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Google Enhances Street View With User Photos
Google has launched a competitor or counterpart to Microsoft's Photosynth, which employs user-contributed photos of much-photographed sites to supplement the street-level view in an immersive way. Google's offering is called simply Navigate through User Photos, and unlike Photosynth — which requires Sliverlight and therefore is not available on Linux — is implemented in Flash. This YouTube video (also embedded at the link above) offers a quick tour of the new feature, which can use photos uploaded to Panoramico, Flickr, and Picasa.
Try Moonlight.
http://www.mono-project.com/Moonlight
Run! It's a trap!
I think there is an editorial error... Silverlight is available for Linux, via an extension published by Novell named "Moonlight". Even better : Moonlight is free software while Flash is not.
You don't need silverlight or a plugin to use these features.
I noticed this last week sometime. My first thought when I see this technology is always "damn that's a lot of maths".
No sig for you. YOU GET NO SIG!
...unlike Photosynth — which requires Sliverlight and therefore is not available on Linux — is implemented in Flash
I'm thinking of making some crack brownies that are delicious and unlike pot brownies--which have pot in them and are therefore dangerous--have crack in them.
So long to the Bing hype done at TED this year. Good idea to incorporate user-submitted photos where the Google StreetView car is not welcomed or... hated. I think as long as the quality, angle and panorama of submitted images are scrutinized for the well-being and wealth of StreetView, it won't be very long before Google has image mapped everything with a road going through it.
...so what's the next best way to data mine people's personal vacation photography? Simply invite them to freely contribute to the bigger, shadowed cause. 0_0
Note to Slashdot Editors: Apps that avoid the use of Flash are Less Evil than Apps which do not run in Linux.
And please, if you're ever unclear on any of this Good/Evil stuff, don't hesitate to ask me.
My neighbour has photos of our street from when he was a kid. I'm planning to scan them and put them up. Quite the change over the years.
So, does this app show blurred faces like the regular street view does?
Finally, all the residents of all the Gay Boulevardes in the world can express their street pride with flair.
I'm pretty sure you ment Panoramio and not Panoramico
I hope there's someone vetting the pics. One of the most annoying aspects of Panoramico, is that there's more than a few narcissists who post pics of things like "our dog Benji at the beach," rather than an informative pic that will enhance the Google Earth user-experience.
Still... if no-one is vetting the pics, there is a LOT of fun to be had with this.
Or is this something different?
Can they order individuals to take down photos too? Or will Google have to "blur" them?
For justice, we must go to Don Corleone
Ok, how does this change the privacy issues ?
If Google takes the images themselves they have to blur all the faces and number plates, but if they include user contributed images of the same scene they don't need to blur them ?
So .. if I (as a private citizen) take pictures of a street and upload them to Flickr with geo-tags, Google will use them un-blurred.
What if I (as a private citizen) mounted a camera on a car and took LOTS of pictures and uploaded them to Flickr with geo-tags, Google would be able to use them un-blurred ?
Is this a crowd sourced way to un-blur Google StreetView one street at a time ....
I showed that link to my buddy. He responded with this link:
http://www.videosift.com/video/TED-Augmented-reality-using-Bing-maps
Which makes the google demo look like something from 1996 in comparison. (Skip ahead to the 4:20 mark for some jaw-dropping live video overlaid on top of 3D interior shots of pike place market, generated from user pics. Mix that sort of data with technology like this and with enough computing power you could probably render a decent 3D model of the habitated world in a few weeks.
moox. for a new generation.
I think they need a consent form for all of these.
Outside Microsoft, a major use for Silverlight is to stream video with digital restrictions management to make it significantly harder to save to the viewer's PC. Free software is fundamentally incompatible with this DRM.
I don't understand how using "free software" translates into a requirement for "unprotected content."
PPV, thelease or rental model, is considred legitimate in many other contexts. Why does it become illegitimate when the rental is an audio or video recording?
Document management is essential in business.
The free alternative is no alternative if it can't deliver the "DRM" tools your clients expect to see.
Hey look it's Goatse at the Eifel Tower. Hey look it's Goatse on the steps of St. Peters. Hey look it's Goatse at Point Sublime on the North Rim of the Grand Canyon.
No thanks, I'd rather have someone vetting the photos.
-- QED
My, aren't you tardy to the party.
When you're afraid to download music illegally in your own home, then the terrorists have won!
It's good that we have both Microsoft and Google in the game now. For all the new "cool" and "hip" stuff each does to show off, the other side has to raise the stake higher, and ultimately we as users (of either service, doesn't really matter which one) get all that tasty stuff.
I'm not a libertarian, but free markets can work to the advantage of the society, given right conditions. This seems to be one of those cases.
...and texture them onto the ground and 3d buildings in Google Earth, I'll be impressed.
who said you were libertarian?
I missed it, or maybe it was CmdrTaco's description* that made me skip it. Either way, it's worth repeating.
/. front page - "This is a really exciting video and worth your 8 minutes."
*Actual description on
moox. for a new generation.
