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Bing Maps Wows 'Em At TED2010
theodp writes "In an eye-candy filled presentation that earned him a standing-O at TED2010, Blaise Aguera y Arcas demos augmented-reality mapping technology from Microsoft. In his eight minute spiel, an extension of a shorter tech preview video, the Bing Maps architect shows how geo-tagged Flickr images can be precisely incorporated into streetside views, demonstrates indoor panoramas at Pike Place Market complete with live video overlays, and even takes the audience into space with Microsoft's Worldwide Telescope. " This is a really exciting video and worth your 8 minutes.
The movement in maps, different images and day/night time cycle with star maps when you're looking up looks great. In every aspect it seems Bing is really innovating and beating Google all the time. It's no surprise they're worried about Bing now.
sopssa, this article was submitted on Sunday February 14, @06:06AM. You posted the first reply on Sunday February 14, @06:07AM.
How did you notice the Slashdot post, watch the 8 minute video, and post a reply here to Slashdot in approximately one minute?
Will not be given to some Microsoft demo of them putting together other peoples tech and claiming it as their own.
Wasn't MS one of the first with a "google earth" like service, just lacking colors.
Awesome, innovative. Good seeing Microsoft kicking Google's ass in something by doing it right. Huzzah for competition!
I guess you really hate Google Earth in that case.
So Taco is a MS tool nowadays? This shit doesn't run on Linux.
And yet you read Slashdot, which is an amalgamation of other peoples tech and is claimed to be the work of CmdrTaco/Geeknet, Inc.
Why can't the american news world stop using the world technology for everything that isn't actual, real, new technology? Probably the most hyped and buzzed non-buzzword in the world. F*'k. Stop using it already.
Ignorance is bliss.
So is stupidity and blind devotion to an entity that wants to suck the very freedom out of soceity.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
They give credit where credit is due. So no, its not the same thing.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
No, the US federal government did that decades before Microsoft even thought of copying it.
Nice try tho.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
"3D is currently not supported for your browser. For a list of supported browsers, see Help."
Seeing help:
Supported browsers.
* Internet Explorer 6 or later
* Mozilla Firefox 3.0 or later
* Safari 3.1 or later
I'm using Firefox 3.6. But I guess it's not my browser that isn't supported. It's probably because I'm running it on Gentoo. I guess I will have to stick with Goggle Maps after all.
[sarcasm] One more point for Microsoft for web neutrality.[/sarcasm]
Or, you could have listened to the fucking speaker where he flat out SAID they demoed that in 2007.
After the revolution
Is it just me, or do you sound exactly like the various evangelists who babble about a Day of Reckoning? The difference is, your idea has had many repeated "revolutions", and has failed every time. Learn from Sisyphus - put down the rock, forget about the hill, and go get a fucking job.
From my understanding, Microsoft has actually been the first with a lot of technologies (admittedly, most of them were pretty obvious, like Mp3 Players and Tablet PCs) but they lacked the design capability to actually make anything that a consumer would want until they can copy it from someone else. Too much infighting and politics. I mean, look at the XBox. They pour untold millions into that thing, and it is, at best, on par in only the US and UK markets?
Actually, I find a lot of those numbers surprising. I know several people with Wiis and PS3s, but no one with an XBox. Well, not anyone who would admit to it, I suppose. But, it is important to interpret data honestly.
When you're afraid to download music illegally in your own home, then the terrorists have won!
They had a site full of satellite images but it wasn't really meant to be used like Google maps or MapQuest. Where as Bing maps is virtually a carbon copy of Google Maps with some new features chucked in.
When you see it, you'll sh&t bricks....
Yup.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
How long before advertisers start geo tagging pictures of them holding ads next to commonly viewed buildings and areas and putting them on flicker for bing maps to pick up?
I'm not a Microsoft hater or a Google lover, but... why is this "really exciting"?
All I saw in the video was yet another blatant attempt by Microsoft to steal users away from Google's innovative and wildly superior products. Bing maps looks like a direct cut and paste of Google Maps, except with a slightly snazzier segue animation, and an uterrly useless feature that perhaps one in ten-thousand people would actively use.
