Google and Murakami

I love Google Doodles and I love Takashi Murakami, so I could not let today's illustration of Google logo unoticed  :

Let's celebrate the summer solstice i.e. longest day of the year 2011 !

HTML5 drag & drop with GoogleEarth API

Sean Maday from Google just posted this video demonstration of how the HTML5 drag & drop and file APIs can be used with the Google Earth API to dynamically parse KML and geocode a CSV.

It is so cool and simple. I love it !

Check up his code here : http://sigacts.com/html5/

More about Google Earth Builder

Here are some interesting links about Google Earth Builder :

About the product :

• Description of the product on Google Website : http://www.google.com/enterprise/earthmaps/builder.html 
• Announcement on the Google Enterprise Blog : http://googleenterprise.blogspot.com/2011/04/bringing-100-web-to-world-of-google.html 
• Google Earth Builder Overview on YouTube : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PcX54Z6Zuy0
•  InformationWeek has also some information about Google Earth Builder (http://www.informationweek.com/news/internet/google/229401896) in particular Dylan Lorimer mentioning that FISMA certification is likely to be pursued in late 2011 or 2012.

 About NGA using Google Earth Builder :

• There is even a post about NGA being a beta user of GoogleEarth Builder : http://googleenterprise.blogspot.com/2011/04/google-earth-builder-supports-nga.html

About Ergon using Google Earth Builder :

• And apart from the military world, the private sector is also testing GoogleEarth Builder : http://www.zdnet.com.au/ergon-bets-on-google-s-earth-builder-339313670.htm 
• http://www.theaustralian.com.au/australian-it/government/google-to-help-ergon-slash-millions/story-fn4htb9o-1226042629715

GoogleEarth Builder announced during the Where 2.0 Conference

During Where 2.0 Conference, Dylan Lorimer (GoogleEarth Enterprise Product Manager) has announced the coming release of a new version of GoogleEarth for Enterprise : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d07FasJ-NWc&p=0B2FEB8AACD826BE. It is called GoogleEarth Builder and could be described as Google Mapping Platform in the Cloud available to enterprise users. It will be available in Q3 2011.

More presentations from the Where 2.0 conference are available online : http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=0B2FEB8AACD826BE ...why fly to Santa Clara, California, when you can view everything online from your desk ? ;-)

>>> More information about Google Earth Builder

SPOTCatalog GWT code source available

Today, the source code for a GWT version of the catalog of SPOT satellite images has been made available. Check it up on SPOTLabs : http://labs.spotimage.com/2011/04/20/source-code-for-gwt-spot-catalog-is-available/

Budha and Shiva

During my last trip to India, I wanted to make sure that I could spend some time to check the big statue close to the sea that I had previously seen on GoogleEarth. When some polish girls that we met in Gokarna showed me pictures of the great Lord Shiva statue in Murudeshwar, I was pretty convinced that this was the statue I was looking for ! And it was really impressive : with a height of 37 meters, it was built only 10 years ago on a holy place in front of the sea.

But when I cam back home and searched for it in GoogleEarth, the statue and even the 3D model where nowhere to be found ! I had to realize that I was either in time warp (having seen before
what I would only visit later) or that I confused Lord Shiva with a statue of Budha in China : http://www.gearthblog.com/blog/archives/2007/05/3d_model_of_tian_tan.html

So I guess that I need to create the 3D model of Lord Shiva statue ! Welcome Google SketchUp !

The Standby Task Force

While the Nuclear crisis following the Sendai Earthquake and Tsunami is still capturing everyone attention, I wanted to recall the Libya and Ivory Coast conflits and praise the effort of the civil community to try to help by creating free and open-source maps of these areas.

The Standby Task Force is an Online Volunteer Community for Live Mapping. This initiative is linked to Crisis Mappers (http://www.crisismappers.net/) who usually setup Ushaidi Maps (http://blog.ushahidi.com/) for major humanitarian crisis. If you would like to participate in the effort to help, you should consider visiting the blog of the StandBy Task Force (http://blog.standbytaskforce.com/) as well as the one from HOT, the Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team (http://hot.openstreetmap.org/weblog/).

Here are the starting points to help creating useful and open-source maps :

Japan :
http://www.sinsai.info/ushahidi/ (in Japanese)
http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/2011_Sendai_earthquake_and_tsunami

Libya :
http://libyacrisismap.net/
http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/WikiProject_Libya

Ivory Coast :
http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/WikiProject_Ivory_Coast