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Skybox Imaging, quand Google nous observe par satellite. La possession de satellites d’observation de la Terre a longtemps été la chasse gardée des Etats. Cette époque est clairement révolue car plusieurs acteurs privés ont compris l’avantage stratégique de l’observation satellitaire. Fondée en 2009, l’entreprise Skybox Imaging a lancé son premier satellite à haute résolution d’images, en orbite, en 2013. A l’époque, les ingénieurs de Skybox ont pu décider d’observer, en temps réel, les affrontements entre les manifestants et la police ukrainienne à Kiev. En fait, le satellite peut rester une minute et trente secondes, focalisé sur le même objectif. Avec la rotation de la Terre, le satellite perd ensuite le contact avec ce point et poursuit sa course. Skybox a développé sa propre technologie de satellites. Ensuite, ces satellites sont assemblés, puis lancés dans l’espace par des partenaires. Google n’a pas laissé cette pépite tomber dans l’escarcelle de ses concurrents !

D’ailleurs, c’est ce que Google fait déjà avec la publicité. Progis - Technologies Géospatiales. The Slow Death of the Google Maps API. I have been planning a great April Fools joke for Google Maps Mania this year. On April 1st I was going to rename this blog 'MapBox Mania' for the day. I planned to explain this decision with a blog post. The post would explain that:there seems little sign of the Google Maps API team returning from their two year vacationthat Google no longer seems interested in developing the Google Maps APIat the same time the MapBox team has continued to innovate and has now become the maps API of choice for most developers. It would have been a funny April Fool's joke because there is more than an element of truth in the idea that MapBox and LeafletJS have usurped Google Maps as the API of choice for many map developers. As developers increasingly turn to Google's competitors I have struggled to find my daily quota of great Google Maps based applications.

This is one reason why I have been reviewing more and more maps built on other mapping platforms on Google Maps Mania. Pourquoi une alternative à Google ? How To Use Google Street View For Marketing? Fiat vs. Volkswagen. Les services alternatifs à Google ? Cédric Motte | On 16, May 2013 Dans la famille “Document partagé”, en voici un lancé par Maelle Fouquenet qui est tout à fait intéressant et à compléter : quels sont les services alternatifs à Google ?

S’il en existe de nombreux dans chaque activités – la recherche, l’hébergement de vidéos, les flux RSS,… – nous avons tous tendance à revenir vers google. Donc si vous utilisez un service qui est vraiment au poil, n’hésitez pas à l’indiquer. Et, oui, comme le dit Maelle elle-même, il y a une certaine ironie à utiliser un Google Doc pour trouver des alternatives aux produits Google ^^ Venez partager sur le doc ! A propos de l'auteur - Cédric Motte Journaliste web depuis un moment, consultant pour la Wan-IFRA, intervient dans les rédactions (Groupe Express Roularta, Le Figaro, Le Groupe Moniteur, Mondadori, Le Soir, Le Temps...) pour former les journalistes aux outils du web, d'où l'idée de NewsResources. M.guardian.co.uk. Over the last few years, at the kinds of conferences where the world's technological elite gathers to mainline caffeine and determine the course of history, Google has entertained the crowds with a contraption it calls Liquid Galaxy.

It consists of eight large LCD screens, turned on their ends and arranged in a circle, with a joystick at the centre. The screens display vivid satellite imagery from Google Earth, and the joystick permits three-dimensional "flight", so that stepping inside Liquid Galaxy feels like boarding your own personal UFO, in which you can zoom from the darkness of space down to the ocean's surface, cruising low over deserts, or inspecting the tops of skyscrapers. (The illusion of real movement is powerful; your legs may tremble.) You can swoop down to street-level in Cape Town, spot ships in the Mekong river, or lose yourself in the whiteness of Antarctica. But you don't, of course. "Oh, yeah," they would reply, matter-of-factly.

Uncharted territory: amateur cartographers fight to put their communities on the map. In May 2013, Google's vice president took to stage and announced that Google was aiming to build "a perfect map of the world". An honourable notion with almost utopian connotations -- and why shouldn't it? After all, Google has been at the forefront of leading the biggest change to mapping since the 15th century, when maps went from manuscript to print. Now they're online and taking advantage of satellite imagery, maps are more detailed, accurate and multi-dimensional than they've ever been, but could such a thing as the perfect map ever exist?

History tells us no, and that we should be wary of anyone -- any state, any organisation or any company -- that declares a wish to create one, says Jerry Brotton, Professor of Renaissance Studies at Queen Mary University London and author of A History of the World in Twelve Maps. Acknowledging a map's agenda There's more to it than that though, says Jessica Pfund, who is a programme manager for Google MapMaker.

Google's rise to power A power shift. La cartographie crée des emplois et contribue à la croissance économique mondiale. Mapping creates jobs and drives global economic growth. Twenty years ago, we used paper maps and printed guides to help us navigate the world. Today, the most advanced digital mapping technologies—satellite imagery, GPS devices, location data and of course Google Maps—are much more accessible. This sea change in mapping technology is improving our lives and helping businesses realize untold efficiencies. The transformation of the maps we use everyday is driven by a growing industry that creates jobs and economic growth globally.

