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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."
They currently have an opening for Associate Field Analyst in Las Vegas, NV. Good luck finding anyone willing to visit each and every strip club and bar in town, write down their addresses, and get paid while you're doing it.
Apparently they have been looking for someone to do that since June.
...two people in a car drive around endlessly...
And I thought my deadlines were unreasonable.
~ Whence do you come, slayer of men, or where are you going, conqueror of space?
With a GPS receiver in many cell phones we need to figure out how we all can collaborate on creating maps. Here is a map I created with the data from my cell phone over the course of a couple of months. If everyone contributed instead of the data from a few people driving around we could pool the collective data and have great, open maps. This service is free until the end of the year, if everyone who can signed up and we pool the locations we would have a great map (not to mention traffic info.)
Free cell phone tracking
And badly, at that. Maybe MapQuest can give you directions to the top of the thread next time.
yeah, but what do THEY use for their directions?
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Crudely Drawn Games
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.
-sam
I was just here, where did I go?
I worked at a company that was going to do vehicle tracking using GPS and those road map CDs you see at the computer store. We bought several of them from different companies. What we found was that they are full of mistakes. I believe that most of the data for these comes from a company called DeLorme (sp?). Unfortunately, it seems to have been compiled from obsolete government records. Something to keep in mind is you're planning a trip with these.
When all else fails, run.
With a GPS receiver in many cell phones we need to figure out how we all can collaborate on creating maps.
"Can you hear me now? I'm on Main and First...."
"Can you hear me now? I'm on Main and Second...."
"Can you hear me now? I'm on Main and Third...."
On the other hand the census bureau is planning on having a new improved database for the 2010 census that includes every home in America with relative precision in the centimeter range and absolute precision in the meter range. Some of the tech that they use for this is VERY cool stuff.
You can start learning here.
The policy of the United States is worse than bad---it is insane. -- Ludwig von Mises, Economic Policy(1959)
Give mea break, Its hardly a 300 words article and what is so interesting about it ?
I couldn't get anything from the article, the real interesting part is the routing and not mapping. But the only information I found about routing was....
Moss opens up a "Shmem," or shared memory file, and puts in all the new info. When she gets back to the office, the heavy lifting starts.
"Usually it takes about twice the time to code it as it does to drive," Moss says. "There's so much information to put in."
Oh so they use Shmem , wow that's sooooo interesting.
for the last time people, I am "frodo from middle eaRTH", not "middle eaST".
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.
It surprises me that they didn't use the TIGER data, available from the US Census Bureau.
Klynas Engineering makes a great product called Streets-On-A-Disk that covers any mapping need you might have. I used it as the mapping backend for a custom automatic vehicle location package I wrote. The software has a nifty API interface for external control and works great. The tech support rocks too - Scott, the president of the company and the guy who wrote the program, has provided me with tons of useful info. I have no interest in the company, I'm just a very satisfied customer.
I see my shadow changing, stretching up and over me...
I want Navtech to team up with a couple of the large carriers, like Schneider National, Werner Enterprises, JB Hunt and the other large trucking companies. These 3 companies, and many more, already have GPS transponders in the truck that track their locations and report back in realtime via Satellite.
Now, when a driver sees major road construction, etc, on major interstates they simply hit a button on their QualComm OmniTracs unit marking it as such. After so many drivers have done this, it marks the area as being under construction, with a little bit of info about what's going on (resurfacing, 3 lanes closed westbound from 9pm-4am at milemarker 139 to 177 until 12/16/03) and mapquest inturns adds that data to it's routing database.
This would be an excellent way for mapquest to add a pay-for service that I for one would definately use.
Looking for hardware (Currently need: Large Etch-a-Sketch) Have one? See my journal!
NavTech just makes a map database, the path plotting algorithm doesn't come from them. That's why mapquest and yahoo will give you different results.
The policy of the United States is worse than bad---it is insane. -- Ludwig von Mises, Economic Policy(1959)
I had to suffer with navtech maps for my autopc nav system. their maps are low quality, very limited in the amount of data and they ask a major premium for them.
Maps based on the US census Tiger data sets that are available FREE online are more useable than anything that navtech has ever produced.
I als used the GM navigation system that also is crippled by NAVTECH maps. now I look carefully, if I see navtech anywhere on the map or device I will not touch it.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
I'd mod this flamebait, but I'm just as bitter as you are, homeboy. I've gone from respected sysadmin to considering renting the use of my bodily orificies to pay my rent.
*sigh*
El riesgo vive siempre!
My subdivision is a little over 3 years old. We're on all the other maps, but not MapQuest. Repeated emails to them to get this corrected have gone nowhere.
Odd thing is, if I map to the Albertson's near my house and then scroll down in their map, I see our subdivision. If I map to our address, none of the streets display.
Kinda sucks when you tell someone you need to give them directions when they say they'll just map it using MapQuest.
At least MapBlast works. Whether or not it'll do better now that Microsoft owns them remains to be seen.
Their LineDrive maps are better anyway.
Cruising the internet on my TI-99/4A @ a whopping 300 baud!
I wonder if these two actually drove around the 5 block circle that second time it appeared in my directions, or just logged it as "known path"?
...sometimes, in order to hurt someone very badly, you have to tell that person terrible lies. - PA
"I use the pen tool to write down names of roads or explain any significant changes to what we currently have in the database," she says. ;^)
Ghee, that really is some sophisticated technology they're using to solve these problems. Driving around in cars, using "pen tools" to "write down" information. It really smacks of the new millenium!
main(O){10<putchar(4^--O?77-(15&5128 >>4*O):10)&&main(2+O);}
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.)
