BHUVAN .... India's own browsable image gallery

[Sriman]

How is this the google killer?

Is this just me or does anyone else agree the quality is far less compared to google? I cant see even houses clearly let alone cars or traffic!

This is the Indian mentality that i dread, how do we use words like google killer, super power, fast growing etc., without any guilt or fear of being insulted or laughed at later!

http://www.ptinews.com/news/225623_ISRO ... l---Bhuvan

The degree of resolution showcased is based on points of interest and popularity, but most of the Indian terrain is covered upto at least six meters of resolution with the least spatial resolution being 55 meters, an ISRO official said.

They are still uploading the high res images

It's still in Beta. Kinks should get sorted out slowly.

[shiv]

how do we use words like google killer,

Er who used the term Google killer. I was unable to find that in any of the links, because I am saving all comments for posterity.

[karthik]

how do we use words like google killer,

Er who used the term Google killer. I was unable to find that in any of the links, because I am saving all comments for posterity.

Everyone did, even the media!

http://www.indifun.com/bhuvan-earth-bhu ... th-killer/

[Rahul M]

everyone ?? or *just* the media ?
kindly show me a link quoting any ISRO official saying "google-killer".

[Singha]

a case of putting cart before horse
- first make the sw useable and debugged for general users
- upload into a powerful server farm with fast links
- then shout about it

else dont open it to public but use internally

if thrown open to public there are minimum expectations.

if its not a one click, one string thing like gearth, why should I use it?

[Rahul M]

Its a shame that ISRO has developed Bhuvan only for Internet Explorer. For an institution that is still under sanctions, they should have shown some common sense and have brought out a version for Firefox.
No way I am going to launch IE as much as I would have liked to check out Bhuvan.

that's my biggest gripe with this release !

I don't understand this fascination of GOI institutions with stupid IE, the world is moving on.

[shiv]

if its not a one click, one string thing like gearth, why should I use it?

GD-garu maybe you were too young when Google earth first came - but do you recall the resolution at that time?

[shiv]

I don't understand this fascination of GOI institutions with stupid IE, the world is moving on.

The coders they employ - young people not unlike any young BRFites, do not know anything else. They are the duds remember. The clever guys are all working for unkil. It is the clever guys who are now the most critical of Indian stupids.

I meet a lot of young people who tell me "Ahem. Harrumph. I work for Google". ISRO is backward caste, reserved category.

[Rahul M]

The clever guys are all working for unkil.

I most certainly disagree.

shiv ji, as I see it it's a matter of inertia and attitude(most people use IE onlee, why bother with other browsers). certainly not one of capability.

[shiv]

The clever guys are all working for unkil.

I most certainly disagree.

shiv ji, as I see it it's a matter of inertia and attitude(most people use IE onlee, why bother with other browsers). certainly not one of capability.

Well there's more hidden seriousness there that I haven't revealed. if you guvrmand boss knows nothing but IE he will ask that it works on IE. We the users need to kick ass and ask for variety.


And that idiotic plugin - Terra whatever - that's for IE isn't it?

[karthik]

everyone ?? or *just* the media ?
kindly show me a link quoting any ISRO official saying "google-killer".

I was referring to the media.

[vasu_ray]

its 70% or more for IE's various versions, naturally becomes first priority

[SKrishna]

The clever guys are all working for unkil.

I most certainly disagree.

shiv ji, as I see it it's a matter of inertia and attitude(most people use IE onlee, why bother with other browsers). certainly not one of capability.

No harm supporting IE when 65% of the world uses it (down from 99% about 4 years ago and from 80% about a year ago ) . But atleast they should ensure all code they write is strictly HTML 5 compliant. That way it shall work on all browsers be it IE (only 8 ) Firefox, Safari, Chrome, Opera etc.

It is all the more important as the future of web is on the mobile and 90% of the market is dominated by webkit browsers (Safari, chrome) so if got to be seen its got to be HTML 5 compliant.

[Rahul M]

Well there's more hidden seriousness there that I revealed. if you guvrmand boss knows nothing but IE he will ask that it works on IE.

well, after all these years of reading your prose it's not that hidden !
actually that's why I mentioned the inertia bit.

