The Earth Is Square

Ok, I just had to post this and play the Devils Advocate since I have been thinking off and on about it today. I am seeing all these blog posts where developers are thinking that GE in a web page is the best thing since sliced bread and that everyone is switching over to use it in their websites.

But, what about the average Joe user though? How are they adapting to this sudden change and in some cases, lack of access because they do not use Windows? Now they are coming to a site that is broken for them. Are end users rushing out to download this plug-in so they can have the latest and greatest? Or are they walking away?

Other questions coming to mind.. how are you're average Joe and Jane users managing the interface and navigation after they do decide to install the plug-in?

Just because it is from Google and it is a variant of Google Earth does NOT automatically mean everyone is going to be rushing to be first in line.

Edit: Here, Hear.. you get the point, don't ya?

Edit 2: Well, if you read the slashdot comments, the average user is going "Meh!" about the Google Earth plug-in version.

Had a heads up about this article from the Mensvouge.com web team.

They have just published a piece online about the evolution of the New York City Subway maps from 1905 to the currently used map, and even a newer version that is un-officially used in some publications.

While most cities have a fairly straight forward map of their mass-transit systems.. NYC has for the longest time, created a nightmare of maps for people to try to understand.

Amazingly enough, the first published subway map is straight forward and fairly simple to follow.

Over the years the maps have gone from cluttered to confusing, to nightmares to something easier to understand again.

Check out the mensvouge article for the full break down of all the versions of the NYC Subway maps over the last 103 years.

Well, I think there are enough people having "joy-gasms" about this API (Just remember kids, it is not an original idea and is nowhere near the first to do something like this).. so I am not really even going to bother with it.  I may install the plug-in.. but probably won't because I hate browser plug-in apps.

I'll let Daniel handle the ranting on this.

It looks like it could be interesting, but this will have a hard time getting wide usage IMHO; you have IT departments that will frown on this you have to make ALL your users install yet another program to make your page usable to them.. users HATE being told what they need to view something.

I have heard of people displaying thousands and even a million points in WWJava, but this is the first time someone has posted a screen shot of it action and saying that it does not affect, too badly, the performance of WWJava.

Article on CNN about farmers using GPS systems and auto-steering to cut fuel costs.

With auto-steering, a farmer manually drives the perimeter of a field to map its boundaries so the GPS gadget can then direct the tractor to carve near-perfectly straight rows. A few systems will even turn the tractor around at the end of each row. By cutting down on overlap, the system saves fuel, and it means the same ground won't be planted twice or sprayed unnecessarily with fertilizer or pesticides.

John Deere has a demonstration video of their iTEC Pro system in use.

From the ECOresearch web site:

The vision of a Geospatial Web promotes the convergence of geographic information, Internet technology and social change. Taking a step towards this vision, the Media Watch on Climate Change uses automated content analysis to extract geospatial context and build a geotagged knowledge base. The interface provides various means to interactively access this knowledge base. It shows that geobrowsers are not only suited to explore geographic features, but can also render other types of imagery such as three-dimensional knowledge planets.

As you can see in the screen shot, the browser window is split into six panes.  The three on the right are all using the WWJava code base.  The top module I have talked about before in my Knowledge Planet post,  clicking on that map changes the content in the left three panes.  The middle module is an Ontology view of news topics and how they relate/link to each other.  The last module is the standard WWJava applet showing a flat earth and news stores are located by the markers shown.

If you click on any of the three modules, it changes the other modules and shows news stories related to where you have clicked, also the tab bar across the top, you can turn on or off any of the modules.

This setup and use of WWJava makes for an interesting, though confusing at first, way of viewing global news stories and how stories and topics all relate to each other.