Yes, I fully admit that seeing a photo perfectly overlaid on a map is neat. However, the practical application for this is incredibly limited. I want my 8 minutes back, and I want Slashdot editors to stop approving hyperbolized story synopses that try to sell me on something.
About 2 months ago I took over a community wiki (moved it to a new domain) for a game with a traffic of thousands of users a month and several sites are linking to it now. Google and Yahoo managed to see this and list my site as second result directly below (the now defunct) original. Bing does not list the site at all!
So how about getting basic indexing right for the search engine before they come with this wizzy new feature stuff?
Not that I mind, I don't care about being indexed on Bing.
High risk behavior. Seemed to work out and impress though.
I hate being bipolar; it's awesome!
I mean, look at the XBox. They pour untold millions into that thing, and it is, at best, on par in only the US and UK markets?
Actually, I find a lot of those numbers surprising. I know several people with Wiis and PS3s, but no one with an XBox. Well, not anyone who would admit to it, I suppose. But, it is important to interpret data honestly.
Being on par (and slightly winning) is really good with consoles, especially with a console that is only on its 2nd iteration. PS1 and PS2 basically dominated the market, killed Sega off from it and made Nintendo skip a generation.
I actually own all the consoles, they're slightly better on different things. First of all, lets get the Wii out of the way since it's targeted to general people and not gamers as such (not that it's not fun for gamers too, it is). PS3 is great with its OS and store. I find it much nicer to use, especially as a media player device, than 360. However, 360's Live as a social gaming, friends and such beats PS3's system. PS3 also is technically better, but it came at really high cost at first and now they had to drop things to get PS3 Slim to lower price.
But the fact is, consoles are something only a few companies can dominate and they all do put millions into it. The current generation of consoles is actually interesting since there are no actual losers - PS3 and 360 are competing about players, are pretty much par with each other, while Wii takes players and general audience.
The next generation will be much more bloody.
So it's... Google Earth? With some extra bits bolted on?
I dunno. It's cool and all, but it was cooler when I first saw it years ago. This is neat as an evolutionary upgrade, but it's by no means anything new or revolutionary.
Don't know if it was the first, but their Terraserver (?) site was pretty interesting.
[John]
Shit better not happen!
Yes I wished there were some middle ground between blind ignorance and blind devotion.
But what has Apple to do with this?
So is stupidity and blind devotion to an entity that wants to suck the very freedom out of soceity.
Sarah Palin: You betcha!
First, my firefox 3.5.7 isn't supported for their web client 3d option. Why, is it because I am running linux? Second, the "updated" maps or that worldwide telescope both need some ms proprietary crap called firelight. Sorry, but I won't install mono or moonlight or whatever is called the Icaza clone of ms tech just to find if it does fail to support some non-documented or too recent api needed for this ms site. Third, I set the language to English in the preferences. But since the idiotic bing maps site sees I am connecting from Italy, I get everything in Italian.Thanks, but no thanks. If I wanted to get the site in Italian, I'd have selected it. Ok, after some time I noticed there is a link at the bottom right that lets me see the maps in English, but that is it. Any language choice I make in the options is ignored. So, triple fail - most of the content is tied to windows, and what I get is not what I asked for, but what some programmer decided is best for me. In what is this exciting, or even new for microsoft?
You're talking about the 360 right? Are you saying you don't know anyone that would admit to owning a 360? And you're in the US?
That's ass backwards. The PS3 is the embarrassing little box that comes with the owner disclaimer of "Oh, well I bought it for a blu-ray player".
Worldwide Xbox 360 sales are just ahead of the PS3. In the US it more then doubles them, and is the defacto gaming console of the gamer type (note console, computers let out of this comparison). Your own link showed that, not sure how/why you ended up writing what you did when your own evidence clearly contradicts your statement.