We the users need to kick ass and ask for variety.

that's why I mentioned it, I hope at the very least salvi sir is reading this. may be some eager ISRO young turk too ?

[Kailash]

Really good start. Seems to be packed with all kinds of info.

Few issues I noticed:
- Need to get the high def images up there, quickly
- When you select the map layer, focus automatically went from city you zoomed to somewhere in Hyderabad!!
- When you double click to zoom, angle of view changes from rt angle (top-view), to something more parallel to ground
- Registration was just too easy. No confirmation emails, you get immediate access without any check on the information provided. Not sure about people from outside India (or Chinese hackers who can take control of machines in India).

I have not used google earth personally, but this thing has tremendous potential.

[Rahul M]

everyone ?? or *just* the media ?
kindly show me a link quoting any ISRO official saying "google-killer".

I was referring to the media.

then you shouldn't have said

This is the Indian mentality that i dread, how do we use words like google killer, super power, fast growing etc., without any guilt or fear of being insulted or laughed at later!

Everyone did, even the media!

and since when does DDM represent Indian mentality ?

[BijuShet]

I most certainly disagree.

shiv ji, as I see it it's a matter of inertia and attitude(most people use IE onlee, why bother with other browsers). certainly not one of capability.

Well there's more hidden seriousness there that I haven't revealed. if you guvrmand boss knows nothing but IE he will ask that it works on IE. We the users need to kick ass and ask for variety.

And that idiotic plugin - Terra whatever - that's for IE isn't it?

This could be as simple as some babu signing off on the official browser approved by GoI. GoI has licensed Ms products and thus Ms is the official platform for GoI appln. The whole idea of an open/shareware may be anathema to a rule book babu. Firefox or any other browser is just not official enough to be tested on. I say this with some confidence because I work in Unkilland and prior to the last 3 months, my employer deployed all apps after testing on IE only. All other browsers were deemed not kosher or worthy of notice.

[SKrishna]

Very ridiculous. Only supports Windows. Need a plugin to use. What bad design. It should have used HTML 5 then no plugin would have required. (google maps uses that) I am a Mac user so cant even test that.

[karthik]

then you shouldn't have said

and since when does DDM represent Indian mentality ?

The Indian media is not part of India?

[shiv]

This could be as simple as some babu signing off on the official browser approved by GoI. GoI has licensed Ms products and thus Ms is the official platform for GoI appln. The whole idea of an open/shareware may be anathema to a rule book babu. Firefox or any other browser is just not official enough to be tested on. I say this with some confidence because I work in Unkilland and prior to the last 3 months, my employer deployed all apps after testing on IE only. All other browsers were deemed not kosher or worthy of notice.

My BSNL (guvrmand) supplied modem - has a wizard for setup that works only in IE.

Fortunately there is a more detailed menu for moronic non wizard Linux users.

[karthik]

This could be as simple as some babu signing off on the official browser approved by GoI. GoI has licensed Ms products and thus Ms is the official platform for GoI appln. The whole idea of an open/shareware may be anathema to a rule book babu. Firefox or any other browser is just not official enough to be tested on. I say this with some confidence because I work in Unkilland and prior to the last 3 months, my employer deployed all apps after testing on IE only. All other browsers were deemed not kosher or worthy of notice.

I like the word "rule book babu", there is still so much meaningless red tapeism in our country that is frustrating on a day to day bases, this is a good example of that.

[Rahul M]

then you shouldn't have said

and since when does DDM represent Indian mentality ?

The Indian media is not part of India?

and pray where you deduced that ridiculous statement from ?
certainly not from anything I said ?

I wrote just what I meant, DDM is not representative of Indian mentality. go figure !
anyway, this is going OT, no more on this thread please.

[BijuShet]

This could be as simple as some babu signing off on the official browser approved by GoI. GoI has licensed Ms products and thus Ms is the official platform for GoI appln. The whole idea of an open/shareware may be anathema to a rule book babu. Firefox or any other browser is just not official enough to be tested on. I say this with some confidence because I work in Unkilland and prior to the last 3 months, my employer deployed all apps after testing on IE only. All other browsers were deemed not kosher or worthy of notice.

My BSNL (guvrmand) supplied modem - has a wizard for setup that works only in IE.

Fortunately there is a more detailed menu for moronic non wizard Linux users.

