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Google Maps Graduates
Anonymous writes "It appears that Google's dynamic, interactive map program, Google Maps, has finally made it out of the labs. Now it has merged with Google Local and has been updated on the homepage. Another great stride in Google's quest to conquer the internet." Graduation covered by PC Magazine. From the article: "Now, when you query Google Local (local.google.com), a map pops up, displaying the many businesses and services that match you query. If you search on "Pizza in San Francisco," for instance, it displays a map of San Francisco sprinkled with red tabs pointing to various pizza parlors. It also lists each restaurant down the right side of your browser."
With all those links to Google in the summary I think it's about to see it's first slashdotting.
I liked it more when the map was aligned to the left. ._O
- shazow
Am I the only one who thought Google was mapping college graduates, density maps of different degrees and fields, and other related things such as that?
Bring On Google Maps with Taged location info, FOR OTHER PLANETS :)
XML - A clever joke would be here if
I dunno, if you look at their site, they still list google maps. Maybe this is just a change to google local
I had a neighborhood near the county courthouse in San Francisco highlighted yesterday and asked for the bail bondsman in the area. It didn't understand that request.
Thankfully I wasn't in jail and looking for one at that time.
by "conquering" the web, does he mean "filling it with useful applications and tools for public use"?
?
I just wish Google Earth was available for MacOS or Linux. I saw someone demo it on a Windows box, and it looked extremely cool.
Find free books.
Microsoft "virtual earth" can map multiple addresses as you enter them and show them all at once. Google maps is yet to do this!
Why does Pizza come from Parlours?
What other parlours are there?
Beauty Parlours.
What else?
Why is a burger joint not a Hambuger parlour?
I get White House 1600 Pennsylvania Ave NW, Washington, DC. Is this like the satellite maps where some entries can be ten years old?
It's all grey! Help me plz =(
I found 50 BS, 25 Masters and 5 PhDs within one block!
Yes, I'll feed the trolls. :) See here http://autopackage.org/> for the solution to installation.
Aside from the reverse handed-ness, it appears to be the same as the waaay kewl Google maps. Hey google guys, how about telling us how this is different?
Evil Overlord Rule #86. I will make sure that my doomsday device is up to code and properly grounded.
What is this about the "ruling the internet"? All they did was merge Google Local and Google Maps, two GOOGLE services. How is that ruling the internet? Frankly, they just made Local more helpful.
Not only "land of the free" but "land of the lawyers" who love a good old 1st amendment smackdown. Shihar 153932
Still no changes to the use of Google Maps API, thankfully. Maps embedded in your own webpages do not (yet) show any advertising material.
Long may that continue...
Open Source Drum Kit, LPLC deve board - mjhdesigns.com
http://www.google.com/apis/maps/, hopefully it will be out in release sometime soon, along with a free geocoder from google.
Living down in South America makes the tool a nice toy but with not so big "real life" utility as it have for fully covered cities (and is really nice what can be reached when you have fully covered your city, a nice example is i.e. Vivirama for the housing market in barcelona)
http://maps.google.com/maps?q=jfk+to+350+5th+ave,+ new+york&ll=40.742786,-73.965835&spn=0.018008,0.02 7805&t=k&hl=en
Spam: Any activity on internet to gain popularity without paying to advertising companies like Google.
I went to the local Google maps and typed in al qaeda, terrorist, criminal, shifty, greedy and etc... Everytime it pointed to places in Kansas. I even typed in Osama Bin Laden and guess where it showed him at... You guessed it Kansas!
See all that money spent on Intel work and all we really need to do to track down all the badness in the world is use Google maps.
News Reporters Make Tasty Polar Bear Treats!
The moon is, of course, a satellite, despite the fact that (according to google) it's only marginally smaller than pluto.
For the love of God, please learn to spell "ridiculous"!!!
FlashEarth is soo much better (for me). You even get the coordinates in real time as you move around the map (which is important for me).
Google maps has some pretty striking before-and-after coverage of the hurricane. Click on 'satellite' and then 'katrina' and spot the difference. It's fairly striking.
I did this, and I get a link for a local shoe store *grin* I'm rather curious how that got in there!
Swweeet! I just did a search for "gays san francisco". Some of the results are queer.
Jon Sims Center for the Arts? Bay Area Reporter? Golden Gate Business? Are these things somehow gay? I'm not familiar with the area.
