Skybox Labs: #Development and co-development in broad vistas
▻https://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2019-04-22-development-and-co-development-in-broad-vistas
Shyang Kong shares the history of the co-development studio, and why it’s now developing its own title, Stela
L’explosion de Falcon 9, un coup d’arrêt pour les ambitions spatiales de Facebook | Silicon 2.0
02 septembre 2016
▻http://siliconvalley.blog.lemonde.fr/2016/09/02/lexplosion-de-falcon-9-un-coup-darret-pour-les-ambitions-
En lançant son satellite, Facebook espérait prendre de l’avance sur ses futurs rivaux. Le groupe de Menlo Park n’est en effet pas le seul à vouloir développer un « Internet spatial ». Début 2015, M. Musk se disait prêt à investir jusqu’à 10 milliards de dollars pour mettre en orbite une constellation de petits satellites. Il est soutenu par Google, qui a investi plusieurs centaines de millions dans SpaceX. Le moteur de recherche a aussi racheté le fabricant Skybox. Autre concurrent : la start-up OneWeb, qui prévoit de lancer 900 satellites.
« Heureusement, nous avons développé d’autres technologies, comme Aquila, qui vont également permettre de connecter les gens », assure le patron de Facebook. Aquila est un gigantesque drone, dont l’envergure est similaire à celle d’un Boeing 737. Fin juin, il a effectué son premier vol d’essai à taille réelle. L’appareil pourra rester dans les airs pendant trois mois, à une altitude comprise entre 60.000 et 90.000 pieds (entre 18 et 27 km). Grâce à un système de lasers, chaque drone fournira une connexion Internet dans un rayon de 80 km.
#internet.org #drones #boycott_facebook #satellites #business_net
lacambre attaquera-t-il, lui qui est propriétaire du nom Internet (…)
How outer space is becoming the next Internet
▻http://www.cnbc.com/2015/07/22/how-outer-space-is-becoming-the-next-internet.html
Silicon Valley venture capitalists are betting big, pouring $1.7 billion into space-related companies this year, according to CB Insights. Even if you exclude the $1 billion of that raised just by SpaceX, the market has still attracted almost twice as much money in 2015 as in the past three years combined. Planet Labs closed a $118 million round in April.
Google, of course, is firmly in the mix. The Web giant shelled out $500 million last year for satellite maker Skybox Imaging, a venture-backed start-up whose technology can bolster products like search, maps and Google Earth.
“There are going to be a number of companies built upon the back of all this fundamental technology,” said Peter Hebert, co-founder of Lux Capital, a Silicon Valley venture firm that’s investing heavily against that thesis. “This is a huge wave that’s going to play out over decades.”
How – and why – Google is transforming the map
▻http://theconversation.com/how-and-why-google-is-transforming-the-map-35238
Google has managed to map most of the world. Recently, the company offered a behind-the-scenes glimpse into how it’s built the Google Maps application using a combination of technology (the Google Street View car), expansion (the acquisition of satellite-imagery startup Skybox) and algorithms (computer vision, photogrammetry, mapping).
While the company’s initial focus had been on the world’s population centers (in 2006, Google had used high resolution satellite imagery to map 37% of the world’s population; by 2012 that number had risen to 75%), their reach has extended beyond human settlements. In Google Maps’ Street View feature, users can now observe penguins in Antarctica, tourists in Machu Picchu, and Himalayan base camps.
#Google s’offre une flotte de satellites
▻http://www.lemonde.fr/pixels/video/2014/06/11/google-s-offre-une-flotte-de-satellites_4436145_4408996.html
►http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fCrB1t8MncY
Pour 500 millions de dollars, Google s’offre Skybox Imaging, une société américaine spécialisée dans la fabrication de petits satellites d’imagerie en haute définition. Grâce à la technologie développée par Skybox Imaging, Google mettra à jour ses cartes de la Terre et étendra son service d’accès à Internet.
Dans les exemples : vue satellite d’Alep pour y suivre une « crise humanitaire »…
Inside a Startup’s Plan to Turn a Swarm of DIY Satellites Into an All-Seeing Eye (18-06-2013)
▻http://www.wired.com/2013/06/startup-skybox
Here is the soaring vision that Skybox’s founders have sold the Valley: that kids from Stanford, using inexpensive consumer hardware, can ring Earth with constellations of imaging satellites that are dramatically cheaper to build and maintain than the models currently aloft. By blanketing the exosphere with its cameras, Skybox will quickly shake up the stodgy business (estimated to grow to $4 billion a year by 2018) of commercial space imaging. Even with six small satellites orbiting Earth, Skybox could provide practically real-time images of the same spot twice a day at a fraction of the current cost.
But over the long term, the company’s real payoff won’t be in the images Skybox sells. Instead, it will derive from the massive trove of unsold images that flow through its system every day—images that, when analyzed by computer vision or by low-paid humans, can be transmogrified into extremely useful, desirable, and valuable data. What kinds of data? One sunny afternoon on the company’s roof, I drank beers with the Skybox employees as they kicked around the following hypotheticals:
— The number of cars in the parking lot of every Walmart in America.
— The number of fuel tankers on the roads of the three fastest-growing economic zones in China.
— The size of the slag heaps outside the largest gold mines in southern Africa.
— The rate at which the wattage along key stretches of the Ganges River is growing brighter.
Such bits of information are hardly trivial. They are digital gold dust, containing clues about the economic health of countries, industries, and individual businesses. (One company insider confided to me that they have already brainstormed entirely practical ways to estimate major economic indicators for any country, entirely based on satellite data.) The same process will yield even more direct insight into the revenues of a retail chain or a mining company or an electronics company, once you determine which of the trucks leaving their factories are shipping out goods or key components.
Plenty of people would want real-time access to that data—investors, environmentalists, activists, journalists—and no one currently has it, with the exception of certain nodes of the US government. Given that, the notion that Skybox could become a Google-scale business—or, as one guy on the roof that afternoon suggested to me, an insanely profitable hedge fund—is not at all far-fetched. All they need to do is put enough satellites into orbit, then get the image streams back to Earth and analyze them. Which is exactly what Skybox is planning to do.
Monitoring Oil Reserves from Space (08-04-2014)
▻http://www.skyboximaging.com/blog/monitoring-oil-reserves-from-space
Alphabet Said in Talks to Sell Skybox Satellite Business
▻https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-01-09/alphabet-said-in-talks-to-sell-skybox-satellite-business