Linux has official sanction within GoI. One reason Bill Gates makes frequent trips to India is to convince GoI that Ms is better than open source s/w. With open source all unresolved issues have to be tackled by a nameless users group (exposing our stuff to the outside world) or by the user itself. This is not acceptable as solving a problem by oneself would mean accepting responsibility for a s/w that the babus did not build.

[Rahul M]

With open source all unresolved issues have to be tackled by a nameless users group (exposing our stuff to the outside world) or by the user itself.

not really, distros like redhat and ubuntu have dedicated commercial support structure.
there may be others I'm not aware of.
it won't need babus to troll around in linuxforums looking for solutions !! (just the idea is hilarious !)

[BijuShet]

This could be as simple as some babu signing off on the official browser approved by GoI. GoI has licensed Ms products and thus Ms is the official platform for GoI appln. The whole idea of an open/shareware may be anathema to a rule book babu. Firefox or any other browser is just not official enough to be tested on. I say this with some confidence because I work in Unkilland and prior to the last 3 months, my employer deployed all apps after testing on IE only. All other browsers were deemed not kosher or worthy of notice.

I like the word "rule book babu", there is still so much meaningless red tapeism in our country that is frustrating on a day to day bases, this is a good example of that.

What you call meaningless red tapeism is a fact of life and there are reasons for it. If you as a babu tried to step out of the rule book then you are liable to be prosecuted by a vast array of other babus(CAG for instance). If things fail then your career may take a nose dive and your GoI benefits may be jeopardised. There is no incentive to be an out-of-box thinker. The out-of-box thinking needs to come from the minister in charge and then the babus can deliver.

[BijuShet]

With open source all unresolved issues have to be tackled by a nameless users group (exposing our stuff to the outside world) or by the user itself.

not really, distros like redhat and ubuntu have dedicated commercial support structure.
there may be others I'm not aware of.
it won't need babus to troll around in linuxforums looking for solutions !! (just the idea is hilarious !)

Saar redhat support is not free. There is a service agreement which will mean that GoI will end up paying for something that was supposed to be free(INS Vikramaditya anyone).

[Kailash]

Advantage of Linux is not that it is free. It is that we can download the source and learn to maintain it ourselves, if enough resources are spent in training the people.

[karthik]

and pray where you deduced that ridiculous statement from ?
certainly not from anything I said ?

I wrote just what I meant, DDM is not representative of Indian mentality. go figure !
anyway, this is going OT, no more on this thread please.

If i say india has a problem with caste system it obviously does not mean everyone in India is casteist, its only a term. go figure it yourself!

Same way, when a country like USA uses a modest term like team-USA to call its F-1 team, its funny we call ours Force-India and Force India represents the whole of India!

This is like when a weak team does a lot of hue and cry before the competition and mid way its athletes fall in exhaustion, even though not all the supporters of the team in the stadium are part of team, never the less its embracing for all its supporters. When such things happen again and again then its time we spoke of it and put a stop to this loud mouth retard who ever is saying such things.

Anyway i dont want to derail the topic.

[karthik]

What you call meaningless red tapeism is a fact of life and there are reasons for it. If you as a babu tried to step out of the rule book then you are liable to be prosecuted by a vast array of other babus(CAG for instance). If things fail then your career may take a nose dive and your GoI benefits may be jeopardised. There is no incentive to be an out-of-box thinker. The out-of-box thinking needs to come from the minister in charge and then the babus can deliver.

Ya i agree, but those rules dont seem to stop these babus, they take the bribe and at the same time delay, what i say is these red tapes have not stopped the babu from taking the bribe, so lets just atleast get rid of the red tape and save time and earn a profit!

This mentality is wide spread in the government and also with the people in general, that gets reflected even in an web site like this, without such red tape may be Bhuvan could be faster and who knows many other projects like Kaveri and Arjun may have also gotten through.

[Kritavarman]

One thing is sure, I am not going to install pirated XP and a FREEWARE IE 6 on my machine

No chance for a Ubuntu user like me to explore bhuvan

GoI / ISRO could have come with better output together, some of the pages don't even carry title... the ATKT wala engineer could have done a better job...

