Google Ocean coming soon?

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According to an article on CNET News, Google is in the process of building a tool known as “Google Ocean” to map the terrain of the ocean floors. Similar to Google Earth and Maps, Ocean will provide the base data (depth mesh and some imagery), and allow users to populate it with data for things like current, shipwrecks, coral reefs, etc.

Capturing the entire ocean in high res would take approximately 100 ship years, so it is assumed that Google will start by using something like the Predicted Depth Map from the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, then fill it in with a patchwork of higher resolution data from a variety of sources.

There is no timetable for when Google Ocean might be released. Last December, Google met with various oceanography experts to discuss the project, so at this point it should be well underway. If we hear any more news about a pending release, we’ll let you know.

Driving directions in StreetView

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Google has added a neat feature that combines Google Maps driving directions with StreetView. When you’re looking at your list of directions, look for the little camera icon next to each item. If you see one, then you can view those directions in StreetView. It draws a blue line with large arrows inside of the StreetView window to help show your route.

Google has created a video that shows off this new feature. After you’ve watched the video, try it out for yourself. If notice anything interesting during your trip, show it off in the Google Earth Hacks new StreetView section.

Don’t forget to add a SECRET_KEY to WordPress

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If you’re like me and you’ve been using WordPress since before 2.5 came out, your wp-config file is probably missing a “SECRET_KEY”.  This is a new, one-line entry to the config file that generates a unique cookie for your site.  Some of the recent WordPress attacks have involved cookie spoofing, and this will help prevent that kind of thing.

As far as I can understand, WordPress 2.5.1 is completely secure even without a secret key.  I think this is just a pre-emptive move to prevent cookie-based attacks in the future.  Extra security is always a good thing.

Adding a key is very simple.  Just open up your wp-config.php file and add something like this:

define(‘SECRET_KEY’, ‘8675309 abc 123 secret key dont hack me’);

You don’t need to remember the phrase, so make it as long and complex as you can.  If you want, you can visit this WordPress page which will generate a unique key every time you load the page.

Google Maps can predict traffic conditions

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As reported by the Google Operating System blog, Google Maps now includes traffic predictions.

Simply pick a day of the week and a time, and Google will color the map to show typical traffic conditions on that day/time.  There are a few oddities I found in it, but it’s a neat idea.  For example, here it Atlanta at 5am on Sunday:

What’s up with the heavy traffic on 400?  While there might always be an accident somewhere in town, the predicted traffic for that time of day should be all green.

All in all, it’s a neat idea.  Here are a few pictures that walk through a Monday morning rush hour (5am-8am):

It shows conditions slowly getting worse, which is exactly how things go at that time of day.

My main concern lately with Google Maps traffic is the sporadic coverage.  One day they’ll have almost everything covered, and the next day there will be gray sections everywhere.  I’m not sure where they get their data from (and it may not be their fault), but the lack of consistency makes the service far less useful.

That being said, after e-mail and web browsing, Google Maps traffic is the killer app on my cellphone.  I use it a lot.  This new feature isn’t on the mobile version yet, but I don’t care if it makes it there or not.  When I’m checking from my phone, all I need are live conditions.  If I want to look at predicted traffic for another day, I can do that from my PC.

Google Earth vs. Virtual Earth in Denver

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Denver has emerged as one of the flagship cities for both Google Earth and Virtual Earth. Google Earth has built a ton of 3D models in the city, and Virtual Earth has already converted it to “version 2.0” with over 100,000 3D models (as well as 300,000 trees). Therefore, I thought it’d be a good place to compare some things.

I already did a quick comparison of Turner Field in Atlanta, but that wasn’t completely fair since Atlanta isn’t an updated city in Virtual Earth.  For this comparison, I picked three different locations in the city and captured similarly positioned screenshots from each of the two programs.  In each set of pictures, the Google Earth image is on the left, and the Virtual Earth image is on the right.

Please note that this brief review is about visuals only.  This doesn’t get into usability, extendability, layers, etc.  This is just graphics, pure and simple.  A more in-depth review will come later.

Coors Field

The trees add a nice touch of realism in the Virtual Earth model, but the Google Earth model blows it away.

City Overview

They’re pretty comparable here. Virtual Earth has more buildings in view, but overall they look quite similar.

Downtown Park / State Capitol

Here is where Virtual Earth really shines. The extra buildings in the background and the trees look excellent. Google has a few nice touches (such as the statues) and the building looks a bit better, but the trees really make the Virtual Earth page feel more realistic.

Conclusion

All in all, things haven’t changed much — they’ve just scaled up. Just as before, Google’s buildings look a little better, but Microsoft has a ton more of them. This should be a fun battle to watch over the next few years!

Google Earth 4.3 thoughts, screenshots and a video

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Google Earth 4.3 is just starting to become available. You probably won’t find it through the normal pages yet, but the Google Earth Blog found a clever loophole to allow you to get it now — simply visit this page

and you can grab it.

