RealityPrime

As luck would have it, I bought an iPhone two weeks ago. I’m not one of those rabid Apple fans. But once I could get Exchange support directly, I figured having my work meetings and email on such a nice mobile display would be well worth it. I hadn’t even registered for iTunes to download apps (even the free ones require your credit card, apparently) — until Google Earth came out.

My impressions — even at 3G speeds, it’s incredibly impressive. The touch interface is great, though not perfect. It’s probably an issue of sampling the device when framerate is low (Apple should ensure the UI is not bound to app or render rates). I did find that the two fingered motions tended get results that drifted from what I wanted, which I attribute to the size of the screen vs. my hands and not to any math error.

I’m not too surpried about performance. It reminds me of how the original Keyhole app ran on unaccelerated laptops. Without terrain, the number of triangles shouldn’t be the limiter (you only need about 1000 triangles to make a nice sphere, even less by the time you need to see placemarks). Texturing, caching, and download speeds seem like they would have been the biggest challenges.

I imagine the optimization work that Google did to make the app run 4+ instances in a browser was vital to this iPhone work as well. But keep in mind, even the idea of using 500MB of storage is problematic on an iPhone. Fitting the Universal Texture code to run in the small main memory must have required some significant tradeoffs, of which I can only speculate. But the results still look very good.

I’m looking forward to trying it out in the field.

Tags: News by avi
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Update: Of all the various email aliases I tried at Facebook to get that profile taken down, the one that finally did the trick was to allege a copyright violation over the picture of me that the scammer found (on Flickr). Now I just need to send a small check to the EFF to balance it out.

Here’s the bit of text that I think did the trick:

The picture is definitely of me, and it is unlikely there is another Avi Bar-Zeev in Seattle Washington who might mistake himself for me...

Original:

This post comes as a result of having my identity stolen on Facebook.

Now, you hear about this happening for celebrities quite a bit. But why would anyone want to impersonate me? What could they possibly gain, except some fine fake friends, right?

Well, having a look at the fraudster’s current friends list indicates he’s already sent invitations to people at Microsoft. Perhaps all of them, I can’t tell. Those who friended him back probably know me and were just trying to be nice. And as result, the fraudster now has some idea who I know at Microsoft, or who the other targets know, which could be telling.

Ironically, Microsoft folks are so friendly in general, so many of them friended ‘me’ without ever having met me (some just saw a division-wide "welcome" email about me) that the usefulness of that list is diminished. But the potential exists for the criminal to email them from his faked account to obtain additional information about me or them, or at the very least violate their privacy by bypassing their "friends-only" controls. But more likely, the scammer will eventually put up some phishing attacks.

This is a major design flaw with Facebook, and a potential liability, IMO (note: I am not a lawyer).

Why?

Facebook has active controls to prevent you from changing your name to something they don’t like, but nothing to prevent you from stealing someone’s name in the first place. It has a place to report a copyright violation — god forbid anyone should use a stolen photo. But I couldn’t find a single link to report that an entire profile’s identity was falsely claimed or in violation of the terms of service in any way, nor do I see any attempt to resolve such issues thus far. I’ve emailed what I can only guess are the appropriate links and contact forms.

And if this exploit works in general, as it definitely seems to do, there’s nothing to stop someone from creating a false profile to parallel anyone’s real profile and inviting co-workers who might never do a search to see there are two profiles with identical names. It’s an open hole that Facebook seems to do nothing to fix. And that is why they are liable, IMO. (again IANAL).

Bottom line: if you received any email from my apparent Facebook account or from bar_zeev@live.com (the apparent account used to sign up), please report it to the abuse areas on Facebook or Live, if you can find them…

BTW, I use only one social network, LinkedIn, and there’s no way in hell I’m going to use Facebook now, except to post a note saying to stay away from this bullshit service.

Facebook’s new advertising slogan should be "Join Facebook, before someone else does it for you!"

Tags: News by avi
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Randy once said that he was grateful that with all of the world-wide attention he’d received, everything that could possibly be done to prolong his life was being done and that he had no regrets.

My deepest consolences to his family.

Tags: News by avi
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Last fall, I told you about my family’s big move from New York to Pasadena so I could join a cutting-edge startup. Well, this spring, I experienced Job Search 2: Electric Boogaloo.

It’s not easy to do two potentially life-changing job searches in any given year. And it isn’t exactly what I’d planned when I started out. But, as always, things seem to work out well in the end. So here’s the even bigger announcement…

[Read more →]

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A senior executive at Electronic Arts (EA), the company which owns the Sims franchise, said that in light of the popularity of virtual worlds and other computer games which allow players to compete with each other via the web, the Sims may soon become a multi-player game.

It has to be a joke, right? Nancy Smith, if anyone, should be familiar with the now-euthanized EA-Land, nee The Sims Online, which was, in fact, a MMO experience based on The Sims.

