art with faces could degrade Street View a bit, but missing some faces that are visible could pose privacy problems.

Google thinks its technology has struck the right technology balance in general.

"It does a good job of figuring that out. It uses a variety of technologies to filter," Hanke said, though it's "not perfect."

Many times computer algorithms struggle to recognize faces that aren't straightforward views. But that problem isn't as bad for Google: the faces that are obscured by hair, telephone poles, or oblique views are likely the ones identifiable already.

Have you found any examples of faces the algorithm missed or that it should have caught? Share the links or other thoughts in the comments section below.

Yahoo is letting outside Web sites use information from its own catalog of geographic information, thus allowing programmers to employ the Yahoo data and services into their own applications.

The company now provides an interface to the data, said Dan Catt, an engineer and geotagging buff at Flickr, Yahoo's photo-sharing site. The catalog gives locations a numeric identifier--where on Earth IDs, or WOEIDs, to various locations.

"Yahoo have opened up their geo database," Catt said in a blog entry. One specific example: the Sydney Opera House has the WOEID of 28717584.

The service is part of what Yahoo calls the Yahoo Internet Location Platform, a service currently in beta testing that's designed to help developers build geographic features into the Internet.

Expect more news on this at O'Reilly's Where 2.0 conference, which begins in earnest on Tuesday in Burlingame, Calif. Yahoo will preview the location platform at the conference, according to the Yahoo Developer Network Web site. Catt is giving one of those speeches on Wednesday.

The service fits neatly into the Yahoo Open Services plan, aka YOS, under which the company is trying to make its Web site a foundation for other applications, either built directly on Yahoo properties or employing services over the network on outside sites.

The Yahoo Internet Location Platform provides programmers "with the vocabulary and grammar to describe the world's geography in an unequivocal, permanent, and language-neutral manner," the site said. "The Internet Location Platform is designed to facilitate spatial interoperability and geographic discovery; users can traverse the spatial hierarchy, identify the geography relevant to their users and their business, and in turn, unambiguously geotag, geotarget, and geolocate data across the Web."

According to documentation, there are about 6 million WOEIDs, including postal codes, cities, time zones, and suburbs. So far, though, natural features and bodies of water aren't included yet.

According to former Yahoo employee Simon Willison, Yahoo got the geographic data through its 2005 acquisition of WhereOnEarth.

The WOEID interface permits operations such as translating a place name from one language to another, looking up the WOEID for a landmark, and supplying a list of likely IDs that match a specific place.

It also can let programmers find the "parents" of a specific WOEID. For example, Hearst Castle's parent is the town of San Simeon, whose parent is San Luis Obispo County, whose parent is California, whose parent is the United States.

It also permits finding neighbors--for example, towns near other towns or countries near other countries. It doesn't assign WOEIDs down to the level of addresses, though.

(Via Read Write Web)

The new Google Earth incorporates the Street View feature of Google Maps, including a full-screen option.

(Credit: Google)

Part of the fun of Google Earth is flying over the virtual planet like Superman. But let's face it: we're ground-dwelling creatures, and the street-level view is useful, too. Even Superman has to land sometimes.

Enter Google Earth 4.3, due for release at about 8 p.m. Tuesday. It the Street View feature from Google Maps for a ground-level view of some areas, and a new navigation method makes the software more like a first-person video game, Google said in a statement.

The new version also lets users watch time-lapse views of sunsets and sunrises, either locally or when viewing the entire earth. It's also got faster, more realistic 3D graphics, Google said.

Google racing for 3D map supremacy against Microsoft, which has been pouring energy into its Virtual Earth and Live Maps technology, including a major upgrade last week. That technology also features 3D views of the planet and various cities, including updated version-2 graphics of four cities.

Members of an industry group called the Open Geospatial Consortium have approved Google's KML technology as an open standard for describing some geographic data.

KML is used to manage the display of geospatial information in Google Earth, the company's software for flying over the surface of a virtual globe. With its 3D coordinate-based system, people can create models of city buildings, draw a line showing where they hiked, or overlay their own custom place names on a generic map.

Google hopes standardizing KML will help mean broader use for the map description language, but already, even rivals such as Microsoft have embraced it. This view shows Microsoft's Live Maps with a KML overly describing Glenn Canyon National Recreation Area.

