Google will be exclusive online map service to use images from new satellite


Satellite imagery is used for many different reasons today from mapping and fun to military analysis and more. As more satellites are launched and new technologies are released, satellite imagery is getting better with each new satellite put into orbit.

GeoEye Inc. is getting ready to launch a new satellite that will be able to take images form orbit with a resolution of .41 meters in black and white and 1.65 meters in color. Current government regulations limit images being offered to the public to a resolution of a half-meter. The color resolution the satellite will offer is the highest in the market.

The resolution limitation is partly because the U.S. government fears the amount of information that can be found in satellite images on services like Google Earth.

Read more: dailytech.com 

Labels: Earth, GeoEye, images, satellite

Google upped its stalker factor this week by adding face recognition abilities to its image search. While currently unofficial and unannounced, users can now search for images that only contain faces by appending a query string onto the end of a search URL. For example, a general image search for "Ars Technica" produces a variety of image results, but when appending "&imgtype=face" to the end of the URL, all new results contain photos of people.

The hidden feature was discovered by Google Blogoscoped, and there is currently no way to indicate that you only want to search for faces through the image search interface. However, both "&imgtype=face" and "&imgtype=news" trigger different search results than what is presented by default—the latter showing only images that are associated with news stories.

Full article: arstechnica.com 

Labels: face, images, search

Google wins a nude copyright infringement case in the U.S. Federal Court of Appeals.

Google wins and is now able to show thumbnail sized photographs from sexually explicit sites. The Federal court of Appeals lifted the preliminary injunction against Google for showing such images. Though the court did say that the company might be liable for allowing links to such sites displaying unauthorized photographs.

Read more: gameshout.com 

Labels: Copyright, images, lawsuit, thumbnail

Google went live Wednesday with a revamped Internet search engine that integrates video, books, maps and news into "universal" results to online queries.

Google spent two years transforming the architecture of its search engine to broaden results to include web pages that one had to previously seek out in separate search categories such as "photos" and "news."

"It's all the stuff on the web," said Google's vice president of search products and user experience Marissa Mayer.

Read more: physorg.com 

Labels: books, images, Internet, Maps, news, search, video