Indians’ can now boast of a home-made map browser application similar to Google Earth. Named Bhuvan, the application is developed by Indian Space Research Organization ( ISRO).
Bhuvan, in it’s beta stage, being prepared by India’s major Space Organization, users can expect high resolution images of the Indian sub-continent. It will be a fun-based try for users as the interface is similar to Google Earth but with greater details. You can view your home,office and nearby streets with greater zoom level.
But one thing that may turn away users is the fact that the images supplied are those captured one year ago. So, homes and places that came up less than an year ago will not appear in the images. The plus point over here is that the application needs less bandwidth and so it can comfortably run on slow internet connections too.
The application Bhuvan can be downloaded from the link http://bhuvan.nrsc.gov.in/
Requires windows. Requires IE. Requires login. Requires execution of some closed source crap with admin privileges. LAME! Nice effort but lame as a tortoise without legs and arms lying on it's back.
Shouldn't data collected with tax payer money be made truly freely available to the tax payers? I am sure there is a tonne of open source goodness that could be built around such data.