Posts Tagged ‘google maps’
New Geographic Data Analysis Gives Historians a Futuristic Window Into the Past
"Spatial humanities," the future of history
Geographic Information Systems, which can analyze information related to a physical location, are helping historians and geographers study past landscapes like Gettysburg, reconstructing what Robert E. Lee would have seen from Seminary Ridge. Researchers are studying the parched farmlands of the 1930s Dust Bowl, and even reconstructing scenes from Shakespeare’s 17th-century London.
But far from simply adding layers of complexity to historical study, GIS-enhanced landscape analysis is leading to new findings, the reports. Historians studying the Battle of Gettysburg have shed light on the tactical decisions that led to the turning point in the Civil War. And others examining records from the Dust Bowl era have found that extensive and irresponsible land use was not necessarily to blame for the disaster.
GIS has long been used by city planners who want to record changes to the landscape over time. And interactive map technology like Google Maps has led to . But by analyzing data that describes the physical attributes of a place, historians are finding answers to new questions.
Anne Kelly Knowles and colleagues at Middlebury College in Vermont culled information from historical maps, military documents explaining troop positions, and even paintings to reconstruct the Gettysburg battlefield. The researchers were able to explain what Robert E. Lee could and could not see from his vantage points at the Lutheran seminary and on Seminary Hill. He probably could not see the Union forces amassing on the eastern side of the battlefield, which helps explain some of his tactical decisions, Knowles said.
Geoff Cunfer at the University of Saskatchewan studied a trove of data from all 208 affected counties in Texas, New Mexico, Colorado, Oklahoma and Kansas — annual precipitation reports, wind direction, agricultural censuses and other data that would have been impossible to sift through without the help of a computer. He learned dust storms were common throughout the 19th century, and that areas that saw nary a tiller blade suffered just as much.
The new data-mapping phenomenon is known as spatial humanities, the Times reports. Check out their to find out how advanced technology is the future of history.
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New Tracking System Can Pin Any Internet User’s Location to Within a Few Hundred Meters
Yong Wang, a computer scientist at the University of Electronic Science and Technology of China in Chengdu, developed a three-stage system to narrow the radius of geolocation without requiring the user's permission. The first stage is the one that's currently used: A packet is sent to the target, and the time it takes to to bounce back is converted into a (very vague) distance. But Wang took it further by realizing that many large organizations, like businesses and schools, usually have their servers in-house, meaning the IP addresses can be tied to a physical location that's easily found. If an IP address is linked to a university, you can just look that university up on Google Maps and have a pretty good idea that the user of the IP address is somewhere nearby.
Wang catalogued about 76,000 such "landmarks" on Google Maps, which leads to the first new stage developed. The new system pings all of the landmarks in that initial 200-km radius, and by analyzing the time that bounce takes, the possible location radius can shrink even further. In this stage, the software might find that ten out of twenty landmarks return similar ping times to the target, and shrink the possible location radius to reflect that result.
After that step, they continue the method until they figure out which landmark is closest to the target. In areas with many targets, like cities, that can lead to unsettlingly accurate tracking--all without the target's permission. The only recourse somebody might have to this method would be to , which would effectively confuse the software into returning a null result.
Who would be interested in this? Well, advertisers might not actually care to get this granular with their targeting, although super-local advertisers might be able to target individual neighborhoods. What's more worrying is the possible invasion of privacy from, well, just about anyone, from individuals to small groups to governmental organizations. Is everyone going to have to use a proxy just to avoid any stranger being able to zero in on their laptops? And do the benefits of this kind of tracking outweigh the costs?
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Sir Richard Branson Launches Virgin Oceanic, Will Explore the Deepest Depths of Every Ocean
Virgin Oceanic is a five-journey proposal, in which they'll hit the Mariana Trench (Pacific), Puerto Rico Trench (Atlantic), Diamantina Trench (Indian), South Sandwich Trench (Southern), and Molloy Deep (Arctic). "They" is Sir Richard Branson (whose cojones can only be measured in cubic miles at this point) and Chris Welsh, an American pilot and explorer. The Puerto Rico Trench is the deepest trench known, and has never been explored.
