Google Earth can now take you to the moon.
Timed with the 40th anniversary of the first moon walk, the Internet giant on Monday released an addition to its Google Earth mapping software to provide images of moon landscapes and traces of human exploration there.
Called the Moon in Google Earth and available for Windows, Mac, and Linux, the software allows you to see topographical features on our closest celestial neighbor with the lunar equivalent of Google Street View. People can also see a gallery of the Apollo space missions and get information on every robotic spacecraft that has visited the moon.
"This tool will make it easier for millions of people to learn about space, our moon and some of the most significant and dazzling discoveries humanity has accomplished together," Anousheh Ansari, a trustee of X Prize Foundation and the first female private space explorer, said Monday on a Google blog.
Google is hosting an event Monday to launch the Moon in Google Earth site at the Newseum in Washington, D.C., where Ansari and Apollo 11 astronaut Buzz Aldrin will speak.
To access the images from Google Earth, you select Moon from the toolbar in Google Earth. From there, the viewer zooms down to get detailed images of the moon's surface.
From the left panel, people can surface information about the moon, including historical charts used by astronauts for training and NASA mission control. High-resolution photos break down the moon's surface into different quadrants to show its features.
The tool is designed to teach people about the missions to the moon by visiting the various Apollo landing sites. After zooming into a location, people can see video clips and panoramic stills taken by the astronauts, such as Neil Armstrong's first steps on the moon. Aldrin also offers a guided video tour of the moon from within Google Earth.
The artifacts tab allows people to see three-dimensional models of the spacecraft that have gone to the moon.
The Moon in Google Earth project was done through Google's partnerships with NASA, which allowed researchers to develop much of the content. Japan's space agency, Jaxa, also donated the global terrain dataset for the moon.
Updated at 8:45 a.m. PDT with more details.
Forty years ago this Thursday, Apollo 11 astronauts Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, and Michael Collins lifted off on their historic mission to the moon. It was the first manned spaceflight to reach the lunar surface, and on July 20, 1969, first Armstrong then Aldrin became the first people to step onto the moon. (Collins stayed in orbit around the moon for the 21 or so hours that the other two were on the surface.)
Today, the Web is home to a variety of sites that remember the historic mission to the moon. If you're looking to remember Apollo 11, take a look at these resources.
Remembering Apollo 11
Apollo 11: The Game Apollo 11: The Game puts you in the cockpit of the Lunar Lander. The iPhone app lets you start out blasting off into space. From there, you'll need to make your way to the moon, land on the lunar surface, and get back to Earth safely.
In order to complete your mission, you'll need to beat all seven levels. I haven't played the game, so I don't know how good it is. But if you want to feel like you're part of the crew, it might be worth paying $3.99 to have it.
Land on the moon in Apollo 11: The Game.
(Credit: Screenshot by Don Reisinger/CNET)Apollo 11 The Apollo 11 group on Facebook is ideal for those looking to discuss Apollo 11 on the popular social network. The group doesn't have many members--as of this writing, there are just 432 users--but it makes up for that with a handful of links that provide even more information on the Apollo 11 mission. The group would be better with more members, but it's the biggest Facebook group dedicated to the mission, so if you want to connect with like-minded people, it's a group to join.
The Apollo 11 group on Facebook connects you with other historians.
(Credit: Screenshot by Don Reisinger/CNET)
Adobe's upcoming Apollo runtime engine (hands-on look at Apollo) will be an important platform for Web and software developers, since it lets programmers create applications that work equally well online and off, and also across computing platforms. At the moment, Apollo requires developers to use Adobe's tools. It's a platform primarily for applications written in Flash or Flex, both Adobe products. But that's going to change.
Renamed AIR (Adobe Integrated Runtime), the product previously known as Apollo will change from being a runtime for Adobe products to being a runtime for any Web application, even one written in nothing but HTML. Web publishers and developers will be able to make their Web pages into standalone apps when using Apollo.
Using optional Adobe (in other words, non-standard) extensions to HTML, these apps will also have access to Apollo's data synchronization functions, so they'll work when offline. Also, Apollo apps, regardless of language, will be able to use some of the fancy user interface tricks in Flash and Flex, like the capability to blur the background when a dialog box pops up in the foreground.
The tool should ship before the end of the year.
Microsoft's competing Silverlight runtime, in contrast, does not have the offline or synchronization capabilities of Apollo, but as with Apollo, it does enable developers to build fancy connected applications using tools they are probably already familiar with.
In related news, Adobe's Flex development platform is going open source. Last week we reported that another major Web platform, Movable Type, was opening up.
See also Adobe Apollo platform goes beta, on News.com.
Google on Thursday at its Developer Day announced Google Gears, a browser plug-in that lets people run Web applications offline. The first application to use Google Gears is Google Reader, its Web-based RSS feed reading application.
The download for the Google Gears beta is quick--the files are less than 1MB in size. Once you have it installed, the Web application you're connecting to asks you whether you want to allow it to store data locally.
Here's a news story with more details, including the technology architecture of Google Gears.
Although it stayed away from making specific commitments, we can expect Google to bring this offline capability to Gmail and Google Docs & Spreadsheets.
