Autostitch™ :: a new dimension in automatic image stitching

http://www.cs.ubc.ca/~mbrown/autostitch/autostitch.html

Aerial photos could track home projects County mulls deal with high-tech firm THE FLINT JOURNAL| March 20, 2005 By Marjory Raymer To learn more

	Aerial photos could track home projects County mulls deal with high-tech firm THE FLINT JOURNAL| March 20, 2005 By Marjory Raymer To learn more about Pictometry Visual Intelligence, check out the company's Web page at www.pictometry.com. Registered users also can see examples of detailed pictures and limits on photo resolution under the Frequently Asked Questions link. New technology soon could let government officials look right into your back yard to see your new deck - and then check whether you filed the proper permits. Genesee County officials are considering using Pictometry Visual Intelligence, a new, ultra-detailed data and aerial photograph system that can show a picture from up to 12 different angles and lets users combine the pictures with all sorts of material - even a tool to measure how big that deck is. "What we tell our customers is, with this system you can see everywhere, measure anything and plan everything that you want to plan," said Dante Pennacchia, senior vice president of marketing and sales for Pictometry International Corp. The program would allow firefighters to see how tall buildings are, SWAT teams to plan escape routes and 911 operators to see exactly where people in need are, Pennacchia said. The Pictometry system would cost an estimated $250,000, with Genesee County and local municipalities picking up the tab. But some taxpayers may not be thrilled by the Big Brother aspects of the system and the prospect of government peering too closely into their space. Pat McDougall, 53, of Flint, whose taxes keep going up because assessors find improvements to his property, said he doesn't like the idea. "I just personally think it's very intrusive," McDougall said. "What if your daughter is laying out in the back yard sunning herself?" Gregory Gibbs, chairman of the Greater Flint chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union, said courts have ruled that aerial photographs are not an invasion of privacy, but he worries how far government will push the technology. "The back yard - that is a special place. It's an extension of the home for a lot of people," Gibbs said. "From (the ACLU's) standpoint, we are very concerned about the use of technology that invades the privacy of the average citizen. We watch it very closely." Company and local officials said protecting personal privacy should not be a concern for residents. Only government entities are supposed to have access to the photos, and the pictures are taken only every two years, so it's not like the government can look and see what's happening in your back yard at any given moment, said Robert Carra, director of geographic information systems for the county, who is heading a committee considering the project. And, Pennacchia said, it's important to realize that the system's zoom capabilities are limited because the pictures become blurry squares called pixels under high magnification. Faces and license plates are never distinguishable using the software, Pennacchia said. "We've chosen just the right balance between privacy and being able to see things on buildings," he said. As for that deck scenario, though, it's real life. Craig Witmer, district manager for Pictometry out of Indianapolis, last week showed a group of township officials how the detailed images could show line striping on roads, home plate on baseball fields and backyard decks. As a first-time homeowner, Witmer said, he didn't realize he needed a permit for a deck on his house and got caught by county officials using his own software. Aerial photography including pictures of back yards across the county is nothing new. Genesee County, like most counties, has long used aerial photographs in planning offices. Traditionally, though, the photographs are taken looking straight down, which show outlines of buildings. Taken from a higher altitude, the photos also have less detail. Pictometry takes pictures at an angle from multiple cameras mounted on the bottoms of planes, and at two altitudes to give perspective. It also combines the pictures with other data so users can pick out addresses or coordinates, see property lines, calculate distances and areas and even measure the slope of hills. "This is something brand new for us and fairly new in the industry," said Bob Slattery, director of information systems and planning for the Genesee County Road Commission. "It's not just the newness that's cool about it. It's the uses." The federal government, Massachusetts, Rhode Island and 125 counties nationwide already use Pictometry, a 4-year-old system. Genesee County could be the first in Michigan to employ the system, although Jackson County also is considering it. Genesee County officials are still in the early stages of considering Pictometry. The earliest the system could go into effect is probably this fall, Carra said.

