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Google Keyhole, Google Scholar

Posted by michael on from the google-google?-google! dept.

baegucb_18706 writes "The front page of Google has a link to Keyhole where you can download a free trial of satellite imagery. Is it worth the cost for a subscription, and is it the start of the real commercialism for Google? And a challenge to MS's imagery?" D H NG writes "According to CNET, Google introduced a new service for academics called Google Scholar on Wednesday. This service searches scholarly literature such as technical reports, theses and abstracts. This service will not carry ads." And finally, reader ian@FalsePositives.com links to some speculation about how a sufficiently competent search engine could write the news itself.

14 of 270 comments (clear)

  1. Satelite imagery by suso · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Sure its nice, and fun to browse, but I don't see a real good consistent profit motive for providing satelite imagery. Who needs it that can't get it already at a local courthouse, etc.

    Unless someone can show me otherwise.

    1. Re:Satelite imagery by LiquidCoooled · · Score: 5, Interesting

      I think people want it right there, right then. I believe most people will get what they need from the 7 day trial.

      It will be an amazing asset for schools and colleges etc. The 3d exploration module looks really good, and combined with being able to switch to a martian map, it increases it uses further.

      I see some of the imagary is scanned at a 3inch resolution (Las vegas for example), but the majority of the planet is at the lesser 70cm-1m range.
      3 inches! Just think about how detailed that is, they can see your Tin Foil Beany. They KNOW your wearing it.

      I live in England and would love this software, but they don't seem to have the resolution here yet (London is down as a 70cm map, I'm nowhere near there so its useless...

      --
      liqbase :: faster than paper
    2. Re:Satelite imagery by CreatureComfort · · Score: 3, Interesting


      I think the more relevant question is, will the average Joe Blow pay a monthly subscription for this just to occasionally play. I bet, and Google is betting, that the answer to that is yes. Look at all the other garbage people spend money on for play.

      Also, why is using this "for play" not a valid reason for it to be offered?

      --
      "Unheard of means only it's undreamed of yet,
      Impossible means not yet done." ~~ Julia Ecklar
    3. Re:Satelite imagery by keefebert · · Score: 4, Interesting

      I stumbled upon this a few weeks ago when Google first bought keyhole. I showed it to my boss at work, and 5 minutes later we are iamging properties we manage and looking at potential new customers. Yeah, for Joe Blow it is useless, but for us it will become another key componant to generating business. It fits in perfectly for what we do, and only cost us $30. We'll use it constantly, and I wouldn't have known about it if it weren't posted on the front page.

  2. lexis-nexis replacement by mmkkbb · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Is that what Google scholar is going for? I guess it would end up as a pay service before long.

    --
    -mkb
    1. Re:lexis-nexis replacement by calibanDNS · · Score: 4, Interesting

      My first thought when I read this was that Google could easily challenge Lexis-Nexis and Westlaw for their hold on the law school community in the US. While my wife was in law school I routinely helped her research cases using both of these services, and quite frankly their interface sucks. It took forever to find just about anything, and they had to continually pelt the students with free gifts just to keep them coming back. Google could potentially do very well in this area and I think there is certainly room for another competitor; especially one with Google's name recognition.

  3. NASA? by Clemensa · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Is this not very similar to what NASA are doing? NASA's is free, but I think Google's has a much better resolution and can zoom in more detail. However, I remember a while back NASA saying they would probably support Open Source in the near future with their project?

  4. Authors by endlessoul · · Score: 5, Interesting

    From the website:
    I'm an author. Why would I want my articles in Google Scholar?

    Your work likely has great value to a number of people who may not know it exists. By including your articles in Google Scholar, others will be more likely to find them, learn from them, cite them and build on the foundation you have laid.

    Sounds like a good way to make yourself known in the writing world. For now, it sounds like a kickass idea. Go Google.

  5. Scholar search! by Xpilot · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Excellent! As a postgrad CS student, I've been more or less relying on Citeseer and Google to search for literature online. Citeseer is really useful, but I find its search rather cumbersome. If Google can create a specialty search for academic papers...I'm more than thrilled! Go Google!

    --
    "Backups are for wimps. Real men upload their data to an FTP site and have everyone else mirror it." -- Linus Torvalds
  6. Keyholes Maps by IndigoZenith · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I think keyhole has more Sat. Imagery of Iraq and Afghanistan, than all of the U.S. put together. This is pretty much a good way to tell if you are on the US hit list, when more and more Imagery is available for your Counrty (At least in the Middle East, otherwise Italy and Greece need to watch their asses). Otherwise, I think this is a great step for Google to take if they are developing their own in-house MapQuest. Plus it is too much fun spinning the planet in circles.

    --
    "If at first you don't succeed, destroy all evidence that you tried"
  7. Worries about Scholar by 3rd_Floo · · Score: 5, Interesting

    The only thing I worry about with scholar, after giving it a whirl, is that some newer papers that have recently been published dont appear, since it seems it builds its index off of citations first. I worry that if Scholar does take hold, newer more obscure papers that may not get the publicity of more mainstream journals and venues of publication will never be seen again (This is all reliant on their indexing model not getting better). Perhaps i'll have to start submiting abstracts of my work to Google as well now...

  8. So it's basically CiteSeer? by mcc · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Google Scholar basically seems to be an attempt to replace CiteSeer. It doesn't seem to have quite as many features in terms of displaying information as CiteSeer does, but it does have the important features, and it does lack a couple of the longstanding problems with CiteSeer (for example, that CiteSeer is absurdly slow)...

    I am curious which produces better search results. Google seems to produce its results mainly from a handful of sources, but a couple of tests showed it giving more relevant results than CiteSeer, and Google Scholar also immediately returned a copy of this one specific article I was trying to find awhile back that I knew to exist but couldn't find either on CiteSeer or Google normal search... Hmm.

    At any rate CiteSeer indexes 716797 articles and Google Scholar... interestingly, doesn't provide an index size number at all.

    --
    Irritable, left-wing and possibly humorous bumper stickers and t-shirts
  9. Google is thinking outside the box... by mogrify · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Google is clearly making an effort to consider ALL the different kinds of information available on the web. They've grown the idea of a search engine from simply something that indexes HTML pages to include PDFs, Office documents, images, news, products, etc...
    This shows some initiative and creativity in trying to develop new ways for people to find all kinds of information, both on your desktop and on the Internet... just imagine when they get all this stuff integrated... you could search for a friend's address, and not only get a map of their house, but a satellite-guided view of the trip, as well as links to their website, public photo collection, slashdot and blog posts, e-mails you've written them, and scholarly articles they've written. Google wants to be a total information provider, and they're the only ones truly pulling all of this stuff together.

    --
    perl -e 'foreach(values %SIG){$_="IGNORE";}while(){}'
    1. Re:Google is thinking outside the box... by geg81 · · Score: 3, Interesting

      This shows some initiative and creativity in trying to develop new ways for people to find all kinds of information,

      Well, in the case of Google Scholar, it's a late entry into the market. It also threatens to derail some significant public and free efforts at making scholarly information available on the web. Altogether, I'm not convinced that Google Scholar is something to be welcomed.