Users can toggle between going on and offline in Google Reader by clicking the little green sync button.
(Credit: CNET Networks)Linus Upson, the engineering director at Google who briefed me on Google Gears, said that Google created the plug-in because its application customers were unhappy about not being able to work offline.
It's true that people for years have tried to make Web applications work in offline scenarios, the most oft-cited one being "when you're on a plane."
But it appears that Google Gears has the potential to become truly widespread.
Why? Well, it's Google. By doing the hard work of Ajax programming back in 2005 on Google Maps, they helped popularize Ajax by showing people what's possible.
Creating a generic method for taking Web applications offline is hard work, too, and they've taken a comprehensive approach while making it all just JavaScript APIs and thus, accessible to Ajax programmers. Assuming, of course, that it actually works.
Another benefit to Google's approach--which uses a local Web server and the open-source SQLite database for storage--is that it will let a Web application work when network connections are intermittent or a server gets bogged down.
Also, they're taking a pragmatic approach to getting the software accepted. It's an open-source plug-in so people can use it right away and they've partnered with the Mozilla Corporation and Adobe to make sure it meshes with their plans around Firefox and Apollo. (See ZDNet David Berlind's blog for more details on Adobe's plans to also use SQLite database on Apollo.)
We're now in a situation where there are a few plug-ins coming to the market, all of which offer something compelling--Adobe's Apollo for desktop Web applications, Microsoft's Silverlight for media-rich Web applications and now Google Gears.
In each case, whether they take off will hinge a lot on the content that's available for each format--and getting developers to commit.
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Here's a mosaic we put together using Image Mosaic Generator and the Webware 100 logo.
The Flickr API has opened up a lot of fun tools over the years. This morning we got a tip about Image Mosaic Generator, a free service that creates neat-looking picture mosaics of uploaded images. The service uses Flickr images to make up each mosaic and lets users save the end result to their hard drive. Images have a fair bit of variation, although you're likely to see a few repeats close up. The service doesn't link back to the original Flickr images, which is a bit disappointing, but as a result, handles the conversion from image to mosaic in just a few minutes.
This is by no means one of the first tools to do this, but one of the simplest Web-based ones I've run into. Also worth checking out if you're playing around with Adobe's Apollo runtime, is Developer Derrick Grigg's mosaic creator, which lets you use Flickr shots that match search criteria. This could come in handy if you have a beach picture, as you could run it through the tool using public photos related to beaches.
Flickrvision shows you newly geotagged shots on Flickr using a Google Map.
(Credit: CNET Networks)The one thing these Web-based services still can't do is pull local photos on your hard drive to make up the mosaic, something that's not easily accomplished without software and a hefty photo library.
Flickrvision is a fun mashup that shows you real-time photos people have geotagged on Flickr using a Google Map. Mousing over them will display a larger preview and information about the shot in a lightbox pop-up. You can also click the thumbnail to go straight to the original shot.
Flickrvision was created by the same developer who made Twittervision, a similar service that shows the latest Twitter posts and where they originated from.
Flickr has its own mashup of geotagged photos, although it doesn't show real-time results like Flickrvision does.
Google is renaming its personal home page iGoogle tonight. Google is also adding a new tool called Gadget Maker that helps people create their own widgets for use on their iGoogle page. The Gadget Maker comes with seven templates, including two media gadgets to pull in content from YouTube and online and offline photo collections. Users will also be able to organize their personal space with a countdown timer and a simple 10 item to-do list. There's also a free-form widget that lets a user mix together various media such as text and pictures.
This is a step in the right direction for Google's personalized home page efforts, although not nearly as fast as some of its competitors in the single page aggregation space. Netvibes has recently come out with branded content pages, and Yourminis has taken the widgets off the browser and onto the desktop using Apollo. I'm still not a big fan of Google's layout, which feels a little boxy and restrictive, but the new themes have spiced things up.
The new features are set to launch at 9 p.m. PST tonight.
Google's new make-your-own-gadget selection features seven new gadgets that can be customized by the user.
(Credit: Google)[Note: This post has been updated with a video taken from today's keynote from the Web 2.0 Expo, to see it click the 'read more' link at the bottom of the post]
Today Adobe announced their new Media Player, a multi-platform, online-enabled application that runs on Adobe's Apollo framework. Along with a full featured desktop media player for Flash files, Adobe plans on including a themed online music store like Microsoft's XBOX Live Marketplace where people can purchase music and movies.
Adobe Media Player will join the bevy of online music and media stores like iTunes, Napster, Urge, Rhapsody and others. Like the competition, Adobe is using DRM, both for downloads and streaming media to secure purchased content.
There's no word when the service will be available, but expect details and partnerships to emerge as Apollo develops.
From their keynote presentation today, we also got a sneak peak of Buzznote, a collaborative word processor that runs off the Apollo framework.
Our early hands-on with Apollo can be found here. And to see a video of the app in action, keep reading.
... Read more
Here's a new Web app that will knock you flat: Scrapblog. In development since last year, the site finally went public on Monday, April 2. It's a service for creating online multimedia packages, in particular, collections of photos and videos. As you might gather from the name, its designers want to deliver a level of flexibility that's similar to what you get when you're building a real-world scrapbook.
