Glympse
My guess is that most people aren't prepared to allow location tracking websites to have blanket coverage of their movements. Many services try to solve this issue by allowing the user to set the granularity of the location data being tracked. Fire Eagle, for example, allows the user to set the level of access to road, neighbourhood or city level.
Glympse however are betting on the fact that it isn't the degree of accuracy of location that concerns most people but the issue of time. Glympse therefore allows the user to share their location for a limited amount of time.
Using Glympse the user can use their smart phone to show their location on a Google Map for a specified period. To use the service you simply select a contact, set a duration, and hit send.
Here's the introductory video,
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Monday, November 16, 2009
Sunday, November 15, 2009
Satellite Tracking in Street View
ToriSat
ToriSat is an amazing satellite tracking website that allows anyone to track satellites on Google Maps, in the Google Earth Browser plug-in and even in Google Street View. The Google Map view shows the path of the satellite around the Earth and the Google Earth option allows you to view the path of the satellite as if you were looking down from space.
What really impresses me, however, is the Street View option that allows the user to view the satellite superimposed on top of Google's Street View imagery. This is really useful as it shows the elevation of the satellite as it passes overhead. Oh, and you can see all three views at the same time.
You can see the tracking in action in the video below,
The default satellite is the International Space Station but you can select other satellites to track, including the Hubble telescope. You can also change the location of the observation point by clicking the cross at the top of the Street View and dragging the map marker to your location.
ToriSat also comes with a Twitter feed that will Tweet you when the ISS is approaching your location (the site will suggest the Twitter feed to follow from your saved location). There is even an option to save the ISS approaching schedules to your Google Calender.
I'm simply in awe of the developers of ToriSat. Check out some of the other amazing stuff they are involved in (including the Street View SpaceBike) here.
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ToriSat is an amazing satellite tracking website that allows anyone to track satellites on Google Maps, in the Google Earth Browser plug-in and even in Google Street View. The Google Map view shows the path of the satellite around the Earth and the Google Earth option allows you to view the path of the satellite as if you were looking down from space.
What really impresses me, however, is the Street View option that allows the user to view the satellite superimposed on top of Google's Street View imagery. This is really useful as it shows the elevation of the satellite as it passes overhead. Oh, and you can see all three views at the same time.
You can see the tracking in action in the video below,
The default satellite is the International Space Station but you can select other satellites to track, including the Hubble telescope. You can also change the location of the observation point by clicking the cross at the top of the Street View and dragging the map marker to your location.
ToriSat also comes with a Twitter feed that will Tweet you when the ISS is approaching your location (the site will suggest the Twitter feed to follow from your saved location). There is even an option to save the ISS approaching schedules to your Google Calender.
I'm simply in awe of the developers of ToriSat. Check out some of the other amazing stuff they are involved in (including the Street View SpaceBike) here.
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Australian Mashup Competition Round-Up
MashUpAustralia
The MashupAustralia competition is now closed. There has been an amazing 78 entries and the vast majority of the entries involve maps. Over at the All Things Spatial blog Arek has started to review all the map related mashups.
Arek has kindly allowed me to republish some of the highlights from his round-up. However, if you want to see the full round-up, which includes those mashups that use other map API's, you should head over to All Things Spatial.
Victoria: Fire Ready
Depicts locations of fire brigades and police stations in the vicinity of a chosen address. Distance circles of 10, 25 and 45km from the address are marked to allow users to discern how quickly aid can arrive in case of emergency. The application also plots incidents reported by Victorian Country Fire Authority as well as current weather and wind conditions from the Bureau of Meteorology.
FireMash
Firemash is an attempt to match official announcements from NSW Rural Fire Services with incidents reported by a community via Twitter. Users can plot location of their houses on the map and if any incidents are reported in the vicinity, the application will retweet the information to alert the user. Interesting concept although its usefulness will be difficult to demonstrate at the moment because there are no fires reported in the entire NSW!
AuScope Portal
This map built with Google Maps and using OGC web services (WMS and WFS) feels like a fully featured online GIS but I found it a bit cumbersome to use (I had real difficulties in displaying and removing layers and especially managing order of layers for display). Great collection of geology related information though!
LocateMe
This application was submitted by the Western Australia Landgate crew. It presents demographic profiles for areas of interest and lists government services available in the area. It uses Google Map as a background layer but is built with OpenLayers - it certainly does not behave like a real Google Map. Once again, the application is styled as a fully featured online GIS with traditional navigation tools - which makes it rather awkward to use (ie. no double click to zoom, no zoom slider tool, requires selection of buttons to either zoom in or out or pan). It could have been quite an interesting application if it wasn't for so many layers being restricted with a password. And I couldn't get demographic profiles to load at all.
Data Aggregator
This is a very slick and well built Google Map application that displays almost all datasets released for the MashupAustrlia competition, and more. It is easy to navigate and certainly much easier to use than any of the above mentioned mapping mashups. Which is quite surprising since the application is using hierarchical and expandable layer selector, very similar to the other applications mentioned today. A unique feature of Data Aggregator is a couple of custom controls for changing display options for markers and vector overlays.
To be continued…
Cross posted from All Things Spatial
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The MashupAustralia competition is now closed. There has been an amazing 78 entries and the vast majority of the entries involve maps. Over at the All Things Spatial blog Arek has started to review all the map related mashups.
Arek has kindly allowed me to republish some of the highlights from his round-up. However, if you want to see the full round-up, which includes those mashups that use other map API's, you should head over to All Things Spatial.
Victoria: Fire Ready
Depicts locations of fire brigades and police stations in the vicinity of a chosen address. Distance circles of 10, 25 and 45km from the address are marked to allow users to discern how quickly aid can arrive in case of emergency. The application also plots incidents reported by Victorian Country Fire Authority as well as current weather and wind conditions from the Bureau of Meteorology.