(Credit: Microsoft)

Google already shared its KML format openly, and others had used it in software products, but Google now hopes that its status as an official standard will decrease barriers to further adoption.

"What OGC brings to the table is...everyone has confidence we won't take advantage of the format or change it in a way that will harm anyone," said Michael Weiss-Malik, Google's KML product manager. "The goal is to prevent market fragmentation," in which different technology uses different standards.

File formats may sound mundane, but they can give strategic value to those who control them as a gateway to the data held by people and companies. In one high-profile example, open-source allies launched an attack on Microsoft's Office stronghold with the OpenOffice.org software, which could mostly read Microsoft's file formats.

One front in that war was an effort to set OpenOffice's file formats as an industry standard called ODF (OpenDocument Format), a move Microsoft countered with its own OOMXL effort, which Google opposed.

It didn't seem like there was powerful reluctance to use KML. For example, the latest Virtual Earth and Live Maps technology from Google rival Microsoft can use KML to let users export user information to navigation devices. And the Microsoft site can overlay KML files from the Internet onto its Live Maps--here's a (slow-loading) link to one from the National Resources Defense Council that describes expected effects from global warming to various national parks, along with the park boundaries.

But standardization will make KML more palatable, Weiss-Malik said. "Governments like to say they can publish to OGC KML instead of Google KML," he said.

And he expects to see a new era blossom of personal map publishing, all powered by KML. "We're just starting to see the birth of map publishing," he said.

KML stands for Keyhole Markup Language. It initially was developed by Keyhole, the satellite imagery company Google acquired in 2004. Keyhole's technology was built into the Google Maps site and the Google Earth software.

The standard, which geographic information system (GIS) software specialist Galdos Systems helped bring to the standardization process, is based on KML 2.2. The official KML standard can be downloaded from the OGC Web site.

Microsoft has launched Live Search 地图, the China branch of its Virtual Earth project.

Compared with Google's ditu.google.cn and Sogou's (搜狗) map.sogou.com, the site seems about the same, if a little faster--though traffic may still be low. What Google and Microsoft have in common is that the maps contain listings for restaurants, banks, and other locations rendered as icons on the map. Sogou has no such advantage, but sometimes it resolves addresses better than Google.

But here's the interesting part: Microsoft's new service includes major highways and the locations of main cities on Taiwan. It never occurred to me before, but so does Google's. Sogou, on the other hand, has a full detail map of Taibei (Taipei).

Is it just me, or does this suggest that Google and Microsoft may have struck a compromise between people who would want Taiwan included and people who would rather see it separate? Google has a much better map of Taiwan on Google.tw.

I don't want to suggest there isn't a good reason to have different map sites serving mainland China and Taiwan audiences. Here in Beijing and throughout the mainland, we use Simplified Chinese characters; in Taiwan, they still use Traditional characters. This is important because place names look different in the two systems. Even the word China is different: 中国 (Simplified) and 中國 (Traditional).

It's perhaps unsurprising that Sogou's Taiwan map uses Simplified. But it is interesting that both Microsoft and Google have included partial map information for Taiwan on their mainland-focused sites. For another day, perhaps I'll look at where they drew the international barriers at sea, but we already know making maps can be a source of controversy. Just look what happened when a Chinese-made map for sale in Japan was recalled over labeling Taiwan.

UPDATE: Just as I finished writing, I noticed a headline from Marbridge Consulting's Web site noting that China's State Bureau of Surveying and Mapping recently published a to do list for 2008, including the drafting of a document all three sites would be wise to watch: "Suggestions on Increasing the Supervision and Management of Mapping and Geographical Information Websites."

I was very fortunate tonight to keynote the inaugural Utah Open Source Conference (UTOSC). Fortunate because I'm a Utahn and it was great to see so many open-source developers in my home state. Fortunate because it pushed me to think once again about the location question in open source. (Btw, Phil Windley blogged my presentation, and did a great job of capturing some of my major points.)

Location may matter in some industries. It may even matter in proprietary software. It doesn't matter in open source, because open-source software is developed, sold and supported over the Internet. Open source is geography agnostic.

I talked about how Utah can grow its open-source ecosystem, but the same principles apply to any geography: