Knol will allow people to write about their areas of expertise under their own names, and users will need permission to edit entries

Eric Auchard
Sun

SAN FRANCISCO — Google Inc. opened its website Knol to the public on Wednesday, allowing people to write about their areas of expertise under their bylines in a twist on encyclopedia Wikipedia, which allows anonymity.

“We are deeply convinced that authorship — knowing who wrote what — helps readers trust the content,” said Cedric DuPont, product manager for Knol.

The name of the service is a play on an individual unit of knowledge, DuPont said, and entries on the public website, http://knol.google.com, are called “knols.” Google conducted a limited test of the site beginning in December.

Knol has publishing tools similar to single blog pages. But unlike blogs, Knol encourages writers to reduce what they know about a topic to a single page that is not chronologically updated.

“What we want to get away from is this ‘last voice wins’ model, which is very difficult if you are a busy professional,” DuPont said.

Google wants to rank entries by popularity to encourage competition. For example, the first knol on “Type 1 Diabetes” is by Anne Peters, director of the University of Southern California‘s Clinical Diabetes Programs.

As other writers publish on diabetes, Google plans to rank related pages according to user ratings, reviews and how often people refer to specific pages, DuPont said.

Knol focuses on individual authors or groups of authors in contrast to Wikipedia’s subject entries, which are updated by users and edited behind the scenes.

Knol does not edit or endorse the information and visitors will not be able to edit or contribute to a knol unless they have the author’s permission. Readers will be able to notify Google if they find any content objectionable.

Knol is a hybrid of the individual, often opinionated entries found in blogs and the collective editing relied on by Wikipedia and other wiki sites.

The service uses what it calls “moderated collaboration” in which any reader of a specific topic page can make suggested edits to the author or authors, who retain control over whether to accept, reject or modify changes before they are published.

In its early stages, Knol remains a far cry from Wikipedia, www.wikipedia.org, which boasts seven million collectively edited articles in 200 languages.

Google signed a deal with Conde Nast’s New Yorker, giving Knol authors the rights to use one of the magazine’s famous cartoons in each Knol posting. Google will allow Knol writers to run ads on their entries and will share income with them.

DuPont said that rather than competing with Wikipedia, Knol may end up serving as a primary source of authoritative information for use with Wikipedia articles.

“Knols will fill gaps on what we have on the Web today. That is what we hope,” DuPont said.

© The Vancouver Sun 2008

Hackers could use flaw in traffic routing system to send users to malicious sites

Jessey Bird
Sun

OTTAWA — Security experts are urging Internet server administrators to act quickly to head off what they are calling the “single largest threat to Internet security.”

A critical flaw in the system used to route Internet traffic could let hackers redirect surfers to dangerous websites, said Christopher Davis, chief executive of Ottawa-based Defence Intelligence.

Davis says this could lead to attackers replacing search engines, social-networking sites and even banking websites with their own “malicious” content.

Government and Internet service provider officials say they are taking the threat to their domain-name servers seriously, but do not have any actual examples of the attack, called “DNS cache poisoning,” to report.

Six months ago, IOActive security researcher Dan Kaminsky discovered a major flaw in how Internet addresses function.

“DNS is kind of the 411 for the Internet,” said Kaminsky, explaining that similar to phone numbers for people, servers on the Internet also have numerical addresses.

Domain-name servers connect the names Internet users type in — such as “google.com” or “facebook.com” — to the numerical addresses of the computers they’re trying to reach.

What Kaminsky discovered was that in just seconds, a malicious hacker could poison a domain-name server and reroute users to different websites from the ones they are seeking.

Hackers could also route people to copycat websites that would enable them to steal people’s personal information.

“This attack works very, very well,” he said. “Any website that you trust is not necessarily the website that you are looking for. Every e-mail you send is not necessarily going where you think.”