This is not flame bait. Honest!
Not only awkward, but an invasion of privacy! Why is Google mapping graduates? Just because some gets a degree gives Google the right to track them?!? :)
Download my free songs!
I mean, for crying out loud, it has little towns on there that have less than a hundred people on them!
Is it some kind of feature that I don't know about, or what?
Worth noting is that I haven't really used google maps ever before (not having traveled in the last few years).
OTOH, though, I would say that google maps stand up pretty well. Either that or no one uses them: I work at a gas staion part time (when I'm not in school), and people using yahoo/mapquest come in all the time asking for clarification. I've only seen one or two google map people come in and ask for help.
Obligatory Soundbite Catchphrase
This is, by far, my favorite troll. The last things that the Zealot says are hillarious, and the troll in its entirety is quite funny because it's true.
Google maps now that you graduated I have one word...........
Plastics!
"(I) have this unfortunate condition that causes me not to believe a single thing any politician says when a mic's on.
Still missing exit numbers on the expressways, though...
"Tell me doctor, with all of your defenses, are there any provisions for an attack by killer bees?"
Because knowing the specials in San Francisco is more important than expanding coverage in other countries, in many of which you can only find cities (if that).
Send email from the afterlife! Write your e-will at Dead Man's Switch.
Just specify "Pizza" and you get Kansas pizza shops.
Is it just me, or did anybody else read that headline to say that Google is mapping people who have just graduated?
From the title of post, I thought Google had mapped all (college) graduates. Ya know, so they could offer them jobs before Micro$oft did?
Sig? - yeah, whatever.
Damn, I wish this feature had been around when I was single.
Searches like this would have been SO much easier.
Planning a night out with the sales staff would have been a snap.
Now all they need is a button to plot a course from your home, to the chain of clubs for the night on the town.
Of course if this one were to actually work, dating in my "Sowing my Wild Oats" days would have been just as easy.
Again, the ability to map a course would be useful.
Google, all you need to be a 21st century digital player.
"Live Free or Die." Don't like it? Then keep out of the USA
whew, i can't even use google maps anymore, it doesn't fit on my fujitsu p1510 screen with that crazy right hand change!!! now i have to physically move the browser off the screen to the left, just to see the map. what are they thinking? i can't be the only one with this problem...any comments??
I'd be interested to hear if anyone else has any thoughts on this, or have any references to Google's response on the future of the API.
Be sure to remember the Programmers Prayer
There are still plenty of things that need to be done to improve Google Maps:
*) Better routes. MapQuest still tends to provide better driving directions. They need to tune it better to select the best route.
*) Newer images. The satellite imagery is about 5 years old in my area, and others are older and lower resolution. They need a consistent plan to update the images.
*) Multiple-stop routes. I want to be able to plan a route that goes from point A to point B to point C. Similarly, I want to be able to look at the route from A to B and force it to take an alternate path. So just how much longer is that senic route?
If the marker for my house is off by a block or 2 can you have them fix it?
Obama's legacy: (N)othing (S)ecure (A)nywhere and (T)error (S)imulation (A)dministration
Google Maps is great, but I wish it wasn't so obsessed with US highway designations. Take the road between Dallas, TX and Denton, TX. On every other map it shows as I-35E, but Google Maps puts US 77 shields all over the place. I don't think the road is even marked on road signs as US 77.
Almost everywhere, the interstate highway designations should take priority over the US highway designations. I've reported this as a bug, but I've seen no response.
I have seen the future, and it is inconvenient.
Tried that phrase, and it asked me
[Go up] [Go right] [Go down] [Go left] [Return to the last result]
[Zoom In] [Zoom Out]
[Drag to zoom]
©2005 Google - Map data ©2005 NAVTEQ(TM) - Terms of Use
Map
Satellite
Hybrid
500 mi
500 km
Did you mean:
restaurants near Vermont Close, Enfield, Greater London, EN2, UK
restaurants near Vermont Road, Croydon, Greater London, SE19, UK
restaurants near Vermont Road, Wandsworth, Greater London, SW18, UK
restaurants near Vermont Woods, Finchampstead, Wokingham, Berkshire, RG40, UK
restaurants near Vermont Road, Colnbrook with Poyle, Slough, Buckinghamshire, SL2, UK
restaurants near Vermont Grove, Peterborough, Cambridgeshire, PE3, UK
restaurants near Vermont Close, Great Sankey, Warrington, Cheshire, WA5, UK
restaurants near Vermont Drive, Derby, Derbyshire, DE21, UK
restaurants near Vermont Way, Hastings, East Sussex, TN37, UK
restaurants near Vermont Close, Basildon, Essex, SS13, UK
This despite that it's showing me a map of North America?
