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Come together

• Get your program leads to post photos and videos of what they're doing in the field. Recent photos and videos go a long way toward demonstrating your impact on the communities you serve, which matters to donors and potential partners.
• Have your donors, partners, and volunteers add themselves to a collective map of all of your supporters. You're all working toward the same goal, and it's encouraging to see who else is on your team.
  

• Burma Chapters US
• Our Stories
• Dirty Ditching Diesel Collaborative

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Putting Google Earth to the test (Answers)

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The South China Sea Project

This layer was developed to share information about the South China Sea Project with the Google Earth community. It is also being used as a tool for sharing geographical information and data among scientists and managers from seven countries bordering the South China Sea.

According to the Project Director, Dr. John Pernetta, this KML provides "an overview of the regional network of government ministries and departments, research institutes, and universities involved in the implementation of project activities; the project's suite of habitat demonstration sites and pilot activities bordering the South China Sea basin; and information and data for 135 mangrove, coral reef, seagrass, and wetlands sites of the South China Sea studied during the project."

By providing rich information in the description bubbles, this KML uses Google Earth as the geographical search engine to provide an in-depth analysis of the South China Sea. This layer is a great example of how to connect with a wide audience. We encourage you to explore it in the Google Earth Outreach Showcase, and get a feel for the beauty and importance of this region.

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Sometimes simpler is better...

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Putting Google Earth to the test

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Superdelegate layer in Google Earth

Disclaimer: Since superdelegate endorsements are not binding, we can't ensure that the endorsements listed are indicative of future events. But we're excited that people are engaging in politics online by drawing from a compilation of candidate endorsement lists on Roll Call, CNN's Election Center and other sources to update the site on a daily basis. Other groups and publications may have different superdelegate counts, including candidates' campaigns, the New York Times, and the AP.

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传微软将于本月27日发布WorldWide Telescope

Electronic Problem Shuts Down Space Scope's Main Camera - 04 July 2006

Birdseye View - Binoviewers In Space and In the Field - 10 September 2006

Brando Generic Mobile Phone Telescope - 17 October 2007

This Week in Aviation History: Glenn Miller's Plane Crash - 12 December 2007

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Google Earth:桌面上的世界

The world on your desktop
Sep 6th 2007
From The Economist print edition

桌面上的世界

As the internet becomesintertwined with the real world, the resulting "geoweb" has many uses
将互联网与现实世界纠缠在一起的"在线地球"用户颇多。





"EARTHmaterialises, rotating majestically in front of his face. Hiro reaches out andgrabs it. He twists it around so he's looking at Oregon. Tells it to get rid ofthe clouds, and it does, giving him a crystalline view of the mountains and theseashore."
"地球逐渐成形了，威严的在希罗面前转着。希罗一把抓住它，把它转过来，找到俄勒冈州。希罗命令它处理掉云层，云层消失后，山脉和海岸便清晰的展现在希罗眼前。"


That vision from NealStephenson's "Snow Crash", a science-fiction novel published in 1992, aptlydescribes Google Earth, a computer program that lets users fly over a detailedphotographic map of the world. Other information, such as roads, borders andthe locations of coffee shops can be draped on to the view, which can be panned,rotated, tilted and zoomed with almost seamless continuity. First-time usersoften report an exhilarating revelatory pang as they realise what the softwarecan do. As the globe spins and switches from one viewpoint to another, it caneven induce vertigo.
尼尔史蒂文森在1992年出版的科幻小说《雪样的崩溃》中的这一幕，恰 如其分的描述了Google Earth。Google Earth是一种允许用户俯瞰全球的精细图像化地图的计算机软件。像道路、疆界甚至是咖啡店位置这样的信息都可以覆盖在视图上，用户可以近乎无缝的连续移 动、旋转、倾斜和缩放视图。认识到这个软件的功能，第一时间的用户常常抱怨这种快乐而又颇具启示性的苦闷，因为频繁的地球旋转和从一个观察点换到另一个， 甚至让用户感到晕头转向。


