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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.
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
yeah, but what do THEY use for their directions?
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Crudely Drawn Games
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.
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)
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!
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 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 best part is that this would be a hard job to send overseas! Built in job security!
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.
We've already paid for that. The U.S. Census Bureau's Tiger map database. You can get the files on CD or DVD, or via ftp. You'll need GIS software. Try GRASS.
See what I've been reading.
isn't that information already required to be public?
however, i know from my own county (middle of nowhere colorado) that the maps are seldomly updated in digital format -- my girlfriend (IT manager for the county) was updating 20-year-old maps, putting the incremental changes back into the database. they were planning on printing new maps for surveyors, etc., and hadn't done it recently (20 years.) although the information is publicly available (and the paper maps are up to date,) there's no guarantee it's available digitally, or digitally & correctly. then again, most of this information was about property ownership and boundaries -- maybe they keep the road information more up to date. (i highly doubt it.) i know
the city disagrees with the sign on my street about where i live, exactly -- someone driving around would find information that doesn't match information given by the city/county, but might be more useful to help you navigate. (the UPS/Fedex people get a bit confused when you give them one address and they have the other one available to them in their mapping system.)
from what i understand, information of this sort is kept using fairly standard software like ESRI ArcGIS (unless it's just in the "road guy"'s head, as it is for us most of the time,) so most counties would have very similar (or identical) database layouts. shouldn't be too hard to coordinate. getting them to -send- you updates might take some convincing though, or even to make the updates digital.
but then, we have, what, less than a dozen paved roads in the county? =)
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