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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.
And yet Google is still better for, well... you know, searching for things. For some reason, I think that might be better than lots of fancy R&D projects. Maybe it's because they're both... "search engines".
Pot, kettle, black ;).
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.
Actually I've found Bing to be quite good on the searching aspect. Live/MSN search was crap, but Bing actually returns good results (better than Google sometimes too). Integrating Wolfram Alpha and other data sources to results works quite good too, especially if you're constantly doing such searches (calculations, conversion of units, food nutrition info, traveling). Google has such things like calculator on it too, but it's not as much comprehensive. On Bing it usually saves you from looking what site might be good and the first click and typing the info again.
Awesome, innovative. Good seeing Microsoft kicking Google's ass in something by doing it right. Huzzah for competition!
At first glance before watching the video, my first thought is Microsoft breaking into a competition with Google over Google StreetView and that it might be up to a par level against it. I'm actually pretty impressed as well. Bing Maps looks like it deploys pretty similiar feature sets, but they've taken them slightly to the next level and put their own spin on things, but that isn't going to keep them on the wow factor list any longer than it takes to Google to deploy similar functionality, but better.
IMHO, for Bing Maps to stay in the lime-light and not get overrun by Google, they best get on doing the entire lower 48 states, so I can street view more than just Las Vegas or Los Angeles and troll through the streets and sights of some place like Guernsey, Wyoming.
I know, right? I see this "Anonymous Coward" guy everywhere. I don't know how he has so much time to post!
When you're afraid to download music illegally in your own home, then the terrorists have won!
I guess you really hate Google Earth in that case.
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.
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 ----
I dunno, this place seems like a pretty big city from their main street. I think Worley, ID, is a better candidate. But if they managed to get Washington's own city of George, they'd actually be ahead of Google's streetview!
When you're afraid to download music illegally in your own home, then the terrorists have won!
No, the US federal government did that decades before Microsoft even thought of copying it.
Nice try tho.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
While we're on the topic of rude things I must ask: Do Americans give standing ovations to particularity loud or interesting farts or is there some minimum standard of quality I can't ascertain?
I base this question on at least two reports of ovations at this weeks TED for mildly insightful talks and seeing ovations in almost every musical ever produced and moved to DVD for the rest of the world to see.
Yes, this is a serious question.
I ate your fish.
"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]
Maybe I'm going to the wrong Google, but for the past few months, the things I've been looking for have been on the second or third page, if they're present at all. Clusty is better at prioritising the results, but their database is so small that there's a bigger chance that the one you want won't be there at all. The biggest problem with Google at the moment is that it will return a hundred copies of the same mailing list post in different list archiving site, and hide the result that's actually useful somewhere in the middle of them. Not sure if Bing is any better, but there's definitely some significant room for improvement in the search engine space.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
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.
It's a lot like tipping. At some point, standing ovations almost become customary. I've been to several mediocre plays and musicals that all received standing ovations. We're just very complimentary people.
When you're afraid to download music illegally in your own home, then the terrorists have won!
Noticed the same - but, check the video. Standing ovation = clap. Looks a lot like those old Australian Countdown Pop music shows where the sign above the stage tells the audience what to do. Watch the audience in some of them - tipping point in action :-)
Yup.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Plus you have the crowd effect. I've been to plays and concerts where I didn't think it deserved a standing ovation and based on other folks sitting, they didn't either. But a bunch of people stand, then the folks around them stand, and it continues until everyone is on their feet. But it doesn't cost me 20% of the ticket price and it's a good chance to start out for the car :)
[John]
Shit better not happen!
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.
This is definitely cool stuff. However, in reality, I think it's rather useless. The better use IMHO would be if/when it comes to mobile phones. I like Google maps/street view because I can pull it up from my phone, and get a look at what's in front of me... Same thing for the Augmented reality. Even cooler, would be enabling any mobile device to capture video from their cell phone.
I'm not knocking the technical achievement, what they did is definitely cool stuff. I just don't think it's game changing YET. Plus, they showed one city (where MS has its home base). What kind of time scale are we talking about for mapping the rest of the major US cities (yet alone the smaller ones). (Assuming they don't have it done already), they have a lot of catch up to do before it's as useful as Google Maps. But, looking at the functional base, if they address these few issues, they may have a game changer here...
I am usually suspect when they say "it's worth your time to watch this video", but in this case, just watch it...
