India Releasing Google Earth-Type Software
Thursday November 27, 2008
The Indian Based Research Organization is planning to release a web-based program that will be similar to Google Earth. The program, called Bhuvan (Sanskrit for Earth), will provide better resolution than Google Earth and will include data from India's network of 50 satellites.
Comments
How many satellites does google use? and whose country?
Do you think India’s network of 50 satellites is better?
Why are some place names being changed to reflect a more accurate native pronunciation, such as Mumbai and Beijing, yet other are not, such as Munchen, Roma, Nippon…
Map publishers in the United States generally adopt a revised name for a non-U.S. place only after the revised name (as with Bombay/Mumbai) or a different system of spelling or transliteration (as with Peking/Beijing) has been adopted by the country of the affected place. Each country makes its own decisions for its own reasons. (It is a difference of style and/or intended market that leads some publishers to use the names by which places have long been known in English (e.g., Rome and Italy), others their local names (Roma and Italia), still others a mix (local names for cities, thus Roma, but traditional English names for countries, thus Italy).) Some replacement names win acceptance slowly or not at all for reasons such as questionable legitimacy of the government making the change (Burma/Myanmar) or uncertain historical merit of the arguments favoring the change (Sea of Japan/East Sea).
The federal government’s Geo Names Server (GNS)can help with judgment calls about places outside the United States. U.S. names are easier: Abide by the decisions of the U.S. Board on Geographic Names.