Why not do this as an Applet, not Flash.... After all, Java is FOSS, and works on all platforms. Applets launch fast, (unless they have megabytes of Jars to load, though this problem is not just with Java).
Which makes the google demo look like something from 1996 in comparison. (Skip ahead to the 4:20 mark for some jaw-dropping live video overlaid on top of 3D interior shots of pike place market, generated from user pics.
The video you are referring to is a demo that required a guy with a camera to stream live for the presentation. Google's system actually works right now.
MS is superb at giving tech demos. They are even better at timing them to most strongly attack their opponents. But what they are awful at is delivering. Until MS gets enough cameras placed everywhere so that you can reasonably expect, even if primarily only in metropolitan areas, that they will have a camera view you can access, it's just going to be a cool gimmick that will have a camera on the Eiffel Tower, and one at Times Square, and maybe three in Seattle.
As of right now, they don't even have *one* set up anywhere.
It's fairly impressive, however, the way MS has this down to an art. They show this cool tech off, and everyone remembers how cool it is, and now existing products have to compete against an imaginary MS product that doesn't even exist and will most likely not exist any time soon.
They tried this with Surface when the iPhone debuted. That backfired, but even so, Suface, the demo, is damned cool. Surface, the reality, is a gimmick.
I don't claim to be a MS fanboy, I only run XP for games; my laptops/netbooks all run ubuntu. Had any other company in the world released this you wouldn't have commented the way you did. Did you see how the user videos were overlaid right overtop of the existing data?? In google it's just a black, blank canvas (try looking up under the eiffle tower in paris). Who cares if you need a live feed to do that? Their system is infinitely more extensible than google's currently is. As for releasing tech demos, this was done right through their current map beta, which anyone can use. It's not vaporware.
moox. for a new generation.
but free markets can work to the advantage of the society, given right conditions. This seems to be one of those cases.
and technology is one of the areas with the least amount of government involved. This is not a coincidence.
I dont understand this privacy decree. Streets are public property. If you dont want someone taking a picture of you on your private property then dont allow someone to see you from the public streets.
Close your blinds when you're taking a crap!
Mix that sort of data with technology like this and with enough computing power you could probably render a decent 3D model of the habitated world in a few weeks.
3D modeling from photos and videos is going to happen sooner or later; it's a question of compute power, accuracy, data, and algorithmic improvements. But nobody has it quite worked out to the level where you can build a "decent 3D model".
Also be aware that almost all the technology in ProFORMA was known decades ago; the holdup has been putting it all together and having enough compute power to make it work just right.
Had any other company in the world released this you wouldn't have commented the way you did.
Correct, as Microsoft is the only high profile tech company that engages in such behavior time and time again. It's in the company's DNA.
IBM used to act in the same way, so I suppose were we to transport ourselves to the 60s, I'd respond similarly to them. But were in the 10s now, and MS has been the smoke-and-mirrors king for the past 30 years.
I also give MS kudos for the things they get right, so don't try to paint me as some sort of anti-MS troll. If you read my post through at least once, you'll notice I mention how cool the tech itself actually is (same for surface). What I'm criticizing them for is for not actually having a product where this is in use. This tech demo is clearly MS trying to get people to stop using Google, and switch to Bing. I don't hold that against them. What I hold against them is that they're pulling the same trick, yet again.
So now people remember seeing this cool video, and they forget that it's not a real product, so when Google comes out with an actual product, some jackass like yourself comes out with, "this Google product sucks, that MS thing that I saw in a video for a product that doesn't even exist is way better!"
On the other hand, if MS actually *does* get cameras everywhere (reasonably speaking), then I'll definitely agree with you, that theirs is a way more impressive product. But until then, I'm not stupid enough to believe that somehow this time MS is actually going to follow through. They've used up all their good will. From now on it's "show me the goods or STFU".
As for releasing tech demos, this was done right through their current map beta, which anyone can use. It's not vaporware.
Then surely you have a URL to a live camera feed like that in the TED talk?
I think the difference is that you can do the Google stuff in /your/ browser /now/.
We have to wait and see how much of the MS tech demo becomes available to the public, and in how diluted a form.
MS Photosynth was kinda neat, but nowhere near as impressive as it was in its demo. ("We reconstruct public spaces entirely out of images harvested from the web", becomes "Take a set of carefully coordinated photos, assemble them on your desktop, then upload the result to our servers")
I think all this technology has been around for decades (pretty much all the technology in Stephenson's Snow Crash is accessible through google or wikipedia in some way); it's just a matter of figuring out which pieces are most awesome with others, and then crafting them together in a usable and accessible fashion. Between 100mbps connections to the home and the amazing power of computers arriving in the next 5-10 years we'll probably have exhausted everything possible in 2D space, at which point walk-around 3D projection will be cheap enough to usher in the next group of 20-something garage startups like Microsoft Google and beyond.
moox. for a new generation.
PPV, thelease or rental model, is considred legitimate in many other contexts. Why does it become illegitimate when the rental is an audio or video recording?
With free software, there's no way for a publisher to prevent users from editing the source code and inserting the equivalent of a tee(1).
Document management is essential in business.