If a man isn't willing to take some risk for his opinions, either his opinions are no good or he's no good
Agree. And generally they're all the same question with no answer. The other problem are the mistyped domain folks and search engine scammers. You can tell since your search term is part of a long string of alphabetized search terms.
Bing just doesn't have the scumbags infesting the database yet.
[John]
Shit better not happen!
I'll shandt bricks?
When you're afraid to download music illegally in your own home, then the terrorists have won!
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!
So is stupidity and blind devotion to an entity that wants to suck the very freedom out of soceity.
Sarah Palin: You betcha!
Pft. Call me low-tech but I don't need no stinkin' phone to look at what's in front of me.
Visit http://ringbreak.dnd.utwente.nl/~mrjb/growingbettersoftware to download your free copy of the book
I like Linux and all (especially as a server OS), but the fact that this will not run on Linux is a failing of Linux as a desktop OS. It's simply not a very good desktop OS and is not capable of running the latest and greatest in desktop OS software, games, web plugins, etc. Deal with it.
So, MS is up to its usual crap of making sure nothing they create will run on anything other than Windows and this is a failure by their competitors? What complete and utter horseshit.
According to your logic because the computer chip in a GM car doesn't run the software Ford uses in their cars/chips it's a failure on GM's part.
Are you really that stupid?
So I go to look at this impressive new technology. Guess what?
It's MS Silverlight only/required.
And *that* makes it singularly unimpressive, to me. Sure, there is some kind of support for Silverlight on Linux. But I have enough experience of the company and their practices that I don't want to use their proprietary software on my system. So:
Fail.
Bring it to everyone, without the requirements to become a MicroSerf of some sort, and then I'll be impressed right up there along with the shills and astroturfers.
"...there are some things that can beat smartness and foresight. Awkwardness and stupidity can." ~ Mark Twain
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).
I believe that it is the French who enthusiastically applaud interesting farts.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Le_P%C3%A9tomane
Huh? Did you watch the whole presentation? The flickr images displayed in 3-D in-place in the street view? The LIVE video being overlayed in-place in the street view, following the camera pan in real-time? For that matter what about the smooth zooming in/out of the map itself vs Google Map's stop-and redraw at next level.
Bitch all you want about Microsoft, but it was a very impressive demo. Kudos to the software guys who developed this stuff.
As someone who's being developing software professionally for 30 years I tend to by cynical and blase, but stuff like this really is impressive and makes you stop and say "Wow!".
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
I blame the worthless copy blogs that google tends to favor so heavily. It was worth something when it wasn't a mess of complete garbage.
Usually it means I just have to work a bit harder at refining my results.
Maybe we have become spoiled as an internet culture. I remember digging through pages and pages to find something truly relevant.
"You should always go to other people's funerals; otherwise, they won't come to yours." -- Yogi Berra
Street View debuted with part of SF and Silicon Valley. Google's had a long, long time to get those images - Bing still has to build its fleet of camera cars (and hopefully they'll be higher-resolution than the ones Google sent out). I have noticed that Bing tends to have somewhat newer aerial imagery, and Bird's Eye is fantastic for getting an idea of what a place actually looks like - I've used that since the Live days.
It could certainly open a whole new advertising avenue channel.
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.
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?
I remember digging through pages and pages to find something truly relevant
So do I. Not having to do that was one of the reasons I started using Google (the other was the modem-friendly front page, which is less important now that there are browser search bars and I don't use a modem). There's not so much of a reason to stay with Google when it doesn't do a better job than its competitors.
Back on topic, I wish OpenStreetMap would get more attention. It doesn't have the nice satellite images (it would be nice if a government would donate some satellite time to the project), but it does have a lot more information on the maps than most of the commercial equivalents. Google Maps, for example, doesn't tell me where all of the pubs in my area are. The database is open, so it would be quite easy to add things like geotagged images. The information on Flickr seems to be easily available, so you could just have a bot crawl the site and add the URLs of every tagged image at the correct coordinates in the OSM database.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
I normally don't post "mod parent up" posts, but that was f&ckin funny. :)
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.
Surely silverlight support on Linux isn't from Microsoft, nor proprietary either. It's GNU moonlight/mono - developed per Microsoft's public specifications.
Here's my million dollar idea. Why can't I have a search engine where I can click on a search result 'never show results from this domain again'. It might take awhile but you could build up nice filtered list after awhile. Hell, even being able to share your list with people and the community builds a good filtered list to get rid of the crap.
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.
Yes, I did.
...
You mean like this?
