Tuesday, September 12. 2006

Time Tracking Moves from GE Pro to GE Free

[Update] Stefan at Ogle Earth found more factual errors in the article.

Per ZDnet, Michael Jones announced at AGI in London the company has moved a feature previously only avaiable in GE Pro (which costs money) to GE (free). The feature provides a slider so that users can see data (think of a car in motion) as it moves through time.

The feature is all about context and Jones had to speak to Google not up-to-date imagery:

Google Earth's tendency to use photographs that are often out of date would not diminish the usefulness of the time-tracking functionality, as the basic application was primarily a tool to provide context, Jones explained.

One oops from the article made me laugh since geostionary satellites stay in the same place over the earth:

Jones also described how the new version would enable users to track all of the geostationary satellites orbiting the earth.

There is new data in GE, too, including "15cm resolution for the first time to areas such as the Netherlands and Japan."

Microsoft was also at AGI and Vincet Tao showed off Bird's Eye View (Pictometry data) and StreetSide, which have been around for a while. The new news from Microsoft:

MSN Virtual Earth was also being integrated into Outlook and Windows Live Messenger, said Tao, and users would soon be able to overlay floorplans into the application.