At the time of the discovery, Kaminsky and industry giants, such as Microsoft and Cisco, acted quickly to create a patch for the flaw, while keeping the exact nature of the problem secret. They released their fix two weeks ago.

Kaminsky promised to discuss the problem at a technical conference in August, so other security experts could learn from his work; that would give Internet providers about a month to install the fix.

But after the details of the flaw were leaked, Kaminsky and Davis say they are worried hackers might know enough to cause problems — and service providers haven’t had enough time to install the patch.

Bruce Schneier, chief security technology officer for British Telecom, stressed there is no need for the public to panic.

“Kaminsky was hoping there would be a full month for people to patch their system,” said Schneier, adding the leak has made Internet users “more vulnerable.”

“But let’s face it — you’re not going to die,” he said. “Money is stolen out of banks every day. Is it a worse way than all the other ways? Probably not,” he continued. “Is it a serious way? Yes. Have there been other serious ways? Yes. Are we still here? Yes.”

Davis said that while the Canadian government has been quick to respond, many are still downplaying the issue.

“People just aren’t understanding the scope and the depth and the breadth of the issue, and I really want to get that message out there because it is really scary,” he said.

He said he believes the flaw was “weaponized” Wednesday evening after a hacker released a program to make invading the DNS servers simple.

“This is honestly the worst thing for the Internet … but because so many quasi-security guys have been crying wolf for so many years, nobody has been picking up on it.”

© The Vancouver Sun 2008

John Morrissy
Sun

OTTAWA – The end of Canada‘s wireless spectrum auction and its promise of increased competition comes on a day when new data shows Canadians, who pay some of the highest cellphone rates in the world, lag much of the world in mobile phone use.

According to a global study by market research firm TNS, 60 per cent of Canadians between ages 16 and 60 use a cellphone, a point “significantly below” the global average of 80 per cent.

This gap exists not only between Canada and other developed nations, but also against several in the developing world, said the TNS study of consumers in 30 countries, which was released Monday.

rate lower, but Canadians who don’t use cellphones are among the most averse in the world to joining the club, and rank only ahead of Mexico and Vietnam among the group known as “rejecters.”

“Canadians do not have the same attachment to and reliance on mobile phones as the rest of the world does,” said Michael Ennamorato, a senior vice-president at TNS Canadian Facts, a division of TNS.

The reason for that is price, says telecommunications analyst Eamon Hoey, who argues that high rates in Canada have caused cellphone use here to top out.

With rates in Canada higher than every other developed country, Hoey said, “Canadians have had it with the pricing.”

As an example, he cites the consumer revolt that Rogers was met with when it announced rates to be charged on its IPhone service.

This tough environment, and the high costs associated with building out new national networks, makes Hoey skeptical about the potential benefits to consumers of the wireless spectrum auction, which ended Monday with $4.25 billion in sales.

While analysts suggested the outcome will deliver between two and five new cellphone companies to choose from, Hey said the costs to the newcomers will be huge, in the rage of at least a billion dollars before they have acquired even a single customer.

The new players will have a tough row to hoe if they don’t do enough to differentiate themselves in terms of innovation and don’t get away from the long-term contracts consumers have come to dislike, Hoey said.

“If these newcomers are not innovative in price and service – i.e., in their value propositions – and they’re not strategic in how they answer this market, it may very well be a nothing at the end of the day.”

© Canwest News Service 2008

 

More wireless spectrum for auction in 18 months

Wojtek Dabrowski and Louise Egan
Province

OTTAWA — The federal government plans to sell off more wireless spectrum in the next year and a half, following a heated auction of airwaves that raised $4.25 billion and could soon reshape the country’s mobile-phone market.

“There is what I refer to as the 700-series bandwidth,” Industry Minister Jim Prentice told reporters. “There is an auction of that which will happen at some point in the future . . . as I recall, it’s about 18 months away.”

The 700 megahertz airwaves are considered valuable because they can cover long distances and more easily penetrate obstacles such as thick walls and buildings.