Google's virtual globeincorporates elevation data that describe surface features such as mountainsand valleys. Other data is then overlaid on it, notably a patchwork ofsatellite imagery and aerial photography licensed from several public andprivate providers. The entire planet is covered, with around one-third of allland depicted in such detail that individual trees and cars, and the homes of 3billion people, can be seen. All this has long been imaginable but has becomepossible only recently, thanks to high-resolution commercial satellite imaging,broadband links and cheap, powerful computers.
Google的 虚拟地球包含了描述山川沟谷一类地表特征的高程数据，其他的数据再覆盖其上，其中特别重要的是从公共和私有提供商获得了使用许可的卫星影像和航空照片的拼 接。数据覆盖全球，其中，约1/3的陆地描述的非常详细，甚至可以看到独立的树、单独的车辆和30亿人的房子。这一切都被设想已久，但直到最近才变的可 能，这多亏了高分辨率的商业卫星图像、宽带连接和便宜却功能强大的计算机。


Keyhole, an American firm,released the first commercial "geobrowser" in 2001. Google bought Keyhole in2004 and launched Google Earth in 2005. Its basic, free version has since beendownloaded over 250m times, says Michael Jones, one of Keyhole's founders andnow Google Earth's chief technologist.
一家名叫keyhole的美国公司在2001年发布第一个商业版的"地 球浏览器"。Google在2004年收购了keyhole，并在次年发布了Google Earth。据迈克尔琼斯（keyhole的创办者之一、现在Google Earth的首席技术官）说，自那时，Google Earth免费的基本版本被下载了超过2亿5千万次。

In 2004 America's spaceagency, NASA, released another geobrowser, called World Wind. More than 20mcopies are in use. But Google's main geobrowsing rival is Microsoft. BothEncarta, Microsoft's encyclopedia, and TerraServer, a database demonstrationproject, had geobrowser-like features in the 1990s. At the end of 2005Microsoft bought GeoTango, which contributed to the development of Live SearchMaps, a web-based geobrowser that uses data from Virtual Earth, Microsoft'sdigital model of the planet. (Google also provides a web-based geobrowser viaGoogle Maps.)
2004年， 美国的航天部门NASA，发布了另一个"地球浏览器"，名叫World Wind。至今超过2千万份拷贝在使用之中。但Google主要的"地球浏览器"竞争者是微软。在20世纪90年代，Encarta（微软的百科全书）和 TerraServer（一个演示工程的数据库）就有类似"地球浏览器"的功能。在2005年底，Microsoft收购了GeoTango，以希望有助 于Live Search Maps的开发，那是一个基于网络、使用Virtual Earth（Microsoft的行星数字模型）数据的"地球浏览器"。（Google通过Google Maps也提供了一个基于网络的"地球浏览器"）




An overlay shows desroyed villages in Darfur; sunbakers on Sydney's Bondi Beach; the city of Berlin, with detailed 3-D buildings
显示达尔富尔被毁村庄的覆盖层；在悉尼Bondi海滩的享受日光浴的人；加载了详细的3维建筑的柏林



Vincent Tao, GeoTango'sfounder and now director of Virtual Earth for Microsoft, allows that Microsofthas spent at the "couple of hundreds of millions of dollars level" on VirtualEarth. Most of that has been spent on the acquisition of imagery, which nowtotals 14 petabytes on 900 servers. (One petabyte is 1m gigabytes.) The companyis also adding detail in the form of textured three-dimensional models ofcities devised from aerial photographs; ten cities are added each month.
文森特陶，GeoTango的创办者和现在微软的Virtual Earth主管，同意微软在Virtual Earth投资数亿美元。投资的大部分用来购买存放在900台服务器上总共14皮的影像（1皮=1百万吉）。微软正以每月10个城市的速度，根据航空相片 设计城市粗糙的3维模型，以添加细节。


