On the 2nd of February, Google Earth is holding an event at the California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco. What is particularly interesting is the fact that there happens to be a Planetarium, a Natural History Museum and a miniature Rainforest within the academy’s campus.

Another noteworthy feature about this gathering, as reported by Cnet is the fact that both Chief Executive, Eric Schmidt and Vice President of Search products and User Experience, Marissa Mayer will be present for the event alongside former US Vice President, Al Gore, who will be one of the speakers.

Suffice it to say that with all these heavy weights in attendance, it has to be a very special occasion. The invites say that it is “the next big step in the evolution of Google Earth”.

The presence of Sylvia Earle at the event is an indication that the occasion may be for the unveiling of Google Ocean. Sylvia Earle is the Chief Scientist of the National Oceanographic & Atmospheric Administration. She also founded Deep Ocean Exploration And Research. Currently she is an Explore-in-residence with the National Geographic Society.

Reports that Google was working on mapping the world below sea-level had surfaced back in April 2008. Almost a year later, the product seems ready to unveil, making critics claim that even though the worldwide economy is in recession, Google is not losing its “cool” factor!

It is believed that Google Ocean will provide underwater topography in 3D. Users will also be able to search for points of interest such as sites of ship wrecks etc. Some amount of underwater photography is also likely to be included, though not too much as it is an expensive and time consuming procedure. Navigating the digital environment by panning and zooming will also be possible.

On the night of November 26, ten well trained, motivated and heavily armed terrorists landed in Mumbai by boat and went on a killing spree, in and around some of the extremely well known and crowded places in the Southern part of the city, creating mayhem and killing over 170 people over the next 60 hours.

A lawyer, Amit Karkhanis has now filed a public interest litigation in the Bombay High Court, against Google, because it is believed that the terrorists used maps provided on Google Earth to study their targets. He has demanded that Google should be made to block images of sensitive places in the country.

Google has issued a statement condemning the attacks and said that they “stand by the citizens of India and the city of Mumbai as they recover from the attacks.”

They however defend themselves saying, that theirs is not the only source from which such information could be made available. It is easily available to anyone who is willing to pay for the purchase of these images from public or commercial sources.

They also believe that advantages of easy access to such tools and technology are far greater than their potential misuse by a few misguided minds.

This certainly seems like a genuine argument, as the same Google Earth has been used in the past to coordinate relief operations in times of floods, cyclones etc.

It is also obvious, that those involved would have found some other means to achieve their devious objectives, even if Google Earth had not been available to them.

One must also bear in mind, that apart from making use of Google Earth, they also made use of other technological facilities such as, satellite phones, cell phones and internet phones to stay in touch with each other and their bosses during the course of their operation.

As the saying goes, ‘there are two sides to every coin’. So also, all forms of technological advances can be abused when in the wrong hands.

Does that mean, that we must decide to ban any further technological advances in the future?

Perhaps the most useful feature in this update is the ability to provide directions with respect to well known landmarks such as petrol pumps, fast food restaurants, convenience and grocery stores, hotels and so on. However, this will be made available only to users in Canada and the U.S.A. for now.

Users will now get a better bird’s eye view of various locations in several cities of North America. 3D images will also be available. Live Search will also provide information about the local weather conditions, and 3D pictures of cloud formations over given areas will be updated every 3 hours.

Locations with similar names and alternate spellings will be accessible through a ‘near-matching’ feature. Related neighborhoods will also be included in the search results.

Localised maps of all regions will be available on desktops as well as on mobile phones. Mobile Internet users will be provided with better imagery than before.

Users will now be able to decide whether they want to choose driving routes based on the shortest time taken, the shortest distance or direction of traffic flow; and all this will be made available with a single click.

Microsoft is definitely as good as Google, if not better, as far as the technology behind their maps is concerned. That, however, is not enough to make Live Search Maps the leading service. Microsoft needs to seriously rethink its overall user acquisition strategy or they will continue to lose market share in spite of having a better product.

Analysts Jim Friedland and Kevin Kopelman report that compared to their earlier study that was conducted in July 2007, the current study shows that Google Maps has progressed considerably, while its competitors, Map Quest by AOL, and Yahoo! Maps have stagnated.

Live Search Maps from Microsoft has shown some improvement in the past year, but their map service still remains the least popular among the top 4 services. Friedland and Kopelman further stated that “Yahoo! and Map Quest do not have the resources to keep pace and are forced to aggressively monetise a declining franchise in the maps segment.”