Such an auction could further shake up Canada‘s wireless landscape by opening up more spectrum to firms other than BCE, Telus Corp and Rogers Communications, the “Big Three” that currently rule the market.

In the U.S., major wireless carriers spent billions earlier this year on securing 700 megahertz licences. Verizon and AT&T won more than $16 billion of the licences, according to auction results.

“They scored big time in terms of government revenues,” Amit Kaminer, an analyst at telecom consulting firm SeaBoard Group, said of the U.S. auction. He added the 700 megahertz spectrum was formerly used for television broadcasting.

Prentice characterized the 700-series spectrum as “highly prized.” The auction that concluded on Monday was a sale of spectrum in the two-gigahertz range.

Prentice also said it could take up to a year to see increased competition in Canada‘s cellphone market in the wake of the latest auction.

“I’ve seen estimates . . . that it will be approximately a year before we see new competition, but I certainly anticipate that at some time between now and that date that we will begin to see new competition in the marketplace,” he said in Edmonton, Alberta.

Ottawa has taken steps to avoid “hoarding” by prohibiting new market entrants from selling their spectrum licences to the three big incumbents for the first five years of the 10-year licence, Prentice said. He added he expects those who won licenses will put the spectrum to “its highest productive use.” The auction, which ended on Monday after almost two months of bidding, raised more than twice the amount analysts had expected.

The government had set aside a chunk of airwaves exclusively for new players, a move aimed at fostering more competition and lowering prices for consumers. It has conditionally assigned 282 licences to 15 companies but will only award the final licences after ensuring the firms comply with a series of financial and ownership requirements.

© The Vancouver Province 2008

 

Eric Auchard
Sun

SAN FRANCISCO – Facebook Inc. is making sweeping changes to the world’s largest social networking site, aiming to give users more control and to curb new forms of spam, company officials said late on Sunday.

Facebook’s redesign aims to make user profiles more dynamic by giving more prominence to the newest information, and it is cracking down on applications that violate privacy or user-control guidelines.

“Users should have control of their information when and where they want,” said Ben Ling, the head of Facebook’s platform product management. “Users should share things because they want to share them.”

Facebook will offer members a cleaner and simpler set of the Web pages which make up personal profiles. These profiles, which can be organized into tabbed pages, let users share tidbits of their lives with select groups of friends or colleagues.

Previously, members could edit largely static parts of their profiles such as birth date, education or music interests.

“Facebook is making significant changes, both in terms of what information gets prominence and what gets buried,” said Gartner analyst Ray Valdes, adding that the changes may seem abrupt to many users.

“The company is trying to eliminate some of the toxic threats to the Facebook experience.”

VIRAL TRICKS

Facebook’s popularity has surged since the site became an open platform for independent designers to distribute their own Web programs 14 months ago — attracting developers who have created 24,000 programs, and inspiring a new Web vocabulary with terms like “SuperPoke.”

But the format has given rise to a new form of spam, nicknamed BACN (pronounced ba-con), which is sent by software makers using viral marketing tricks to flood members with confusing messages seemingly from friends.

Facebook’s existing design ended up rewarding many software makers for intrusive, attention-grabbing tactics, said Jeremiah Owyang, an analyst with Forrester Research.

“Facebook is trying to weed out the non-important social activities,” Owyang said. “The redesign makes your profile more relevant to other users, telling them who is doing what, where are they and what are they doing socially.”

Some of the most widely used applications from Facebook’s biggest independent developers, Slide Inc. and RockYou, were banned earlier this month until they complied with Facebook’s demands, Facebook’s Ling said.

Slide’s Top Friends program was only restored to Facebook after fixing privacy violations, while some features of Rock You’s Super Wall, which counts 500,000 active users, remain temporarily disabled, a Facebook spokeswoman said on Sunday.

TAKING ADVANTAGE

Facebook, which began in 2004 as a socializing site for college students, has become the world’s largest social network, overtaking News Corp’s rival site MySpace.