"with their freedom lost all virtue lose" - Milton
Google Local seems to be broken in Konqueror - it goes into an endless loop of redirection and never loads.
Are you lonely?
Looking for a goon?
Use the GoonMap http://www.goonmap.com/
does that mean maps will finally work in Konqueror? I like google maps but it's useless to me unless I can use it in my browser. And it seems to have got worse recently - there was a time when it was almost working, now it just gets stuck in an endless reload loop.
I am trolling
At work I'm running at 1024x768 and the white space is just huge compared to a screen with 1600x1200 resolution. Two thumbs down. Bring back the old google maps!
API hasnt changed yet. All they did was re-org their site.
-everphilski-
When searching, MSN seems to hit up more yellow-page type results than Google, which seems to hit up its web search results alone.
Another huge plus for VirtualEarth is that you can grab and move the map, which will refresh the results of your search.
... but as a recent graduate, can I opt-out? (what if I don't want to be mapped?)
BUUUURN!!!!
-everphilski-
I've been following the evolution of Google Maps for a while now. You can tell it's a killer app when people begin developing more applications around it and using it in ways the original developer never guessed.
Here are some of my favorite Google Map apps :
My recent favorite: Live streaming New York traffic cams integrated with Google Maps.
Track your GPS enabled vehicle live.
Use Craigslist home listings with Google Maps Cheap, plentiful phone cams with GPS flooding the market have spawned Geobloggers. Thousands of shots from GPS enabled Phone cams, posted to Flickr accompanied with the longitude/lattitude co-ordinates.
UFO's have been spotted. Still no certainty about what they are, but fun anyway.
Just emerging are: Google Maps merged with recently released prisoner data, Wireless hotspots, nearest grassroots recommended restaurants, cash machines...
Wireless access, Google maps, and tagging will create sticky location-based fountains of useful knowledge.
This is one to watch. There's no telling what will spin off next.
Thoughts on the Emergence of Computing Intelligence
Apparently, those savages in Austrailia don't have roads.
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
Google might be fast, but its database isn't necessarily (I assume they rip it off from atlases or something) ... addresses can be just as out of date as they are in a phone book or paper list bought at the convenience store
I saw this yesterday and I'm really unimpressed by it.
I, for one, welcome our new mapping overlords.
I tried: "hooker in Montreal", and it didn't work. Am I missing something?
printf($randomline(sigs.txt) \n "-- "$randomline(authors.txt));
-- myself
Wake me up when google covers Switzerland as good as http://map.search.ch/
Still no railway stations south of Elephant & Castle, I see. It's a nice interface, but as most of my travelling is by train, the competition still wins.
sure it is useful, but MSN local search is better. It has more features, and is easier to use. and best of all it supports the scroll wheel.
Hello, are you OK? Any other website would have been beaten up for such clumsiness. But of course, it is Google - they can always take the hype smoking users as granted!
Your search for pub near Dublin Ireland did not match any locations.
Sorry, left out the link for that one: Track your GPS enabled vehicle live with this innovative Google Maps hack. For a few hundred dollars in parts and an onboard webcam, you can zoom right down to street level from Google Maps and look out of the vehicle. See this picture for how cool this is.
Thoughts on the Emergence of Computing Intelligence
Love it!
Instead of "pizza in San Francisco", look up "prostitutes" or "whores" in "Washington, DC". That search feature sure is useful.
The greatness of Google is that I could use maps.google.com while it was still under development and it worked perfectly for me, and I never had a problem or new it was still under development
Kudos google another job well done.
Thanks, I had forgotten that I disallowed JavaScript to 'change images' (Web Features > Advanced > Change Images). Reallowing it (or giving exceptions I suppose) fixes the problem indeed.
Does anybody else have a problem with the fact that it is old information, and anything new won't be there for several years? It didn't know there was a Convenience store down the street which has been there awhile.