For its part, Google isrelying on "crowdsourcing"—enlisting its users to build and contribute images, 3-Dmodels of buildings and other data to enrich its digital planet. So far 850,000users have contributed millions of annotations and more than 1m images, vettingone another's contributions. Wikipedia, which uses a similar system, is itselfavailable through Google Earth. Users can read Wikipedia articles placed on theglobe using "geotags"—spatial co-ordinates encoded into each entry. Other sitesincluding Flickr, the leading photo-sharing site, and Google's YouTube, alsosupport geotags.
对Google来说，则依靠它"支持者"，Google鼓励他的用户贡 献图片、建筑物的3d模型和其他数据来丰富它的数字星球。到目前为止，850000名用户贡献了上百万条注释、超过1百万幅的图片，同时检查其他人的贡 献。使用类似系统的Wikipedia，跟Google Earth也有联系。Wikipeia上的相关文章被根据地理标签（空间位置的编码）在Google Earth上添加入口以供用户阅读。其他站点，包括Flickr—杰出的图片共享网站和Google的YouTube也都支持geotags


These virtual globes are beingput to an unexpected range of uses. Google Earth was used to co-ordinate reliefefforts in New Orleans in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in 2005. Taxinspectors in Buenos Aires are using it to see whether people are correctlyreporting the size of their properties. An Italian programmer who was using thesoftware noticed odd markings on the ground near his home town which turned outto be a previously unknown Roman villa. Roofers, landscape gardeners and solar-panelinstallers use the virtual maps to scout for potential customers. RebeccaMoore, a member of the Google Earth team, used the software to galvanise herneighbourhood in the Santa Cruz mountains in opposition to a nearby loggingproject. And the Amazon Conservation Team, an American charity, equipped 26indigenous tribes in the Amazon with hand-held global positioning system unitsand computers running Google Earth, to enable them to assert their legalsovereignty in the face of threats from loggers and miners.
这些虚拟地球甚至吸引意料之外的用户群。2005年，飓风 Katrina袭击后的新奥尔良使用Google Earth来定位救济工作。布宜诺斯艾利斯的税官用它来核查居民是否真实的申报自己的财产。一个意大利的程序员用这个软件注意到了他家附近地面上的古怪标 志，结果证明是未知的古罗马别墅。盖屋顶的人、庭园美化师和安装太阳能板的人使用虚拟地图搜索潜在的客户。丽贝卡莫尔，一名GE小组的成员，使用这个软件 动员她在圣克鲁斯山的邻居反对附近的一项伐木工程。保护亚马逊小组，一个美国的慈善团体，把手持的全球定位系统仪和运行着Google Earth的电脑装备给26个亚马逊当地土著部落，以保证她们在面对伐木工和矿工的威胁时，能够维护自己的法定治权。


"It's turning into a map ofhistorical significance," says John Hanke, head of Google's Earth and Mapsdivision, and another of Keyhole's founders. "It is going to be a map of theworld that is more detailed than any map that's ever been created." He may beunderstating the technology's importance.
"它变成了具有历史意义的地图"，Google Earth和Maps部门的负责人约翰汉克说道，他也是另一位keyhole的创办者，"它会变成一幅前所未有如此详细的世界地图。"他或许了解了这项技术的重要。


The world-wired web
Geobrowsers are a stunninglyeffective means of visualising the planet. But they are just one part of abroader endeavour, the construction of a "geoweb" that is still in its infancy,much as the world wide web was in the mid-1990s. The web did away with manygeographical constraints, enabling people with common interests to communicate,regardless of location. Yet placelessness jettisons some of the most usefulfeatures of information, which are now attracting new attention.
捆绑了世界的网络
地球浏览器是一个绝妙也有效的观察星球的方法。但这只是更宽泛的努力的 一部分，构建"地球网络"仍然处于初级阶段，这恰似90年代中期的万维网。万维网消除了许多地理上的限制，不管身在何地，有着共同兴趣人都可以在线交流。 但抛弃位置信息也就抛弃信息的最有用的几个方面，现在，这引起了世人的注意。