Eid Wishes

Navigational Brains

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7613621.stm

weekend break lagi

Welcome Summer

look a like

Weekend back to back from pier to pier

Cradling old baby

Break - Park Drive Ku Cuba

Brief History of Geo Sense

Communicasia 2008 Singapore EXPO

Weekend Break

Geo Sense Data

Take a bite, iPhone 3G Out

Malaysia UAV initiatives

Following is some local initiatives on UAV system:-

http://star-techcentral.com/tech/story.asp?file=/2007/5/16/technology/20070516133831&sec=technology
http://www.btimes.com.my/Current_News/BTIMES/Thursday/Nation/hsapu.xml/Article/index_html
http://thestar.com.my/news/story.asp?file=/2007/12/4/nation/19652979&sec=nation
(pls scroll to the bottom section in here - http://www.asiafinest.com/forum/lofiversion/index.php/t95071.html
http://utusan.com.my/utusan/info.asp?y=2008&dt=0529&pub=Utusan_Malaysia&sec=Sains_%26_Teknologi&pg=st_01.htm

a bunch of local university efforts
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5_ThqUD3BJY
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KORH1IUw-c8
--

Eye oN MaLaysia

This guy/s have been flying around taking Malaysia aerial photo (actually not really Malaysia, he is taking heli in and around Klang valley, he said, it cost a bomb to fly away from KL. http://eyeonmalaysia.wordpress.com/

Investment in MLB UAV

| View | Upload your own

Where Jungle

Behind Street View

http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/industry/4232286.html
http://labs.live.com/photosynth/
http://google-latlong.blogspot.com/
http://www.cio.com/article/354013/Google_Takes_Street_View_Snaps_in_Paris_Lawsuits_May_Follow

Google Street View Tech Talk

Speaker: Luc Vincent, Google
Date: Thursday, February 14 2008
Time: 12:00PM to 1:00PM
Location: 34-401A (Grier A)
Contact: Victoria Palay, 617.253.8924, palay@csail.mit.edu
Relevant URL:

Unveiled in May 2007, the Street View feature of Google Maps is the result of a substantial engineering effort by a team including mechanical engineers, software engineers, UI designers, computer vision scientists and scores of others. As is true with a number of other projects at Google, the initial vision for Street View was actually provided by Google co-founder Larry Page, who personally collected a street scene video from his moving car in order to bootstrap research in this area. Turning this initial vision into a product required developing major new pieces of technology, including: a robust data collection platform (i.e., a van with lots of camera equipment), a fancy system for computing accurate pose from several imperfect sensors, various software components to stitch, blend, color correct and warp collected imagery, efficient systems to manage a Gargantuan flow of data, JavaScript and Flash software components to integrate Street View to Google Maps, and many others. This presentation will go over some of these components and give the audience a peek at the Street View project from behind the scene.

Luc Vincent joined Google in 2004 as an 'Uber Tech Lead' and is presently responsible for several engineering projects centered around computer vision, including Google's Optical Character Recognition (OCR) efforts and the recently unveiled Street View project, which he
helped bootstrap.

Before Google, Luc was Chief Scientist, and then Vice President of Document Imaging at LizardTech, a developer of advanced image compression software. Prior to this, he led a large research and development team at the prestigious Xerox Palo Alto Research Center (PARC). He was also Director of Software Development at Scansoft (now Nuance) and held various technical management and individual contributor positions at Xerox Corporation.

Luc has over 60 publications in the area of vision, image analysis and document understanding. He recently served as an Associate Editor for the IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence (PAMI) and for the Journal of Electronic Imaging. He has also served
as chair for SPIE's conferences on Document Recognition, the International Symposium on Mathematical Morphology (ISMM), and in the program committee of numerous conferences and workshops.

Luc earned his B.S. from Ecole Polytechnique, M.S. in Computer Science from University of Paris XI, and PhD in Mathematical Morphology from the Ecole des Mines de Paris in 1990.

See other events happening in February 2008

VTOL UAV

Jack Dangermond of ESRI & me of Geo Sense

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Dangermond

Where Google Camp From Google Campus to Skudai Malaysia

WhereCamp 2008 - Program

Day 1 Program at Wherecamp 2008 / xcrosspath.com was in Beirut 5:30pm



Day 2 : Geotude Day

Wherecamp 2008 : Google Campus Mountain View CA

BAT3 Demo with MLB near Gilroy CA

where 2.0 2008

where 2.0 Day 2 13 May 2008. conference

It a sunny much warmer morning in Bay Area.

9am – utilizing mapping, google map disaster relief works.
OpenStreetMap (OSM) http://www.openstreetmap.org/
Utilizing available online services such as twetter, sms geo chat, InsTEDD + HumanLink, etc.

915am Eye-Fi – making geotagging effertless. http://www.eye.fi/ eye-fi is wireless card in digitl camera to connect/uploud to wifi & to services like flicr, etc. Integrated with wayport http://www.wayport.com/ (10k hotsport in US).
(can apply for cradle grant – inventorized South East Asia hotspot :)

930am http://www.frogdesign.com/ – form follow function. design object, look landmark, route, maps. form follow emotion. trusted trip content about icon design, guide users etc. Personalize travel guide (product). (what about a visitor arried at airport buy the simcard with gps chip & the card guide/advice where&where to go :)
Merian Scout navigator UI (ggogle)

940am – http://www.djangoproject.com/ http://code.djangoproject.com/wiki/GeoDjango – houston crime maps etc. web application onlie. commoditization technology :) nerd centric presentation :)

955am – your car get an API - your content in the car – dash – dynamic search API, http://www.dash.net/
(cool!!!)