Then no, you didn't. You said you did, but obviously you didn't. The only slightly similar thing is that in google earth when a user clicks on a link, it will zoom into a position where the image perfectly aligns (if the person who authored the link successfully made it align.) Thats in contrast to what Microsoft is doing where no matter what orientation the user has put himself, the image will be morphed to align, and that no link authoring is necessary at all (nor any tedious positioning, by definition)
You mean that irrelevant eye candy effect that google earth had since it was first released?
Google Earth does not do this with the overlayed images. To get the overlayed images, you must click on a link to them and then the camera is moved to a specific position for viewing. Essentially, this google earth feature is stupidly not useful at all and has simply been hacked into their earth client with the absolute bare minimum of effort.
It makes me wonder if you are aware of the tools which have been available for, say, the past 5 years.
I do not wonder weather or not you viewed the demonstration video. I know you didn't. You couldn't have without being so retarded about whats in it.
"His name was James Damore."
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.
100% agree.
One of the things that both of these search engines do is group some similar results into a category, but they arent using any automation to dynamically create categories. For example, both will group some videos together, and some images together:
Moon Landing
Moon Landing
But they arent grouping forums together, published paper archives together, patent archives together, or any of the other classes of sites where you will get dozens of hits all with the exact same or very highly similar (copied) content.
Now, they could manually start grouping these things up, but that isnt the real solution. The solution is to recognize highly correlated sites and group them.
"His name was James Damore."
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.
Uh, what?
1) MS has released Silverlight specs to open source community to develop. This is what Moonlight project is about. If the project doesn't have enough interest in developers, it is not MS's fault.
2) FOSS and Open Standards doesn't mean the original developers would be required to develop their software for all platforms and OS. It's about the standards and specs being out openly there, so others can develop them, and currently they are.
3) Silverlight with its open specs is actually even more open than Flash. Adobe refuses to release specs for Flash and all implementations of it are propriety and closed, and reverse engineered alternatives will probably be hit with a lawsuit.
Please learn what the actual FOSS and free software is really about, since you're coming out as the worst type of zealot. For starters, it's not about forcing anyone to do the software for you, but having the possibility to implement it if you want to.
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 tried signing in to Google? It has Promote and Remove buttons for each search result, if you're logged in.
"million dollar ideas -site:slashdot.org"
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.
You've been able to do that with Google since Nov. 20th 2008. http://www.google.com/support/websearch/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=115764
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.
Kill yourself.
This is one problem I have no issue with. I pine for the days that the Internet had a high signal to noise ratio, but a small footprint of knowledge. Back then, you still had to actually research your desired search term and read up more than just the first 2 results on Google.
Since we are now stuck in an Internet of Facebook tards and contentless blogs, a profusion of junk, in a way, destroys the ability of the average person to read a couple of search results and consider themselves an expert.
Huge amounts of inaccurate information will re-teach us what Google made us lazy enough to forget: Learning requires effort.
I hate printers.
I think when people talk of a technology being impressive, they are talking about, well, technology.
The fact that you don't want to use Silverlight or can't run it on Linux has nothing to do with how impressive the technology is.
Get over it Microsoft!
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
Am I supposed to positively associate the casual reference to shills and astroturfers on /. with free thought? Because right now, considering the number of people who claim their existence without a shred of evidence, it's having the opposite effect.
You know, there is a difference between trolling and pointing out the flaws in your reasoning. Just saying.
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.
after reading you post I searched for my own site on Bing, a map of my not so famous city. It is returned first in the results and it has the new title and description that I've put a few days ago. Sweet!
On Google it's not the first result (still ok for me) but is has the old title and the old description. And, what really pisses me off is that on top of the results they put their own map, which for my city, it's worse then mine. Now I would like to compete with their map for the 1'st place, the problem is that they reserved that place for their own product and you can not compete for it.
Bing should really not load that picture on the background, or they should load it after the rest of the page (the search box = what I really want) is loaded.
The presentation is really impressive, they use our universe (really!) as a canvas in which they stitch user photos, video, POIs etc. They have a unified product as opposed to Google.
Good to see some real competition for a company so big as Google. It will be better for... well, for me!
This has been done several times before, but the problem is that people register accounts just to spam the results.
You mean like Google's Experimental Search ?
"Don't like it? This button (fig. 1b) will remove the result, and it will remain hidden when you search for the same keyword(s) in the future."
Google Maps, for example, doesn't tell me where all of the pubs in my area are.
OpenStreetMap was started by a British guy, so it's not really a surprise ;-).