Their , designed by Graham Hawkes, is one of the more interesting parts of the journey. Shaped more like a dolphin than a traditional submarine, the Virgin Oceanic craft has an operating depth of 37,000 feet--about seven miles--which means it has to be able to withstand outrageous pressure, 1,500 times that of an airplane. Constructed of carbon fiber and titanium (with a quartz dome), the craft is currently undergoing tests--at that depth, the smallest crack would result in certain death for the pilots, both due to the immense pressure (13 million pounds) and the simple fact that there exist no other vehicles capable of a rescue mission. The sub travels at a maximum of three knots, and can dive at 350 feet per minute, so a dive to the bottom of the Mariana trench and back would take around five hours.
The sub is equipped with all the usual sensors and cameras, which should come in handy as this isn't--or at least isn't only--a swashbuckling "let's see if we can do it" mission. Knowledge of the ocean at this depth is, without exaggeration, at 0%--we have no idea what's going on down there, which is why Virgin is working closely with both Google and the renowned Scripps Institution of Oceanography, and with a host of other scientists from some of the best marine studies departments in the country.
Though further tests need to be carried out before the first expedition begins, Virgin Oceanic expects to dive the Mariana Trench sometime this year, with the remaining four dives spaced out throughout the following two years.
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Google’s Body Browser is a Google Earth for Human Physiology
As far as handy Web apps go, Body Browser is pretty neat; a sliding scroll bar allows you to peel away layers of the body, starting at the skin and moving down through the muscles and bone/organs to the cardiovascular and nervous systems. It allows you to zoom in tight (with nice resolution) to get the name of a specific bodily bit. Clicking on anything produces a handy label that identifies what you’re looking at.
Then there’s the search function of course, which allows you to locate any part of the body by just typing in the name. Like your usual Google search, the drop down is self-populating, so even if you’re not quite up to speed on the spelling of “anterior cruciate ligament,” the app will still help you find it. Perhaps best of all: no plug-ins. No Flash, no Java. The application runs right in any WebGL supported browser. It can still be a little cumbersome – if you’re not zoomed to exactly the right level in some cases (navigating the brain is a good example) it won’t always let you click on the right object – but overall it’s a pretty smooth experience.
Of course, not every browser is WebGL-enabled, but Chrome 9 Beta and Firefox 4 beta are, and both are available for download. Body Browser hasn’t landed in Google Labs just yet, but you can take it for a spin around your insides now through the . Barring that, you can get a somewhat rough tour via the video below.
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Google Maps 5.0 for Android now available with 3D buildings, offline support
The latest version of , and as we’ve reported previously, like 3D building support, dynamic map drawing and access to maps offline.
Google Maps 5.0 relies on vector graphics, instead of flat 2D maps, to load its map data. Vector files are smaller and more flexible than typical graphics files, both of which make a huge difference on mobile devices. Thanks to vector graphics, the app will now load your maps more quickly than ever before and draw them dynamically. It also supports 3D building models in over 100 cities. A new compass mode automatically orients the map to help you maintain direction.
As we’ve previously mentioned, the app will also be able to cache map data that you use most often to let you view maps offline. It will download map locations overnight when you’re connected with WiFi. Google says this feature will make up for over 90 percent of the times the Maps app fails when there’s a bad connection. The app’s Navigation feature will be able to take advantage of the offline maps and re-route you even if you’re without service.
Google says the new features are just the first step to improving the overall performance of its Maps app. The company figures that viewing maps with the new app now takes 70 percent less mobile data. It remains to be seen if we’ll see similar new features on other platforms. Apple, which is in charge of the Google Maps app on the iPhone, hasn’t been very good about supporting Google’s updates in the past.
Google Maps 5.0 is available on all Android devices running version 1.6 and above, but 3D and offline support is only available to those running Android 2.0 or higher.
