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The promise, as reported by the New York Times citing employees familiar with the project is a pair of Google-made glasses that will be able to stream information to the wearer’s eyeballs in real time. They are expected to go on sale by year end at about the cost of a smartphone ($250-$600).
Other details: 3g/4g, sensors, gps, navigation by head movement, built in camera, no biz plans yet - an "experiment"
Skobbler [which uses OSM] has announced its decision to withdraw from the Android Market.
Their free GPS Navigation app has been a big hit on the iOS platform with over 1.5million users worldwide. Skobbler cite the success of Google's free Navigation app on Android as one of the reasons for their decision not to pursue development on that platform.
The New Haven Register ran an article tiled "Mapmaking enthusiast celebrated by Google for contributions." It profiles Map Maker contributor and Yale University librarian, Daniel Mugaburu. Google likes his work so much it made "him an international ambassador of online cartography, flying him around the world to talk about using Google Map Maker technology." I could not read much more so I went directly to the comments where I found what I hoped I'd see:
Chris wrote on Feb 19, 2012 2:25 PM:
" It is fun to contribute to community maps. I prefer to contribute to OpenStreetMap, the Global Wiki map. The big differences from G Maps are that the underlying data is accessible and contributors own their work in OSM - you're working for the community not a closed company map. "
NESTA named OpenStreetMap as #38 of its 50 New Radicals.
In partnership with the Observer, and using an expert panel of judges, we have identified who we think are the people and organisations who are changing Britain for the better; those applying fresh approaches in practical and scalable ways, through social, technological, scientific and artistic methods.
Of course OSM is not really new, nor does it change only Britian, so maybe substituting "the world" for Britain would be more appropriate. Who is NESTA?
NESTA is the National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts - an independent body with a mission to make the UK more innovative.
Says the Guaridan on the selection:
We're going to look back and wonder why we ever had maps any other way.
- via @openstreetmap
The New Haven Register ran an article tiled "Mapmaking enthusiast celebrated by Google for contributions." It profiles Map Maker contributor and Yale University librarian, Daniel Mugaburu. Google likes his work so much it made "him an international ambassador of online cartography, flying him around the world to talk about using Google Map Maker technology." I could not read much more so I went directly to the comments where I found what I hoped I'd see:
Chris wrote on Feb 19, 2012 2:25 PM:
" It is fun to contribute to community maps. I prefer to contribute to OpenStreetMap, the Global Wiki map. The big differences from G Maps are that the underlying data is accessible and contributors own their work in OSM - you're working for the community not a closed company map. "
With the goal of encouraging innovation in a fun way, ACM SIGSPATIAL is hosting an algorithm contest with winners to be announced at the ACM SIGSPATIAL GIS conference in November 2012. Contest participants will submit original computer programs to be evaluated by the contest organizers on a common dataset. The first place team will receive US$ 500 plus one NVIDIA Quadro 6000 (or similar) graphics card. Second place will receive US$ 400 plus one NVIDIA TEGRA tablet device. Third place will receive US$ 300 and one NVIDIA TEGRA tablet.
The 2012 contest will be about map matching, which is the problem of correctly matching a sequence of location measurements to roads.
- contest page via @michael_d_gould
How about a game based learning contest? Ideas for teaching spatial literacy and/or geography would be valid!
In an effort to circulate innovative ideas about integrating electronic gaming in the classroom, the NEA Foundation, in a partnership with Microsoft U.S. Partners in Learning, is hosting a competition for the best ideas on "how interactive technology and game-based learning can improve teaching and learning," according to the Foundation's website. Game-based learning can mean anything from understanding physics through the popular Angry Birds app to delving into the structure of society in the computer game Minecraft.
The Challenge to Innovate (C2i) competition is open to educators, students, parents, or anyone who has an idea and has registered for free as a member of the U.S. Department of Education's Open Innovation Portal, which acts as a public forum for improving education. Participants post their gaming idea to the portal, and other registered members—most of whom are educators and parents—award points to the ideas they think are most innovative and helpful.
- US News
Aim: The main aim of the OneGeology Best Application competition is to demonstrate the wide range of potential applied uses and applications that the OneGeology Portal, and geological data/services that it provides, can offer for easy discoverability, access and use.
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The registration of the applications developed for this competition will be accepted until the end of May 2012.
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The winner of the competition will receive a free registration for the 34th International Geological Congress, Brisbane, Australia (August 2012) and will also have the opportunity to present the new innovative application during the Geoinformation Symposium/ OneGeology Session at the conference.
You must be under 35 to enter.
- website via @jeffharrison
Through their Google+ page, Google Maps announced the inaugural Map Your University competition for all students in the U.S. and Canada. Through the use of Google’s Map Maker, Google is asking current students to create detailed maps of their campuses that will be viewable on Google Maps and Google Earth. Winners of the competition will be award fun Google-y prizes such as Android tablets, phones, GPS devices, and more.
New York City kicked off voting today in its third annual BigApps competition, which rewards apps that use some of the city’s open data sets to build apps. But one of the most popular resources appears to be Foursquare, which is in use in more than half of the top apps in early voting.
- GigaOm
Google is guilty of abusing its dominant position with Google Maps per a court in France. It was ordered to pay €500,000 in damages and interest to the plaintiff and a €15,000 euro fine against Bottin Cartographes. The company, until it was put out of business, offered online maps.
February 1 is the cut-off for companies with onine mapping websites to have a license from the State Bureau of Surveying and Mapping. Google has applied for one, but does not yet have approval. That suggests its ok to keep running as is, but can't launch anything "new."
After Google launched its Ocean extension for Google Earth back in 2009, oddly well laid-out features on the floor of the Atlantic had been speculated by some to be evidence of the existence of Atlantis, the legendary ancient civilization said to have vanished into the sea thousands of years ago. Those theories have been sunk, though, with NOAA's sobering clarification on exactly what those features are: errors in sonar rendering caused by assembling multiple data sets together, which is exactly what Google Earth does to create a global picture of Earth's oceans. It's a fairly common problem — students at UC San Diego have spent the last three years removing those types of errors from the data by hand, and as of last week, "Atlantis" has been once again wiped off the map, so to speak.
In Korea, Google's December enhancements to Maps, including showing the insides of some 1000 stores in Seoul, has meant competitors had to scramble. They are adding more routing options, more data, easier to use icons on mobiles to try to compete.
