Network World has the story (press release) of "Eye on Earth" a site that show water quality scores of 21,000 swimming sites across Europe in five languages: Portuguese, Italian, Dutch, German and English.

Last week Microsoft announcedthat its recently acquired trueSpace 3D model creator is now free and models created with it can be uploaded as collections to Virtual Earth. What does that say about what Google, Microsoft and the geospatial community think about what tools and data are required for today's maps?


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Transit New Zealand, operator of the state highways, has two different projects going on related to its road network. The "video viewer prototype" a team effort of Transit, Microsoft and Wellington-based e-spatial runs under the Microsoft Innovation Centre and aims to correlate video views of New Zealand roads with location data. Roadrunner or Virtual Highway, as its known on the Web, is two years old and uses GIS from Argonaut and Google Earth. The former has many layers of data and latter "is designed purely to help road users familiarise themselves with the route before travelling it," says Transit spokesman Anthony Frith.

There are plans, say a source to integrate Virtual Highway into the road asset management system. I suspect we'll see more situations like this as both organizations push into public sector enterprises.

- Computerworld NZ

Update 7/29: It seems the original post, by Christ Pendleton, has been "removed" at the very least. I found another copy here. Ogle Earth speculates on a premature announcement.

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From Chris Pendleton's Blog:

No longer is Photosynth just a Live Labs research project - it no(w) has full funding and backing from the Virtual Earth team. It helps that we get all of the people that worked on it too.

Recall that Photosynth can take a pile of photos of the same location/feature, "match" them up, and display the "photos in a reconstructed three-dimensional space, showing you how each one relates to the next." The general consensus, with which I agree: its closer to being a real world product. It's a good thing Chris mentioned this; the Photosynth blog's last post was Sept of last year! I guess they've been busy with other things.

This is the next phase after Microsoft acquired Caligari (apb post) and its trueSpace 3D toolkit this past February.

Chris Pendleton at the Virtual Earth, Evangelist's blog explains and provides an answer to "how to make money with 3D."

Last week Ask.com moved off its longtime mapping platform to Microsoft's Virtual Earth. What are the practical choices these days for those who want mapping as part of their portals? Has customization and a unique look and feel been overshadowed by a few strong hosted solutions to which everyone will eventually migrate? Our editors sort out the options and trends and end up using the "c" word - commodity.

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