Atpresent the most feverish excitement surrounds the combination of virtual mapswith other sources of data in "mash-ups". One of the earliest examples,housingmaps.com, created in 2005, combines San Francisco apartment listingsfrom Craigslist.org with Google Maps. Mash-upshave since become commonplace—Google says its maps are used in more than 4m ofthem. In April the company added features to Google Maps to make it easier tocreate mash-ups. Microsoft is at work on a similar tool. Another site, platial.com,provides free mash-up tools for bloggers, spawning a new genre inself-absorption: autobiogeography.
如今，最令人兴奋的事就是把虚拟地图和其他数据源的"搅在一起"。一个早期的例子是2005年建立的housingmaps.com，它把来自Craigslist.org的旧金山的公寓清单和Google Maps相结合。自那时起，"搅在一起"变得普通。Google说，超过400万个这样的应用使用了它的地图。四月，Google为Google Earth添加了新的特色以方便创建"搅在一起"。微软也在开发类似的工具。另一个网站platial.com，向博客用户提供了免费的"搅在一起"工具，孵化出了一种新类型的专心致志：行路自传。


Thegeoweb has obvious appeal to those in the property business. Zillow.commashes Microsoft's Virtual Earth with other data to create maps of home pricesin America. But property is just the start. At gasbuddy.com, visitorscan map local petrol prices to plan fill-ups. ExploreOurPla.net brings togetherthousands of sources of images and data to let users investigate climatechange.
"地球网络"显然吸引着资产行业的从业者。Zillow.com结合微软的VirtualEarth和其他数据，建立了美国的房价地图。资产还仅是开始，在gasbuddy.com，来访者可以查阅当地的油价来制定加油计划。ExploreOurPla.net同时提供了上千种来源的图像和数据，允许用户研究天气的变化。

House prices overlaid on a satellite map atZillow.com; San Francisco, seen on Google's Street View; a GIS view ofan air-force base
在zillow.com，房价被叠到卫星地图上；从Google Earth看到的旧金山街景；一个空军基地GIS试图

Theseexamples illustrate the emerging architecture of the geoweb: data, such asinformation on traffic jams or seismic tremors, is hosted separately from theimages and models of the geobrowser, which assembles, combines and displays theinformation in new ways. GeoCommons.com hosts data, from crimerates to melanoma statistics, that can be combined to create colour-coded "heatmaps" of intangibles such as "hipness". Visitors to Heywhatsthat.com can generate a diagramof the view from any high spot to see the names of visible mountain peaks.
这些例子说明了地球网络正形成的结构：数据，如交通拥塞或地震的信息，各自依托地球浏览器的图像和模型，装配合成并以一种新的方式显示出来。GeoCommons.com作为数据的主机，从犯罪率到黑素瘤的统计数字，都可以结合从而把"时尚"这样无形的问题表示成颜色编码的"热图"。Heywhatsthat.com的访问者能够自己生成从某个高度可以看到山顶的山名的图表。


Herethe neogeographers, as mash-up enthusiasts are known, have crossed into theterrain of "geographic information systems" (GIS), the fancy software toolsthat are used by governments and companies to analyse spatial data. Geobrowsersare still quite primitive by comparison, but are much easier to use. For itspart GIS deals with critical infrastructure, so its data tend to be ofimpeccable quality. Jack Dangermond, the founder of ESRI, a private firm thatdominates the GIS market, says interest stimulated by the geoweb has helped toboost business by 20% this year. Ron Lake of Galdos Systems, a firm thatspecialises in integrating civic geodata, says geobrowsers have led to a pushfor better public access to such data.
以"搅在一起"的爱好者著称的新地理学者已经涉足地理信息系统 （GIS），GIS是被政府和公司用来分析空间数据的新奇软件。与之相比，地球浏览器的功能仍很原始，但更易于使用。GIS自身与基础设施打交道，所以他 的数据往往拥有较高的品质。GIS行业的领头羊ESRI公司的创办者杰克丹格尔曼德说，今年，geoweb带来的嗜好使得整个行业扩大了20%。 Galdos Systems（一家擅长整合城市地理数据的公司）的罗恩雷克说，地球浏览器带来的冲击使得公众更好的访问这类数据。


