A view from space
The Indian Satellite Research Organisation’s latest toy, the Bhuvan Mapping Service, promises to be better than Google Earth. In reality, however, it’s not even half as good. The first thing anyone does when they use a satellite image is to try and find their house and important landmarks by zooming in. We compared Bhuvan, not with the superior Google Earth but with Google Maps’ satellite view, and tried to locate Business Today’s Delhi office, the Videocon Tower.
Bhuvan’s resolution was so poor, that we could barely make out the buildings. We finally identified Videocon Tower through approximation, helped by the light-blue roof of the Jhandelwalan Metro station down the road. On Google Maps, which unlike Bhuvan works on every major browser and isn’t tied to Internet Explorer, we could not only find the building easily, but could also make out individual cars on the road.
The biggest drawback with Bhuvan, however, is that it doesn’t work when you want it to work! It didn’t work when we needed to get screenshots for this story (it did so eventually after many hours). Google Maps worked, MSN Live Maps worked, Yahoo Maps worked and so did Nokia Maps on the N97. That said, we are sure ISRO will continue to release more and better information and will work on improving the service. They should start with getting new servers and more bandwidth, because if this is a rough diamond, it needs a lot of work to get to a finished product.