With Scrapblog, it's easy to place photos anywhere on a page, rotate them, crop them, and so on. The same for videos--but so far, you can get video in only via YouTube URLs. You can also set presentations to music (Scrapblog's canned selections only so far), and set transitions between pages. You can then embed your presentation in a blog or a social network page.
Building a Scrapblog
(Credit: CNET Networks)Notwithstanding those restrictions--and a few bugs, especially around publishing projects--nothing that I've seen, Web-based or not, does the job of creating free-form presentations as well as this application (disclosure: I have not used Keynote). Here's one I created in a few minutes.
CEO Carlos Garcia told me that Scrapblog has attracted an unusual demographic for a Web service: 80 percent of its users are female. A lot of them are what he calls "mommy bloggers": mothers setting up pages to document what the kids and the family are up to.
Certainly, you can create a more engaging presentation with Scrapblog than you can with a photo-sharing site, or even a blog such as Vox (review). However, the free-form nature of the system means that getting your presentation just right will take time. There are good templates on Scrapblog, but since the whole point of this system is to let you express your creativity, I think that even users who start with a template will spend a fair amount of time modifying it to create just the look they want. Scrapblog is no replacement for PowerPoint--although I'll give bonus points to any CEO who uses Scrapblog instead of PowerPoint in a presentation.
As I said, Scrapblog is an excellent online application. It's based on Adobe's Flex and uses a lot of the fancy user-interface options available on that platform. However, because it's online there are a few snags. Mostly, the speed of uploading photos is limited by your connection, and if you have a lot, it can be frustrating to wait (although if you already have images Flickr, Yahoo Photos, Webshots, or PhotoBucket, Scrapblog has a simple interface for quickly "sideloading" the images into it). And, of course, you can't use it if you're offline. This summer, the company will release a standalone front-end to the service using the Apollo (review) runtime, Garcia told me. It will allow you to import photos directly from your hard disk and upload them all to the service when you choose to "publish" your scrapbook.
The service is free. In the future, premium services may include printing options and licensed content (graphics, themes, and music).
I just got a preview of the new version of Joyent Connector, the slick work-group app I covered last year. The interface has been cleaned up a bit (not that it was bad to begin with), but the big news is that Joyent is announcing an offline version of its service. By the end of April, Joyent users will be able to get a downloadable client for the service that lets them access their work-group data even when their PC is disconnected.
Joyent's new offline app is even slicker than its online version.
(Credit: Joyent)Joyent's client app uses the company's new platform, which it calls Slingshot. This tool provides a runtime for the Web development environment Rails (which Joyent is developed in), and also makes it possible for Rails apps to use local system resources. For example, applications built using Slingshot and Rails can exchange data with desktop apps via drag-and-drop. Slingshot also provides the critical synchronization tools, which are necessary for an app that spends part of its time working with data over the Internet, and part of its time using a subset of that data that's mirrored to the user's local hard disk.
Joyent CEO David Young expects many of his customers to use the runtime version of the client all the time, even though they never work offline. It's faster and more fluid, he says, and I'm not surprised. Web apps are great, but there's nothing like a local machine running its own executables for delivering a rich user experience. Within the next year or so, Young expects to see more online apps that "push their processing out to the edge [of the network]."
That's just what Adobe's Apollo is all about, of course. Also bearing witness to this trend: Very soon, e-mail service provider Zimbra will announce an offline client to its Web-based product.
We'll take both Joyent and Zimbra for a spin as soon as we can.
And speaking of offline access to Web-based apps, I need to take a jab Google. In October 2006, Google representatives told me they were going to "take a shot" at building offline access to their online office apps. Since then, Adobe, Joyent, Zimbra, Salesforce.com, and other companies have demonstrated real progress towards the construction of hybrid (offline/online) apps, Google still has nothing to show in this space.
Joyent will be one of the many presenters at tomorrow's Under the Radar: Office 2.0 event.
YourMinis, the popular single page aggregator service, has launched desktop integration with its library of over 14 million widgets, using Adobe's Apollo technology. After installing the Apollo runtime and the YourMinis Apollo plug-in on your PC or Mac, you can simply click on any widget in the YourMinis library and click "Add to Desktop." Likewise, there's the option to send any widget to the Web if you'd prefer it to stay on one of your YourMinis pages. It's really well-done.
Once they're on your desktop, you can drag them around, change colors, transparency levels, and various settings for each widget--the usual features that come with a full-fledged widget application.
Mac users likely will be uninterested with the new feature, as they've already got a built-in widget engine with OS X's Dashboard. PC users, on the other hand, now have another free way to put widgets on their desktop besides Yahoo Widgets and Google Desktop. As we've mentioned before, Apollo is still pretty early on in development, and the YourMinis widgets are RAM-hungry. With just four open, they were taking up more CPU cycles and memory than Microsoft Word and Outlook combined. It will be interesting to see how Adobe addresses this problem further along in Apollo's development.
See also News.com's take on how Apollo is 'one-upping' Ajax.
(Credit:
CNET Networks)
