Earthware Blog

On Sunday 25^th November local secondary school student Jenny Heaton was announced as the winner of Letchworth’s Google SketchUp competition, ‘3D_lgc’. Earthware had been a supporter and sponsor of this competition, and our Director Brian Norman a judge.

Jenny’s superb model of Letchworth Train Station that won her the top prize of a Google Nexus can be seen below, and viewed in Google Earth here: http://bit.ly/VhMnH1.

Other excellent entries included:

The Cloisters, by Worlds6440

The Spirella Building, by Seigeworks

St George’s Chruch, by Matt

The winners were announced at an event in Letchworth Arts Centre which had been organised by students of North Hertfordshire College. All of the entries were shown at the event, giving the attendees and judges a chance to appreciate all of the excellent SketchUp work that has been going on in Letchworth over the past few months!

Brian, as well as the other judges, was impressed with Jenny’s model because ‘’it showed an outstanding attention to detail and the quality of both the model and the photography used stood out even amongst the professional modellers who took part in the competition.’’

Earthware would like to pass on a huge ‘thank you’ to John Webb, the competition organiser. John ran the competition with sheer enthusiasm from day one and we are certain that it never would have received the entries or coverage that it did, without him behind the driving wheel; congratulations and thank you John!

All of the entries can be seen via the following link; http://sketchup.google.com/3dwarehouse/search?tags=3d_lgc, and we would definitely recommend taking a look at all of the excellent competition entries in Google Earth for yourself!

Last week was a very exciting time at Earthware… our Raspberry Pi arrived!

I have recently started at Earthware as a ‘summer intern’, and so was thrilled to be given possession of the Pi for a day, and struggled to hide my excitement in front of the other, envious developers. I was set the challenge of making the Pi read our Twitter feed aloud to the office. I was asked to create a loop which would refresh every so often and read aloud the latest tweet. If a tweet had already been said, the Pi should ignore it, however if a new tweet was written it should read it aloud to the room, via our TV.

The Raspberry Pi uses the Python programming language to write code, and so as part of the learning process I had to learn how it worked compared with other languages that I am used to writing in. Luckily I found Python quick and easy learn, especially once I realised that it displayed similarities with other languages such as Java and JavaScript.

With the challenge set I quickly got stuck in and started looking into how we could make the Pi actually ‘speak’, and I soon discovered that Python has modules you can use to do different things. I used the ‘httplib’ module to gain access to the internet, and from there used the Twitter API that is made specifically for use in Python to access various Twitter feeds. In order to make the Pi ‘speak’ I found a ‘speaking’ module, and I used the ‘datetime’ module to write code which would highlight when new tweet had been written, triggering the Pi to read it.

After a few tweaks and edits I managed to get the Pi to read aloud tweets from whatever twitter user I wanted! I also enabled the ‘input’ feature which means that users are able to choose how long they want the Pi to wait before it refreshes.

I am pleased to report that I succeeded at my initial challenge of making our Raspberry Pi speak! Only one problem remains… the voice that reads the tweets is not exactly… gentle on the ears… I’m working on it!

Andy

The two videos that we posted showing the “Roving Eye” that we developed using a Kinect and a PufferSphere have now been seen over 500,000 times on YouTube in less than three weeks.

If you haven’t seen them yet, then here are the two videos.

and:

We are now playing with lots of other ways that we could bring products and services to life using the PufferSphere.  If you have any great ideas please email them to us at info@earthware.co.uk.

For more information, please:

view all our videos on our YouTube channel: http://www.youtube.com/user/earthware

see our blog post telling the story about how we did it at http://www.thetechnologystudio.co.uk/blog/index.php/2011/03/a-boys-own-guide-to-building-a-giant-creepy-eyeball-that-follows-you-round-the-room/

or contact us info@earthware.co.uk.

Within hours of Google launching Google Street View imagery covering 99% of UK roads, Earthware has released their first implementation of the new imagery in commercial property portal NovaLoca.com.

The Google Street View imagery in NovaLoca.com allows users to view commercial property in the major UK cities and in smaller towns and villages right across England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. The user now gets an even better impression of what a property being advertised on the site is like, without having to visit it in person, making finding commercial property easier than it has ever been before.

Earthware and NovaLoca have been working together for a long time to keep NovaLoca’s property mapping well ahead of the competition. In October 2008 we implemented the very first UK street side imagery in NovaLoca’s maps for commercial property in London before Google released any of their Street View imagery in the UK. This latest addition means that Street View imagery is now a standard function of the property maps where ever you are looking for commercial property in the UK. Yet again, this means NovaLoca have beaten all their competitors by becoming the first UK commercial property website to be using this technology.

If you want to know how you can use online mapping and Google Street View in your website please contact Earthware on 0845 642 9880.

Google Maps have today launched Google StreetView imagery for the entire UK and we mean the entire UK!  Nearly a quarter of a million roads across England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland are now available to ‘walk’ down from your computer screen. The 360 degree pictures mean you can have a good look around as you travel down the street, and you can deep zoom into the images to see the detail (although faces and registration plates are blurred out in accordance to the privacy protection rules).

But Google have been even busier than that: they have also released Google Street View imagery covering the majority of France, Italy and Spain too.

Although Google Street View has been available in 25 major cities in the UK since March 2009, to now have Street View right across the UK is a phenomenal achievement from the Google Maps team and will be changing the way people use online maps to display geographical information in interactive maps. The StreetView maps can be embedded into any website to help businesses display their location and any geographical information on a map, immediately we see major benefits from property mapping and travel mapping.