Furthermore, for video game sales the 360 the biggest sellers of all the consoles (meaning a lot of people that own Wii's don't really buy games for it, and there are few blockbusters for the Wii, but in its defense when a blockbuster comes along it sells very very well).
Well, the XBox is still basically a money pit for Microsoft, and the PS3 is extremely profitable for Sony, so I'd say that the sales of PS3 are, in general, better than those the XBox, if not numerically larger.
Additionally, this is hardly relevant to anything I was actually talking about.
When you're afraid to download music illegally in your own home, then the terrorists have won!
The Mapper at Acme.com was one of the earliest *useful* mapping services on the net/web that I am aware of. It is far different now than it was long ago, however.
"...there are some things that can beat smartness and foresight. Awkwardness and stupidity can." ~ Mark Twain
You could switch zoom levels and go from mapping to aerial to both, and back, at the flick of a mouse, on your USGS products? Terraserver was an amazing beast for the time.
TED's subtitle is 'Ideas Worth Spreading'. Al Gore's ideas, Jane Goodall's ideas, yes. But Microsoft's ideas?
I'm sure Microsoft get 'worth' by spreading them at a prestigious conference like TED. Masses and masses of 'worth'.
Is TED just a big marketing opportunity now?
google street view has been up and running for years now. it doesn't require some crappy plugin either.
How does one contrast the 'mining' of Flickr or Picassa photos to the sampling or music or plagiarism from books.
If you had told me a year ago I would say that I would not have believed you.
We are looking for a new house. I have found that Bing is much more accurate that Google. This is especially true for new developments. The easy explanation for this is that Bing is using more up to date data. However, there have been times where google is off by 2-3 houses and Bing is right on the money.
I have also found that Bing's Bird Eye View is superior in my needs than street view is when trying to examine neighborhoods.
On the other hand, I have disabled the silverlight view of Bing maps and gone back to the old view because of speed.
How long before someone manages to mashup a mapping site that pulls the content from bing maps and google maps/earth?
Really, will critics of MS ever recognize anything good that comes out of that company?
We'll get back to you when they release something good.
If you can read this, it means that I bothered to log in.
A perfect example of someone who hates Microsoft, just to hate Microsoft.
on Voyager.
Seriously, it's this kind of work that proivdes the foundation for Stelar/Astro Cartography maps that we'll need if we're ever going to start expanding out of the Sol System.
Mod me up/Mod me down: I wont frown as I've no crown
I for one will...
I was really impressed, especially with the video embedding...that was incredible. I also liked that they blurred out faces in their images, but the didn't (couldn't?) in the video. I'm guessing that could be a privacy concern looming...
An important change for education.
For some reason... "Sarah Palin" and "suck" in the same sentence doesn't trigger a negative reaction. Mmmmm...
Its frm M$, so not even worth the time it takes to type this!
So I follow the link to Bing world-wide telescope.
This page requires Silverlight 3.
No thanks.
1. I have enough trouble with two CPU-intensive web plugin environments.
2. If I wanted to take on the risk of Microsoft's security models, I'd be running Windows.
Take 'em straight to TED.
Here's the URL for the video on the TED site, in a larger format, and without "techflash" anywhere nearby:
http://www.ted.com/talks/blaise_aguera.html
When I was a kid, we only had one Darth.
It IS an innovation over Google Earth, not so much at the mapping side, but in image consolidation. Instead of putting a googlevan capturing images of all streets, they take pictures taken from anyone into popular social services and integrate them giving an unified view. They even can't be sued for that as Google is, because those images/videos were taken by normal people.
But if you want to complain about Microsoft for something, start for the requirements to see that. Silverlight (and probably even IE running over real latest version of Windows, if they can push it) will be a minimum for that "full" experience. Oh, and the patents they could had put to any form of image consolidation like that.
Have you actually used this new technology? Or are you just talking about the demo video?
I ask because it's not real, and it doesn't really work, until I'm able to do it reasonably well on my own PC. Think about it, wasn't there a demo video for Duke Nukem Forever? And what happened to that?
