Comments on: How can ‘Bhuvan’ beat ‘Lagaan’ of Google, Yahoo and Bing(MicroSoft) Maps.

By: Jay

Jay — Tue, 20 Apr 2010 11:44:42 +0000

U open the main web-site (http://bhuvan2.nrsc.gov.in)in Internet Explorer..b’coz it workes only in it.
Then click Enter…
Download Setup…
Install it…
(Make IE as your defult browser if it’s not)
Then run it…
Click Enter…
Enjoy…..b’coz it’s great..!!!

By: arvind

arvind — Thu, 27 Aug 2009 07:34:31 +0000

@Aditya … No doubt that execution & performance is more important than the idea and intention. And ‘bhuvan’ team truly needs to rub its ass off to get even close to its competition. Mark my words, only competition can make them get close to making their product worthwhile and not by distancing themselves from other map-apps…:)

Regarding re-inventing the wheel. Well there are some serious limitations of the existing technologies available worldwide. Besides ISRO team owns the satellites behind ‘bhuvan’, which gives them a significant edge over ‘refresh’ and ‘control’ part of future development and upgrades.

So not all is in vain, as you see Aditya.

By: Aditya

Aditya — Mon, 24 Aug 2009 04:51:56 +0000

I think this initiative is getting too much media attention and will result in disappointment. I am familiar with most of GIS and image processing software used in the remote sensing domain, and I’ll post my opinions here:
1) ISRO may be a great space research organization, but that doesn’t make them great software developers. Software development is a different ball game altogether.
2) Instead of making full-blown software which hardly anyone will end up using, it would have been better if they could enhance the existing software in the market with plugins and make the higher resolution maps available to these software. For a research organization like ISRO, making a software product to compete with the likes of Google Earth and maintaining it is far tougher, and most existing software provide capabilities for adding plugins.
Why reinvent the wheel?

I don’t intend to sound harsh, but I always believe in execution being more important than the idea and intention.

By: krish

krish — Sun, 23 Aug 2009 04:23:28 +0000

i am not able to download bhuvan for after trying the same from the site : http://isrobhuvan.in/ for a long long hrs. every time i try it gives page load error

can u pl. give me the links, all the working ones, you have gone thru, one by one , step by step.

the net says many are not able to download the same or after downloading all three required softwares nothing did work for them. every one expressing its all due to initial hiccups.

but how did it work for u ???????

pl. help

By: ritesh

ritesh — Tue, 18 Aug 2009 08:29:23 +0000

Limitations like buggy IE and directX are there. But, then also, I feel they have done good work as expected from a Government Organization

By: arvind

arvind — Tue, 18 Aug 2009 08:07:37 +0000

Now that’s a kick-ass feedback @Ritesh

By: ritesh

ritesh — Tue, 18 Aug 2009 07:37:26 +0000

I have a Linux box, and so I was unable to check bhuvan into action. I then switched to a friends windows machine to see how it looks like.

Bhuvan’s interface is awesome with lots of unexpected features like 2d/3d maps, add layers, points, lines and polygons, etc.

Bhuvan’s success over Google earth maps is in the terms of accuracy of data. I checked major areas, roads of Mumbai and Delhi, and compared them with Google. Data with Bhuvan is much updated and are pretty correct as compared to Google. I checked ‘Bandra worli searlink’ and found that Bhuvan’s image is much correct than the Google earth maps.

Bhuvan’s team has done a superb job. I am looking forward to see the capabilities of their developers platform and rich API support.

Congratulations !!

By: sonica

sonica — Mon, 17 Aug 2009 15:58:42 +0000

@khd? What sort of product then should it be?? A non-competing dud, which many other applications try to be??? Without competition no app/product/business will attract open-source developers nor users in a capitalist world…It’s completely loser like if one is not ready to compete with giants of the space… or at least not carving a niche for oneself to take on the giants…

By: khd

khd — Mon, 17 Aug 2009 14:44:05 +0000

Bhuvan could be used for all the purposes you mentioned (disaster management, city planning, etc) without having to be a commercial product. I agree that making it available as open source, would drive innovation. However, I don’t think it has to compete against Google and Yahoo to be useful to development of India.

By: arvind

arvind — Mon, 17 Aug 2009 09:14:16 +0000

I guess it’d be quite sometime from now…even the buggy launch has been after a delay of 3-4 months.

By: ujjwal kumar

ujjwal kumar — Mon, 17 Aug 2009 08:32:43 +0000

nice post arvind. I will soon switch to bhuvan maps for analytics in my website once it is launched. can u throw some more light on as when we can use the technology

By: Abraham

Abraham — Mon, 17 Aug 2009 08:32:34 +0000

man they are fully immersed in Microsoft….look at IE compatibility, using DirectX from microsoft… I am sure they even know what open-source and API is all about…