Google Maps Gallery recognised as an interactive digital atlas.

On Thursday, Google launched a new feature in Google Maps known by Google Maps Gallery. The Google Maps Gallery is a specialized maps using Google’s Google Maps Engine and share them online. It has an interactive digital maps provided by businesses, governments, non profit organizations, such as US Geological Survey, National Geographic, Worlds Bank Group, Florida Emergency Management and the City of Edmonton. The SETI Institute also published a series of planetary maps.

Jordan Breckenridge, Google Maps Product Manager gave the reason behind the Public Data Program is to reveal the maps and geospatial information that many organizations have with themselves. The data which are not available in public or its often in PDF or image file. The Google Maps Gallery includes construction projects, historic battlefields, Internet users worldwide, US congressional districts, climate change data, public school ratings, and much more. “The intent here is to provide an interactive digital atlas around anyone’s mapping content,” Breckenridge said.

National Geographic Maps director of digital development Frank Biasi said that the majority of its maps could only be seen in paper form. But now that the organization has joined Google's Gallery, these maps are available to all.

"Over the last 125 years, National Geographic has developed and published more than 800 maps, as one of our primary vehicles for achieving our mission to inspire people to care about the planet," Biasi said in a statement. "But access to these maps has been limited due to their physical printed nature and their range of publication dates. Maps Gallery makes our entire collection and individual maps discoverable and viewable to the world through a simple Google Maps user experience."

Google wrote, “Maps included in the Gallery can be viewed in Google Earth and are discoverable through major search engines, making it seamless for citizens and stakeholders to access diverse mapping data, such as locations of municipal construction projects, historic city plans, population statistics, deforestation changes and up-to-date emergency evacuation routes.”

Participants selected by Google received free access to the enterprise version of Google Maps Engine to import public data into Maps Engine.

Breckenridge supposes that people will be accessing the Google Maps Gallery through Google Search instead of the Gallery, so the company is looking as to how to highlight searches in the Google Search results and Google Earth too.

Google is also thinking of how user's develop the app with the help of free Google Maps Engine Lite service and make them more discoverable.

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Google will soon introduce ultrasonic password

Google acquired SlickLogin, a startup Israeli company that developed a technology which can verifies and authenticates online accounts using high frequency ultrasonic sounds that are inaudible to the human ears.

“Google was the first company to offer two-step verification to everyone, for free,” SlickLogin further continued, “and they’re working on some great ideas that will make the Internet safer for everyone.”

SlickLogin claims to offer "military grade security" which uses two step process by placing your phone next to your PC or tablet. When you sign in via SlickLogin enabled website, the PC or tablet will play ultrasonic sound which our smartphone can hear. The Smartphones authenticates with SlickLogin Servers and grant access to the account.

Each sound produced is unique and cannot be reused.

In August 2013, SlickLogin founders Or Zelig, Eran Galili and Ori Kabeli started to develop their program on ultrasonic technology, By September, they presented their program at TechCrunch Disrupt in San Francisco. Later in December they registered as an official company.

SlickLogin website said, "Today we're announcing that the SlickLogin team is joining Google, a company that shares our core beliefs that logging in should be easy instead of frustrating, and authentication should be effective without getting in the way."

Other then ultrasound, SlickLogin also uses, NFC, QR Codes, GPS, WiFi, Bluetooth for verification and authentication of accounts.

Google acquired five Israel-based companies in recent years like iRows in 2006, LabPixies in 2010, MentorWave Technology in 2010 and Waze last year and SlickLogin recently.

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'Project Tango', A new way to watch our world on our phone by Google

Google wants to build a new kind of smartphone that is capable of seeing like a human eyes. It is a new experiment which works on Android platform. Google calls it 'Project Tango'.

Motorola's ATAP(Advanced Technology And Products) Team is working on Project Tango and is leaded by Johnny Lee, A Human-Computer Interaction researcher.

Johnny Lee wrote, "The goal of Project Tango is to give mobile devices a human scale understanding of space and motion".

Since many years Google team has been working with universities, research labs and industrial partners from nine different countries around the world to gain research works from the last 10 years of work in robotics and computer vision to consolidate into a unique mobile phone.

Johnny also stated, "Now, we’re ready to put early prototypes into the hands of developers that can imagine the possibilities and help bring those ideas into reality. We hope you will take this journey with us. We believe it will be one worth traveling."

"What if you could capture the dimensions of your home simply by walking around with your phone before you went furniture shopping? What if directions to a new location didn't stop at the street address? What if you never again found yourself lost in a new building?" Johnny said, "The future is awesome. We can build it together,"

Currently Google developed a prototype, a 5 inches phones which contains customized hardware and software designed to track the full 3D motion of the device along with simultaneously creating a map of the environment. These sensors allow the phone to take a quarter million 3D measurements every second, updating its position and orientation in real-time, combining that data into a single 3D model of the space around you.

It runs Android and includes development APIs to provide position, orientation, and depth data to standard Android applications written in Java, C/C++, as well as the Unity Game Engine. These early prototypes, algorithms, and APIs are still in active development.

The Prototype phone comes with Movidius's Myriad 1 vision processor platform, which features ultra-low power computational chips, software and development tools used to enable mobile devices to understand and contextualize their surroundings.

"Google has paved the future direction for smart mobile vision systems and we're excited to be working with a company that shares our vision to usher in the next wave of applications that fundamentally alter how a mobile device is used to experience the world around us," El-Ouazzane said. "Project Tango is truly a groundbreaking platform, and we look forward to seeing the innovation the developer community achieves with unprecedented access to the Movidius Vision Processor."

Google is looking for the professional developers  to work on the top of this platform and build applications. Google have kept some devices for itself for projects in the areas of indoor navigation/mapping, single/multiplayer games that use physical space, and new algorithms for processing sensor data.

Google is providing 200 prototype development kits to the developer only who are working in an incorporated entities or institutions due to 'FCC restrictions'. To apply for the prototype, fill this form.

Many universities and development collaborators are working and contributing in 'Project Tango'.
Bosch, BSQUARE, Compal Comm, ETH Zurich, flyby, The George Washington University, hiDOF, MM Solutions, Movidius, University of Minnesota, JPL, Ologic, Omni Vision, Open Source Robotics Foundation, Parcosm, Sunny Optical Technology.

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Google I/O Conference in June

Google scheduled its annual developers' conference on June 25 to 26 at Moscone West conference center, San Francisco. This news was announced by Google's senior vice president Sundar Pichai.

The post on Google+ stated, "Only 126 days until the 7th annual Google I/O, when we come together with amazing developers like you to talk about what's next. On June 25-26, 2014, we'll be broadcasting live from Moscone West. You can join us in person in San Francisco or remotely, via a live stream and through I/O Extended community events around the world. More details to come next month, including registration info."

Pichai reported that Google is planning to do some changes in the registration process. Pichai continued saying, "Also, quick note for those who want to join in person: this year we're making some changes to registration, so you won't need to scramble the second registration opens. We'll be implementing a new system, where you can submit your interest to attend Google I/O 2014. Successful applicants will then be randomly selected and notified shortly thereafter. We'll be following up with more details from +GoogleDevelopers, so stay tuned."

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