The new 3D cities on Google Earth for Android

Explorers of the world, rejoice! There is now a new way to explore the world, right from the palm of your hand. Gone are the days when the only way to get a bird’s eye, 3D view of your favorite metropolitan area was from the window of a penthouse apartment or helicopter. Now you can soar above your favorite cities in 3D, with Google Earth for mobile.

 

New 3D Imagery

We recently shared a preview of this striking new 3D imagery and starting today, you can take flight yourself with our latest version of Google Earth for Android. An updated version of Google Earth for iOS will be also be available soon.

 

 

 

New 3D imagery of Portland, Oregon

Creating this comprehensive 3D experience is possible due to advanced image processing. Using 45-degree aerial imagery, we’re able to automatically recreate entire metropolitan areas in 3D. This means every building (not just the famous landmarks), the terrain, and any surrounding landscape of trees are included to provide a much more accurate and realistic experience.

 

Get started today by taking a virtual flight over one of our initial 3D imagery cities: Boulder, Boston, Santa Cruz, San Diego, Los Angeles, Long Beach, San Antonio, Charlotte, Tucson, Lawrence, Portland, Tampa, Rome or the San Francisco Bay Area (including the Peninsula and East Bay). We’ll continue to release new 3D imagery for places around the world over the coming months; by the end of the year, we aim to have new 3D coverage for metropolitan areas with a combined population of 300 million people.

Tour Guide

Not sure where to begin? Let the new tour guide help show you the way. We’ve put together short tours of thousands of famous places and historical sites across the globe so it’s easier than ever to discover amazing places. Just pull up the tab at the bottom of the screen to open the tour guide. Each image highlights a tours or place of interest in the area you are looking. Click on an item and you will be flown there. As you fly in and around the sites, snippets from Wikipedia provide additional information about the location. It’s like having a local expert right beside you!

 

 

Tour guide showing top destinations around Los Angeles.

We hope this more accurate, comprehensive and realistic 3D representation of the Earth brings out the inner explorer in you. Whether you are visiting familiar grounds or venturing out into the world, Google Earth is there to show you the way.

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Four New Bing Maps V7 Modules

In September of 2011 Bing started the Bing Maps v7 Module CodePlex Project. The purpose of this project is to create a single place where developers can find and share useful modules that expand the functionality of the Bing Maps V7 API. Currently, there have been 10 modules submitted to the project. With a number of new modules in development, it’s safe to say that this project is definitely worth looking into. Today I would like to highlight the four newest modules added to this project.

Point Based Clustering Module

Download here

Bing created this module based on feedback received around the Client Side Clustering Module that  created some time ago. The older client side clustering module uses a grid based algorithm which is fast, but requires re-clustering the data every time the map moved. This allows for 5000+ pushpins to be clustered in a fraction of a second but often results in pushpins jumping around the map as you pan. The point based algorithm prevents pushpins from overlapping and jumping around by only clustering the data when the zoom level changes. Additionally this module keeps track of clustered information for each zoom level, making the algorithm faster the more you use it. This improved UI experience does affect performance and as such this algorithm is recommended for 2000 or less pushpins. Interested in reading more about how this algorithm was created? Check out this blog post.

GPX Parser

Download here

Bing created this module due to a number of requests that had received for such a module. This module allows you to easily pass in a URL to a GPX file and have it parsed into an EntityCollection which you can then render on Bing Maps. GPX is a type of XML file that is commonly used by GPS devices. It can be used to describe waypoints, tracks, and routes. Majority of the XML tags for V1 and V1.1 of the GPX schema are supported and all data is stored in a Metadata property, which is added to each entity.

Route Optimization – RouteSavvy Module

Download here

This module was created by OnTerra Systems, a Bing Maps Partner.

In today’s economy, it is more important than ever that companies optimize and manage their supply chains more efficiently. Given today’s fuel costs, product delivery with high quality of service and short delay times is paramount. Distribution accounts for a large proportion of the overall operational costs of a producer. Hence, effective and efficient management of transportation and distribution of goods are becoming increasingly important.

One of the key problems in this process is the optimization of delivery routes to customers. This problem is known as the “Travelling Salesman Problem” (TSP). RouteSavvy is a web service that helps solve this problem.

RouteSavvy is a simple but powerful tool that can take anywhere from 3 or 4 locations to hundreds of locations. It reorders them based on whether you’d like to visit them in a “round-trip” OR as a one-way trip, with the last stop chosen either by you or by the software (whichever is preferred).

Web developers can now easily integrate the RouteSavvy API into their web application by adding the RouteSavvy Map Module. The map module uses Ajax to call the RouteSavvy web service to optimize a given set of locations.

Here is a screen shot of a set random location optimized for a round trip:

Mini-Map Module

Download here

This module was created by OnTerra Systems, a Bing Maps Partner.

The Bing Maps Ajax v7 control doesn’t include support for adding a Mini-Map. The Mini-Map module adds a small map at the right corner of the parent map that’s collapsible and shows the extents covered by the current map. This module adds a mini map at the top right corner of the screen. Mini-map view helps to give a zoomed out overview of your location. Here is a screen shot of the implemented Mini-Map module:

I hope you find these new modules useful!