The latest changes aim to reward designers who create genuinely useful programs and to stop software makers from forcing members to promote their applications without fully knowing what they are doing.

“Some developers chose to build applications,” Ling said. “Others took advantage. Obviously it is not good for users, not good for other developers, not good for Facebook.”

Hadi Partovi, 34, president of music-sharing site iLike, said: “One big change is that Facebook users will effectively get to try before they buy.”

“The changes stop things from being automatically added to your profile without your okay,” Partovi said.

The moves are also meant to reassure members about privacy by helping them better understand how friends can see the personal information they publish. Facebook has been dribbling out details of these plans since early this year in an effort to reduce surprises for users.

It also gives users more control over tools they use to share snippets of text or photos, videos, music or other personal information with friends in their network, said Mark Slee, 24, product manager in charge of the profile redesign.

New profiles will first be offered as an optional view to members before gradually being implemented for everyone.

© Reuters 2008

Chuck Taylor
Sun

NEW YORK – Digital high-definition radio is hitting some key milestones in terms of pricing and features, but building enough momentum to spur broad consumer adoption remains a tall order.

Prices on some radio models have tumbled below $100. More automakers are offering HD radio as a factory or dealer-installed option. And the rollout of a feature enabling consumers to “tag” a song they like for purchase at Apple’s iTunes store provides a level of interactivity that traditional analog radio can’t match.

But four years after the first HD radio receivers hit the U.S. market and two years after RadioShack became the first retailer to start rolling them out nationwide, sales are still miniscule compared with the broader terrestrial radio market. In addition, consumer awareness continues to lag and such competitive options as satellite and Internet radio are complicating efforts to make the digital radio standard a mass-market phenomenon.

To date, nearly 1,750 AM/FM stations (out of a total of about 13,000 stations) covering 83% of the United States are broadcasting digitally, while about 800 offer original formats and content on HD side channels, according to iBiquity Digital, the developer and licensor of HD radio technology. U.S. HD radio sales totaled about 300,000 units in 2007, with about 1 million units expected to be sold this year, iBiquity says.

But that’s still only a tiny fraction of estimated annual radio sales of about 70 million. And according to a consumer survey conducted in January by Arbitron and Edison Media Research, only 24% of respondents said they had “heard/read anything recently about HD radio,” down slightly from 26% a year earlier.

About 60 HD receivers are now available in the States, including table-top units and car radios from such leading consumer and audiophile brands as Panasonic, Yamaha, Denon, Polk and Harman Kardon. Among the manufacturers breaking through the $100 price point is North Sioux City, S.D.-based Radiosophy, which specializes in HD radio receivers. The company’s portable HD100 radio, which includes a clock radio and an input jack for an MP3 player, costs $49.95 after a $50 rebate.

iBiquity president/CEO Bob Struble remains optimistic that falling prices will finally jump-start the HD market.

“It’s not a great mystery that a higher volume of radios will sell at a lower price,” Struble says. “We’ve seen this movie before with consumer electronics. Think of the first DVD players for $2,000. We are following a similar path to make it happen as quickly as we can. The price point is fundamentally important.”

But Edison VP Tom Webster counters that new technologies and lower prices won’t be enough to drive mass consumer adoption of HD radio. Instead, he argues, the industry needs to invest more in quality content.

“Programming is a regional crapshoot of varying quality,” Webster says. “The industry has to create value through the creation of strong, passionate brands that may be augmented by music, but stand for more than ‘one great song after another’ … Building brands takes the time, resources and energy of radio’s talented programmers and creative staff — but many are already programming three to five broadcast stations, so often the HD2 channel gets relegated to the back burner.”

Robert Unmacht, a media consultant and radio expert with iN3 Partners in Nashville, believes that broadcasters haven’t been aggressive enough in their launch of HD radio. “The problem is that it is being rolled out as if it’s a new radio invention, like FM,” he says. “If there were no competition from new media, it would be fine for this to gradually phase in and replace analog radio. But with so much competition, we don’t have that time to wait.”