I'm not saying that what Microsoft is showing isn't cool; what I am saying is that they have a history of over-promising and under-delivering...and sometimes putting out buggy products.
Reposting logged in:
To people interested in image based rendering, something like the system presented by Microsoft is inevitable, yet still impressive when actually implemented. Look at the transitions in Google Streetview, for example: You have to pay close attention because it happens really fast, but you can see that Google also has a 3D proxy underneath the images. The transition is not between different projections of flat images but between rough approximations of the actual geometry, textured with the image data. That is what makes Microsoft's system so seamless as well. The existence of an underlying geometric understanding of the scene is also obvious when you move the cursor over a Streetview image or look at the cursor in the TED demo: It changes perspective depending on the geometry.
The critical algorithm at the core of it all is called "SIFT" (Scale Invariant Feature Transform). That's what enables the computer to identify matching features in different pictures, as long as they're taken from similar positions. (This is done after prefiltering the images according to geo-tagging information to reduce the search space.) Then you have sets of 2D coordinates of 3D points under several projections (images). This data defines a set of equations which you can solve to get the relative camera positions and 3D coordinates of the feature points. If you've followed the news on PhotoSynth, you might remember pictures of 3D point clouds: Those were the calculated 3D positions of feature points in the source images. From these point clouds, you can create an approximate representation of the geometry of the scene. If you then use the picture taken from a position closest to your current viewpoint to texture that geometric proxy, you get what Microsoft presented at TED. It really isn't all that complicated.
Inevitable, therefore not really surprising, but still mighty cool.
I call (minor) shenanigans on the live video overlay. Despite the twists and turns indicating a hand-held camera, there was absolutely no parallax in evidence, indicating either a mounted camera precisely set to rotate around its entrance pupil, or a static panoramic camera having its image cropped.
They even can't be sued for that as Google is, because those images/videos were taken by normal people.
Are you implying non-coporations can't sue?
Or did you mean that because these people gave all their photo rights to flickr they cannot sue?
Get over it Microsoft!
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
"Ideas worth spreading"... but not spreading very far... since they choose to use Silverlight. WTF?
I only have Silverlight installed on one of my 10 machines. And I honestly can't remember which one it is on. Can't say that I found any issues with it, but my interest in keeping my installed software stack low means I will keep it off most machines. It is rare to encounter a site that needs it, so it stays off.
So we have another possibly good idea from Microsoft technical that gets screwed by their marketing and management. Microsoft has become the new Xerox. See the history of Xerox PARC if you don't understand that comment.
Place nail here >+
Only kids who don't know any better buy an xbox ;)
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
I would give it 3 stars out of 5.
Not really as much of a "jump" as google streetview was at first look.
The federal government had an online aerial image database back in the 1970s?
Someone should have told me. All that time wasted in the map library as a geography student!
It was pretty cool.
I am very small, utmostly microscopic.
Nice to see the implementation of linking live video into virtual indoor maps. I remember seeing this done in Sci-Fi in the 1985 Max Headroom movie and thinking how cool it was.
"I bless every day that I continue to live, for every day is pure profit."
Before Google Maps I remember there was Keyhole which was geared toward real estate and surveyors but also had a simple version for hobbyists. You had to pay a monthly subscription for the service to work but there was a basic trial version that worked for a week or so. Shortly after Google Earth came out and was free so I nearly forgot about Keyhole.
Its funny, I just looked up keyhole to check some facts and lo and behold Google bought them out and turned it into Google Earth. So it looks like Keyhole/Google Earth has been around since 2001.
in google you can use -inurl:somedomain.com
of course you'd need your own proxy to google to make this permanent; that is the approach used by www.givemebackmygoogle.com
This is maps + Photosynth. If you aren't familiar with Photosynth, go watch it. THey took a bunch of random pictures from Flickr and built a 3D virtual tour of various famous monuments. Now they are taking intentional pictures and combining them. I predict that this is just the tip of a lot of really wowie things that will appear within the next decade. This + augmented realities can do a lot.