But I’m thinking maybe the reporter missed the story here. I’m thinking that the point is not to turn the Sims 2 or 3 into another MMO, but to take a page from Facebook and Spore and make the Sims more of a massively single player experience, but with extensive social elements.

In other words, the doll houses are not all in the same shared town — you might visit a friend’s house, but don’t expect shared public spaces, since that’s most likely where TSO went wrong. The point is to put our creations in a shared, explorable experience (not necessarily one big space), but leave the personal drama to someone else.

Which only goes to bolster my "anti-social" theory of on-line fun. Yes, some people want to discover strangers randomly. But given how badly strangers can and do act in on-line spaces, ranging from usenet to Second Life, I think my theory works pretty well for the other 90% of us who prefer to meet new friends more through mutual interests, activities, and introductions, than via common coordinates and/or curious costumes.

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I didn’t go to Google I/O, mainly because I don’t actually develop anything on top of Google products and services. Still, it was great watching a video of Michael Jones, who is really the heart and soul of Google Earth and the entire Geo line. The video starts off a bit slow for those already familiar with Google’s mission, but then it kicks into high gear about half-way through with the demos (where Michael can’t resist a reference to the Prisoner…) and the introduction to the Google Earth API. 

The other major announcement, the magnitude of which probably won’t sink in for a year or so, is the agreement with ESRI to release ("from jail," as MTJ puts it), most of the world’s ESRI-based GIS information, such that Google Eartth and Virtual Earth can show it and, perhaps more fundamentally, search and index it. All it takes is the latest ESRI update and a single click of a checkbox to let the information be free. This is where the rubber meets the road (or the mashup meets the world beyond the metaverse).

I was pleased to hear about his pitch to US governors and counties to release the info — the abstract fear of terrorism is insignificant compared to all the good that can and will be done with this information. Not to get political, but I suggest you all add "Release the GIS" to your regular communication with your elected officials.

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Google Earth Blog

Looks like Frank Taylor is first to post the news that Google Earth will now run in a browser. That’s huge. However, don’t expect the full GE UI or feature set, according to his sources. This is meant to be driven by Javascript in the surrounding web page. Better to think of it as Google Maps goes 3D, albeit at real-time interactive frame rates.

For mashups, this will be an amazing enabler. Expect to see it anywhere you might see Maps today, assuming it’s popular, and why not? And I’m sure this is meant to be a swift kick in the pants to Microsoft’s VE, which already runs in browser and does similar mashups.

[Read more →]

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So today was my official last day working for Big Stage. I’d given notice about a month ago, but had some loose ends to tie up to make sure stuff I’d been directing was working well for the upcoming launch.

I’m not going to get into any details publicly. But things are as amicable as they can be. I enjoyed working with the folks there, had a lot of fun, and wish them all the greatest success in this product and in all future endeavors.

As for me, I’m planning on starting some interesting short-term consulting work this week, which could lead to more. I’ll continue to consult while I diligently research a number of interesting full-time and startup possibilities. I’m hoping to get into something very cutting edge, as always, and to play a foundational and/or leadership role.

I’ll let you all know when the time comes, but it could take a while to find the right opportunity this time around.

In the meantime, I might have some interesting and unrelated news to blog about soon.

Tags: News by avi
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I did an interview for the very respectable journal Cartographica with Jeremy Crampton last fall and it’s just come out. Seems to cost $12 to view, alas Jeremy has kindly provided a direct link to the PDF for free. Enjoy.

It covers some history with Keyhole my thoughts about GIS (even Net Neutrality, though I don’t know how that came up).

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Adobe Drops Licensing Fees, Gives Away Flash For Devices | Compiler from Wired.com

Well, maybe Queen was overstating it a bit. It’s not even Savior of the Web3D just yet. But Adobe is making some very important moves this month. First was the news that Flash — the format — will be opened to anyone, royalty free. Adobe will make its money off the development tools, not servers and license fees. The code may or may not be opened as well. There was some talk of donating the JIT compiler code to the Mozilla foundation.

Second, they’ve put out a pre-release version of Flash 10, which contains native 3D rendering. Download and try out the demos.

What this means is that companies who already put their eggs in the Flash basket for delivering 3D to the web have been fairly well vindicated, vs. the ones that painfully went with their own proprietary ActiveX controls and whatnot.

Will Flash 10 be as fast as compiled C++ code? Not a chance. But for pushing lots of polygons, it won’t matter as much anymore, as long as we can send big vertex arrays in one call (let’s not ask about physics and simulation though) — the card does all the work. I’ll be curious to see if they allow shaders and therefore GPGPU code, but that’s a side point right now.

The key thing is, if you want to deliver a 3D app to the most number of customers without a new download and install, Flash is certainly an attractive option, especially compared to Java and Silverlight. If it becomes part of the browser, as I expect in the next few years, even more so.

Tags: News by avi
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