CycleStreets (example route) uses OSM data and has extra from-the-bike images, but I'm not sure where they come from. It's also an example of the extra OSM information: on OSM, the roads are tagged by what's allowed to use them, which means it can suggest e.g. walking a bike over a pedestrian bridge if it saves a 5-minute detour (or avoids busy roads, if you ask for that).
It was pretty cool.
I am very small, utmostly microscopic.
Huh?
You linked to a Google earth page that:
1) Let's the user drape a photo over the terrain layer (i.e. a pre-existing 3-D model)
2) Let's the user play "pin the tail on the donkey" with their photos
What do either of these have to do with 3-D model extraction from photos and mapping of photos into 3-D scenes?!!
What to either of these have even remotely to do with image recognition of any sort?!!
Clue: Those are rhetorical questions.
The parent is right. Technology and how it's implemented are mutually exclusive. Just because you dislike the manor in which the technology was implemented does not mean that this technology isn't impressive.
And that, Mr Closed Source, means that only a pedant like you would find this stuff impressive.
Why the personal attack? What does this story have to do with him?
Life is not for the lazy.
I think when people talk of a technology being impressive, they are talking about, well, technology.
The fact that you don't want to use Silverlight or can't run it on Linux has nothing to do with how impressive the technology is.
But it might in the end have something to do with how impressive the technology is. If the technology is desirable enough, then I'd like to be able to use it on my PC, TV (I'm thinking of something like a Sharp Aquos in this instance of 'TV'), iPhone, Droid, iPad, $100 netbook, toaster, etc. Problem is, I can't guarantee Silverlight runs reliably on any of those devices.
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."
Yeah, I'm wondering how many geotagged Flickr photos there are that are licensed to allow Microsoft to re-use them commercially in this way. Surely not that many?
GCHQ Quantum Insert installed. If only our tongues were made of glass, how much more careful we would be when we speak
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.
I still prefer Google's home page for its sparseness, especially when I'm on the VPN and RDPed to a work computer. We're all (home, VPN, work computer) on fast pipes, but there's added latency that slows down the Bing image.
Would be nice if the first few bytes (or K) were measured, and depending on the perceived load time, they determined whether to show the image based on how long it would take to display. Like, "more than 3 seconds, show no image".
This is my idea. Now it's yours.
I feel fantastic, and I'm still alive.
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.
Bitch all you want about Microsoft, but it was a very impressive demo. Kudos to the software guys who developed this stuff.
That's the problem with Microsoft, their demos are almost *always* impressive. They *always* show off things that make them look better than the competition, but with technology that rarely comes out as shown.
Remember when the iPhone came out, MS demoed their Surface? It was clearly meant to say, "iPhone, schmiphone, look how cool *our* product is!" Years later, I'm still waiting for all those cool Surfaces to start popping up. In the meantime, the iPhone has gone on to both redefine the smartphone market, has been improved twice, spawned a new product, and become a huge success.
Right now MS is on a major offensive against Google. This, as of right now, is just another smoke-and-mirrors fake-out meant to make people think Bing Maps is more amazing than it is. I'm not saying that Bing Maps isn't pretty cool, just that this is meant to make it look as though is significantly better than it is.
In this controlled demo, they had a guy with a camera and a wireless connection at the market. It was certainly very cool, but until this is something that *I* can actually use, it's just another promised amazing new technology that MS has yet to actually deliver on. And in this particular case, it seems like something that will be only available in a few places, as token, "see how cool this is", but not universal enough to be more than a novelty.
Say what you want about Google's perpetual Beta and Apple's secrecy, but at least I know that when Google announces something, I can start using it at some reasonable point in the future, and when Apple does, that the product shown is finished enough to be in stores once production and regulatory paperwork are covered.
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.
Until Bing Maps can give me public transit directions, it's completely useless. All their shiny eye-candy, day-night time cycle, star maps, are completely useless (and, honestly, a giant waste of time) when they haven't bothered to match the basic functionality their competitors provide.
It's this willful dismissal of core features that keeps hurting their market share, too. When Google's transit system was on the fritz for 3 hours last week, I tried Bing assuming they would be able to provide an alternative. If they had, I might have been impressed enough with the eye candy to come back again. Instead, I became even less likely to give them another shot, because this one incredibly obvious and useful feature has been ignored in favor of having 4 different angles on every satellite shot, and adding star charts. Total fail.
Slashdot needs a "-1, Wrong" moderation option.