Whenthe analytical insights and data quality of GIS are combined with the geoweb'svisualisation and networking prowess, startling efficiencies emerge. Last yearWaterstone, a consultancy, assembled the geodata for 13 American air-forcebases and wrapped them up in a modified version of NASA's World Windgeobrowser. This makes it possible to walk through a 3-D model of each base andcall up multiple layers of data. A project manager can view live video from aconstruction site and identify the contractors and their vehicles. A plannercan assess a proposed building's effect on runway visibility. And anenvironmental engineer, while viewing a plume of contaminated groundwater, candelve into 45 years' worth of documents associated with the site. CarlaJohnson, Waterstone's boss, says the project cost less than $1m and is expectedto save the air force around $5m a year through faster decision-making.
当GIS的分析能力和数据质量整合进geoweb的可视功能和超凡网络 后，令人吃惊的功能显现出来。去年，一家名叫水石（waterstone）顾问公司，为美国13个空军基地装配了geodata并包装到NASA的 world wind地球浏览器里。用户可以在每个基地的3维模型中漫步并访问多层的数据。项目主管可以观看来自建筑位置的即时视频，分辨承包商和它们的车辆。计划员 可以估算将要将建起的高楼是否会影响飞行员看到跑道。环境工程师在发现羽毛状的污染的地下水时，可以查阅45年间的与该地点有关的文件。水石的老板卡拉约 翰逊说，凭借加快指定决策的速度，这个花费了近1百万美元的工程有望为空军每年节省5百万美元。

Smile, you're on Google Earth
Likeany technology, the geoweb has both good and bad uses. When geobrowsers firstintroduced easy access to satellite imagery, something that had previously onlybeen available to intelligence agencies, many observers worried that terroristsmight use such images to plan attacks. Google Earth seems to have been used inthis way by Iraqi insurgents planning attacks on a British base in the city ofBasra, for example, in which individual buildings and vehicles can be clearlyseen. After this came to light in January, the images of the area in questionwere replaced with images from 2002, predating the construction of the camp.
笑着使用Google Earth
geoweb如其他的技术一样有利有弊。地球浏览器如前面所介绍的可以轻易的访问原来只有情报机构才可以看到卫 星图像，很多观察家担心恐怖分子会利用这些图像来计划新的袭击。而且，似乎Google Earth已被伊拉克暴徒用来计划袭击Basra的英军基地，因为这一地区的独立建筑和车辆都可以在Google Earth上看得清清楚楚。1月，当事件因果浮出水面，出问题地区的图像被换成兵营建造之前的2002年的了。


Thissummer a member of the Assembly of the State of New York called on Google toobscure imagery after the geobrowser was used by plotters in a foiled airportattack. Yet Mr Jones says Google has been formally contacted by governments inthis regard only three times (including by India and by an unspecified Europeancountry), and that in each case the issue was resolved without making changesto the imagery in Google Earth.
这个夏天， Google的地球浏览器被发现在一次被挫败的飞机场袭击中被用于计划袭击之后，纽约州众议院的一名成员呼吁Google把图片模糊掉。但，琼斯先生说， 仅有3次政府正式的因为这个理由向Google交涉(包括印度和某个欧洲国家)，而尽管每次都没有更改Google Earth上的图像，问题还是都解决了。


Althoughsome buildings or areas are blurred for security reasons, Google says this isdone by the firms from which it licenses the imagery. Microsoft says it blursphotos in response to "legitimate government and agency requests". But theimages are typically between six months and three years old, which limits theirtactical usefulness; and satellite and aerial images are available from manyother sources, and have been for some time. So in some respects, geobrowsers havenot made possible anything that was not possible before—they have just madeaccess to such images much cheaper and easier.
虽然一些建筑和地区因为安全原因都做了模糊化处理，Google称这已 由图像的提供商完成。微软说它"应合法的政府和部门要求"模糊了照片。但这些照片一般拍摄于6个月到3年以前，谁来决定它们的战略价值。长期以来，很多渠 道都可以获得卫星和航空照片。因此在某些方面，地球浏览器并没有把原先不可能的事变得可能，他只是使得访问这些图片更加便宜与方便。