The auto market has the potential to be a key sales channel for HD radio, as it has been for satellite radio. Automakers ranging from Ford and Volvo to BMW and Mercedes-Benz offer or plan to offer HD radio receivers in their vehicles. But HD radio is facing constraints in making further inroads.

As satellite broadcasters XM and Sirius await FCC approval of their proposed merger, some members of Congress have voiced support for iBiquity’s request that the FCC require all new satellite receivers to include HD radio capability. But General Motors and Toyota, the world’s two largest automakers, have come out against the proposal, arguing in a joint filing to the FCC that “any mandate will inherently distort the normal incentives to (reduce costs) and further improve the HD product offering.”

Of greater long-term concern is competition from Internet radio. Unmacht believes that automakers’ interest in HD radio will fade in favor of the promise of wireless connectivity. He foresees a day when vehicles offer a roster of interactive services, including a global positioning system, car monitoring (a la LoJack), baby monitoring and thousands of channels of audio online, all for one price.

“There will come a time where broadband will be like electricity, where you don’t even think of it as Internet,” he says. “It will be used for any number of devices in houses and cars.”

iBiquity’s Struble downplays the competitive threat from Web radio. “If you take the 3 (million)-4 million listeners of radio drive time, that would shut down a broadband network,” he says. “It simply doesn’t have the capacity. And if at some point the consumer is charged for the access, that spectrum is no longer free. Radio has an economically efficient pipe to distribute to a broad audience” — the airwaves.

In the near term, car-based Internet access is likely to remain available only at a premium, which will limit online radio’s reach, according to Edison‘s Webster. And that, he says, offers a window of opportunity.

“If HD is free and just comes with my car, then its potential exceeds the near- and mid-term potential for online radio in vehicles,” Webster says. “It’s easy to fall into the trap of the ‘futurist’ and assume free, ubiquitous Internet access will be available to all. Someday maybe, but in the intervening years, radio does have a gap — through an ever-closing window — to establish new, great digital brands that consumers will be loyal to wherever they are and whatever they are doing.”

© Reuters 2008

 

Jefferson Graham
USA Today

That question is the rocket fuel for Twitter — a hot social-network service that lets you tell people what you are up to at any given moment of the day — via cellphone, instant messenger, or the Web. Never heard of it, you say?

“What are you doing?” is the question Twitter asks “Twitterers” to answer in a simple text message as they connect with friends, co-workers or the wider world. Twitterers “tweet” about everything from what they had for lunch to how much they enjoyed their latest Netflix DVD. If that sounds silly and incredibly narrow at first, don’t worry, you’re not alone.

“When people hear about Twitter, their immediate reaction is that it’s the simplest and stupidest idea in the world,” says co-founder Biz Stone.

“They do not want to know that their brother is eating a hot dog right now,” he says. “But then they discover that their friends are on it. And so are the L.A. Fire Department, NASA and JetBlue. Then they get it.”

Boy, do they.

Twitter has become so popular, so fast, that keeping up with its fast-growing user base is a real issue. So many people now use Twitter to update friends that the system often crashes.

That could be about to change. Twitter executives are working feverishly to solve the problem through a new investment ($15 million, according to several tech blogs) from Spark Capital and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and putting off expansion plans (i.e., making money) until the network issues are resolved.

“Twitter took off really quickly, and honestly, we were surprised and had to play a lot of catch-up,” says Stone. “Now we’re focusing 100% on reliability.”

Twitter no longer exists just for friends to tell friends that they’re on their way to the gym or out to eat. It’s become a kind of hypergrapevine news resource — a way of instant messaging your circle of friends about your interests (“Did you hear what Obama said today?”) or consumer rants and raves (“The customer service at Zappos.com rocks!”).

The service is even credited with breaking news about fires and other natural disasters.