FireMash
Firemash is an attempt to match official announcements from NSW Rural Fire Services with incidents reported by a community via Twitter. Users can plot location of their houses on the map and if any incidents are reported in the vicinity, the application will retweet the information to alert the user. Interesting concept although its usefulness will be difficult to demonstrate at the moment because there are no fires reported in the entire NSW!
AuScope Portal
This map built with Google Maps and using OGC web services (WMS and WFS) feels like a fully featured online GIS but I found it a bit cumbersome to use (I had real difficulties in displaying and removing layers and especially managing order of layers for display). Great collection of geology related information though!
LocateMe
This application was submitted by the Western Australia Landgate crew. It presents demographic profiles for areas of interest and lists government services available in the area. It uses Google Map as a background layer but is built with OpenLayers - it certainly does not behave like a real Google Map. Once again, the application is styled as a fully featured online GIS with traditional navigation tools - which makes it rather awkward to use (ie. no double click to zoom, no zoom slider tool, requires selection of buttons to either zoom in or out or pan). It could have been quite an interesting application if it wasn't for so many layers being restricted with a password. And I couldn't get demographic profiles to load at all.
Data Aggregator
This is a very slick and well built Google Map application that displays almost all datasets released for the MashupAustrlia competition, and more. It is easy to navigate and certainly much easier to use than any of the above mentioned mapping mashups. Which is quite surprising since the application is using hierarchical and expandable layer selector, very similar to the other applications mentioned today. A unique feature of Data Aggregator is a couple of custom controls for changing display options for markers and vector overlays.
To be continued…
Cross posted from All Things Spatial
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Saturday, November 14, 2009
Week of Geo Hacking
There are a number of geo-related events coming up this week.
If you are in the Mountain View area today you could pop along to Random Hacks of Kindness. Random Hacks of Kindness is an initiative bringing together disaster relief experts and software engineers to work on identifying key challenges to disaster relief, and developing solutions to these critical issues.
If you are in Denmark (Nov 18-19) then you shouldn't miss Kortdage (Map Days). This is a major conference with 47 speakers. As part of the conference there will be a 24 hours mashup competition to use free public data and free tools and web services to create on-line maps.
If you happen to be in London on Thursday (19th) then you can attend the latest Geomob meet. There will be presentations at the event from CloudMade, mapme.at, Mapstraction, Skyhook Wireless and Jaggeree.
In New York on Friday (20th) there is a Google Hackathon. This should be a great event for anyone interested in Google's geo-related APIs.
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If you are in the Mountain View area today you could pop along to Random Hacks of Kindness. Random Hacks of Kindness is an initiative bringing together disaster relief experts and software engineers to work on identifying key challenges to disaster relief, and developing solutions to these critical issues.
If you are in Denmark (Nov 18-19) then you shouldn't miss Kortdage (Map Days). This is a major conference with 47 speakers. As part of the conference there will be a 24 hours mashup competition to use free public data and free tools and web services to create on-line maps.
If you happen to be in London on Thursday (19th) then you can attend the latest Geomob meet. There will be presentations at the event from CloudMade, mapme.at, Mapstraction, Skyhook Wireless and Jaggeree.
In New York on Friday (20th) there is a Google Hackathon. This should be a great event for anyone interested in Google's geo-related APIs.
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Cycling and Jogging VR with Street View
Stationary Cycling through Google Street View
Using a head-mounted-display, an exercise bike and Google Street View Bako.ca has created a virtual reality VR environment for stationary cycling.
Bako.ca acknowledges that the project was partly inspired by the Wii and Street View project Tokyo Jogging.
Dev.tori.st
Dev.tori.st have also developed a stationary exercise 'Spacebike' that allows them to cycle over cities in Google Earth.
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Using a head-mounted-display, an exercise bike and Google Street View Bako.ca has created a virtual reality VR environment for stationary cycling.
Bako.ca acknowledges that the project was partly inspired by the Wii and Street View project Tokyo Jogging.
Dev.tori.st
Dev.tori.st have also developed a stationary exercise 'Spacebike' that allows them to cycle over cities in Google Earth.
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Google Map of the World's Top Universities
World's Best Universities Map
This Google Maps mashup from Mibazaar shows the locations of the world's top 100 universities, as based on the Times Higher Education-QS World University Rankings and reported by US News.
The universities are ranked in six areas; Academic Peer Review, Employer Review, Student to Faculty, International Faculty, International Students, Citations per Faculty. On the map the universities' rankings are shown by numbered map markers. The universities are also listed in numerical order in the map sidebar.
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This Google Maps mashup from Mibazaar shows the locations of the world's top 100 universities, as based on the Times Higher Education-QS World University Rankings and reported by US News.
The universities are ranked in six areas; Academic Peer Review, Employer Review, Student to Faculty, International Faculty, International Students, Citations per Faculty. On the map the universities' rankings are shown by numbered map markers. The universities are also listed in numerical order in the map sidebar.
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Friday, November 13, 2009
Oasis of the Seas - Update
Oasis of the Seas
In a few minutes time the Oasis of the Seas will be arriving at Port Everglades in Florida. You can see its current position on the ship's website.
You can also view its position at APRS or on MarineTraffic.com.
The Oasis of the Seas on Marine Traffic
The Oasis of the Seas is the largest cruise ship in the world.
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In a few minutes time the Oasis of the Seas will be arriving at Port Everglades in Florida. You can see its current position on the ship's website.
You can also view its position at APRS or on MarineTraffic.com.
The Oasis of the Seas on Marine Traffic
The Oasis of the Seas is the largest cruise ship in the world.
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