To present a clearer picture of the importance of the geo services industry, we commissioned studies from Boston Consulting Group (BCG) and Oxera. What we found is that maps make a big economic splash around the world. In summary, the global geo services industry is valued at up to $270 billion per year and pays out $90 billion in wages.

Click the image for a larger version 1.1 billion hours of travel time saved each year? Google expands North Korea map coverage. 29 January 2013Last updated at 09:18 ET Many landmarks are now labelled including notorious prison labour camps - Courtesy Google Maps Google has puts its first detailed maps online of North Korea, a country that has so far been mostly blank on the search giant's popular Maps website. The data was compiled on Google's Map Maker tool, which allows users to contribute information mainly using satellite images or local knowledge. Many landmarks are now labelled, as are the notorious prison labour camps and nuclear research sites.

The move comes a few weeks after the head of Google visited North Korea. In the capital, Pyongyang, schools, theatres, government buildings and underground stops are now marked in Google Maps, as are statues, some embassies, an ice rink and the infamous 105-storey Ryugyong hotel, which has been under construction for more than 25 years. The Yongbyon nuclear site and a plutonium separator facility have been labelled Scant information. How Google and Apple's digital mapping is mapping us | Technology.

How Google Builds Its Maps—and What It Means for the Future of Everything - Alexis C. Madrigal. An exclusive look inside Ground Truth, the secretive program to build the world's best accurate maps. Behind every Google Map, there is a much more complex map that's the key to your queries but hidden from your view. The deep map contains the logic of places: their no-left-turns and freeway on-ramps, speed limits and traffic conditions. This is the data that you're drawing from when you ask Google to navigate you from point A to point B -- and last week, Google showed me the internal map and demonstrated how it was built.

It's the first time the company has let anyone watch how the project it calls GT, or "Ground Truth," actually works. Google opened up at a key moment in its evolution. And for good reason. "If you look at the offline world, the real world in which we live, that information is not entirely online," Manik Gupta, the senior product manager for Google Maps, told me. This is not just a theoretical concern. But that would entail actually building a better map. Cartographie numérique : à travers l’oeil de qui regardons-nous le monde. La lecture de la semaine est un article paru dans le quotidien britannique The Guardian le 28 août dernier, on le doit à Oliver Burkeman (@olivierburkeman) et on pourrait lui donner comme titre : « comment les cartes numériques changent notre manière de voir le monde ». Burkeman commence par relever l’omniprésence des cartes numériques dans nos vies et le fait qu’elles gagnent toujours en précision.

A tel point qu’un historien de la cartographie de l’Université de Londres, Jerry Brotton, explique : « Honnêtement, je pense que nous assistons, en ce qui concerne la fabrication des cartes, à un changement plus profond que celui qu’a connu la Renaissance en passant des manuscrits à l’imprimerie ». Le passage à l’imprimerie, reprend Burkeman, a ouvert les cartes à un public plus nombreux. Le passage à la cartographie numérique accélère et étend cette ouverture, mais il transforme aussi le rôle que les cartes jouent dans notre vie. En un sens, cartographier est l’essence de Google. L'Atelier de cartographie. Why Google Just Made iPhone King: Ads | Wired Business. Larry Page. Photo: Justin Sullivan/Getty Images By releasing new versions of Google Maps and Gmail for iOS this month, Google helped make the iPhone the best mobile phone on the planet.

Why is Google, the owner of Android and Motorola, helping its ostensible rival? The answer boils down to advertising. Understanding Google’s strategy is especially important now that a wide range of companies, including not only Apple and Google but also Facebook and Twitter, are carefully calibrating how they ship and host software. ‘There is no reason to play any games. . — Daniel Graf,Google Maps “Google doesn’t make money off of Android which is open source; they make money when people use Google services,” says Joel Spolsky, CEO of the web startup Stack Overflow and author of a widely cited essay on why tech companies drive down prices of ancillary products.

Google Maps would seem a fantastic place from which to sell ads. Google’s willingness to ship iOS apps could look smarter as time goes on. Why Google Just Made iPhone King: Ads | Wired Business. Google Maps Can’t Kill Public Space (A Belated Reply to Evgeny Morozov) The new Google maps probably won’t destroy public space. Maps are always political. Most maps show us something that we already believe, so its difficult to see what is being reinforced and what is systematically ignored.

Even the most mundane AAA maps of highways and state borders are doing political work by recognizing the sovereignty of individual states and the obduracy of highways and roads. The near-infinite number of things, qualities, measurements, and people that have spatial characteristics (seriously, just think of all of it: temperatures, ancestral lands, endemic species, isobars, places to buy smoothies, locations of hidden treasure, and so on, and so on…_) mean that map makers must always select what is relevant and what is not.

This selection process—a human endeavor—is inherently social and deeply political. Maps are so good at their job of transforming abstract ideas into visible entities that we often conflate the two. That’s just wrong.