Twitterers, as they call themselves, post their updates at Twitter.com or by using text- or instant-message tools.

A cottage industry of websites — including TweetScan, FriendFeed and Summize (which Twitter recently acquired and renamed Twitter Search) — have popped up to service the Twitterers and their tweets, by making it easier to search through the chatter for specific topics or people.

Tweets of gold

Savvy businesses see gold in the information: Consumers are talking about them on Twitter, and they get to respond more quickly than ever.

“In the past, companies would hire a market research firm to understand their audience,” says Mike Hudack, CEO of Blip.tv, a New York-based video website.

“Now we use Twitter to get the fastest, most honest research any company ever heard — the good, bad and ugly — and it doesn’t cost a cent,” he says.

With Twitter, Hudack can monitor every mention of Blip.tv and see exactly what people are saying. He can drop notes about things the company is thinking of doing and get instant feedback about whether they’re worth pursuing.

To get started on Twitter, you begin by searching to see who else is using the service and ask permission to “follow” their postings. Twitter subscriber Joe Rogel — known as Granola Joe on Twitter — says the service is a great way to reach those who might otherwise be inaccessible.

Blip and other young companies such as shoe retailer Zappos.com are on Twitter. So are food retailer Whole Foods and cable company Comcast, whose customer service issues — especially online — are legendary.

Frank Eliason, a customer service manager for Comcast, spends his day communicating with Twitterers about the company — hoping to resolve issues. Comcast isn’t on Twitter to turn around the firm’s customer service perception issues but simply to “build better relationships with our customers,” he says.

Whole Foods, which started using Twitter in June, just wants to hear what people are saying about the company.

“It’s amazing how many people say, ‘I’m off to Whole Foods for lunch,’ ” says Slayton Carter, Whole Foods’ online community development coordinator.

Getting beyond the tech crowd

Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh uses Twitter to make himself available to the public. He says he receives up to 200 tweets daily.

“For people who follow us on Twitter, it gives them more depth into what we’re like, and my own personality,” he says.

Zappos tested a new site, zeta.zappos.com, recently on Twitter, “and we were able to make some improvements based on the comments,” says Hsieh.

When Twitter co-founders Stone, Jack Dorsey and Evan Williams began working on their new Web idea, Dorsey suggested a site that emulated the “status” feature of instant-messaging services, which lets people know whether you’re online. Twitter also adopted the short character limit of text messages and IMs.

As Twitter users know, if you can’t say it in 140 characters or less, your idea won’t get out there.

And since Twitter combines use of the Web, IMs and text messaging, measuring the site’s popularity is tough. The privately held company does not disclose numbers.

Traditional online measurement firms report only Web usage, which is only half of the equation because so much of Twitter usage is via mobile phones. Still, Web measurement firm Compete says Twitter’s audience grew to 2 million users in May from 200,000 in May 2007.

Not everyone loves Twitter. Phil Leigh, an analyst for Inside Digital Media, says he goes on the site with an open mind and just doesn’t get it.

“That some guy saw Wall-E and thought it was a great movie is wonderful, but it’s just not that interesting to me. If somebody has something important to say, they can say it in an e-mail.”

Allen Weiner, an analyst at Gartner, says that Twitter’s audience right now is limited to the “cognoscenti,” but that it’s a testament to Twitter’s growing popularity that so many third-party applications (such as Summize and FriendFeed) have sprung up to feed on its success.

Many news and media outlets (from cable giant CNN to tech blogs such as Tech crunch) have responded to the popularity of Twitter by offering instant news updates to share with friends. This adds to Twitter’s growing stature, says Weiner.

Twitter’s problem is keeping its users happy. So many people go on it that at times — often, in fact — the system crashes, and Twitter is unusable.

Stone and Dorsey say the problem is that Twitter became more popular than they ever envisioned and that the system they created wasn’t built for masses. An influx of engineers is working to rebuild it, and they say the situation should be resolved within the year.