When I saw the headline of this slashdot article (coincidentally, I saw it on my Google Personalized Homepage, which lists only the headlines), the first thing I assumed was that Google had created a new system to map graduates. I imagined a system in which you could put in your name and it would give you the current cities-of-residence, and even careers, of other people in your graduating class. Which has been thought of before, as we all know from seeing dozens of "where are they now?" banner ads. But on the other hand, it seemed so much COOLER because now it was GOOGLE doing it! Oh well.
Will we now get a new article every time Google indexes against a different database of locations?
Slashdot Article:
Posted by Zonk
Google Local now shows the locations of computer parts resellers! Will this encourage geeks to shop locally instead of ordering online?
Slashdot Article:
Posted by CmndrTaco
Wow! It looks like google maps has just added the location of Natalie Portman updated in real-time via wirless GPS. Will this cause an increase in demand for hot grits?
Slashdot Article:
Posted by Zonk
Google Local now shows the locations of computer parts resellers! Will this encourage geeks to shop locally instead of ordering online? (I've got to simulate the double post too!)
Netbooks, they come with Linux or a $3 copy of Windows. Either way, Microsoft loses.
LOTS of problems with Mozilla. I pretty much have switched to using IE for the service.
With Mozilla, a lot of times the map won't load. I just get broken images that say under them that no map is available for that area.
This happens especially often if I zoom in or out. Particularly if I try to do so quickly.
With IE, I get the loading problem a lot less often, but it still happens.
I use Comcast as my ISP, and I don't have a software firewall, just a router, and I run XP. I don't know what could be causing these issues.
This is Google, why isn't it working 100% of the time!?
Yeah. I too wish for a MacOS X port for Google Earth. Same with NASA's worldwind, Windows only. Ports will eventually come, I'm sure.
:-)
Meanwhile we wait, three games involving Google Earth, Earth Contest, GoogleEarthing and GEwar. (plug) Taken from the new slashgisrs.org, which can be of interest to you if you're interested with Google Local/Earth and anything GIS+RS. (/plug) Cheers
Animoog.org
I searched for: restaurants in ZIPCODE
Using the zip code for my hometown.
I was presented with a map of my hometown. There was, however, a push pin on Main St for a restuarant located in an adjacent town (with an entirely different zip code).
I see your point, I just tried using http://virtualearth.msn.com/ and it seems to work well. If you search for something and move the map after getting your results, it will give you new results.
Not sure if this is a good or bad thing. What if you only want to move the view to determine how far the result is, in relation to some other point. Perhaps someone will make a thourough comparison of the two services.
How about Google maps with job listings?
Anyway as I alluded to yesterday. Web services (GoogleAPI, Amazon, eBay, etc)* and Browser toolbars are were the action's at. Advertising and services. What a win for a company, and customer.
*Something for aspiring toolbar designers to keep in mind. Google for UDDI and WSDL, and you'll see there are a lot of publically available web services. Combine the results from several different ones. e.g. Amazon and Google maps.
See Google/Yahoo/et al., unbounded by the constitution.
See Google/Yahoo/et al. censor what I can find because some site may or may not conform to some vague AUP.
Meet our new government, Idiots!
FSCK GOOGLE/YAHOO/ET AL.
Aside from the reverse handed-ness, it appears to be the same as the waaay kewl Google maps. Hey google guys, how about telling us how this is different?
I think you have just set a precedent for Slashdot. You have not only not clicked the links to read, but you didn't even read the summary info! From the summary: "Now, when you query Google Local (local.google.com), a map pops up, displaying the many businesses and services that match you query"
I was quoted out of context in my autobiography...
I just hope the word "Web" on their main page doesn't keep going further and further to the right that eventually it is simply dropped.
That's not the only way Google Maps is backwards now.
It used to be possible to get Google Maps to map an intersection and show you exactly where it is. This functionality no longer works reliably. Instead, it wants to show local businesses all over the area in the general vicinity of the intersection, but good luck getting it to actually show the intersection!
How am I supposed to fit a pithy, relevant quote into 120 characters?
I read the title "Google Maps Graduates", assumed the final word was a noun, and thought that Google had indexed everyone graduating from university - so that http://graduates.google.com/ would allow employers to search for everyone receiving a "first in natural sciences from Cambridge after 2001".
Further confused when I scan read the summary as "Another great stride in Google's quest to conquer the internet; graduation."
It's only a matter of time.
