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Who Makes MapQuest's Maps?
carpoolio writes "TechTV has an interesting story about the company that builds the mapping technology behind popular map services like Mapquest. The company, Navigation Technologies, is decidedly low-tech in its approach to making its maps: two people in a car drive around endlessly, inputting street information and landmarks into databases. Navtech's map databases are used in everything from Garmin GPS units to Alpine in-dash auto navigation systems. So next time you turn the wrong way down a one-way street, know that there are real people behind the controls."
If you could only find a way to Wiki map collaboration. Now THAT would be way kool.
My first impulse is to crack a joke about this, but upon second consideration...
That sounds like an unbelievably sweet job; where do I send a resume? (And to think: all those pointless roadtrips and all that skipping school could come in handy.)
In Capitalist America, bank robs you!
My car has one of these things in it - the map systems runs of a data DVD rom in the boot (part of the CD changer assembly).
:o(
As a result I have been driving in Boston for 3 months and can't find my way from end to end, unlike every other place I have lived in (I can drive around NYC, London, Cambridgeshire and Lancashire with no map no problem). I have no idea what connects to where at all.
You need that period of getting lost all the time when you first move somewhere to really learn it, rely too much on GPS nav and you will never know the city properly
Cool for the odd weekend, but overreliance will cripple your direction sense. And worst of all, now I have lived here for so long I can't exactly switch it off and be late for everything - no excuse anymore.
Now I'm stuck forever buying map upgrades and newer and better systems at vast cost - it's a conspiracy to lock you in I tells ya, get out whilst the goings good.
Beep beep.
I'm suprised they don't strike up a deal with UPS, FedEx, and other companies that travel around alot that allows them to hook up receivers and use it to grab data that they can compare to their db.
Should be easy to tell if a street is new, changed, or whatever. Then they'd just have to send someone out there to verify the new data.
I'm actually surprised that this is how they do it. I've always assumed they hire people to drive over every road, but I figured there was a much better way to collect what I'm sure is a shitload of data.
It's not all as simple as it seems. Figuring out where all the roads are is easy, but if you RTFA, you'll see that coding everything takes twice as long as that. Somebody has to enter the street names, speed limits, address ranges, etc. And don't forget about deleting old roads that no longer exist!
Very close to every road is already digitized in the computers of municipalities, fedral and other government agencies. What we need isn't a swarm of GSP receivers but get the information into once place and make it public. The information already exists in pieces and it needs to be coordinated and released.
A lotta folks are saying they don't understand why theres not some huge network of volunteers that are helping out. I'd also think that this would be beneficial to the entire digitized world, but for the simple fact that I would not want my charity to be used by a company to make their $$. If however someone with more time/programming-skills than I decided they'd lend their time to building a free solution then I'm sure volunteers would pop out of the wood work. (Free as in, the cd's and data distributed by users who aren't searching on the web.)
I don't think they actually input speed limits, as I've been on many trips that claim 10+ hours, and it takes about 7 at the speed limit, no matter the traffic.
The driving directions are often mistaken, generally because they do not always take into account one-way streets and prohibited turns.
That's exactly why they have these fools driving around. The maps already exist, they are not creating them from scratch. They are observing the local roads/turns/restrictions for errors in the mapping data and any changes. The idea is to get clean data so you do not have the problems you mentioned.
The driving around work is only part of the process.
The work is primarily done by teams of workers putting together the road network in a GIS based on topographic maps and air photos. The addresses are added to the data from parcel maps, census data, postal data, etc...
The driving around work is to field check the data and keep it up to date. Building the data by driving each road wouldn't be cost effective.
Not to sound like a mean old man (well ok, I am a mean old man), but the hardest part of any such project would be sifting the bullshit out from the data.
There's just too many ways for erroneous input to be included in such a vast database: Folks with an obnoxious "sense of humor," people with Things To Hide, grudge holders against various and sundry people, places, and things, government wombats with strange agendas, and never forget the Great Slimy Shoal of Lawyers who would seek to reorder things on behalf of Bob Knows Who, for Bob Knows What kind of reason. Pure random stupidity and mistakes cannot be ignored either.
Odds of actually achieving a useful, properly updated, set of data aren't actually zero, but they're pretty damn close.
Is it fascism yet?
It's easy enough with peer reviewing. Just rate people up or down as you discover that their map information is good or bad, and then score their datum points higher or lower based on their rating.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"