[Rahul M]

its funny we call ours Force-India and Force India represents the whole of India!

this is getting more ridiculous !
AFAIK force-India is the racing team of UB group or did I get that wrong ?
it's a name chosen by that team nothing more. it DOES NOT represent India. it's a team from India not THE Indian team. hope you understand the difference.

If i say india has a problem with caste system it obviously does not mean everyone in India is casteist, its only a term. go figure it yourself!

the earlier statement and this one are different, when the whiny nature of the earlier nature is pointed out to you, you respond with another ridiculous counterpoint.

that is *fine* by me, I only request you to find another platform to post those.
please restrict BR posting to constructive posting.

[Rahul M]

not really, distros like redhat and ubuntu have dedicated commercial support structure.
there may be others I'm not aware of.
it won't need babus to troll around in linuxforums looking for solutions !! (just the idea is hilarious !)

Saar redhat support is not free. There is a service agreement which will mean that GoI will end up paying for something that was supposed to be free(INS Vikramaditya anyone).

biju ji, I know that, it is not meant to be free ! it is meant to provide professional support for what is a very robust and capable OS without the monopolistic hassles of MS.

[BijuShet]

Just signed up for Bhuvan and first impressions were not good. I hope they redo a lot of the user interface to make it better.

[BajKhedawal]

Anybody able to use it on vista?? Throwing an error while installing

Install with administrator rights... It works fine for me...

Works fine for me on my 64bit Vista Home + IE 8

[saip]

I can only zoom upto city level. Why are the census figures from 1991?

[Gagan]

Dear Friends,
You are not seeing images of Bhuvan. You are watching the TerraExplorer images which are a decade old.
Look for buildings which are recent like 5 years back. They are not there on these images. I checked. My house is not there, there is barren land there.

I generally look for certain key features like, Palam airport's third runway, Hydrabad's Rajiv Gandhi Airport or Bangalore's new airport. These were all added within the last year or so.
This tells me how old these images are.

Bhuvan is not officially launched yet it seems, these seem to be some french / american earth viewing software which gets launched every time we log on to Bhuvan.

[shiv]

Dear Friends,
You are not seeing images of Bhuvan. You are watching the TerraExplorer images which are a decade old.
Look for buildings which are recent like 5 years back. They are not there on these images. I checked. My house is not there, there is barren land there.

I generally look for certain key features like, Palam airport's third runway, Hydrabad's Rajiv Gandhi Airport or Bangalore's new airport. These were all added within the last year or so.
This tells me how old these images are.

Bhuvan is not officially launched yet it seems, these seem to be some french / american earth viewing software which gets launched every time we log on to Bhuvan.

Good catch. In fact the "annexe" to the Vidhan Soudha legislature buildings in Bangalore - opened in the last 2 years appears to be missing. The construction took 2 years. Devanahalli airport is missing - but it is missing even on Google Earth.

There was a TV news item about the launch of Bhuvan and the images shown (on TV) really were at "house" level. I suspect that is the resolution that will be provided in due course.

We on BRF are like doctors - gadget/techno suckers who jump early into new stuff when the price is high and quality low. I can now buy 4 cellphones for the price of the first pager I bought, and a Blackberry costs less than the brick I bought called a cellphone when it first appeared.

But the software is working better than the early versions of Google Earth provided for Linux and even those came much later I used to curse Google Earth for forcing me to boot into Windows. Even now Google maps is not fully functional in all ways with Linux.

PS: Let me make a prediction. Devanahalli airport, Bangalore's new airport will appear on Google earth within a month.

[Bade]

Google earth image swaths have not been updated for North B'lore for like ages. They very likely pre-date google earth itself.

Yes google may be forced to make more frequent updates now. I see that Arunachal names in chinese have been removed already for a change.

[shiv]

The site appears to be down now @ 8-45 AM IST

[shiv]

Good catch. In fact the "annexe" to the Vidhan Soudha legislature buildings in Bangalore - opened in the last 2 years appears to be missing. The construction took 2 years. Devanahalli airport is missing - but it is missing even on Google Earth.

Correction - that annexe is visible. Judging from the state of the golf course - it is possible that those specific images are a year old for Bangalore. But the airport is missing though. Not even works visible - neither on GE nor on this.

Weird..Am I missing something?