PlanetInAction Ships 3D Ship Simulator Using Google Earth Plugin

Thanks to the ever increasing detail in Google Earth it has now become feasible to write high quality applications and games for the Google Earth API. PlanetInAction.com hosts such virtual environments where the world is your playground. Their first installment is "Ships" - a 3D ship simulator which will take you past the World's incredible scenery at a leisurely pace. All you need to play Ships is a browser and the Google Earth plugin. Many more exciting applications will be added soon.

"Ships" is a case study / Technology show piece that demonstrates what can be achieved with Google Earth. While map data has a tremendous value for practical purposes, it can also be used as a backdrop for a range of games. Google Earth proves extremely capable to handle many overlays with alpha transparencies which enables developers to create intricate and graphically rich instruments. Proof of that can be seen in the Compass/rudder instrument which consists of 5 layers of bitmaps.


When you start "Ships" you will be looking at this screen. By default you are in control of a closed river barge located at "Waal haven Noord" in the port of Rotterdam in the Netherlands. This location is chosen because Rotterdam is one of worlds largest ports and is shown in great detail in Google Earth. You are looking out across the "Nieuwe Maas" river towards the city of Rotterdam. On the horizon you can see the "Euro mast" tower. From this vantage point you can see some of the other ships you can sail on in "Ships" and yes, the Airship Hindenburg is also part of your fleet.

Check out the gallery for more screenshots or click here to play ships now.

Ships was developed by Dinther Product Design. They have other innovative project such as Virtual Windows. It will turn your monitor into a true window onto a 3D world. Head tracking and special screen management will one day make for the next generation of simulator equipment. Have a look at this video on YouTube.

Wolfram|Alpha Launch Webcast

Watch a live webcast of the Wolfram|Alpha system being brought online for the first time today on Friday, May 15, beginning at 7pm CST.

Check out my earlier post for an overview on Wolfram|Alpha or this new introduction screencast by Stephen Wolfram.

The Best of the Web 2009 - 13th Annual Webby Award Winners

Webby Winners truly represent the best of the Web. With nearly 70 categories, Website entries make up the majority of Webby Awards Winners, Nominees and Honorees. Some are beautiful to look at and interact with. Others are a testament to usability and functionality. And a handful excel across the board. To be selected among the best is an incredible achievement worthy of praise.

Webby Award Winner Websites in 2009 by category:

• Activism - Protect An Acre
• Art - Keith Tyson Website
• Associations - Create an Effect
• Automotive - The Truth About SMART
• Banking/Bill Paying - Xero
• Beauty and Cosmetics - AXE 100 Girls
• Best Copy/Writing - NYTimes.com
• Best Home/Welcome Page - adidas.com homepage
• Best Navigation/Structure - WHITEvoid online portfolio
• Best Practices - NYTimes.com
• Best Use of Animation or Motion Graphics - Coraline Website
• Best Use of Photography - The Big Picture
• Best Use of Typography - Wordle
• Best Use of Video or Moving Image - TED.com
• Best Visual Design - Aesthetic - The Turbo Gene Test
• Best Visual Design - Function - NIKEiD
• Blog - Business - 5 Blogs Before Lunch
• Blog - Cluture/Personal - 1000 Awesome Things
• Blog - Political - Democracy in America Blog
• Broadband - NBC.com Full Episode Player
• Celebrity/Fan - Yahoo! omg!
• Charitable Organizations Nonprofit - The Nature Conservancy
  