"It'sa question of the policy and the thinking catching up with the technology,"says Mr Hanke. "Ease of access alters the debate." Google insists that it takessecurity concerns very seriously, and points out that the American government'sofficial position is that the benefits of making satellite images widelyavailable outweigh the risks. Indeed, some jurisdictions are embracing theexposure. The Canary Islands have donated high-resolution imagery to Google inthe hope that virtual visitors might become real tourists, and the city ofBerlin has made its painstakingly detailed digital models available throughGoogle Earth.
"这是政策和追赶新技术的想法的问题"汉克先生说，"方便访问改变了争 论。"Google坚持它重视安全上的担忧，并指出美国政府的官方姿态仍是认为广泛使用卫星图像的益处大于它的风险。的确，一些行政部门接受了这种"揭 发"。加那利群岛把高分辨率的图像捐献给Google，以期虚拟的访问者会变成真正的游客，柏林煞费苦心的通过GoogleEarth发布详细的数字城市 模型。


Forgovernments that are used to hiding things from each other's spy satellites,the advent of the geobrowsers does not change things very much. Ordinarymembers of the public can now call up images of Chinese nuclear submarines viaGoogle Earth, but intelligence agencies around the world have had access to farmore detailed satellite images for years. And the fact that the submarines canbe seen at all means that China is not trying to keep their existence a secret.Even so, armed forces do find the geoweb useful. The American military is a biguser of both World Wind and the enterprise version of Google Earth. And somegovernments do have grounds for concern: the government of Sudan, for example,would undoubtedly prefer the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum not tohighlight destroyed villages in Darfur via an overlay in Google Earth.
因为，政府间早就习惯在彼此的间谍卫星的眼皮底下藏东西，地球浏览器的 降临并没有改变太多。普通的公众现在可以通过Google Earth看到中国核潜艇的图片，但世界上情报部门多年前就看到了更详细的卫星图片。但是随意就可以看到潜艇的事实也说明中国并不打算把它当成是个秘密。 尽管如此，军方也的确发现Google Earth很有用。美国军方正是World wind和Google Earth企业版的大客户。一些政府的确有理由担心：比如苏丹政府，毫无疑问希望美国大屠杀纪念馆不要通过在Google earth上的叠加层来高亮达尔富尔地区被毁的村庄。


Closeto home, the geoweb turns out to have implications for personal privacy as wellas geopolitics. Google's new Street View feature, launched in May, lets usersof Google Maps move through stitched-together street-level imagery of severalAmerican cities, giving private citizens a taste of "crowdsourced"surveillance. All the views are of public streets yet, in aggregate, theychallenge accepted notions of privacy—especially for those caught doingsomething naughty as Google's specially equipped camera van swoops past.Shortly after the feature was launched, users uncovered a car getting a ticketfrom Miami police, a man scaling a locked gate in San Francisco and another manentering a shop selling sex toys.
由于可以清晰的看到住处，geoweb结果是会暴露个人的隐私，正像在 地缘政治上所做的一样。Google的5月发布的新的街景功能，允许Google Maps的用户在美国几个城市的链接在一起的街道级别的图像中闲逛，结果当地的居民感到被"Google Maps迷"监视着。尽管所有的视图都是公共的街道，但总的来说，她们挑战了公认的隐私权的概念-尤其是Google跑来跑去的特别装备的摄像车捕捉到的 那些没规矩的人。在新功能发布后不久，用户就发现了一辆车收到了迈阿密警方的罚单、旧金山的一个人正攀爬上锁的大门还有另一个人光顾性玩具商店。


"Whenthe coverage is everything and everywhere, there is going to be a big problem,"says Lee Tien, a lawyer at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, an internetcampaign group. Satellite images are not detailed enough to allow individualpeople or vehicles to be identified, but faces and licence plates can be seenin Google's Street View. There are few legal precedents. In 2003, BarbraStreisand sued to keep her Malibu estate out of an online library of images ofthe California coast. She lost. Although movie stars are more stalked thanmost—several sites provide geobrowser links to celebrities' homes—it is easy toimagine innocent annotations that could be unintentionally dangerous. Sheltersfor battered women, for example, often prefer not to make their locationswidely known.
"如果覆盖了所有的东西、所有的地方，就有成大问题，"来自电子前锋基 金会（一个互联网活动组织）的一名律师李迪恩说。卫星图像还没有清晰到可以辨别一个人或一辆车，但在Google的街景中可以看到脸和车牌。这种情况少有 合法的先例。2003年，芭芭拉史翠珊提出诉讼，要求从在线的加州海滩图片库中移除包含它的Malibu不动产的图片，但最终败诉。尽管影星更引人注意- 不少网站提供名人住处的geobrower连接-很容易想象这些无知的注解会导致无心的危险。例如，婚暴妇女的庇护所往往不希望它的位置人尽皆知。


