• Mind Blowing 3D Maps by C3 Technologies [Updated]

    // Gradly // 3D, Acquisition, Apple, blog, google, iPad, iPhone, Microsoft, News, Rants & Raves, Tech. 7 Responses

    You are familiar with your current mapping services when it comes to Google Maps, Bing Maps or Google Earth, But a new technology will let you get beyond that and the Swedish company behind it thinks you actually deserve more and… seriously.

    Enter mind-blowing 3D mapping technology from Swedish startup C3 Technologies, the company that showcased their 3D maps on iPad at the CES show. Unlike your Ma and Pa’s maps, C3 Technologies calculates the terrain and buildings directly from aerial images. The approach takes into account the positions and angles of the cameras that took aerial images in order to give each pixel its geographical position with very high accuracy.

    When we say high precision, we mean it hundred percent because C3 maps incorporate recently declassified missile targeting technology by Saab, a well-known Swedish aerospace company. As a result of all this, you get military-grade, pixel-perfect realistic representation of the terrain that can be rotated and paned around to a stunning effect. And at CES, they showed off 3D view of San Francisco running surprisingly smoothly on an iPad, see above

    In addition to 3D maps, C3 also makes awesome street level imagery captured using “an advanced multiple camera system with overlapping viewing angles to capture the entire surroundings in stereo.” Topping it all off are incredible interior views of restaurants, hotels and other points of interest that can be found along the street.

    Don’t you think that would be amazing if this was chosen as the maps to power the upcoming iPhone 5?!

    Update:

    C3 Technologies was acquired in July and the buyer is a western company and currently kept secret. Certainly the big players such as Apple, Microsoft and Google are the prime candidates.

    As noted by macrumors, Apple is a good fit for the company, as they have already admitted to be working on their own turn-by-turn direction GPS service, and we’ve also found evidence that they have licensed map data from a number of companies. It would also reduce their dependance on Google’s mapping solution which presently is used on iOS devices. Apple previously purchased mapping company Placebase and has been aggressively hiring for their Geo Team to take Maps to the “next level”.

    [via brightsideofnews]

  • Google Will Help Protect Your Computer from Malware

    // Gradly // blog, google, Microsoft, Tech. No Responses

    Google has been able to detect a large number of computers infected with a specific piece of malware. If you go to Google and do a search (any word will do) right now, check to see whether you get a “Your computer appears to be infected” warning at the top of the search results. If you see the message, you need to clean up the infection from your machine.

    As we work to protect our users and their information, we sometimes discover unusual patterns of activity. Recently, we found some unusual search traffic while performing routine maintenance on one of our data centers. After collaborating with security engineers at several companies that were sending this modified traffic, we determined that the computers exhibiting this behavior were infected with a particular strain of malicious software, or “malware.” As a result of this discovery, today some people will see a prominent notification at the top of their Google web search results:

    This particular malware causes infected computers to send traffic to Google through a small number of intermediary servers called “proxies.” We hope that by taking steps to notify users whose traffic is coming through these proxies, we can help them update their antivirus software and remove the infections.

    You can run a system scan on your computer yourself by following the steps mentioned here. This is malware that’s specific to Windows.

  • Microsoft Accidentally Reveals Their Social Network Tulalip

    // Gradly // blog, Microsoft, News, Rants & Raves, Social Networks No Responses

    On Thursday Microsoft accidentally published their new social network which is in internal testing on the web. After realizing that they published it, they pulled it off leaving a message.

    The project is named Tulalip. The project is under testing in socl.com The domain is owned by Microsoft. The new project has got a sign-in option with Twitter and Facebook.

    The service included a teaser promising a new “social search” service by Microsoft. The service also appeared to allow Facebook and Twitter users to sign-in. “With Tulalip you can Find what you need and Share what you know easier than ever”, read a message on the home page.

    The website was live for a short time and have been pulled off now. But the team has left a message regretting their mistake. Here’s what it states now:

    Thanks for stopping by. Socl.com is an internal design project from a team in Microsoft Research which was mistakenly published to the web. We didn’t mean to, honest.

    Looks like after Google, it is Microsoft that’s trying to make its leap into Social Media. But, let’s wait for the official launch. Until then, stay tuned.

    [via winrumors]

  • Forza Motorsport 4 Official E3 Trailer

    // Gradly // blog, Games, Microsoft, Trailer 1 Response

    Microsoft has released a new Forza Motorsport 4 trailer, or rather it’s an old, but previously unreleased video first shown at its E3 media briefing last month.

    The new installment of the Turn 10 racer is set to include Kinect support, content from Beeb car show Top Gear and a more detailed Career Mode. Watch the trailer below:

    Forza 4’s out on October 11, in Europe October 14.