The Urban Hippie
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
... George, Washington has a rode called Bing Ave. Though street view does drive by it. I wonder what stopped them from just doing a couple circles and catching it all...
That's not exactly the same thing. It only removes that result from that particular search. So if you search for the exact same thing again, it won't show up. If you search for something else that the same site has indexed, it will show up again. Not very practical in my book. If you're doing the same search over and over again, it is usually easier to just bookmark the sites you want.
The GP is talking about removing particular domains from all your search results. That way, you could quickly eliminate the primary offenders.
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.
I bet it will also get you signed up for their social network...
I've been using that for a while now, it's great! I'm often googling for web development results, and I always always X w3schools.com (old, outdated into). I think Sark666 is saying it would be nice to remove results from entire domains. I'd love that too, because then I could just click once and be done with it.
The OptimizeGoogle Firefox add-on will do it for you. Among many other useful features, it adds a "filter" link beneath each result, allowing you to filter that domain or URL (you specify the exact filter).
Google Custom Search does this, among other things.
The user photos are not overlaid on the street view (neither were they in the Microsoft demo) - they are just presented as an alternative view of the same location. i.e. Google is just using geo-tags to give to a user-selectable bunch of photos taken at/near that location. Yawn.
That is completely unrelated to what Microsoft's demo did. It didn't just give you a menu of photos geo-tagged to the location, or simply overlay them at that spot. It actually recognized the content of the photos, where they belong in the 3-D scene, and incorporated them into the 3-D scene in augmented reality fashion. Way cool!
It was much easier to come here and actually discover something before bloggers came along.
The better use IMHO would be if/when it comes to mobile phones. I like Google maps/street view because I can pull it up from my phone, and get a look at what's in front of me...
Only if you have good 3G reception. Not that google maps isn't impressive, but the time when you most need it? Lost, middle of nowhere, crap reception? You know, typical slasher movie intro. You're fubar. The chainsaw wielding maniac is going to get you.
Deleted
Or do you need to lug around a supercomputer in a rucksack?
Deleted
You don't understand the legal definition of a Covenant
Bing should really not load that picture on the background, or they should load it after the rest of the page (the search box = what I really want) is loaded.
1. Open Bing search page.
2. Click on "Help" link below.
3. Click on "Give me the plain background".
4. Enjoy.
(Yes, I do think that this is a damn confusing way to do it; I've spent a lot of time looking for it under Options)...
Looking at that Fisherman's Wharf in Google maps some more, in general they are just presenting a menu of geo-tagged photos, but the big round Wharf sign itself is a special case.... For that they've grouped a bunch of photos of the same object and have determined how these map onto a street view photo of the same object.
The fact that no other user photos (in this scene at least) are mapped to street view makes it appear this was done as a special case. Maybe the user photos were hand tagged as being of the same object? In any case, this is just mapping to a master photo, not integrating into a 3-D scene.
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.
So, MS is up to its usual crap of making sure nothing they create will run on anything other than Windows
Silverlight runs on OS X.
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.
Perhaps I'm wrong, but I think most people who talk around here about Linux not being ready for the desktop are pro-Linux.
I have difficulty with expressing an opinion on Linux because I never know if my audience will interpret what I say as if Linux is only a kernel or an entire distro.
It's rather hard for me to say if the Linux kernel is impressive technology because I haven't studied it and I'm not an OS expert.
With Verizon on my droid, I have yet to find a location where I don't have 3g reception... Then again, I do live in a pretty populated suburban area...
If a man isn't willing to take some risk for his opinions, either his opinions are no good or he's no good
Impressive technology or not, it obviously isn't worth much to an individual if it doesn't work on their equipment.
On the other hand, these days technical issues are less likely to be the reason a particular technology won't work on a particular device. The only reason any kind of browser works on a mobile device is because the vendor decided to include it. There's nothing particularly more "native" about a browser than any other application.
Has Google public transit gotten any better? The last time I tried to use it get from Long Beach to Los Angeles, it suggested that I take a bus all the way there. It completely missed the trains.
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.
While we're on the topic of rude things I must ask: Do Americans give standing ovations to particularity loud or interesting farts or is there some minimum standard of quality I can't ascertain? I base this question on at least two reports of ovations at this weeks TED for mildly insightful talks and seeing ovations in almost every musical ever produced and moved to DVD for the rest of the world to see.
Hear hear! Everyone give it up for cloricus (691063)! And thanks to biryokumaru (822262), for giving cloricus a post to which to reply! Huzzah!!!!!
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!