I used this last night while trying to find a different take out place. It sucked. It couldn't find the three places that are down the block. I even search on their names with the zip code and it couldn't find it. It ws horrible for trying to find lumber, didn't even find a Home Depot or Lowes.
They need to read up on more phonebooks, 'cuase that is how I found a better place. Go back to Beta, you're not finished!
While the Google Maps interface and satellite imagery beats other maps products hands down, I feel like the local search aspect of the Google Local product still feels pretty anemic compared to Yahoo Local, which I find beats Google Local hands down in terms of usefulness. And I'm surprised to see Google taking Local out of beta without making it less anemic. While Google's interface is sparser that Yahoo's, that seems to be a deficiency since its mainly due to its lack of lots of features I use nearly every time I do a Yahoo Local search. While I'm glad local products no longer sort solely by distance, its hard to imagine using a local product that doesn't give you this option and I can't believe Google still doesn't. And there are so many other refinements that I can't imagine living without: category, neighborhood, distance, and even refining by first letter (for those times when you just can't remember anything but the first few letter of that great Mediterranean restaurant). And even the extra bells and whistles added a couple months ago have been surprisingly useful (search history, view history, neighborhood events) And unlike some Yahoo products, Yahoo Local has always managed to have all these features in a very slick interface. I do think the Google's aggregation of web reviews is very cool though. But I'm just surprised that after being available for a little longer than Yahoo Local, Google hasn't come close to making Google Local nearly as cool as Google Maps or Yahoo Local.
I'm sure Slashdotters probably use Google Local more than Yahoo Local as a good fanboy should, but I'd be interested to here if/how people actually find it more useful. I guess I mainly use Yahoo Maps because its integrated with Yahoo Local, even though YM is not as nearly cool as Google Maps, so maybe a lot of Slashdotters use Google Local solely because it is integrated with the kick-ass Google Maps.
Previously it took two button presses to get a print, because they reformatted the page for better printing. Now one click accomplishes this.
The nice thing is about web-shipped software is that the user did not have to re-download the improved maps.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Better said you have found 25 BS, 20 MS and 5 PhDs ;)
...you'd have noticed that maps.google.com and local.google.com are exactly the same.
I searched for sushi in the Boulder area. The second page of the results also listed the Boulder County Health Department! Does Google know something I don't? :-)
I don't want to be rude or smth., but there are some (a lot actually) of us who don't live in the US or the UK, and for us Google Maps is mostly useless. Google is always proud of being a global company so they should not forget about the importance of making their service useful for most of us.
If you don't fail at least 90 percent of the time, you're not aiming high enough. (Alan Kay)
This feature has been working for MONTHS, am I missing something?
I hate the new layout. Old layout with the map on left was better.
Well, the cool news is that Google Maps seems to have at least the locations of Finnish cities down. Still no road/street/service maps but at least it thinks it knows where I am and can give satellite view of the cities. Pretty cool if it can find some small towns.
Which is kind of bad, I kind of enjoyed panning around the map and looking at clues on where I was supposed to go. It was real fun trying to find my old home town just by following the waterways. Needed some *effort* to find the place. All the while them foreigners had wussy tools like high-resolution satellite images or map layer or full location search. Oh well, the future will be brighter for everyone! At least we don't need to learn geography the hard way! =)
There is so much missing in google maps. I live in a city of 65,000 that hosts a major research university. Sure, there are sat pictures of the town. However, in my home town, I could see cars parked in driveways. The same level of detail is not available for my university or the town beside it. The most I can make out are the major roads and patches of green and white. I certainly can't see my dorm building, which is pretty big.
NASA's Worldwind software is similar and is a .NET app,
l
so there's a Linux version for Mono underway that I'm told
mostly works already (it's mostly a reimplementation using the
same data).
More info and pretty screenshot in Miguel de Icaza's blog:
http://tirania.org/blog/archive/2005/Sep-30-1.htm
Meanwhile Microsoft's Virtual Earth features a MUCH tighter zoom in many areas. Tight enough to see individual cars, and almost close enough to see me peeing in my back yard.
Did I just say that out loud?
Um...
I tried this search and got no map results.
How am I supposed to find these without their help!?
We all know what sort of base motivations drive tech innovation, so I thought I'd test by looking for strip clubs in an area I'm familiar. A search on "strip clubs near Spring, Texas" actually turns up some strip clubs downlist. The first three mapped hits, though, are pretty interesting. The first is a restaurant, the second appears to be one of those family-friendly entertainment and food complexes, and the third is a training facility where little girls learn gymnastics and dance.