Check out a video of the app in action below:
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You Are Here: How Digital Maps Are Changing the Landscape of the 21st Century
Mapmakers have more power than ever. But who are the mapmakers?
The commander Google Maps, which had erroneously depicted a stretch of the border in Nicaragua’s favor by as much as 1.7 miles. Google quickly moved to amend the faulty border data and sportingly apologized.
The incident raises some interesting issues concerning the future of mapmaking that, thus far, our brave new digital world hasn’t yet been forced to confront. Whereas cartography – particularly the act (or the art) of drawing political lines on geographical charts – used to be the purview of nations and international bodies, commercial entities like Google, Bing, Mapquest, and other digital services are the principal mapmakers of the 21st century.
Orbiting GeoEye satellites and camera-equipped Google sedans are the Magellans of the digital age, dispatched to explore and catalog -- and most importantly make public -- unprecedented amounts of geographical data via the Web. If anyone wants to locate anything – be it a coffee house, a post office, or an international boundary – users log into Google or Bing, not the U.N. or the U.S. Geological Survey. But these commercial maps are compiled from a variety of sources and often blend government-derived mapping data with user-generated content. As such, they are subject to conflicting information, differences of political opinion and – as the Nicaraguan incident shows – outright error.
“With a lot of these web-based tools, the need for formal training in cartography is going away, and that’s both a good thing and a bad thing,” says Dr. Brian Tomaszewski, an assistant professor in the Department of Information Sciences & Technologies at the Rochester Institute of Technology. It’s good because it creates rich, centralized data compilations that users constantly update. But before that can happen, someone like Google has to build the underlying map, and there’s no single source or authority for global map data to draw from. That leaves companies in the unenviable position of trying to pick and choose the best data and massage it to fit a single geographical template.
In the case of Nicaragua, it turns out that data was simply incorrect. A post on Google’s explained the error: “Yesterday we became aware of a dispute that referenced the border between Costa Rica and Nicaragua as depicted on Google Maps. This morning, after a discussion with the data supplier for this particular border (the U.S. Department of State), we determined that there was indeed an error in the compilation of the source data, by up to 2.7 kilometers.”
Viewed on Google Maps, however, an incorrect border looks like any other border, and if the U.S. State Department (and, more importantly, Google) says the border is in one place, who is Costa Rica to say it’s not? In strict cartographic sense, the treaty that originally established the border is the final word. But no one locates a border by reading a 150-year-old treaty; people find borders by looking at maps, and in the 21st century people consult maps by opening their Web browsers.
“We look at the computer and say ‘how can it be wrong, it’s on the computer,’” says Dr. Frank Galgano, professor and chairman of Villanova University’s Geography and the Environment Department. It’s to the computer that the world increasingly turns to find just about everything, lending digital mapmakers incredible power to shape users’ geospatial perceptions.
What’s largely missing is the healthy skepticism that users apply to other piecemeal compendia of information like Wikipedia, Galgano says. Google knows its maps contain errors; it says so in the user agreement (you read that closely, didn’t you?). For those people searching for the nearest Starbucks in Lower Manhattan these errors are largely negligible. But for an American hiking near the Iranian border, they can lead to miscalculations with serious consequences.
“People are forgetting to use common sense and critical thinking,” Tomaszewski says. “Google Maps isn’t an official mapping agency like a government. They buy or acquire data and then assemble it into a map. It’s almost frightening to think that militaries or governments might rely on Google as the final word on boundaries or borders between nations.”
But there are a variety of reasons why a government or military might do so, not least of which is the lack of anything better. In the United States, the USGS maintains an extensive collection of publicly available map data accurate down to about 130 feet. Many other nations treat their official maps as state secrets. Still others don’t have the resources to produce accurate maps at all. That makes commercial, publicly available maps like Google’s very attractive, if not any more authoritative.