• Community - Flickr
• Consumer Electronics - Secret Services
• Corporate Communications - Seymourpowell
• Cultural Institutions - Guggenheim Museum
• Education - Smarthistory
• Employment - TheLadders
• Events - YouTube LIVE
• Family/Parenting - Disney Family.com
• Fashion - Red Issue
• Financial Services - Mint.com
• Food and Beverage - Hotel 626
• Games - Club Penguin
• Games-Related - The Escapist
• Government - BayBridge360
• Guides/Ratings/Reviews - Very Short List
• Health - Take Care Down There
• Humor - The Onion
• Insurance - NWMutual "Let Your Worries Go"
• IT Hardware/Software - HP - Creative Studio
• Law - WomensLaw.org
• Lifestyle - BBC Climate Change: Bloom
• Magazine - TheAtlantic.com
• Movie and Film - Sundance Channel
• Music - NPR Music
• NetArt - Dreamgrove: webpage and interactive garden
• News - BBC's News website
• Newspaper - guardian.co.uk
• Personal Web Site - My Star Wars Collection - Joshua Budich
• Pharmaceuticals - Leading Ladies
• Podcasts - guardian.co.uk podcasts
• Politics - The Huffington Post
• Professional Services - cake-factory
• Radio - NPR.org
• Real Estate - Trulia
• Religion and Spirituality - Comment is free: belief
• Restaurant - Parish Food and Goods
• Retail - NIKEiD
• School/University - Campus Daily Guides
• Science - Cassini Mission Website
• Self-Promotion/Portfolio - Thank You begins with a T.
• Services and Applications - Animoto
• Social Networking - Digg
• Sports - ESPN.com
• Student - Mission Loc@l
• Telecommunications - Orange 'Balloonacy'
• Television - Flight of the Conchords Lip Dub
• Tourism - Tourisme Montreal
• Travel - Kayak.com
• Weird - Jason Nelson's Digital Oddities
• Youth - Tate Kids

Congratulations! Check out the full list of 2009 Webby Award Winners, People's Voice Winners and Nominees on WebbyAwards.com.

Web Trend Map 4 by Information Architects

The 2009 Web Trend Map is the fourth edition of this awesome annual publication by Information Architects. Web Trend Map 4 visualizes the 333 leading web domains and the 111 most influential Internet people on the Tokio Metro map.


Domains are carefully selected by the iA research team. Each domain is evaluated based on traffic, revenue, age and the company that owns it and is assigned to an individual station on the map.

The soon to be published 2009 version of Web Trend Map 4 includes the following lines:

• Application
• Publishing
• Opinion
• News
• Identity
• Creativity
• Money
• Broadcasting
• Knowledge
• Advertisement
• Sharing
• Entertainment
• Filter

The map also includes Web Trend Ranking with the Top 50 most influential domains:

1. Google
2. Yahoo
3. MSN
4. Apple
5. Wikipedia
6. Amazon
7. YouTube
8. Facebook
9. Twitter
10. The Pirate Bay
11. The New York Times
12. Firefox
13. Adobe
14. Digg
15. Reddit
16. eBay
17. LinkedIn
18. Flickr
19. craigslist
20. deviantART
21. WordPress
22. The Huffington Post
23. Drudge Report
24. The Daily Show
25. CNN
26. The Guardian
27. The Washington Post
28. TechCrunch
29. The Wall Street Journal
30. TED
31. vimeo
32. FriendFeed
33. hulu
34. PayPal
35. StumbleUpon
36. Blogger
37. Bloomberg
38. Dailymotion
39. MySpace
40. O'Reilly
41. Last.fm
42. Delicious
43. Drupal
44. Ask
45. Blizzard
46. CNET
47. Skype
48. Fotolog
49. mixi
50. Spiegel.de

The final beta version of the map is available as a PNG image on flickr.

Amazon Launch Kindle DX 9.7" Wireless Reading Device

Today is the launch of the Kindle DX, the large 9.7" screen addition to the Kindle family.

This is the customer letter by Jeff Bezos:

Dear Customers,

A strange thing happened on the way to the paperless society. We humans created more paper than ever before. Computer printers (and their evil companion, the ink-toner cartridge) have proliferated, and most of us routinely print out and lug around loads of personal and professional documents. Why? It's not that buying printers or changing ink-toner cartridges is fun. It's because reading on paper is better than reading on traditional computer displays. Printing has been worth the hassle.

Kindle starts to change that. People who see Kindle's display for the first time do a double-take. It looks and reads like real paper. People who swore they would never read books on computers are reading books on Kindle in numbers far greater than we ever expected. And they're now starting to ask: If I can carry my whole library around on my Kindle, how about I carry all my personal and professional documents there too?

We're excited to announce Kindle DX, the large screen addition to the Kindle family.