Google'sMr Jones believes the benefits are strong enough to overcome these concerns. "Ithink there's a social barrier to everything new," he says. The availability ofuseful information will outweigh concern over surveillance and loss of privacy,he believes. Five or six years ago, he notes, people worried about the spreadof camera phones. But now "everyone just presumes that everybody has a cameraon their phone—it's nothing special." The lesson of previous technologies, hesays, is that "we all are happy to tolerate things that would have previouslybeen considered intolerable."
Google的 琼斯先生相信好处还是足以克服这些忧虑。"我想总有种阻力针对新的东西，"他说。他相信能够获取有用的信息比受人监视和失去隐私更重要。5、6年前，他强 调人们也担心摄像手机的传播，但现在"每个人都会假定每人的手机上都有摄像头-这并没有什么特别的。"早期科技的教训，他说，就是"我们喜欢忍受原来认为 是不可忍受的事情。"


Indeed,all the features—good and bad—of the internet will eventually gain newdimensions on the geoweb. Bots and intelligent agents will crawl it. It will bepopulated by avatars, as Second Life becomes first life, and it will enable theinverse: telepresent machines roaming the real world. Ghostly, private worldswill be overlaid on reality, sensitive only to members. The maliciouspossibilities are sobering: location-based viruses, geohacking and, worst ofall, geospam.
的确，互联网所有的功能-好的和坏的-最终会为geoweb增加新的 维。聊天机器人和智能代理在geoweb上蠕动，虚拟世界的生活变成第一位，天神也要住在其中。这会导致大逆转：超距离存在的机器在真实的世界中流浪。私 人世界可怕的铺在真实之上，却只对成员有意义。恶毒的事情变得值得重视：基于位置的病毒，位置有关的破坏和最糟糕的-位置垃圾。


Despitethese concerns, the potential of the geoweb is not lost on investors. Since thebeginning of last year more than 20 geospatial firms have been the targets ofmergers and acquisitions, with Google, Microsoft and ESRI among the buyers. Butit is not quite time to declare the dawn of Web 3.0. For one thing, consumergeobrowsing does not make any money. Microsoft's Mr Tao says that revenue hasto come from advertising for now, until critical mass enables location-basedtransactions. Google, true to form, is investing first and worrying aboutrevenue later.
虽然有这些担心，但投资者从未忽视geoweb的潜力。自去年年初，超 过20家地理空间有关的公司成为像Google、微软和ESRI的买家兼并和收购的目标。但断言Web3.0的黎明到来还为时尚早。有一点，消费者使用地 球浏览器并不制造出钱。微软的陶先生说，现在利润来自广告，除非基于位置的交易变得可能。Google，一如既注的打算先赔后赚。


The road to Web 3.0
Amore immediate hurdle is on the verge of resolution. Google recently submitted KML,the tagging protocol that describes how objects are placed in Google Earth, tothe Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC), a standards body. This will let otherfirms support it. GML, a protocol developed by the OGC to encodespatial-information models, was formally adopted as an international standardthis year. Standards for dynamic geodata, the sharing of 3-D models ofbuildings and geodata from sensor networks ought to be in place by next year.All this will ensure interoperability and do for geodata what the web did forother forms of data, says Carl Reed, the OGC's chief technologist.
Web 3.0之路
更加直接的障碍在于，Google最近把KML，一种描绘如何把目标放 置在Google　earth上标签协议，提交给开放地理联盟（OGC，一个标准组织）,这可以让其他公司也支持ＫＭＬ。ＧＭＬ－由ＯＧＣ开发的一种空间 信息模型编码协议，就在今年被采纳为国际标准。对于动态的地理数据的标准，建筑物３维模型和来自传感器网络的地理数据的共享，应当在明年就位。这些都会确 保互操作性和处理了网络处理的其他形式的数据，OGC的首席技术官卡尔李特说。