10am – NAVTEQ we only been about where – http://www.navteq.com/
mobile information revolution, pushing contents to users.
locally relevant. navteq is enabler. horizontal vs vertical. Asia LBS challenge in Spore (2008). http://www.navteq.com/developer

break 45min (chat with UCLA researcher doing vrml for history on google)

11am – http://www.flickr.com/ – tagging & geocoding, proximity,

1115am – www.locationware.org – lOCATION Able channels. www.geocaching.com drive highly relevant contents. KISS (keep it simple stupid).
collaboratuion – mozilla labs + skyhook wireless

1125am – groundspeak / geocaching – www.geocaching.com
geo gaming. whereigo (creating media rich experience) experience geo caching game to content development
jeremy@groundspeak.com

1137am – PlatnetEye GeoData – crawler
structuring image to relevant data
standard of addresses – varies between countaries,
low resolution geo coding, ???
challenge to match address to the same location
flaw in current visualization technique
Retrieval of dataset
juan@planetEye.com

115pm – google map demo – 9 features announcements. google maps is google.
google is updating more enabling layers (indexing services such as wikipedia and pictures) in mapping and searching options capability. web on google map. enabling user read news on google maps. bring contents on maps, vizualization.bring from geo web data.

140pm – history joker pt 3

150pm – VC venrock http://www.venrock.com/
http://nextwave.com/
geo is impacting many industries
stressing PND important USD30bil in US.
area of interest:
geomobile
geocar (new media company)

210pm – http://www.openlocation.org/
twitter vision local
about location and proximity
about increasing access to opportunity
GeoHash

220pm – what did public interest on satellite
integrate satellite imagery
orbinal marketing scheme
realtime imagery

235pm – locating handset
http://developer.wavemarket.com/veriplace/about

245-250pm – autodesk digital cities
http://usa.autodesk.com/adsk/servlet/index?id=11053875&siteID=123112

3pm – breaks – visualization add up map. the challenge in not just accuracy but relevant and visualizing stunning map on geo sense, what tools needed? and available iconic options .

330pm – INSTEDD - TED – funded google.org
geo info in humanitarian or disaster situations. using available tech

350pm – Lifemapper.com http://www.lifemapper.org/

405pm – google GMM
cell-id – collecting cell power info
gps vs center of the map,
clustering algorithms – gps clustering vs non gps
approximately 300m
collecting info about cell tower
improve accuracy, to use Android, Gear (SDK)
http://code.google.com/android/

420pm – http://www.freebase.com/
semantically structured data
relevant search http://www.metaweb.com/about/mgmtteam.html

435pm – http://www.afrigadget.com/
gis + gps being easier to use
ushahidi (google)
crisis scenario mapping – how to help ngo visualize data

bye

where 2.0 2008, Burlingame San Francisco Tue. 13, Day 1 Conference

presentation – where 2.0 – open for change
list of speaker http://en.oreilly.com/where2008/public/schedule/speakers

9-915am – http://www.everyblock.com/ – chicagocrime.org all public complain etc on the maps. question;who really contribute the data? taking advantage of existing data. Gov should focuses not on data. adrian@everyblock.com
adrian advices service provider offering their own maps, use some map tools like http://mapnik.org/demo/ everyblock is funded by grants. they dont know how make money, may be local advertisers. req. getting city and neighborhood's boundaries.

930am- Nokia LBS http://www.ovi.com/ovi/app/ovi/web/index/
nokia maps 2.0 global mapping solutions. maps on Ovi. you 'r good to go. contents web centric. internet and mobile internet.

935am – geography of the web. support by CIA http://www.inqtel.org/
http://www.geocommons.com/
http://finder.geocommons.com/ *** download data to KLM, SHAPEFILE and SPREADSHEET !!!!
rating the services and map them
Isnt this what we want to do years ago.
silos of geodata
federate geo data
sean@geocommons.com

950pm – google john hanky, vision of geographic web, documenting web pages, geography in organizing data. geoweb is spreading. geotagging media. geosearch. launch Geo Search API - http://googlemapsmania.blogspot.com/2007/07/google-maps-geo-search-part-12.html
google – KML is part of OGC
ESRI founder – ESRI is into mashup + integrated to consumer mapping, into Geoweb 2.0 (metadata directory, KML, Javascript/Flex), search distributed application. modeling and projectory.

