The Earth Is Square

Found this CNN video on the Dash Networking GPS.  What made this GPS interesting for me was the traffic updating and the finding gas stations and sorting by the latest price.  But the "downfall" of this GPS with the traffic conditions is that you need multiple vehicles in the area also using the Dash GPS so that you get a detailed traffic report.

Another downside, monthly fee to have all the good features.

• Purchase a two-year prepaid plan for the equivalent of $9.99 a month
• Purchase a 1-year prepaid plan for $10.99 a month
• Purchase a month-to-month plan for the rate of $12.99 a month.

So, at least $120 a year on top of the $399 price.  Think I will just get a $200 GPS instead.

This year's JavaOne will be a big one for WWJava, for one the NASA WorldWind team will be releasing WWJava 1.0 and there will be several WWJava based sessions.

Putting 3-D Earth into Your Applications and Web Pages

NASA World Wind provides 3-D virtual globe technology that you can put in your applications. It’s a visual component based on the JavaBeans™ component architecture, with an extensible API and a friendly user interface that you can easily enhance or even replace. It can be used as-is or highly customized. You can put one or more in your programs or your web pages. In a web page, you can control it with the JavaScript™ programming language. It’s as good as it sounds; it’s what the world has been waiting for.

You’ll learn in this session how to use, customize, and extend NASA World Wind for the Java™ platform. It shows you how to create several programs and illustrates how to employ 3-D virtual globe technology in your standalone and Web 2.0 products. You’ll find out where to start and where to get this amazing open-source component.

NASA World Wind Java™ Technology BOF

Since debuting at the 2007 JavaOne℠ conference, NASA World Wind has been deployed in dozens of applications and has attracted an excited World Wind developer community. This BOF brings many of those people together to meet the World Wind technical leaders and provides a forum for discussion, ideas, questions, and help. It is a follow-on to the technical session “Putting 3D Earth in Your Applications and Web Pages.”

blueMarine: Or Why You Should Really Ship Swing Applications

This presentation introduces the blueMarine project, an open-source desktop application that supports the photographic workflow. It supports cataloging, creation of galleries, publishing, and different ways to geotag photos against a 2-D map or 3-D representation of the world implemented with NASA World Wind. The design of blueMarine follows best practices for the creation of a “filthy rich client,” from animations to the use of Java OpenGL (JOGL), and takes advantage of the rich framework delivered by the NetBeans™ IDE rich client platform (RCP). The presentation demonstrates some of the advanced sections of the blueMarine user interface and quickly explains the components used behind it--most of them have been explicitly designed to integrate with the RCP APIs of the NetBeans IDE and are available as a separate download to be easily reusable for developing other applications.

These two sessions reference WWJava, but are not really about WorldWind.

• NetBeans™ IDE Plug-In Module Development for 3-D Model Viewer, Using Java™ OpenGL (JOGL)
• Duke Riding the Geospatial Wave

Seems a database connection error has popped up on WorldWindCentral, the Wiki and the Forum are both down at this time. I have let those that have access know about it, so should have the site back up sometime today.

Edit: Ok, just as I posted this.. the site was fixed.

Made a change to the OSM.xml file.  It now has both the Hybrid view and now, the Standard view.  The standard view is like what you see on the OpenStreetMap site, white background for the tiles that download.

I didn't say in the last post.. but I figured by now that most people know how to install a WW XML, but just in case..Unzip the file and copy into your "World Wind Folder"/Config/Earth/ and start WorldWind.  The Standard view is off by default.

Ok, here it goes... WorldWind FINALLY has roads!

Something I have been wanting in WorldWind since almost day One.   Roads.  Seems so obvious to have.. yet was not so simple to get.  Why? Because WorldWind uses Public Domain data.. and most of the road data is not Public Domain .. or they don't want to share.

Yes, you can get some road data, for the US you have Topo maps.  Or you can use the Virtual Earth plug-in.  Or you can load shapefiles or your own data.  But now we have a WorldWind XML that works in WorldWind.net to load the Open Street Map tiles in via a WMS server, all thanks to someone wanting to load the tiles in WorldWind Java.

Open Street Map data is a perfect fit for WorldWind.  Why? Because their goal is to make a global road map of the globe that is in the Public Domain and free for all to use without restrictions.

Philadelphia

Washington, D.C.

Paris, France

Was reading at All Points Blog about a "new Google Tool" coming soon.. After reading the post, I realized it will basically be the same thing as the NOAA Coastal Risk add-on for WorldWind I put together about two years ago now.  Guess I need to get the data again (it was being updated when I first gathered the data) and get the mapserver serving the data again (Original Mapserver site is down, I have a new spot for the data.. just need to re-upload it).

Now to finish getting ready for a drive out to Pittsburgh for Easter.