According to your links, the division the 360 operates in made money, and Microsoft made way more money across all divisions for the quarter. I'm not sure how to interpret that as "Sony is winning," nor am I sure what the point of trying to would be.
Yes the video is really cool. Neat technology and all that.
But what about all the people in the photographs that are used to build these maps? There's an indelible record of where these people were and (roughly) what they were doing at a particular point in time. Is there value in this? Had any of those people "called in sick" and should be at work? Cheating on their spouses? Buying some fattening foods that aren't on their diets?
You can invent your own questions about these people, but I'm far more interested in them than those man-made structures this video is so enamored with.
This exact idea was first mentioned by me, circa 2007 right here on Slashdot in 2007.
Slashdot's first reaction to VMware
Whoa, I got a little carried away with the "2007"s there. :^)
Slashdot's first reaction to VMware
LOLWUT?
This ain't gonna help Bing maps, for one simple reason. Google has THEIR OWN full map of the US. I don't know if you've noticed, but since a few months ago, the copyright on the maps says (c) Google. They've actually invested a shitload of money and mapped everything (or close to everything) out.
This means they can actually _update_ the map, add and remove POIs, provide turn-by-turn directions (and compute them more effectively), and do all the other nice things that anal retentive contracts with map data providers did not let them do previously.
Guess what, Microsoft doesn't have that data, and as far as I'm aware, there's no effort underway to collect it. This is epic fail which no amount of Silverlight eye candy will be able to fix.
It was much easier to come here and actually discover something before bloggers came along.
As already pointed out, microsoft stuff tends to be very cool and "innovative" when demoed, but usually fails to deliver at later date (witch is almost always far later, than initially announced)
The proceedings usually go like - when demoed, LOOK HERE IS SOMETHING REALLY COOL AND SAFE AND STABLE with all the excellent features that we PLAN to implement.
But somewhere down the process the "cool" stuff will usually be stripped out and the rest is either implemented poorly or disastrously.
I don believe this before it's happened. then im willing to discuss the serious aspects of this. Before that, this is just a cool demo, destined for another MS treatment at later date.
Or do you need to lug around a supercomputer in a rucksack?
Deleted
The impressing part is where SIFT is utilized in realtime for each videoframe. This means 25 times per second, within a few frames lag the 2D image is superpositioned over the 3D representation. I wonder if they direct the SIFT calculation to a server doing all the math, or the Silverlight client manages to do this itself. I'd put my money on the first, with the client consuming a videofeed relayed from a server along with calculated 3D spatial information.
You don't understand the legal definition of a Covenant
It's weird. When I've tried Bing for regular search, its been better than Google. Mainly, I think that is because people selling things have really honed in on optimizing their sites for Google, so when I search for some technical information, half the results are useless companies trying to sell me something slightly related. They haven't concentrated on doing that to Bing yet, so right now its more useful.
Bing maps has a much nicer interface than Google. Same for their video search.
Yet most of my searching remains with Google. As near as I can tell, I'm simply too lazy to change. Google has become such a habit it doesn't matter that Bing might actually be better.
"My name is Jon Abbott, and Bing maps was my idea"?
I just saw a video on Channel 9 showing that the Hard Rock Cafe is using Microsoft Surface and other touchscreen devices in a few of their restaurants. Considering the device was only release about 2 years ago and has such a large price tag I am still impressed with what they have done. Check it out:
http://channel9.msdn.com/posts/LarryLarsen/The-Tech-Behind-The-Hard-Rock-Cafe/Default.aspx
Wikipedia mentions AT&T, Harrah’s, Disneyland, Sheraton Hotels and MSNBC as users of the Microsoft Surface too. I have yet to see one, but it still is making it's way into the market.
MS was the first with 'mp3 players'??? In what parallel universe was that?
Even a "tablet pc" is just microsoft's name for 'pen computing'. Look it up on wikipedia and you'll learn that microsoft wasn't the first, at all... not even close.
