Google has recently updated their StreetView data for Manhatten. Beside some improvements in image quality, Google has implemented automatic face-blurring technology. Form the screenshot you can see that it works really nice. It blurs the faces, but doesn’t detract too much from the imagery. Here is the quote form the official Australian Google Blog:
At Google, we take our users’ privacy very seriously. Street View only contains imagery that anyone can already see walking down a public street and we’ve always had in place image removal tools. In addition, today, on the Google LatLong blog, we have just announced the first public test of our new face-blurring technology on the busy streets of Manhattan. This effort has been a year in the making - and we will continue to work hard to improve it as we roll it out for our existing and future imagery. Here’s an example from the bustling streets of Manhattan:
In Australia (and New Zealand), Street View will also feature face-blurring, as well as image removal tools.
This new technology indicates that Google is working on technologies to fullfill the legal requirements to introduce StreetView in Europe as well. I think StreetView Europe is comming soon…
[via GWB, google-au.blogspot.com]
Written and submitted from Home, using my 802.11g WiFi network.
Today Google has integrated Streetview in Google Maps routing. If you generate a routing inside a city with Streetview you can see a camera. With a click on this camera a Streetview window is comming up where the street scene of the position is shown.
Google Maps are one of the most useful applications for mobile devices. Google Maps is relatively fast and easy to use. Apple has preinstalled an Google Maps application on their iPhone. For all people, who do not have a flat-rate contract with their provider and want to have full benefit of Google Maps, there is an nice little Tool called “Maps Offline” where you can download parts of Google Maps data for your iPhone.
The tool can be installed on the iPhone easily (only the Jiggy Framework is needed. Once installed, the users can download maps about various areas. The size of these areas only depending on the iPhone memory itself. In some cases this could be very useful, considering that the city area of Berlin requires 100 MB for the satellite photograph and 40 MB for the map.
Personally, I cannot varify this information because I’m not an owner of an iPhone. Maybe someone can give feedback on this.
In the beginning of this year Geonames.org has released a new Service called Geotree. This service structure Country information and other spatial information in a tree view, which can be accessed together with a map. Currently (March 2008) version 1.2 is available, including features like CSV Export, different languages, capitals and random view.
All locations can be visualized using major web based base map services like Map24, Google Maps, Yahoo Maps, Microsoft, Openlayer, Openstreetmaps, etc.
This little video shows what you can do with KML and how it is used in Google Earth and Google Maps. Some handy tricks for designing small KML files are shown and how they can be imported in Google Maps.
The presentation is done by Pamela Fox and Mano Marks. Really new things are not shown there but its an start if you want to begin with KML.
Interesting would be a video where the network link function is explaned and maybe shown how to dynamically generate KML on the server efficiently.
Written and submitted from Home, using my 802.11g WiFi network.
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