Apart from having very good maps, Google also has additional features, such as Street View, driving directions, traffic monitoring and public transport directions. But what makes them the winner is simply their dominance as the leading provider of information on the Internet.
The most important rammification of Google’s dominance is the importance map-based data and location-specific information will have in the upcoming mobile Internet market. People on the move will often want to refer to these maps when they are in unknown surroundings. Google Maps will be able to attract advertisers in the near future and hence help companies generate even more revenues. An investment made to improve maps on the Internet today will pay off many times over in the near future.

Users have been surprised to see that they could not find any information about any cities or roads in Georgia. Even the capital city, T’bilisi, has not been marked. Only blank outlines of Georgia and its neighbours Armenia and Azerbaijan can be seen.

This led to some questions being raised about whether Google simply deleted the maps of these countries from their website following the ongoing conflict.

Fortunately, in this case Google is not playing God / political arbiter. The omission is merely due to the countries not being important enough for Google to bother with! In their own words, “we never launched coverage in those countries because we simply weren’t satisfied with the map data we had available.”

It has been standard policy at Google Maps that if they do not get properly detailed maps, they continue searching for better maps, and do not launch the maps until they are fully satisfied with the material available to them.

In all fairness, if it had not been for the recent upheavals that have occurred in that part of the world, most Google users would never have noticed the absence of detail on these maps.

Based on the feedback received, Google has now realised that users would prefer to have some basic information within maps of these countries rather than nothing at all. In accordance with these sentiments, Google has now decided to change their internal policy, and will introduce maps of the few countries that they have not yet covered, with whatever basic information is available to them.

Some of the other countries that do not yet have detailed Google Maps are Guyana, Suriname, North Korea, South Korea and Argentina. Users can make access information about these places on Google Earth in the meanwhile.

It appears that Googlers in the region were told about Google’s plans in advance. People were out on the street fully prepared. The street was lined by Google employees and friends who were obviously excited about the event, showing off various things.

In fact, one enthusiastic Googler, Michael Weiss-Malik, who works for the Google Geo team, actually put up a sign on the street, asking his beloved to marry him. It was a homemade banner saying “Proposal 2.0: Marry me Leslie!!”.

Later, Weiss also launched a site, MarryMeLeslie.com with an email address for Leslie, where a lot of people wrote to her, advising her to marry Michael.

Weiss explains on the site that he had already proposed to her last April, and she had accepted his proposal. However, he felt that his original proposal had not been exciting enough. He therefore hit upon a novel plan to take this opportunity to propose to his sweetheart, over the Web.

The couple are planning to get married in May!

There is a flip side to all these technological advances. A lot of people, especially in New Zealand, have voiced their fears about their security and privacy being invaded, as the information available on the sites could be misused if it fell into the wrong hands.

Google says that they take their clients concerns very seriously, and will do everything they can to protect users, like blurring faces and number plates where requested. It will also be possible to report any inappropriate imagery and have it deleted.

However, there is no foolproof way to protect ones identity when online, as websites identify all their visitors from the IP address and can easily gather a lot of information about any user.

Once they have zeroed in on an appropriate location, they organise a pool party at that place through social networking sites such as Bebo and Facebook. Needless to say this is done without the permission or knowledge of the pool owners – in other words they pool-crash!

This activity has taken on such alarming proportions, that the police in areas like Devon and Cornwall have issued warnings to swimming pool owners, through the Daily Mail newspaper, to be on guard.

They have also warned youngsters that “using someone else’s pool, is trespassing and therefore illegal.”

Owners of many such pool-side homes, have woken up, or come home to find a poolside party in progress, or worse still, the left-overs of a rowdy party, such as empty beer cans, and vomit floating around in the water.

Miscreants freely hand out mobile phone numbers of the organisers of these pool-crash parties through Facebook. Get-togethers are often held in the middle of the night.

The organisers even set up certain rules for the participants, such as coming in fancy dress etc, and to bring a bike if possible, to facilitate a quick escape in the event that they are discovered.

It is feared that if this craze is not checked immediately, it will spread during the summer vacation as people tend to go on holiday, leaving their homes unguarded, and revelers are more likely to seek out a pool to party in.

This is not the first time that social networking sites have been used to cause trouble. In the past, private parties have been gatecrashed through the social network MySpace.