The graph algorithms to calculate these routes are very mature. If there are problems, they're either from the algorithms being implemented improperly (unlikely, as they're actually quite simple algorithms), or there are issues with the data. Most likely it's the latter.
I think it's pretty obvious you're going to need a sidekick. I have my own costume, and will work for donuts.
- Joe
I've had much better luck with MS MapPoint than ANY online service. The driving directions and printed map quality are excellent. I moved to NC from TX a year and a half ago and its been a real lifesaver even with local directions. I'd highly recommend paying for it than using any free online service; haven't gotten lost once!
Tell them to drive through Williamsburg, VA again. I got SO lost last weekend courtesy of Mapquest...
Hamilton court is probably the busiest in Ontario, as Hamilton City Police is very large and they produce a lot of speeding tickets (in Ontario there aren't a lot of toll roads, speed limits are kept artificially low and governments use speed tickets as a source of revenue).
I thought about trying to contact Mapquest about it, but then I thought this is probably on purpose so that lost & guilty souls (or their hacker/cracker skilled paralegals) can adjourn trials :)
"One of the symptoms of an approaching nervous breakdown is the belief that ones work is terribly important." -BRussell
Of course, if you wanted to license them, they were US$3,000 per quadrangle (7 1/2 minutes Longitued by 7 1/2 minutes Latitude) in 1991! It was a bit much. It was cheaper for us to take the TIGER maps and aerial photos and have people in the Dominican Republic redo the maps!
---- It puts the lotion on its skin or else it gets the hose again. It does this whenever it's told.
In Tucson the I10 and I19 are under heavy construction so I wonder how long it will take for those guys to visit Tucson and get the maps updated. In the last two years several freeway exits have been removed from the freeway to never be reopened. Some roads now require drivers to get off at an earlier offramp and take a frontage road to the street you want.
.
I know that sites like mapsonus.com have a link to e-mail them about wrong/changed roads on the maps, but if it's really just up to two guys driving around then maybe it will take a wile.
Even worse, what if they actually take people at there word! "Oh yes, you can get off at the Willmot exit now and drive all the way to the Park Place mall ever sence they closed the military base. You can just drive across that area and nobody will mind."
If anyone is ever stupid enough to actually try that I hope they pick a mellow yellow alert level day to do it. They might go nuts if the national threat level is orange or red or something.
I have also noticed that some of these services will give me directions like "turn right onto unnamed road." The road really isn't unnamed, it just doesn't have a street sign. I guess asking the city for the info is too much work.
I am not suggesting that the people running Tucson or any other city actually know what they are doing. .
Anyway, none of these map services guarantee the results so before you follow the directions you should ask someone who actually knows that area (if you can find someone like that) expecially if there has been road construction. It might actually be faster taking the long way.
Losing faith in humanity one person at a time.
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.
I figured it was either done manually or maybe tied into a database by the road department as they pave things.
You know what?
I can't imagine life without being able to get directions, and a custom-made map, to somewhere an hour and a half away that no one's ever heard of. I really don't think I could navigate with a paper map anymore.
But technology's most amusing when it all blows up. I wish I could find the link, but I distinctly remember reading about some lady who tried to plot an intracity voyage, and got routed through about 12 states -- even venturing into Canada for a while. (Does anyone else remember this?) And someone I know was talking about how on a recent trip, he tried navigating only by GPS; it worked perfectly, until it had him turn down onto what was a dead-end street. It turns out that the GPS assumed he could drive about 100' through the woods, up a steep embankbent, to get onto the highway. (I suppose it would have been a convenient shortcut, if only he had been in a Hummer and had a chainsaw for those pesky trees.)
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suwain_2
The company didn't do well financially (which is why i'm not working there anymore), but the models can still be viewed. Check them out:
A presentation of just about every model we did (Helsinki, Tokyo, London, Bremen).
Helsinki, more images of Helsinki model.
London, a small part of London (images and video)
Virtual Kainuu, a huge rural area model created from existing map data (VRML, video and images). In finnish, but I think you'll manage.
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.
I posted this under a different thread, above, but it fits better here, as it's related:
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Back when Yahoo maps was just getting underway, my friend and I decided to do a little test.
We got driving directions and a map from his place to my place. One look at what was on the screen told us their maps were created from normal printed street level maps.
Yahoo told my dear friend to drive down 65th Ave, then make a left onto I-205 Northbound. Problem is, there's an approximatly 30-40 foot drop off the bridge, and no onramp. Not to mention the cars below going 65MPH as you landed nose- or top-down on the freeway.
Since then, I've never really been able to trust online driving directions...
I used to travel a lot with this indie band, Joe 90. While travelling to the nearly non-existant town of Independence, Orgeon, they came to an impossible situation, thanks to the brilliance of Mapquest. Basically, the road just stopped. At the banks of a river. Since they did not have a floating van thing a la Oregon Trail, they turned around, and ended up late for their own show. Always check mapquest against other sources. I believe they even have a disclaimer somewhere on their site suggesting "do a reality check and make sure the road still exists."
Here in Brazil we have a group, called TrackSource, wich carries a project of mapping all the country roads and streets, people drive with their gps's, then submit tracks to a moderator which compiles it in a broader map and then put it for free on a site.
e =News& file=article&sid=100&mode=&order=0&thold=0
This page is in Portugues, but you can get a feel
http://www.portalgps.com.br/modules.php?nam