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Google Earth Now Ready

Delaypat

By Delaypat
in GPS technology and devices

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Marky

+Marky

Posted
Posted
The GPS connecitvity and some of their file interchanges are very well done, if I say so myself.

 

Did you look under the hood?

What are you GPSBabeling about :blink:

Hey, thanx for noticing!

 

Yes, it's GPSBabel under the hood.

Robert, if we upgrade to plus, do you get a $1? :blink:

 

--Marky

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robertlipe

robertlipe

Posted
Posted
Robert, if we upgrade to plus, do you get a $1?  :blink:

Unfortunately, probably not. I think I gave up my chance at a revenue stream on this by sticking to those darned ethics.

 

Keyhole came to me last fall ("keyWHO?" I remember wondering) about licensing GPSBabel for inclusion in their 'Pro' product.

 

While I'm clearly the lead guy that puts GPSBabel together, the reality is that that there's a substantial amount of code in it that isn't mine to relicense. Since we already had a license that allowed redistribution (the GNU Public License) and I knew that the odds of getting copyright transfers/relicensing agreements from every author were approximately zero, I steered them to use GPSBabel as allowed by the GPL. I haven't seen the final product yet, but I've leaned on them pretty hard to be sure they comply with the terms of the GPL, too. (The irony of little ole me from my midnight project telling engineering managers of a $59B company to go talk to his laywers wasn't totally lost on me.)

 

After the purchase by Google, the frequency of contact went up and in recent months it was pretty clear to me that GPSBabel was one piece of the huge puzzle that became Google Earth. They have contributed code (yes, THAT is how that KML module got finished after I flaked out on it...) and have been very communicative with me through the process.

 

The end result of that agreement is that anything that Google does to the code to improve their product can be included in "my" version. So by sticking to this license, there's a "rising tides" effect. For example, this is how GSAK now has KML support.

 

Comparing revenue of Clyde & GSAK with Google right now results in a division by zero error. GSAK's revenue stream into the project has been a big help to end the "I don't have this GPS" or that USB adapter or similar problems. So I won't turn down Google Bucks if they're offered - especially if it becomes a pain in my neck. But there's not a royalty agreement or anything in place.

 

In short, if you want to give me a dollar, that's the wrong way to do it. :-)

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robertlipe

robertlipe

Posted
Posted

Despite your repeated statements that programming is easy, it's costly to develop. The geocaching crowd is lucky that it has enough "geek appeal" that programmers are drawn to it and tend to develop tools that they'll share becuase they had to develop it to solve their own problems. For example, GPSBabel was born because I couldn't find a waypoint transfer program for UNIX for my first GPS that didn't stink. I shared it with the world, it grew, and there are now over 200,000 downloads. (After Google Earth hit, I now suspect there may be dozens more, but they won't show up on my counters. :-)

 

Graphics-intensive thingies don't move easily between operating systems, so you have to pay to develop a new graphics layer. Look carefully and you'll see the Google Earth is _so_ graphics intensive that it supports only a subset of even the Windows systems. Even if you can afford to redevelop that layer, you have to assemble new doc, a 'native' user interface, entirely QA the product, handle end-user support, perhaps redo internationalization issues, probably develop new installers, and so on. Let's assume Google's paying for development time from copies of Pro sold and not from the subset of that that's distributed for next to nothing or less. The people that _pay_ the big bucks are even more likely to have Windows systems.

 

In the end, professional development organizations spend your time (and therefore money) in places where they can earn that money back. The most generous market share numbers I've seen for OSX peg it at under 9% of the home market. (Most put it closer to half of that.)

 

Don't get me wrong, I dislike that convicted monopolist more than most as my day job puts me competing with that very monopolist. I happily lived in a Windows-free world, ironically enough, until I started geocaching, I do understand why software providers choose where to spend their bullet carefully.

 

Choose the applications you want and then choose the hardware and OS that runs them.

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Greymane

+Greymane

Posted
Posted
Maybe you programmers can tell me why big companies like Google don't port things like this to the Mac?

From what I've read, It isn't hard to program for the Mac. Is it just ignorance or inertia?

It is really all about time management. Whether it is Palm vs PPC or Windows vs Mac, if a programmer has a good market and a developing product, it is hard to justify spending the time to learn a new language (as similar as it may be) when the time could be better spent improving the current product. When you look at the market share of Windows to Mac, is it hard to see why the focus is on Windows? Palm vs PPC is a little different. Certainly Palm has held a great market share, but as the military and government move away from Palms, I believe this will change as well.

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Maingray

+Maingray

Posted
Posted
Can we put GPS waypoint and trackpoints into the program? I just went to the site today: june 29, 2005 8am and cant download it. Just need to know.

Yes. It can open .gpx and .loc files.

 

Examples, images from the Raleigh area:

 

http://www.calloffate.com/forum/uploads/Ma...9_085654_10.jpg

 

http://www.calloffate.com/forum/uploads/Ma...9_085725_12.jpg

I just went to the site and the ability to put waypoints and trackpoints into the program costs extra. (20/year)

The ability to use waypoints directly from a GPSr costs extra. The images taken above were from the regular client, I havent paid any money yet. They were from a GPX file.

 

Google Earth Plus includes:

 

GPS integration – read tracks and waypoints from your GPS.

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PodunkPaul

PodunkPaul

Posted
Posted
Maybe you programmers can tell me why big companies like Google don't port things like this to the Mac?

From what I've read, It isn't hard to program for the Mac. Is it just ignorance or inertia?

 

In the end, professional development organizations spend your time (and therefore money) in places where they can earn that money back. The most generous market share numbers I've seen for OSX peg it at under 9% of the home market. (Most put it closer to half of that.)

 

If you want software for your OS, get the market share... Plain and simple, this is the only rule by which software is generally released for any OS. Costs too much money for me and my developers to port software to other OS's, so we don't. I've experienced this first hand in everything from device driver development to web based application development. Where's OS/2 support, oh yeah, nobody used that, buh-bye :blink:

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