Why Nicaragua chose to use a Google Map to justify military actions along a tense border is something for the geopolicy wonks to debate. Regardless, the incident embodies the changing nature and impact of cartography in a rapidly digitizing environment where data – often conflicting – is abundant and clearly defined rules are scarce. After all, borders are nothing more than imaginary lines enforced by mutual agreement. Cartography is inexact enough already, and the blurring line between “official” cartography and commercial maps rich in content but low in complexity further compounds that lack of concreteness.
That’s not to say commercial maps don’t carry tremendous value. Their accessibility has revolutionized the way people use maps, particularly as they pertain to commerce. The economic importance of being “on the map” may not be outwardly apparent, but consider the case of Sunrise, Fla.; the community of 90,000 has inexplicably from Google Maps three times since August of last year. During these “blackouts,” local businesses reported flattening commerce as new customers couldn’t locate them. Online orders ground to a halt for some businesses. After all, how would anyone find a florist or automotive shop that’s not searchable? When Sunrise disappeared from Google Maps, it might as well have disappeared completely.
So what makes a real map in the 21st century? Some would argue that the musty old analog maps tucked into national archives around the world are still the real deal, invested with the authority of governments. But if asked which is more important to their everyday lives, the citizens of Sunrise, Fla., might argue that commercial maps, regardless of inaccuracies or oversimplifications, represent a far greater social and economic utility. To the average person, commercial maps like those compiled by Google, Bing, or Yahoo have become at least as equally important as their “official” counterparts.
The important thing is maintaining a line between the two, and therein lies the problem in a world where data of all kinds is migrating ever more rapidly to the Web and pooling there, waiting for someone to make sense of it.
UTD’s Dr. Dean likens mapmaking’s shift to the commercial, digital realm to the blossoming of user-generated travel sites across the Web. When planning a trip, a user might seek information from established third party reviewers, like magazines or established ratings agencies. But he or she might also troll the Web for social data and customer reviews written by other travelers. Both kinds of data are valuable, he says, but a smart traveler would absorb and use them differently.
“It’s all part of becoming a knowledgeable consumer of maps. The idea that if it’s on a map it’s got to be true is misguided,” Dean says, noting that this is actually a very old problem rather than a new one. As with any data, misuse can lead to debacle, and such mishaps can range in severity from missing an exit on the interstate to interstate warfare. “Someone tried to look at a boundary on Google Maps as if it were a real definitive border and it nearly caused an armed conflict,” Dean says. “That’s as serious as it gets.”
New Google Maps for Android to spark jealousy among iPhone owners
The next major Google Maps update for Android phones looks like it’ll blow the iPhone’s aging Google Maps app out of the water. New features include dramatically faster performance, 3D building rendering, and an offline mode.
Google Maps 5.0 for Android will offer “dynamic map drawing” with vector graphics, which are smaller and load more quickly than the flat 2-dimensional maps the app previously featured. Overall the map performance is much “snappier”, both and report. There’s also support for 3D building models in over 100 cities. And just like Google Earth, the new Maps app will support tilting, so you’ll be able to get a sense of a building’s height when rendered in 3D. The app will be able to automatically rotate maps using your device’s compass to help you maintain direction.
Thanks to the smaller vector graphics, the app will also be able to cache map data that you use most often to let you view maps offline. The app will download map locations overnight when you’re connected with WiFi. Google says that this feature will make up for over 90 percent of the times the Maps app fails when there’s a bad connection. The app’s Navigation feature will be able to take advantage of the offline maps and re-route you even if you’re without service.
Google’s Andy Rubin unveiled the new Maps app last night at the D: Dive Into Mobile conference in San Francisco, where he also talked about . Rubin apparently showed off the app on a prototype Android 3.0 (codenamed “Honeycomb”) tablet.
Given the amount of new features in this app, it will be some time before Apple manages to update its Google Maps app to compete on the same level.
The new Maps app will support any Android device running Android 1.6 “Donut” or above. Features like dynamic rendering and automatic map rotation will only work with more powerful Android phones. It looks like the app will be fully functional on the original Motorola Droid, and any Android device more powerful than that. We can expect the app in the next few days, Rubin said.
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