"Document management" connotes access control for unpublished works within an organization, used to enforce trade secrets on machines owned by that organization. Even when used between two organizations, these organizations are still in a position to negotiate terms. "Digital restrictions management", on the other hand, connotes access control for published works, used to enforce copyrights on machines owned by members of the public, made available only under a standard form contract. It's supposed to be easier to lock down your own organization's machines than every machine in the world.
Yeah it's not like every simple little idea is registered at some kind of "Patent Office" and the wireless spectrum is micromanaged by some kind of "Federal Communications Commission." And of course the infrastructure the Internet runs on is 100% free-market privately owned and paid for, no government assistance there, no sir. I'm also glad governments keep their hands off the software, and don't contribute anything to open source projects, especially well-known security software, or assist software vendors in improving security, because that would be socialism. And thank goodness they don't fund any research in the military or space exploration that could benefit private tech companies, nobody needs that kind of government interference.
Who knows what kind of shithole the tech industry would be if governments got their grubby mitts on it. We'd definitely have no Internet, and wireless communications would be a total clusterfuck.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
Has anyone "mined" google-street view?
By mine, I mean do image-processing to drive around virtually, and look for speedlimit signs or what have you?
speedlimits
Especially that whole "Internet" thing I'm glad that was a private project without any government intrusion. WHEW!
What I found interesting about the live video overlay is that there was NO parallax. This implies it was mounted at a carefully fixed point, or the movement was computer generated from a panoramic input. Either way, shenanigans!
Captcha: curtains. As in, pay no attention to the man behind the
Cool demos are great, but Google has a product that is used by many millions of people at the same time. They need something that is scalable and usable over realistic internet connections. I'm sure that a company like Google could create a mind blowing demo like that quite easily, (and they might have something like that internally), but I doubt if they will make a released product out of it until it's a practical idea.
"When the only tool you own is a hammer, every problem begins to resemble a nail." - Abraham Maslow (1908-1970)
Yeah, it's likely it was on a tripod, although you do see the camera rotate almost 45 degrees on a central axis, where tripods that have that sort of rotation capability rotate usually on the lower left corner. Now that I think about it, they mention it was done over a 4G connection, meaning it could have likely been from a phone.
moox. for a new generation.
actually you can by an MS Surface table - they are jsut far far far far far far far (i'll stop now but it keeps going) to damn expensive ~10k each.
'...if only "Jumping to a Conclusion" was an event in the Olympics.'
actually i was wrong - just looked at the order form
http://www.microsoft.com/surface/Pages/HowToBuy/HowToBuy.aspx
and it looks like the cheapest you can get is going to be >13k and ~16k if your a developer.
so the price has actually gone UP from when it was first released.. and it STILL comes with Vista not Win7
'...if only "Jumping to a Conclusion" was an event in the Olympics.'
Where is the binary for PPC/OSX ? Also does it do exactly what Silverlight 3/Win does?
Moonlight... Come on really.
I said, it was one of the places with the least amount of government involved. Or you think the FCC and patent office help the technology market in some way?
Yes the government provided some of the infrastructure. But it's still been relatively hands off.
I'm also glad governments keep their hands off the software, and don't contribute anything to open source projects, especially well-known security software, or assist software vendors in improving security, because that would be socialism.
Government has legitimate roles, and if they contribute to open source, through those roles, I have no problem. In fact government software, should be public domain by default anyways.
I said with the least amount involved, and was mostly implying regulations/controlling/ownership. Contributing to open source or the other points you made, hardly, imo, would count as government being very involved.
a legitimate function of the government(defense), contributed to the internet. what's your point? I said it had minimal government involvement.
Tried it. It's a slow, non-functional piece of crap. It's just enough for Microsoft-fanbois to say "Hey try Moonlight!" when they obviously never have. It will not even run most of the demos that are meant to display, like, a box and a circle on screen, and is very feature-incomplete; it intentionally leaves out codec support, and intentionally leaves out hooks to ffmpeg as well, so it'll NEVER be useful for video streaming sites. It truly is a trap -- Microsoft uses it to falsely claim that Silverlight supports a bunch of platforms that it does not.
You think the government had minimal involvement in creating the Internet?
like i said, they did infrastructure. but did they make it into the incredible resource it is today? no. And again, the defense is a legitimate function of government.
Apparently the European Union has urged Google to make sure its Street View images are deleted after six months
You can read more here
http://www.eweekeurope.co.uk/news/european-authorities-push-google-over-street-view-data-5557
Although I agree with some points you make (namely the video is still demo material) the flickr and photosynth embedded in the street view in bing maps is already a reality and way better integrated than google's.
The new maps where you can add apps to the map view (the flickr thing is tech prev but available). Some are either not well supplied of entries or tricky to use, but the photosynth and flickr photos integrate great in the street view. The positioning of the photos is very accurate (not as google's "see the photos without context apart from the geo pos").
Granted that the interface from bing is a bit shaky to use... but in terms of the content at this point it does surpass google's (and also the eye candy of transitions is very good).
Note: I'd still use google maps to get from here to there though... (the interface seems simpler and less clouded...)