Kindle DX's display is two and a half times the size of the Kindle display. The display is large enough that you can read PDF files natively without scrolling, panning, or zooming, and without re-flowing, which destroys the original structure of the document. Text and images are amazingly sharp, and you can carry all your personal and professional documents with you in one slender package.

Kindle DX is also terrific for reading books, magazines, and newspapers. The Kindle Store has more than 275,000 books to choose from, including 107 of 112 New York Times bestsellers. Thin as a magazine, Kindle DX holds up to 3,500 books. The larger screen size especially benefits highly formatted books like cookbooks, computer books, and textbooks.

Kindle DX is wireless so you can think of a book and start reading it in under a minute. Email personal documents to your Kindle DX, and they too will be delivered wirelessly. Our vision is every book ever printed, in any language, all available in less than 60 seconds. Inching a bit closer to a paperless society sounds good too.

We hope you enjoy this new addition to the Kindle family.

Jeff Bezos
Founder, Amazon.com

P.S. To have Kindle DX shipped the day it becomes available, preorder today to reserve your place in line. The Kindle DX page has a side-by-side comparison with Kindle so you can choose the right one for you.

Some additional details from Wired Gadget Lab:

Among the new feature are an auto-rotating screen, technology iPhone users will be familiar with, and a native PDF reader, finally adding support in that ubiquitous digital format.

The device measures one-third of an inch thick. Its 9.7-inch screen offers 1200 x 824 pixels at 150 dpi, and 16 levels of gray (like the Kindle 2). The screen is held within a plastic housing that measures 10.4″ tall by 7.2″ wide; the unit weighs about 1 pound 3 ounces. Like the two earlier Kindles, the Kindle DX has wireless download capabilities via the Sprint EVDO network.

It contains about 3.3GB of usable memory for storing books, and can display or play a wide variety of text and document formats — including, significantly, at least three open formats: PDF, MP3 and TXT.

Shipping this summer, the Kindle DX costs $489 and is available for pre-order from Amazon.com.

EON ICUBE - Amazing 3D Immersive Technology

EON Reality, Inc. has amazing immersive solutions such as the ICUBE, a revolutionary PC based multi-sided immersive environment in which participants are completely surrounded by virtual imagery and 3D sound.

The EON ICUBE consists of 3, 4 or 6 walls according to the users requirements, and that can be setup in any configuration. Thanks to the rear-projection of the images and the flawless image continuity in the corners, the illusion of a complete sense of presence in the virtual environment is created. On top of that, the system is fully compatible with tracking and input devices. It is built on PC technology whereby several PCs are synchronized together to generate simultaneous images in stereo (stereoscopic visualization) on multiple walls seamlessly.



Using a series of infrared emitters, high-end projectors, and stereoscopic active lightweight shutter glasses and position trackers, the result is complete immersion of the user in a virtual world where objects float in space with high quality graphics. Electro magnetic 6DOF trackers are implemented to monitor the user's position and orientation and are used to calculate a stereoscopic perspective view while allowing the user to freely move into and around the objects floating in space. The stereoscopic visualization is supported by an integrated audio surround system. Peripheral devices such as force feedback devices, and gesture gloves are optionally integrated into the system.

Innovative solutions such as large immersive displays, 3D and holographic displays, tele immersion systems, and mobile 3D stereoscopic and augmented reality systems can be the next step in user interfaces and the web.

Minoru 3D Webcam - The First 3D Web Camera

Minoru is the Worlds first 3D webcam. Your friends and family can now see you in 3D over your favourite messaging program like Windows Live Messenger, Skype, AOL instant messenger, OoVoo and many others. Minoru can also take 3D photos or even shoot 3D videos for YouTube or other video sharing sites. Minoru = Reality (at least in Japanese)!



The red and cyan anaglyph image produced by Minoru can be viewed by anybody who is wearing commonly available red and cyan 3D glasses (five pairs included with Minoru). It is not HD quality for 3D HDTVs but it is fun nevertheless. Minoru can also be used as a standard 2D webcam for anyone who doesnt have the 3D glasses at hand.

Minoru 3D Webcam is available on Amazon.com for $89.95.

Another innovative step for the coming 3D Web.