Computers, Society, and Nature

The more we rely on online mapping to tell us the truth, the more it can be used to deceive us.

Google goes back to pre-Katrina maps, with the Lower 9th Ward restored.

Canary Islands gets censored data, which omits the beachfront development (since remedied)

Google Earth states that it uses whatever data that the data suppliers give them. But they certainly modify data based on government requests. So why not obtain “2007” data that actually is from “2007”?

(screenshot of Google Earth, Lower 9th Ward, showing site of Industrial Canal levee break)

(yes, as posts show, I’m on a Google Earth kick.)

Google News reports on the use of 3D printers to produce physical topographic models:

The Dimension 3D Printing Group, a business unit of Stratasys, Inc., reports that Mitekgruppen, a Swedish design firm hired to create a 3D model of the city of Stockholm, Sweden, completed the project in a fraction of the normal time by using a Dimension 3D printer and Google Earth.
…
To construct the Stockholm model, Mitekgruppen used aerial photos and drawings to create the city’s buildings in a computer aided design (CAD) program. Where aerial photos and drawings weren’t available, designers relied on Google Earth to prepare these CAD files for the 3D printer. The CAD files were then sent to the 3D printer to produce models of Stockholm’s buildings. The finished building replicas where then positioned, secured and hand painted along with other landscape features including bridges, cars, boats trains and trees.
…
“A handmade model of this scale would have been a tremendous time investment,” said Martin Jonsson, co-owner and designer at Mitekgruppen. “Similar city replicas have taken years to construct. With the Dimension 3D printer and the images we gathered from Google Earth, a project that could have taken years to finished was completed in a matter of months.”

Other companies have used the Dimension 3D printer to create neighborhood models within cities. Gordon Ingram Associates (GIA), a U.K. based lighting consultancy firm, used a Dimension to generate scaled 3D models of areas in central London, allowing interested parties the ability to witness the effects of light on the buildings in the cityscape.

Here’s a description of 3D printing.

This would be an awesome tool for conservation projects in developing countries, the technological version of participatory 3D modelling.

The NewScientist announces that a patent has been filed for an Underwater global positioning system — GPS (technically, the patent is for Underwater geopositioning methods and apparatus)

GPS does not work underwater-the radio signals on which it depends cannot pass through water. So submariners have yet to benefit from the revolution in navigation that it allows.

Now engineers working for the US Office of Naval Research think they have found a simple way to let submarines and divers get an accurate GPS fix.

A base station is tethered to the sea bed at known depth and known GPS location. A submersible anywhere in the area sends out a sonar request pulse to which the base station replies with a signal which gives its GPS position and depth as well as the bearing angle from which the submersible’s request arrived.

The submersible then uses its own depth, which is easily measured, plus the round trip pulse time and the bearing angle sent by the base, to calculate its own position. Simple.

Presumably the methods and apparatus will become commercially available. It’ll be a tremendous boon to oceanographic and marine research, which have had to rely on movable buoys or losable radio transmitters. It also has potential for conservation research, for example, to locate and map changes in the seabed and coral reefs.

(h/t for article to slashdot and mattsparks)

Vodafone is teaming up with Google to develop maps for mobile telephones. I wonder if Google will control all the content or whether it will allow mashups. Also what happens to all those “unverified listings” and user (business) added content. Will mobile phone users demand greater accuracy (e.g., spatial location) than currently available?

Found this incredibly easy graphical user interface for Google Earth at atlasgloves. It’s DIY virtual reality gloves made from white LEDs and ping pong balls. The “heavy lifting” is the software that integrates the glove movements via a web cam with the Google Earth software. Happily, atlas gloves has written it and you can download it at their site. They also have a nice demo of the atlas gloves in action.

Here’s a Youtube link done by digitalurban.blogspot.com:

3dconnexion’s space navigator is also cool but doesn’t appeal to my geeky sensibility the way the atlas gloves do.

A new one to add to the list of new graphical user interfaces that could manage our massed amounts of information. This one comes from the Mitsubishi Electric Research Labs. It’s a way to store and manipulate digital files.

In this video, we describe the design of Personal Digital Historian (PDH), an interactive system that facilitates face to face conversation and story sharing, using a digital tabletop user interface, where relevant images can be easily displayed and manipulated by everyone. The design of PDH focuses on providing the right tools and visualizations for the listeners of the story as well as the story sharers. Our goal is to provide a new digital content user interface and management system enabling face-to-face casual exploration and visualization of digital contents.

Most of the examples in the video are photos. But some are maps (i.e., scanned images of maps). Think of what could be done in terms of managing all softs of digital files, photos, audio, databases, text, etc. that have geographic locations. And I love the round display with the tools on the circumference.

BTW, this could not only be an excellent tool for historians, sociologists, and geographers but for urban planners, too. Think of all the data we have, in terms of slides, master plans, old coursework, interesting references, and photos. All of these could be categorized, discussed and recategorized. The GUI has great potential for scenario planning or futuring sessions or plain old planning meetings.

Once again from the inestimable slashdot,

An anonymous reader writes “Google organized a flyover of Sydney, Australia last Friday for Australia Day. The images taken on the day will be posted to Google Maps in a few weeks. A number of dotcoms spent hours making huge signs that would be visible from the air. It will be interesting to see whether Google will repeat the event in other cities. If they do, get prepared early. What sign would you make?”

Some sour grapes on the swift city site over spamming Google Earth. But I say, all’s fair in love and geo-spatial data.

NYTimes discovers geotagging, although it does mention other sites besides flickr (Picasa, SmugMug‘s Edit Geography, and Trippermap).

While the article is behind the times, it still does a fairly good job of pointing out the problems of getting the x and y coordinates.

Slashdot points to an article on the potential to sketch furniture in the air, have the sketch (including its geometry) transferred to a computer and then printed with a 3D printer.

Think of the possibilities for sketch mapping and for mental mapping. Even for dance!