Atthe same time, the incorporation of satellite-positioning technology intomobile phones and cars could open the floodgates. When it is available, simplymoving about one's neighbourhood can then be tantamount to browsing andgenerating content without doing anything, as demonstrated by a company calledSocialight. Its service lets mobile users attach notes to any location, to be readby others who come along later. Taken further, the result could end up being asort of extrasensory information awareness, annotation and analysis capabilityin the real world. "When that happens", says Mr Jones, "then the map isactually a little portal on to life itself." The only thing that can hold itback, he believes, is the rate at which society can adapt.
同时，卫星定位技术的与移动电话和车辆的组合放松了限制。一旦这成为可 能，喜欢在居家附近闲逛的人可以不做任何事就可以获得相同的感受，就如一家名叫Socialight的公司所演示的那样。其服务允许手机用户在任何位置贴 上备忘录，这些文字可以被晚些时候来到这里的其他人读到。进一步，其结果会是现实世界中的一种超感觉的信息感知、评论和分析能力。"如果真正实现了，"琼 斯先生说，"地图事实上就是生活本身的小入口。"唯一扯后腿的，他说，就是社会适应它的速度。

[ 本帖最后由 轩辕轼轲 于 2007-9-12 22:04 编辑 ]

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ditu.live.com

13 号微软的中国在线地图上线让不少人欣喜。它确实是个漂亮的服务，比如说在缩放的时候，它虽然和其他栅格地图一样，需要重新贴图，但是先一边把当前的图幅放大，一边在后面下载，试图产生一种无级缩放的错觉，很"炫" —— 当年用户也是这样形容 Google Earth 的，可惜 Google Earth 上采用的这一小伎俩没有复制到它的谷歌地图上。导致现在 ditu.google.cn —— 用小女生的话说 —— 成为有点"挫"的东西。

非要拿来和谷歌地图对比，这显然不公平，map.google.com 的 API 都不能拿来用在 ditu.google.cn 里，两者的更新也不同步¹ —— 我不知道 Google 在中国遇到了什么障碍或者失误，但这个电子地图曾经的引领者在国内几乎要被人淡忘，即便没有微软，51ditu 和 mapbar 几家本土服务也能把它完全压制 —— 它们和 ditu.live 比也毫不逊色 —— 除了可能有人觉得没那么好看，但其实可能更实用 —— 你不能苛求一个女孩上得厅堂又下得厨房，否则她早就无敌了。

比如右键定位，它让你无需从键盘输入复杂的地名就能确定起点或者终点，这个功能在 51ditu 和 citylr 上早已有之 —— 后者甚至用在了拟 3D 地图上，可惜这个精致的服务不知道从什么时候起无法使用了。

比如时间估计，它即使能在全国其他 660 个城市使用，在北京还是不如 map.sogou 买来实时路况有效，微软告诉你从五道口到天坛坐公交不需要一个小时的时间（因此比地铁优先），恐怕你得坐他们家的直升机。

诸如测距、面积和面包屑导航在 ditu.live 上都没有出现，可能前两者对用户要求太高，但后者的确实说明 ditu.live 现在还过于简单，就像它还不丰满的数据一样²。不过即使是我知道的那一点点 GIS 理论和技术现状，这些电子服务能提高的空间都相当大，个别功能远不能判别高下，应该说他们还是处在相同起点的。

之所以说到这，因为很早的时候班主任告诉我们，有个师兄³在加拿大办的公司被微软收购了，他就是陶闯博士（Dr. Vincent Tao）， GeoTango 变成了微软的 Virtual Earth，让科学家来制作在线地图，想到这，真是非常激励人。

^{1 听闻 google 的国内卫星数据更新的时候我做了实验，把 map.google 上的 API 套在 ditu.google 上，不能兼顾前者的卫星影像和后者的地图，说明他们的数据还是各自独立的。
2 恐怕不能认为同一家公司供应的 ditu.google 和 ditu.live 有多大不同，因为点位是买的，国内的几个服务显然卖出了更多的点 —— 虽然同时也有更多的广告。
3 其实远比师兄大，他从武测到约克，现在已经是武大的客座教授。}

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Your content on Google Maps

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Mapping with Google Spreadsheets

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