That last one might be the most classic case of "premature optimization" I've ever encountered.
Love to see Google promote this site. I haven't used mapquest in quite some time.
Try zooming all the way in on that map. :-)
"Skill shows through where genius wears thin." -Wittgenstein || Religion: uniting aviation and architecture.
Google maps graduates, many were found slacking at their homes and workplaces. From extrapolated google data, it was found many were posting things on internet forums and searching Google for their house and other 'points of interest.'
A google spokesperson (who did not want to be identified) said that they are working very hard and will soon be even able to find the Lost Ark of the Covenant, Nessie, and the Abominable Snowman.
He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
http://maps.google.com/maps?q=from%3A+Riverside,+C A+92507+to%3A+8570+Costa+Verde+Blvd,+San+Diego,+CA +92122&f=d&hl=en
...
...
Merge on to I-5 N (Go 20 miles)
Exit 51C
Merge on to I-5 S (Go 22 miles)
Random 40 mile detour?
Mapblast produces not only better directions than google maps, but it also draws them better (See their line-drive directions).
Google has a lot of catching up to do.
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
I've been nagging Google to add bike routes,
to no avail.
What with $3/gallon gas, it would be a public
service to add them.
-- Paul
Wow! It also appears that Google has implemented a simple "live zooming" feature when you use drag the zoom indicator while viewing a map. Although this only seems to be implemented in certain browsers (works in IE, not Firefox), it is nice to see this sort of functionality being implemented on the web.
Were your results anything like this?
Slashdot bends over to smell it.
NORML and the Cato Institute are also in the Top 10, btw...
Notice that those foggy shapes are actually semi-transparent, and the Google background logo shines through. It's as if the Earth itself fades away at those points. The conclusion is inescapable: those are HOLES IN THE SPACE-TIME CONTINUUM.
One little temporal tremor and your neighborhood could blink out of existense. Nosiree, I wouldn't want to live near one of those.
I tried "water ice in haddon township, nj". There are three water ice stands within a mile of my house, but none of them are listed here. In fact, none of the places that ARE on this list even sell "water ice". (For those not lucky enough to have had it, water ice is similar to Italian ice - it's a dessert made from flavored ice, mostly fruit flavors.) And if I put my actual address in, it finds the wrong house (wrong side of the street, several houses away from where I actually live).
Graduates have been mapped before, any time one dares another to place themselves on the photocopier/scanner.
I don't get it.
I misread the title with the impression that google was now somehow capable of mapping college graduates.
You know they would of loved that. I was about to do a search on my name.
Another thing that needs serious work from a Google Maps API developer standpoint are the staggering javascript memory leaks that still remain, even though Google Maps is out of "beta". You can see this for yourself by just going to maps.google.com and hitting refresh a few times. Basically, you will lose 4-5 MB of memory every time the map loads, until your browser crashes. It'd be easy to blame poor Javascript garbage collection by the current crop of browsers, but virtualearth.msn.com, which is just as complex, has no leaks at all.
This is a serious problem for a lot of developers who are considering implementing Google maps into their own sites. I love the ease of use of the API, but who wants to develop a site which will crash users' browsers after X number of page loads? There is a long thread about it in the developer API group here:
http://groups.google.com/group/Google-Maps-API/brThe most concerning thing, however, is the almost complete lack of communication between Google and the developers. This is an issue that has been raised since early July, yet it still hasn't been fixed or clearly acknowledged as a priority. Important changes to the API are only sometimes announced, and even if they are announced, they get quickly lost among the other posts in the newsgroup, because there is no clear way of seeing who is an offical Google poster nor does there seem to be an offical channel of communcation for conveying information. The developer community is fairly strong, but without any offical word or guidance, there is often much confusion.
So, just from a developer (or even savvy user) perspective, don't be fooled by the "out of beta" status. There are still quite a few serious issues that remain unresolved and unacknowledged.
I recently had a friend of mine show Microsoft's Map-point (which btw was released way before google maps). It just amazed me how Google seems to have just *copied* the *entire interface* (including keyboard controls, map details, just about everything) and simply *innovated* in putting it online. Shouldnt some of the credit for the excellent interface go to MS?
