Google Earth imagery was updated on May 9, but the entry for Scotland simply reads "large percentage covered now" at the moment, with no further detail.
The new imagery is yet to be pushed to Google Map, so it is possible to compare the two products at the moment to check if an area is a new inclusion.
There are no detailed reports by users of the areas covered, and I suspect that there may not be - it is only Scotland after all
Update
I'd lost my usual "insider" link for info on Google map info earlier (damn these urges to tidy things! ), but have found it now, and this confirms there is no detailed info or listing released regarding the new areas covered in Scotland, but it does hint that there might be more info released later.
Found this while fumbling around GE - not Scotland, but not disappointing...
Activate the 360Cities layer in GE, and either look at the south coast of England, where you will see a single, round, orange 360 marker...
Or Fly to Nothe Fort and look for the orange 360 marker on the point just south of the ferry lying at the harbour - it may be buried in the midst of some other distracting markers unless you zoom in a bit closer to the ground.
Click on the marker, and just wish we had something like that up here that was in a similar condition
The date of all the images used is now shown in the left hand corner of GE status bar at the bottom of the view.
There are no "new" images in GE, and although there are updates which replace older images, you can expect to be looking at much that is back in the time 2002.
Even Google can't keep flying planes - or buying new versions of images they already have on file.
The addition of the date is handy, as you can check places you know, or know have been changed, and see just how the change has affected them.
Or if you're a tabloid newspaper, you can have headlines with the word CONSPIRACY in them, and bleat about places that are still in lo-res, and make claims that government agencies are forcing Google to suppress the images to hide bases where alien craft are being stored and tested, or ICBM silos are being concealed - not forgetting the odd bit of Atlantis.
It's worth noting that this imagery is only new to to Google Earth, and has been freely available online for years - I've been using it, and it comes from a commercial supplier of such imagery and has been on sale for years as digital or printed photographs (something the tabloids also chose to ignore, so they could write silly stories about Faslane for example, claiming that the nuclear sub base had been censored from Google's aerial views).
There's a working preview of the Microsoft Live Local system that shows street level views like Google Street View. The example shows a small area around a couple of American city centres, San Francisco and Seattle at the moment.
Unlike the Google offering, there is no set schedule or program to be followed to cover any specific area, and they will not be sending out any sort of photographic teams.
Instead, they will be looking for contributed pictures and use an existing image processing system - PhotoSynth, or possibly GeoSynth when used for this - to knit together the contributed images to provide the final view at street level.
Microsoft thinks the system is now ready, as GeoSynth, to become a virtualized, crowd-sourced, image-driven world map. The service will take the images and metadata from geotagged imagery supplied by the public to a special database and form them into Streetview-like world view application. Microsoft Virtual Earth expert Johannes Kebeck explained that the system will apparently be moderated somehow, so the "system would take the best images from a location to create a single image of a specific landmark".
(I didn't write the following bit, and I don't quite understand it, so am just including it as a quote for information. It's dated March 2009 for currency.)
GeoSynth sounds clever, and it's certainly a much more cost-effective way of sourcing the images than having a fleet of specialized cars drive across the planet. Plus, where there are sites of specific interest, such as a famous landmark, the PhotoSynth aspect should allow you to view even more detailed imagery than is possible from Google's system. GeoSynth hasn't officially been announced, but it's reportedly due to arrive "later in the year."
Update: It seems that Johannes Kebeck's words have gone slightly awry in between him saying them and them ending up in the news. Microsoft has just contacted us to clear up the situation, and according to their spokesman: "Johannes Kebeck’s comments were taken somewhat out of context. GeoSynth is a standalone version of Photosynth offered by Vexcel that is licensed to public sector companies. There are no immediate plans to integrate GeoSynth into the consumer facing version of Live Search Maps. Photosynth collections are already included in Live Search Maps in the U.S." That's cleared that up--though it seems a shame that there won't be a public-facing version of GeoSynth coming directly from Microsoft.
If MSoft Live are going to use submitted pictures then I hope they screen them well, the ones on Google are often nowhere near the correct location. Many seem to just drop them onto the town whilst on quite a small scale, others don't even get the right town/area.
It's a waste of time trying to report errors to Google - the local A&E hospital is in the wrong position on just about all online mapping systems including Google.
The errors are not down to Google, and there's no point in reporting any location errors to them, they can't do anything about them.
That's why your hospital is in the "wrong" positon on most of the online systems.
The classic was once the location of the ferry port at Portavadie - life would have been tough if you had followed the map blindly
They purchase the mapping and location data from commercial organisations, and simply re-use it. The supplier names can be seen in the copyright statements at the bottom of the screen, and can be seen to vary as you move through the maps/views.
If you want to report a error, that's where the report has to be sent.
When the source is corrected, the Google view will be corrected.
There are also deliberate errors introduced.
These are documented and used by the source to bring actions against organisations that copy or clone the information published, rather than buying it from the source that compiled it. As these errors are different in every system, they can be used to identify where the data was stolen from.
I realise that it is the source of the mapping data and tried to get them to correct it. But there are other things on Google that are difficult (or impossible) to get corrected. The temperatures on their weather summary bear little resemblance to reality, I did wonder if they were using a temperature from the summit of Aonach Mor for Fort William but seen others in different countries also complaining. Perhaps it is their source but Yahoo, BBC etc all seem to manage to find an accurate source. They have a regular error on their News pages where they attribute some news items to "BBC Bulgaria" for no apparent reason. Again tried to tell them but it is like banging your head on the proverbial brick wall.
Again, if they are buying in the news or weather feeds, there is no point in telling them, since they are only serving information they have subscribed to. They might not even be paying for some of these, and that would give some funny info sometimes, but no fee means no comeback. There will be no staff to deal with changing it (since they can't anyway), and if the world is telling them there are errors, then it would be an impractical and never ending job replying to everyone.
But, you've got me curious now.
I'd never use Google, or any other aggregator for weather or news, preferring to go to source to avoid the very problems you describe, that way I know the credentials of the national organisation providing the data, or conversely, if it's coming from a private or commercial venture. But that's just down to me and the fact that I work with data from others, and inherently don't trust it until the source is known. I can't even stop doing that even when I'm playing
Could you drop a few urls to the services you've mentioned with the odd info please - I'd like to keep an eye out now that I know about them, and look at one or two.
The weather is just a summary that you can add to your iGoogle page. I would thought that if they are buying the information then they would be even more concerned that it is wrong. There are always quite a few degrees colder.
The news service just searches for various topics and keywords then displays on a page with the source. Often the source is "BBC Bulgaria" when it has come off the main BBC site - you know that because that is where it takes you when you click on the link.
Has anyone else found old-maps.co.uk acting strangely? I can now only see the bottom half of the already small map area as the top half is obscured by the samples of other maps of the area.
Or is this related to the fact that I ugraded to IE8 today?
I was trying the Auchenreoch area if it makes anyy difference.
Has anyone else found old-maps.co.uk acting strangely? I can now only see the bottom half of the already small map area as the top half is obscured by the samples of other maps of the area.
Or is this related to the fact that I ugraded to IE8 today?
I was trying the Auchenreoch area if it makes anyy difference.
IE8 is the problem but changing onto Compatability mode takes you back to the home page unless you are already running in that mode before you click on the page link. If I want to use old-maps I do use FX but I am only raising it on behalf of visitors, the majority of whom come via IE.
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