My initial thoughts:

StreetView is neat, but not very useful. The version on Google Maps feels much smoother and easier to use.

The sunlight feature is very cool! Terrain and buildings look different as the day progresses and the light hits them from different angles. Terrain also casts shadows, though 3D buildings do not. Here is a short video showing some areas transitioning from day to night:

As expected, the 3D buildings load much better. Also, there are a whole lot more of them in many cities. It appears that some are auto-generated, but Google hasn’t confirmed that yet. I’m of the personal opinion that they automatically generate some, but then hand-tweak each of them, but that may or may not be accurate.  Google Earth Blog weighs in on this as well.

Also, many cities now have a bunch more 3D buildings in them. According to the Google Earth Blog, San Francisco, Baltimore, Raleigh, Charlotte and Phoenix are some of the cities with new buildings. I can confirm that Atlanta has new ones as well.

In particular, Turner Field (home of the Atlanta Braves) finally looks good. I was at a game a few days ago and took a picture with my cell phone (N95 rocks!). Here is a comparison of that photo to a similar view in Google Earth 4.3 and Virtual Earth:

It’s worth mentioning that Turner Field in Virtual Earth is still a “1.0” building, so it’s likely to improve once Atlanta is updated. Also, I still can’t get over how cool the trees look in Virtual Earth. That being said, the stadium looks way

better in Google Earth. It’s not even close.

Here are a few more screens I grabbed:

Have you tried it yet? What do you think?

Google Maps now has YouTube videos

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Last October, Google Earth got a new layer that showcased YouTube videos.  Starting today, those videos are now available in Google Maps as well.

When viewing an information bubble, simply click on the “Photos & Videos” tab.  More information about this release can be found on the Google LatLong blog

.

KML is now an international standard

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As reported by the Google LatLong Blog, KML has now officially become an OGC (Open Geospatial Consortium) standard.

According to Google, there are tens of millions of KML documents available online, hosted on over 100,000 unique domain names.  The number of files isn’t a huge surprise, but 100,000 unique domains seem like a ton!

As part of this, Google has transferred ownership of the standard to the OGC.  To quote Google:

This transfer of ownership is a strong reflection of Google’s commitment to open standards. Fundamentally, our interest is not to control information, but rather to encourage its spread.

Microsoft started adding support for KML last October

, so getting KML accepted as a standard is another step toward making it the ubiquitous mapping standard on the web.

Trees and Highway Overpasses

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I’ve long felt that two things would need to happen to get to the next level in 3D imagery — trees and highway overpasses.

Since one of the neat features in Google Earth is the ability to fly a route, having proper overpasses would make things look much better.  The latest version of Virtual Earth has some cities modeled in “version 2.0”, which include a number of advances.  To the right is a bridge over a river.  While the bottom is still solid (you can’t see the river under the bridge) and the edges are rough, it’s really coming along nicely.  The tighter mesh of elevation data is getting us closer to where I’d like to see it.  I would think we’ll see some real progress in this area within the next year or so.

The bigger problem is the lack of trees.  Amazingly, Microsoft has begun to fix that already, too!  I really felt that was still well off in the future, but I’m glad I was wrong.  It only works in their “version 2.0” cities (Las Vegas, Dallas, Denver and Phoenix), but it’s really neat.  As Google Earth Blog had speculated, the trees are generated automatically by Microsoft.  Hand-placing thousands of trees would be an impossible task to keep up with.

In addition, the trees don’t affect load time very much.  They only have to load a given tree type once, then tweak the height and diameter for each placement of it.  As such, I’ve found the trees load very quickly — usually before most of the buildings.

I’m a bit concerned about performance, though.  The tree models look excellent, and with thousands of them scattered around a city, I have to think that it’ll make things move a little slower.  I’m currently out of town on an old laptop, so everything is slow right now.  When I get home to my primary PC I’ll really start putting it through it’s paces.

Microsoft says that the updated data will roll out to the current set of 250 3D cities “soon” and I’m really looking forward to it.

WordPress in the next iPhone?

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John Lamansky, the “WordPress Expert” has noticed a little snippet of text from WordPress developer Matt Mullenweg that implies we may see WordPress in the next iPhone.  The quote John used:

Mobile is really important. Blackberries, iPhones… and other things… are coming. And I’d like that to be in a core cell phone. They were hoping to do it in time for WordCamp and announce it here, but there is a device maker who is working on actually building WordPress into the device, so it’ll come bundled with it — which will be pretty interesting. I can’t say who it is yet, but there’s only a few out there so you can probably guess.

It sure sounds like the iPhone, doesn’t it?  As John said, even if it’s not bundled with the 2.0 firmware, it’s quite likely we’ll see a third party app that handles it.

We’ll find out soon – probably around June 9.