I dunno. Remember when they replaced the trash can with the recycle bin? Think of all the virgin bits that have been saved over the years.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
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.
Pft. Call me low-tech but I don't need no stinkin' phone to look at what's in front of me.
Ah, then you don't suffer from blackberry, then.
- RG>
Hey pal, this isn't a pleasantforest, so don't waste my time with pleasantries!
I believe you can use it today. I haven't tried the 3d plug-in (one more thing that needs to be installed) but the photsynth integration seems to be working well in places that have them. It's not as flashy as the one shown in video but that's probably because I haven't figured out all the controls and the power I have with it.
Like expert-exchange! :)
Let me get this straight...
You think it's good that competition is increased for a company so big as Google... by a company that is larger than Google with a monopolistic history?
That just doesn't seem logical to me. I'm all for increasing competition for Google and I don't even mind that some of the competition comes from former monopolies, but what I'd really like to see is the little guys out there innovating.
Dunno about your specific case, but they are sometimes slow to incorporate various agencies' timetables. It took a couple weeks before they added the new light rail in Seattle. Anything they put in there is better than Bing, though, which has exactly zero public transit schedules...
Slashdot needs a "-1, Wrong" moderation option.
The Urban Hippie
Meh, bing maps is super buggy (unusable) on chrome. If I need to use IE to run it, then screw it, back to google maps it is.
The question of whether a computer can think is no more interesting than the question of whether a submarine can swim.
Kill yourself.
Just the enlightened answer I'd expect here on ./
And I'm the one who gets modded troll... :D
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.
You'll get over it.
Free thought and active campaigning are 2 different things. Evidence? How about the fact that my comments - which are definitely NOT pro-MS in this case - are getting modded down even 24 hours later, having been at +5 for yesterday. I've seen this happen many times, with content not pro-MS. The MS contingent earmarks posts they don't like/that put their corporate overlords in a bad light, and down-mod them long after the story - and the comments - are no longer front page material. This gets search engine results looking better, ya know... MS has an active contingent here and at other tech blogs to push their agenda, products, and services - why wouldn't they? The very definition of astroturfing, done by shills. Yes, I'm certain there are folks who are pro-MS without being paid to be so as well. Just not so many as the astroturfing campaigns would have the general public believe...
"...there are some things that can beat smartness and foresight. Awkwardness and stupidity can." ~ Mark Twain
It's about time they started having something more useful than that aerial view of theirs. It's not like I'm flying to my destination.
http://dilbert.com/2010-12-13
The problem with that argument is that people won't stop using Google unless the alternative actually works now.
No-one is going to say to themselves "I know, I won't use Google maps ever again because Bing maps is so cool, even though I can't actually use Bing maps at the moment."
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
Says it's not supported in my browser. Figures.
Also, unless you actually install some fancy 3D mode software bing is just a crappier, horrendously slow, feature-poor Google maps. And the kicker is, 3D won't work on Chrome, so you're stuck with the crippled version. My first reflex after realising this was to try IE8 and for some reason half the interface failed to load until I installed MS's program.
Granted, it worked very smooth and sleek after I installed it, but then again, so does Google Earth if I'm gonna be installing stuff. And Google's map program has a flight simulator!
Moreover, -with an Android 1.6 device- the mobile Bing maps site is atrocious (although search seemed nice at first glance and I might even start using it in the future).
Now, the demonstration is very cool, and while it's kind of all been done it looks like bing put on quite a bit of polish and made everything seamless and well integrated and all. However, overlaying streaming videos is not what I, personally, would like most in my maps site. It's consistent feature set! Someone complained about the 3D view not being fully available in all US states, well, I live outside the US. Street view? Is that when you zoom in all the way, so you can see like bits of the alleys and stuff? I even know a few spots in my city where there's a 3D building or two put op on Google Earth. It's almost like in those marketing demos, where they subtly imply all that funky stuff is available everywhere!
Overlaying images is, quite frankly, worthless to me unless I can rely on it working in a vast majority of the places I'd want to use it in.
Seriously, a month ago I tried to use Google's directions for a 5-kilometer walk to a park, in the middle of my country's largest city. I was directed into an under-construction, closed off tunnel. I realise bells and whistles make the audience salivate at presentations, but I'd salivate 10 times more if (say) a Google guy went on stage, said "we have now implemented Street View for at least 10 major cities in each of 150 countries around the globe." and left. New features and innovation is all nice and good, but sometimes you gotta finish one project before starting a new one. Or in this case, about fifty.
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.