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Google Earth: High-resolution imagery in Antarctica

As Google has continually improved the quality of their imagery across the globe, one area always seemed to stay low-res — Antarctica. Thanks to the help of the Polar Geospatial Center (PCG), that’s beginning to change.

A great example of that is the Mackay Glacier Tongue, located in Granite Harbor, seen here:

mackay.jpg

You can see it for yourself, as shown in the article, using this KML file.

So far, the PGC has helped Google update nearly 1,000,000 square kilometers, with another 275,000 square kilometers added every three months. While it will take a while to get the entire continent updated (more than 14,000,000 sq km), they’re certainly making great progress.

Along with updating the quality of the imagery, they’re also working to improve the accuracy of the location of the imagery. The PGC’s Paul Morin will be heading down to the Antarctic Peninsula soon to help improve the imagery from being off by as much as 30 meters to being accurate within a single meter.

The full article at The Antarctic Sun is quite interesting and well worth your time to read. We all enjoy the constantly improving imagery quality in Google Earth, and the PGC is just one of many companies working with Google to help move things forward.

(via @OgleEarth)

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Google Summer of Code: Write code and save lives with OpenMRS

Earlier this year OpenMRS participated in Google Summer of Code, a worldwide program organized by Google’s Open Source Programs Office to expose university students to the world of free and open source software, and encourage those students to become long-term contributors to projects that interest them. OpenMRS is a web-based medical record system originally designed for use in the developing world, and is now used on every continent on the globe. OpenMRS is used in all kinds of health care environments, from research laboratories to hospitals to small clinics in remote villages, and even via mobile devices that collect data door-to-door.
OpenMRS has been participating in Google Summer of Code every year since 2007, and our 5th year was arguably our most successful yet. This year, 15 motivated students successfully completed projects to focus or extend the OpenMRS health care IT platform in ways that will have significant impact for our global community of users. Throughout the summer our students became full contributors in good standing in the OpenMRS community. They presented their projects’ work in progress to other developers and users and often contributed their code to our software releases to support health care professionals saving lives around the world. Unlike many other summer internships that students may have during the summer, our students were responsible for planning and delivery of “real-life projects” that came from needs and requests from people installing and using OpenMRS.
Some projects were dedicated to improving the core OpenMRS platform, and some built add-on modules to support specific types of clinical activities. There were projects focused on making the installation of OpenMRS easier, and others focused on helping improve collaboration for our volunteer community. And if the presentations our students made this semester were any indication, all of the projects were exciting ways to write code and save lives. There’s not space here to describe each project in detail, but we encourage you to check out our students and their projects on the OpenMRS Wiki and learn more about them:
  • Balachandiran Ajanthan created an add-on module to deploy reusable “SMART” health care apps inside OpenMRS.
  • Christopher Zakian reimagined a “universal” search within OpenMRS that allows users to search for any system data from anywhere within the system
  • Gaurav Paliwal created an add-on module to allow OpenMRS users to provide application feedback to their system administrators and the larger open source community.
  • Gauthami Pingili improved both the UI of the OpenMRS Patient Matching module and improved its accuracy of finding duplicate patients.
  • Goutham Vasireddi helped make it faster and easier for developers to write add-on modules for OpenMRS by creating a “wizard” for Maven.
  • Jelena Skorucak reworked the attributes a person has within OpenMRS, giving clinics the flexibility to record more information about the persons.
  • João Portela made significant improvements to our HTML Form Entry editor, allowing non-programmers to create more detailed, useful data collection forms for health care.
  • Piotr Bryk enhanced our Metadata Sharing module to make it easier to manage the export and import of OpenMRS system configurations.
  • Rahul Akula’s work helped make it possible for OpenMRS to interoperate with external laboratory information systems.
  • Sai Manohar Nethi worked to create a framework for a comprehensive Human Resource add-on module for OpenMRS, allowing the system to help manage clinic personnel.
  • Sreya Janaswamy created a way for OpenMRS users to translate phrases used by the application into other languages, inside the application itself.
  • Sriskandarajah Suhothayan created a way for the OpenMRS Notifiable Condition Detector module to watch for certain large-scale patterns and send notifications to clinicians via SMS or e-mail.
  • Suranga Kasthurirathne created a new way for OpenMRS to store clinical observations that reference other people or locations.
  • Taras Chorny built a system to allow OpenMRS to be installed and upgraded using a variety of languages.
  • Victor Chircu built an “Atlas” add-on module that allows OpenMRS users to opt-in to report their location, type of clinic, and number of patients on a shared map to represent the active OpenMRS community.
Since we started participating in Google Summer of Code, we’re very proud that so many of our students have stayed active in the OpenMRS community and continued to contribute their talents after the program ended. In fact, three of our students have gone on to become full-time OpenMRS developers paid by various organizations involved in our community.
We continue to be more and more impressed with the students who are interested in our work, and are proud to welcome them into the OpenMRS family! In fact, this year, 2011 Google Summer of Code student Suranga Kasthurirathne was able to join us in October for our annual OpenMRS implementers meeting in Kigali, Rwanda. Suranga provided some excellent feedback about his involvement in Google Summer of Code this year, and about his experience meeting the OpenMRS community face to face. Read his blog post for more of his thoughts.
Once again, this year we were blown away by our amazing students during Google Summer of Code.
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