1015am-break, brief I had the opportunity to hai and photo shot with ESRI Founder Jack Dangermond http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Dangermond and his vision http://www.govtech.com/gt/247185 he looking forward to revisit Malaysia. will upload the pic in the blog.

11am – https://loopt.com/loopt/sess/index.aspx –
https://loopt.com/loopt/aboutUs.aspx
social networking, mobile location clients. / platform. Location Access Management – dev location aware app and publish on web.

1115am – modeling crowd behavior
this is what my paper on managing haj (2002).
synthetic data analysis http://geosimulation.org/crowds/
apply to real world issues, identifying, contingency,
applying mapping simulation for diseases etc

1130am – poly9 freeearth http://www.poly9.com/
http://www.gisuser.com/content/view/14631/
??? not to be mistaken with http://investing.businessweek.com/research/stocks/snapshot/snapshot.asp?capId=1532471

1145am – Autodesk in mapping construction and infrastructure (in US). inc. fatality due to bad road conditions. geospatial enable. Building Info Modeling (BIM, 3D Vizualization (simulation) for LEED cerification , COO etc. demo transparent view of underground facility,
citizen participation / involvement if enough info such as spatial and mapping data is available to everybody.
creating interactive environment.

break – lunch

130pm – http://fireeagle.yahoo.net/
brokerage to location contents
user location with fireeagle
dopplr – social network for frequent travelers
OAuth – security & verification
updating location
users/collaborator services; – navizon, loki, zonrtag, brighkite,spot (gps logging-good for xrosspath, but why ppls what to be tracked??), wikinear (wikipedia pages near you), Lightpole, outsidein, fireball, proximizer, moveabletype.twitter. friend on fire

fireeagle has the intention of geotude/xrosspath except they really tag to ready services.
& why malsingmap not evolve like this directions, or we can approach malsingmap community for add value services.

1:50pm – SAP presentation on how VR stimulation help business corp.
tracking nad tracing
utilizing in building maintenances and city maintenance.

2pm – panel. how get pay.
- adv relevancy, marketing services platform,location targeted. subscription, pay per access, etc.
in conclusion, they all not really sure how to make money from location info services.

240pm – Bugs Labs http://buglabs.net/ – creating programmable GPS with BUG. hardware mashup, buglabs, devices with sdk = = rendered into web services
- telematic module,
challenge is who going to fund in connecting every devices wit bug labs.

235pm – feotate – http://geotate.com/
geo tagging

C&P
SwGPS – connect to laptop and geotate server ?? – for prison tagging. contact – Johan.Peeters@geotate.com

3pm – earthscape – http://www.earthscape.com/
hand on augmented heli demo.

310pm – Vincent tao, microsoft virtual earth. – what is where, where 2.0- location matters. info indexed by location. ppls cme to site not because of the mapping but the contents/apps of the site. location is enabler, (geosense is enabler??) destination search,
Microsoft invests in imagery – aerial photo, – automated image processing pipeline. automated 3D city model generation. crowd sourcing.

430pm http://secondlife.com/ – secondlife mashup with google maps.
digital urban, taking street & building data to real world data. immersive map of real worlds, retention f memory/experience.
represent idea/data in 3D = we life, dream in 3D. www.nwn.blog.com

440pm anthony – http://www.earthmine.com/
http://www.earthmine.com/beta/
provide based layers to services

450pm Pict'Earth – http://pictearthusa.com/
cover few hundred acres
applications
accuracy, freshness and availability

5pm Everscape.com – http://www.everyscape.com/
record, search and share
what about the inside. indoor tagging!!
POI - most POI inside
eyes level visual presentation
visual touring test
what about the inside.
what the address of the thing / tag / geotude???

Teleatlas – Pat McDevitt http://www.teleatlas.com/index.htm
the long tail of map content
for long, all navigation is local, where is relative
y=hit base x=niche based
paleogeographers & neogeographers
when you rich, you can be more philosophical about what you doing :)

515pm ESRI - launch ArcGIS server 9.3, emphasized on KML
http://www.esri.com/software/arcgis/arcgisserver/about/whats-coming.html

530pm – weathertrend – http://www.wxtrends.com/
relation weather to commodity and now supply of foods etc.

