Webware

Stateless Systems, the creators of BugMeNot and PDFMeNot, have a new tool called Trendsmap that hasn't been designed to solve any productivity problems. Instead, it does just the opposite and serves as entertainment. It tracks trending Twitter topics by geographical location by combining data from Twitter's API and What The Trend. It then sticks it onto a Google Map where users can sort by city or general region and see trending topics in real time.

All of this information is organized into something resembling a tag cloud, which floats around without any specific, or pinpointed location within each city. Clicking on any of them pops up a small info box that aggregates the latest tweets, local and global seven-day histories of that trend's popularity, as well as some top-related news links that change depending on what's trending.

Trendsmap gives you a birds-eye view of trending topics on Twitter, per city, region, or worldwide.

(Credit: CNET)

Where the site shines though, is in letting you dig even deeper by giving each city its own trends page. Here you can cruise through info boxes without first having to find each tag, as well as see all of the trending charts stacked up against one another--something I think makes for a better experience. It also collects all of the related media like photos and videos in one single section (try giving it a spin for Las Vegas).

One thing the service doesn't do very well though, is serve smaller towns. This wasn't a big deal killer for me since I'm based in San Francisco, but if you want to use it for somewhere that's outside a major city, you're out of luck. This may simply be a limitation of how deep the data set is, but it keeps you from seeing trends starting up in smaller towns, which can be more interesting than in major cities.

See also Palm's Trendtracker, which lets you see trending topics not only geography but by time of day as well. We checked it out last week.

Google has fixed a disconnect between two of its software products, its Chrome browser and the plug-in version of Google Earth.

This Google Earth flight simulator works in Chrome now.

(Credit: screenshot by Stephen Shankland/CNET Networks)

"As of ~4 p.m. PST today, Google Chrome 1.0+ on Windows is an officially supported browser," a Google employee said on a Google Earth mailing list on Thursday. "That means Chrome users will no longer get the unsupported browser message, and the plugin and API should work just as they would in other supported browsers."

Google Earth is generally used as standalone software, but the plug-in version can be mashed up with Web pages such as James Stafford's Mini Flight Sim and Thatcher Ulrich's Monster Milk Truck.

Ultimately, Google believes Google Maps and Google Earth will converge into a single product; the plug-in is one step in that direction.

The update is also noted on the Google Earth API page from which the plug-in can be downloaded.

In other Google geography news, the company also announced a new batch of public transit map updates Thursday. Houston, Calgary in Canada, and 21 agencies in Virginia include maps and schedules, while Atlanta, Bonn in Germany, and Sacramento, Calif., among others, got maps visible through Google Transit.

(Via the unofficial Google Earth Blog.)

Google on Thursday released an application called My Tracks that turns the T-Mobile G1 Android phone into a full-fledged GPS receiver.

The free software can record tracks showing where you've been, display them on a map, show elevation gains and losses, and share data with various online services.

As a geography buff, I have to confess that this one of the first applications that actually got me excited. I carry a Garmin standalone GPS device so I can geotag my photos and keep track of my trips, but My Tracks one-ups it in several ways.

For one thing, it's a phone and therefore much more likely to be toted at all times, not just on dedicated occasions. But more important, it's an Internet-enabled device, which means it shows my position on Google Maps--either map mode or satellite image mode, not just the feeble and expensive Garmin Maps--as long as it can find the Internet. Track data can be saved not just as a GPX file, but also uploaded and shared with Google Maps. And statistics can be uploaded into Google Docs spreadsheets or even Twittered (for example using the Twidroid application).

(Credit: Paul Ford)

The release of Google Earth 5 has further whetted the Googlebot's voracious appetite for new data.

Specifically, Google wants more views of the planet for the new historical imagery feature in Google Earth 5, which lets people see earlier views of a particular area, not just the present. The company established an Imagery Partner Program through which organizations can supply their data.

Don't expect to be paid for helping Google out, though. "We are happy to add your map content to Google's services at no cost to you, but we generally do not pay for content," the company said on its image partnership frequently-asked-questions page.

In fairness, Google offers some situations where sharing the data would be in the interest of a municipality, for example, that wants to be on the map but is tired of waiting for GeoEye-1's satellite camera to whiz overhead. There probably also are organizations with public-domain imagery that would like to see it made broadly accessible but that aren't trying to build some business out of it.

Plus, Google has a point that processing lots of geographic data is laborious. Who wants to orthorectify and georeference a bunch of data sets? Quoting some of Google's reasons for why people might want to share:

• Make a positive impact on your community and the world

• Simplify navigation and geographic analysis
• Raise awareness of land use and environmental issues
• Facilitate emergency management

• Boost tourism and foster economic development

• Enable visitors and tourism agencies to plan and present travel itineraries
• Support business site location planning

Google showed off new ocean views at its Google Earth 5.0 launch event.

(Credit: Stephen Shankland/CNET News)

Google announced the new partnership program on its Lat Long blog Thursday.

Mapping is getting more important in the digital world as new possibilities open up for navigation and finding nearby friends. Google has aggressively pursued this area with online maps and satellite views, and the company has begun testing advertisements in Google Maps and Google Earth.

Yahoo doesn't share quite the degree of obsession as Google, but it's working hard on geography too. On Wednesday, Yahoo announced that it has 100 million geotagged photos on Flickr, its image-sharing site. Geotagged photos have map coordinates built in, letting people find photos of a particular region or explore their own archive geographically.

Accepting others' data could help Google accelerate its geographic agenda, though. And who knows, maybe they can get somebody in Clarkesville, Md., to help fix weird purple arcs that show up in Street View.

These weird purple arcs appear on when checking out Clarkesville, Maryland using Google Maps Street View.

(Credit: Google)

Mozilla Labs plans to announce a plug-in called Geode on Tuesday that gives the Firefox Web browser a better ability to understand and use geographic information on the Web.

Geode details at this stage remain sketchy, but here's the example used in the alert about the project: "With Geode, a user who is looking for restaurants while they are out of town will be able load up their favorite review site and find suggestions a couple blocks away and plot directions there."

Geotagging most commonly refers to photos with geographic data stored within the file, but there are plenty of other cases, too. Many Wikipedia entries have geographic information encoded, and YouTube users also can geotag their videos.

There also are plenty of cases in which Web sites have geographic information such as a business address that's not formally encoded as geographic data. The gradual arrival of the semantic Web, in which descriptive elements help computers understand the data on a Web site, could expand that significantly.

The quintessential tools that make the geographic Web useful today are online maps. Those applications are getting more useful as mobile phones--especially GPS-enabled mobile phones--incorporate their use.

Yahoo has licensed detailed data that describes 40,000 neighborhood boundaries in more than 2,000 U.S. cities, from a company called Urban Mapping.

"Allowing users to search by neighborhood yields more appropriate results, adding value and relevancy to the overall experience," Bob Upham, director of business development for Yahoo's Geo Technologies group, said in a statement.

Urban Mapping's Urbanware database works with a thorny geographic issue, trying to describe informal and often ill-defined neighborhood boundaries.

Meanwhile, Yahoo hopes people will help define neighborhoods through its Flickr photo-sharing service, too.

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.