For anyone that’s interested you can now see where all the Earthware fun happens:
View Larger Map

If you are interested in how you can use Google Maps and Google Street View to display your information then contact Earthware on 0845 642 9880.

post updated please click here

We came across this video the other day, an amalgamation of the various ‘Did You Know’  videos originally created by Scott McLeod, Jeff Brenman and Karl Fisch that are out there at the moment whilst this one was created by Sony BMG.

Did You Know

It really tells the story about how the evolution of technology has been happening as well as giving an indication of it’s speed. The conclusion we came to having watched it: There is a demand for change and that is exactly what is happening. Standing still is increasingly becoming less of an option.

Take a look and if it doesn’t start you thinking then we would be surprised!

Earthware are celebrating having become finalists for Team of the Year at the 2008 Business Startups Awards.

So what is it like working for Earthware?

From the outset Neil and Brian, Earthware’s directors, had a vision to be innovative and different from many other companies in terms of their attitude towards staff. At Earthware job titles are irrelevant, the whole team has a say in decisions regarding the company, everyone has access to the company finances, an open plan office space is essential and hierarchy has little, if any, bearing on how the company operates, (for an idea of our aspirations see Ricardo Semler’s “Maverick”).

We make every effort to identify the core strengths we have available within the Earthware team and armed with this knowledge we make sure the right person is doing the task to ensure the company is run as efficiently and cost effectively as possible. We also find that this is a great way to attract and keep excellent staff!

Features editor of Startups.co.uk Sara Rizk says "Earthware is a great example of  the kind of innovative and fresh thinking company that the Startups love to champion. The business keeps a strong focus on technology at its core while constantly thinking about how its products engage with its clients’ needs".

Discover what the Earthware team have to say and find out more about careers at Earthware and see what one newspaper had to say about us.

Earthware’s aim has always been to “use the latest mapping technology to create compelling visual experiences to bring our clients’ products and services to life”. Therefore you can imagine our excitement when we saw the latest development in mapping being released: panoramic street level imagery. What better way to make a map compelling and to bring something to life than being able to see a location on your PC as though you are actually standing there and taking a walk around?!

Seety were the first to bring street level panoramic views to the UK having driven over 1000km of the streets in central London and taken over 170,000 photographs. Now to realise our commitment to using the latest mapping technology, Earthware have joined forces with them. Street Level View as we are calling it will be implemented into our existing EarthwareProperty maps in the coming days to become the first implementation of this latest mapping technology in the UK. Our Operations Director, Neil Osmond says of this development;

“At Earthware, we are delighted to be involved in somewhat of a coup in partnering with Seety to bring Street Level View to the UK before anyone else.  We are sure that people will really enjoy experiencing travelling round the streets of London through their PC.”

Having had a long standing relationship with commercial property finder NovaLoca, (Earthware built the NovaLoca site which also became the first implementation of EarthwareProperty) it seemed natural that NovaLoca also be the launch place for the first implementation of Street Level View imagery in the UK. Key to NovaLoca’s success has been their use of technology to differentiate them against similar offerings in its goal to make marketing commercial property easier for agents and finding commercial property easier for occupiers. Therefore it is not surprising that they were keen to be on board too. With Street Level View site users looking for commercial property in London will be able to ‘stand’ in front of a chosen property (see the facia not just the roof!), look at the one next door and even take a ‘walk’ to the nearest tube station or shop.

A note for the security and privacy conscious among you; Seety have carefully processed every image and blurred out all car registration plates and people’s faces to ensure their identity is not shown.

Keep an eye on the Earthware blog; we will be announcing the release of Street Level View in EarthwareProperty here first and if you would like any more information please contact us on 0845 6429880 or email us at info@earthware.co.uk.

UPDATE: Earthware’s Vscapes product now offers 3d Building developments for our clients in Virtual Earth and Google Earth. For more details see our Vscapes virtual landscapes page for details and client stories.

As part of an in house training exercise here at Earthware I went into town and captured some photos of the Town Hall here in Letchworth.

This building was constructed in 1935 and makes a nice challenge for anyone wishing to create a building for Google Earth due to its unique architectural features. The biggest challenge faced is the need to keep the model simple enough to not to exceed the restraints of Google Earth yet detailed enough to look like the building the model is designed to represent. Below is a short list of tip I believe are essential to creating an efficient Google earth model.

• When creating textures from photos always crop them and remove unwanted items from the picture as this will reduce image size.
• Always resize and save your textures at the lowest quality possible that still retains the level of detail you require. A good web texture is no more than 30k
• Remove all redundant geometry from your model such as the base plane of the model and any polygons that have formed within your model while you have been creating it.
• Create curved surfaces from a number of straight lines to give the appearance of a curve. For example if you examine the tower on the town hall model you will see that the curved dome is made up of a few flat angular pieces.
• Use your textures to show building details like windows and doors rather than modelling it for real.

These few useful techniques should get you well on your way to creating web efficient and Google earth compliant models in no time at all.

I have submitted the Town Hall model to Google in the hope that they will embed it in Google Earth so that anyone scanning the sights of Letchworth will be able to view it in its natural location. For now clicking on the image will take you to 3D warehouse and allow you to download the model to you computer or view it in Google Earth.

Let me know if anyone finds this useful!

Cheers

Chris