540pm- Open Source UAV - http://diydrones.com/
http://valleywag.com/tech/chris-anderson/a-drone-debate-leaves-wireds-editor-unmanned-293211.php
why – long term access to the sky
stabilization + navigation
http://www.thelongtail.com/the_long_tail/2007/08/can-open-source.html
infrared stabalizer – PTGUI (stick images) 3cm resolution !! resolution frm UAV - 3cm. low cost access to the sky
- gps hardware on the loops
- ArduPilot, open source auto pilot.
- BlimpDuino – autonomous blimp
what is regulation –
co need to apply for export license.
cheap, easy and ubiquitous – open sourse technologist.

cheers

where 2.0 2008, Burlingame San Francisco Mon. 12, May. Workshop Day 1

Forum from user experinence on Google API
1. Travel site of
http://www.ichotelsgroup.com/h/d/hi/1/en/hotelsearchresults?bcFrom=null&packageRatesFlag=null&_requestid=455374
replace MQ maps with google maps http://www.ichotelsgroup.com/h/d/6c/1/en/hotelsearchresults?bcFrom=null&packageRatesFlag=null&_requestid=457995

- tourism industry want maps that less complicated, simple hotel location finders,
- travel industry will need more mapping
-
2. navx - http://blog.navx.com/
http://beta.navx.com/connect/
- french startup
- cool project
- hope we can help this program in geo sense
- sharing location etc
- community platform to publish community generated geo contents. - this is how to populate geo content in a platform.
- & use google map as platform
- study their beta site, they use FLEX , javascript and google api , http://coenraets.org/blog/2006/06/google-maps-collaboration-using-flex-flash-media-server-and-ajax-updated-for-flex-2-ga/

3. www.realestate.com - http://www.realestate.com/tipsandtools/
- there is 97 million property addresses in US :)
- home valuation
- giving controls to user - i find this is key to most mapping services, giving features for user to do it them self DIY.
- property application is among the priority in geo sense platform, easy to make money and valuable contents to not just property buyer/owner but also valuer, lawyer, banker, insurance, etc.
- the presenter stress user experience, he stress, cache at proxy, local process. I think this matter, if slow, people don't use the map/application

4. www.kayak.com
- making informed travel location
- educate user thru experience
- idea - how to make in geosense such like easy cataloging system to user to list down their location info.
- building API for other to use our application.

Questions / Comments
- question on how to monetize (make money) from mapping application
- what motivate people to share location info.
- provide right platform to motivate people to share info (location info)
- user corrected geo coding
- mapping inaccuracy issues -
- proxy for secured connection
- post GIS post queries,
- make mapping very-very easy to use
- privacy issues

Open Source workshop

The Geo Stack
- tutorial on installing geoserver
- . 1. need to install java
2. http://geoserver.org/display/GEOS/Welcome
- I wonder why mapserver people are not around
3. styling feature using SLD
4.it all about publishing maps
I have all the files to install geoserver & openlayer, pls let me know if needed to try.

I am too jetlagging to continue the tutorial, when out for some cookies & lemonade.

Tutorial Web 2.0 Enterprise mashup from Autodesk.
1. tutorial on installing mapguide and mapguide studio
2. many copies, pastes and scroll downing.
3. I have the trial CD of mapguide, if need to try, pls let me know.

note. Autodesk is serious about going web 2.0 & mashup.

salam

Evening - Ignite 5 min presentations

Can we catchup with them;

Ignite and launch pad is event (7pm - 9pm) where 20-30 startup talk about their project in 5 min.
I share some interesting projects being presented this evening in where 2.0 Burlingame SF.

http://mapufacture.com/

http://www.patientslikeme.com/ - to push for moh
http://crashmap.us/cgi-bin/index.pl
http://gpsmission.com/
http://www.whrrl.com/
http://www.ipoki.com/
http://databasin.org/ - this project has most functionalities that geosense try to explore, (pls study) ***
http://www.maponics.com/Neighborhood_Data/neighborhood_data.html

neighborhood data from prof of berkley UC. ??? good

http://www.greenmap.org/
http://www.greenmap.org/ -

UK access data - a finance dude that presenting the need for free geo data access in UK, without data you can't built services
changing gov mind on data access

http://www.pushpin.com/ - launching free API
http://rest.alpha.pushpin.com/states/CA/cities
http://www.concharto.com/home.htm - vs crosspath? www.xcrosspath.com - it does not cross to other data.
http://www.focation.com/sg/ - location grid
http://en.oreilly.com/where2008/public/schedule/detail/359 - can outsource mapping project?
http://openspace.ordnancesurvey.co.uk/openspace/index.html
http://wheresthepath.googlepages.com/wheresthepath.htm

salam

where 2.0 2008, Burlingame SF.

What in my bag