Bijan Sabet, a general partner at Spark Capital, says the cash infusion should help solve the problem. But Weiner doesn’t think it will go far enough. “I’d be stunned if by the end of the year, somebody doesn’t buy Twitter,” says Weiner. “They need the kind of global infrastructure a big company could provide that would make it 100% reliable.”

A flock of chirps

Stone says the secret of Twitter’s success is realizing that folks don’t want to use the Web for private conversations but public ones. Nearly 90% of Twitter users make their updates public, so everyone can read them.

“It encourages other people to see what they’re saying,” says Stone. “People aren’t doing one-to-one e-mail or instant messages anymore. Just look at comments on MySpace and blogs. They’re communicating with one another in an open way.”

Just like birds.

In choosing a name for the service, Stone suggested Twitter, and the co-founders jumped for it. “It’s what birds do when they converge,” says Stone. “The sound they make is technically defined as a trivial chirp. How perfect … hear a trivial chirp on your phone, look down and it’s your friend. During events, you can move as one with your friends, just like birds, because you all know what everyone is up to.”

And if the bird analogy doesn’t persuade you to use Twitter, we’ll leave the last word to Dorsey: “Is there anyone you care about? Twitter is about keeping in touch and making the world smaller.”

So … what are you doing right now?

 

Darrell Bellaart
Province

NANAIMO — The city of Nanaimo is consolidating its title as capital of Google Earth.

The application that people use to view any portion of the globe photographed from space is using the city in promotional material to let the world know about the new, three-dimensional version of its software.

Version 4.3 allows the user to navigate through accelerated three-dimensional images of real cities. That depends, of course, on Google Earth having the data available. Nanaimo was the first city to upload literally all of its electronic mapping data to Google, ranging from locations of sewer and water lines, aerial building photos and even 3-D imagery of all its commercial buildings. It even includes real-time locations of its fire trucks.

Nanaimo is so accessible online that Time magazine recently proclaimed the city capital of Google Earth. And now Google is perpetuating the city’s claim to fame by using Nanaimo to promote Google Earth 4.3.

“Google actually approached us saying we’re putting this feature on our website and we want to promote Nanaimo because of the work we’ve done,” said Per Kristensen, Nanaimo chief of technology. “They said we want to make Nanaimo part of the marketing of this in future.”

Despite Nanaimo‘s data rapidly becoming outdated as the downtown skyline changes, Google Earth specifically identifies Nanaimo on the web as a city that can be viewed in 3-D. For Kristensen, it’s another affirmation of his IT department’s contribution at city hall. “Google. . . is pleased with the work we’re doing,” he said.

To experience Nanaimo in 3-D, users must have the latest version of Google Earth, not to be confused with Google Maps. But they’ll notice the newest highrises and the Vancouver Island Conference Centre are missing from the downtown streetscape. That information was unavailable the last time Nanaimo was aerially mapped in 2006. It’s expected to be updated in the spring of 2009.

© The Vancouver Province 2008

 

Internet service will provide full aerial views

Marke Andrews
Sun

An overhead view of Port Alberni illustrates what can happen when government works with an Internet mapping service.

The right side of the image on this page depicts what Google Earth and Google Maps showed before entering into an agreement with the B.C. provincial government: Streets are identified, and you can make out green space and built-up sections, but the map is vague on details.

On the left side of the image is what you can see with the government’s help: A high-definition view in which houses and commercial buildings can be picked out and, zooming in, you can make out individual trees in all that green space.

On Friday, Agriculture and Lands Minister Stan Hagen announced GeoBC, a government organization, will provide 24/7 access to the province’s geographic database in partnership with Google. This information will be available online at geobc.gov.bc.ca and from Google Earth.

This makes B.C. the first government in Canada to supply Google with access to its information.

At the touch of a computer button, residents and tourists can check out an area before hitting the road, and industry executives and entrepreneurs can scout a location to see if it’s a viable place to set up shop.

