Slashgeo

The Map Room blog informs us about this new Google API meant to embed Google Maps in flash applications. From their summary : "So, what do I like about the API for Flash? Smoothness and speed are a big part of it. We’ve designed it so that Flash graphics can be used for each tile layer, marker and info window — opening up possibilities like dynamic shading, shadowing, animation, and video. When the user zooms the map, magnification changes happen smoothly and place names fade in. After the user drags a marker, it gently bounces to a halt. Generally, Flash allows for much greater embellishment, and, well … “flashiness.” I get excited just thinking about the creative ways developers might take advantage of having a Flash API for Google Maps."

To check it out, please visit the Map Room blog.

The news is spreading fast. The TomTom/TeleAtlas deal is moving ahead. Reuters is reporting that "TomTom, the world's biggest maker of car navigation devices, won unconditional permission from the European Commission on Wednesday to buy its main map supplier, Tele Atlas, for 2.9 billion euros ($4.5 billion)." EUBusiness reports the EU scrutiny determined that "the deal would not significantly reduce competition in the SatNav sector".
The next obvious question is how this impacts the NAVTEQ/Nokia deal...

Slashdot discuss a story named China to Regulate Internet Map Publishing. We discussed the censure of maps in China on many occasions, see related stories below. Ogle Earth provides an AFP article on the new China efforts to bring down illegal maps. Spatial Sustain links to a China Popular Computer Week article translation. The Slashdot summary: "After text, pictures, and videos, China starts regulating Internet map publishing (here is the google translation.) The government believes that Internet maps can represent the state's sovereignty and its political and diplomatic positions in the international community — and consequently, inaccurate maps could harm national interests and dignity, produce bad political influences, reveal national secrete and harm national security, in addition to harming consumer interests. So from now on, publishing maps would require approval and (yet another) license from the state survey bureau. That means Google, Yahoo, etc., need to remove China from the map; or maybe they just pay up some officials and their agents to acquire yet another license. And our newest 80Gbps DPI monsters need to be upgraded to identify maps together with porn."

The What is special about geospatial blog reports about this new Google endeavor. From their summary : Google has recently updated their StreetView data in Manhatten. Biside some improvemetns in image quality, Google has implemented some automatic face-blurring technology. Form the screenshot you can see that it does work really nice. It blurs the faces, but doesn’t detract too much from the imagery.

For a more detailed explanation of why this is occurring, please visit the blog link above.

As the Digital Earth Blog and Ogle Earth blog is reporting this morning, a beta version of WorldWide telescope has been released. You can grab the download directly from the MicroSoft site http://www.worldwidetelescope.org/. For more information and preliminary reviews, please visit the blog links above.

A lot of World Wind news came out of the JavaOne conference last week, so I am going to summarize those here for one quick and easy source.

• JavaOne WorldWind Java Presentation Slides
  If you want to see what was presented at the NASA World Wind Java SDK 3D Earth in your Applications and Web Pages session, you can now view the power point file and see what was covered The power point also has several diagrams that explain some of the core features about WWJava.
• First Known Commercial Use of WWJava
  LandPrint.com is an interesting commercial enterprise, they are creating 3D models of the earth and make use of WWJava as the way the user selects what they want to have created.
• NASA World Wind Java Demo Applications and Applets
  List of live examples of WW usage
• NASA Presents Knowledge Planet at JavaOne Conference
  At this year’s JavaOne conference in San Francisco, NASA developers showed that virtual globes are not only suited to explore geographic maps, but can also serve as rendering engines for other types of imagery.

From the Map Room blog : "Digital Earth Blog notes reports that Microsoft’s WorldWide Telescope may be released by the end of this month — or at least Bill Gates has been quoted saying that it will. I’ll be very interested to know the system requirements."

In case you are not familiar with World Wide Telescope, please check out this relevant story article.