I trust MS is using Flickr photos strictly according to their licensing settings and not just wholesale pillaging other people's copyright for their own commercial gain...
Read Pynchon.
I just saw a video on Channel 9 showing that the Hard Rock Cafe is using Microsoft Surface and other touchscreen devices in a few of their restaurants.
Oh, I'm well aware that they exist, but they are still little more than novelties, which is exactly the point I'm getting at.
While MS is announcing products that aren't ready, in controlled demos that are very impressive, Apple and Google ship actual products that people actually use.
Considering the device was only release about 2 years ago and has such a large price tag I am still impressed with what they have done.
It's hardly impressive that there are a handful of places using Surface. Even if Surface totally sucked (which it doesn't, it only half-sucks. It's a cool technology, but with extremely limited practical use), MS would be able to get a few high profile installations.
But more specifically to my point, Surface was announced to counter the iPhone. It was a controlled tech demo, which was really impressive, but years later we just have a few novelty installations.
Now, look at the Bing Maps demo. While some of the features are a bit better than Google Maps, it's the camera overlay that is the headliner here, and it looks like it'll be just like Surface. There will probably be a few cameras here and there, so while very cool, it won't be very useful.
Think about what it would take to make this more universal (like street view). MS would have to get cameras placed all over. Even just limiting it to a few cities (Seattle, NY, SF), for example, would be an enormous undertaking to provide any sort of coverage beyond a half-dozen or so landmarks. Look, it's the Pike Place Market, and now, it's Times Square. Cool on its own, but ultimately little more than a gimmick, a tech demo.
Check it out:
I'd love to. Surface seems like it would be pretty cool to play with for about 10 minutes. Call me when I can encounter one in my day-to-day life and not have to watch an MS video or take a vacation to see one. Until then, it's just a gimmick, no matter how amazingly cool it is to operate.
If I had a 360 and needed it serviced more than once and it's exhibiting the RROD, I'd be embarrassed about that.
Where In The World Is Ned Ryerson?
BING!
So? All Microsoft has to do is to take out its checkbook and create a partnership with a company like Teleatlas.
What would be really tough is getting the degree of street view coverage Google has.
On top of that, there is scaling this kind of technology so that it works with the volume of data and users that Google has. In many ways, Google is a data storage and distribution company. They've got something like synergy, only it's much more concrete: an infrastructure that is useful for a wide variety of applications serving data to lots and lots of people. It will be interesting to see if Microsoft can grow their apps to the scale of use Google has, and whether they can do it on the software they sell to others.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Time to hop on a different bandwagon bro, the PS3 grew much faster than the 360 last year, and is expected to continue to grow faster in '10 and will likely surpass the 360, and continue to leave it in its dust.
Sure dolts like you managed to slow down the PS3 with the 'fanboyism' worthy of MAC people, but people are finally noticing wow this PS3 doesn't explode in 2 years AND it looks a lot nicer on this new TV...
Yeah, remember when those two great Xbox 360 games, Uncharted 2 and Demon's Souls won a majority of GOTY awards on the internet for 2009? The PS3 is obviously inferior.
Oh noes. I can apply your "logic" too. I stay in a 3rd world country. No surfaces or even iphones here. Ergo, they are gimmicks and useless. I don't want to see a video or take a vacation to see one. Waaaaaah Waaaaah.
Its amazing how anti-ms trolls think. Though, not surprising considering Slashdot is the meeting point for ms haters around the world.
Strange, because I know a several people with Wiis and 360s but no one with a PS3. Well, not anyone who would admit to it, I suppose.
Wank wank wank
I am stuck with my G4 Powerbook 15" which I bought new in 2003. It's got a 1.4gz processor and a gig of ram. Runs Leopard and performance-wise is just as powerful as any netbook out there. I still see a bunch of these laptops being used around town.
Says it's not supported in my browser. Figures.
Teleatlas is owned by TomTom. TomTom won't allow turn-by-turn navigation with its maps, since it makes their core business redundant. I guess MSFT could just buy both, but that's unlikely to happen.