A mining executive wanting to check out an area in northern B.C. can get aerial and 3-D images of the area, and also find information from GeoBC’s provincial geographic warehouse about such things as mineral potential, the existing road network and transmission lines, as well as existing constraints on land use, such as wildlife habitat, first nations treaty settlement issues, and the existence of trap lines.

“A question we get asked quite a bit is, ‘Where are the power lines?’ ” said Mark Zacharias, acting assistant deputy minister for GeoBC. “If you’re going to have a development, you will need access to the grid, so this gives you that.”

Zacharias said that by making this available on Google Earth, “not only will you be able to zoom in on an area and get a high-resolution view, you’ll also be able to download about 600 different themes from the provincial [geographic] data warehouse.”

In a statement, Hagen said that this information “is essential for decision-makers, and we hope to see this information drive innovation and new business opportunities in B.C.”

Zacharias said having this information on Google “will make it that much easier for citizens, business interests, environmental groups or anyone interested in coming here to be able to look at B.C., query what they want to look at and get the answer they want.”

He also said that GeoBC hopes to have 200 of the themes posted by the fall, with the full 600 themes available in early 2009.

While Friday’s announcement is the first partnership between a Canadian government and Google, digital mapping expert Ron Lake expects more will follow.

“I think we’ll see something like this all over the world,” said Lake, CEO and chairman of Galdos Systems Inc. and an organizer of next week’s GeoWeb conference, Monday to Friday at the Morris J. Wosk Centre for Dialogue.

“With the introduction of high-resolution aerial photography, 3-D city models and ground-level photography, you can see things at a scale that matters for urban planning or urban development,” said Lake.

© The Vancouver Sun 2008

 

Four hotels in the Canadian Rockies offer freedom from electronics for $500 a night

Sarah McGinnis
Sun

CALGARY – BlackBerry addicts and sufferers of cellphone-itis may soon find respite at four hotels in the Canadian Rockies, now that one savvy company has created “electronic rehab getaways” for guests in need of professional help to disconnect from work.

The Fairmont Hotel and Resorts has just launched “electronic rehab getaways” at its resorts in Banff, Lake Louise, Jasper and Whistler.

Clients who sign up for the specialized package hand over their cellphones, BlackBerrys and other mobile devices, which are then locked up in the hotel safe. The guests sign a waiver pledging to go off-line for the duration of their stay.

“People are looking for the opportunity to disconnect. They want somebody to say, ‘Come here and unplug. . . . Slow down and enjoy life,’ ” said Lori Grant, spokeswoman for The Fairmont Hotels and Resorts.

As part of the package, which starts at $499 a night, BlackBerry and cellphone junkies checking into The Fairmont Banff Springs are treated to herbal teas, a meditation book and complimentary access to fitness classes and spa mineral pools.

Further west, technophiles can enter a minimum two-day “digital detox” at The Fairmont Chateau Lake Louise, which also includes hiking with a mountain heritage guide, herbal teas and a paddle on the famous lake at a cost of $459 per night.

Those signing over their mobiles to staff at The Fairmont Jasper Park Lodge are treated to fresh fruit and herbal teas, a guided hike and breathtaking views with a package price starting at $529.

“I think it’s a great idea to break me away from the addiction,” said Trevor Sziva, a salesman for a roofing products company said in Calgary on Wednesday.

Sziva checks his well-worn BlackBerry at least 20 times a day. He’s also been known to take it along on vacation – much to the chagrin of his wife, who turns around and walks away when he uses it off-hours.

Handing over the device to a hotel clerk would make fighting the urge to turn it on for a quick second that much easier, he said.

A Statistics Canada study released in January says Albertans worked an average of 1,880 hours a year in 2004, the highest of any province.

Alberta also had the highest proportion of people working more than 2,300 hours a year – with 12.5 per cent consistently putting in extra hours.

© Calgary Herald 2008