The list is now on the left side... but here is one feature I think everyone would appreciate. It would be nice of I could put in GEO Coordinates (at a clearly specified format), then have the map zoom into that point, centering it on the map... so all you slashdotters, please send your feedback to Google and ask them to add it.
Other serious deficincies - still very low resolution sat images - although some but not all major cities have better imagery. Still no street of city maps available for other countries like Germany, russia, almost all of Asia, and the UK seems to have some mappings... you can't even identify cities in these areas.
Last but not least, Google should offer a Mac Client for google Earth... not all of us use WinBlows OS - we need Linux and Mac clients so us guys who "Think Different" can learn Global Geography in using this program... I think we ALL should send them feedback and request these and other features.
j
You got something against U.S. highways?
I frequently drive U.S. highways instead of Interstates because there are almost nobody on the U.S. routes and I find the driving MUCH more enjoyable and interesting. If I want to get food or gas I just pull into the parking lot instead of getting mixed up in interchange madness.
Google Maps shows various labels depending on magnification level, so your mileage might vary. They are a hell of a lot better than DeLorme's labels which are either wrong or counter-intuitive.
slashdot: A failed experiment.
Why'd they move the information column from being to the right of the map image, to now being left of the map image?
I had gotten used to its [arbitrary] location, but moving it seems [also] arbitrary.
I'm sure more people out there got it. Although I'd think the graduation reference was a little obscure.
I'm just talking about when they are the same physical road. I don't have anything against US highways, but in many places they exist only in theory and have been superceded by an interstate.
I have seen the future, and it is inconvenient.
"It also lists each restaurant down the right side of your browser." Actually, they are listed down the left side now.
~Hergio
Except that... that's been the case for at least two months now. I've been using that feature regularly in Google Local for at least that long.
I'm using a non supported browser (Omni Web)... It used to be that I would be lead to a page where I would be told this, but I could try out the service if I wanted. Now, I'm simply locked out. I doubt this is a requirement of graduating from 'beta'... Silly that I have to change my browser identity to get it to run.
- mount rushmore
- c n tower
- leaning tower of pisa
- sphynx
I'd say it should have stayed in beta a bit longer.Patrick Doyle
I mod down every jackass who puts his moderation policy in his sig. Oh, wait a sec....
Wake me when maps.search.ch covers Canada as well as Google Maps.
Do daemons dream of electric sleep()?
In California and many other western states, you are right. California decided to dispose of most of its US highways once the Interstate system was in full swing in the 60s. The reasoning for this is because what happened in the 1950s was that freeways were built before the Interstate system was started, so those freeways started with US highway numbers and signs. Freeways also tended to be built parallel to the former US highway routing; in California, freeways are usually built to replace other roads. When the Interstate system made its way to California in 1960, the Interstate numbers were somewhat grafted on to those freeways. However, certain routes in the past were assigned two (or sometimes even three) US routes numbers, and adding an Interstate and State highway signage to the same road led to a lot of motorist confusion. For example, this page has a picture of a typical freeway sign in the LA area before 1964.
In 1964, California decided to renumber much of its roads by getting rid of duplicate numbers and by replacing most of its US highways with Interstate (and sometimes State) highways. For example, US 99 was replaced largely with Interstate 5 and California State Route 99, US 91 was replaced with Interstate 15, US 66 was replaced with Interstate 40, etc. Only a few US routes in California remain, but some of those remaining routes got truncated. (For example, US 101 south of Los Angeles has been replaced by Interstate 5.)
On the East Coast, on the other hand, the Interstate and US Highway system tend to coexist. Interstates are relegated to freeways, whereas US highways are relegated mostly to surface streets and non-freeway highways. The Interstates and US highways don't seem to cancel each other out, unlike what has happened in California.
Now that Google has Google Maps out of beta, is buying up dark fiber, and is creating free Wifi in San Francisco, Google should team up with one of the Pocket PC/Palm companies (or one of the MP3 manufacturers) and release a handheld PDA that has Wifi (802.11b NOT g - no need for g), Bluetooth (where there is no Wifi, but you have a phone), and a screen the size of current PDAs. The main app should be Google Maps with support for Street, Satellite and Overlay modes. The secondary app should be a mail viewer with access to GMail. It should also have other small, typical PDA apps like a calculator w/ tip calculation, calendar, notes, etc. Sell this in two versions a B/W (~ $200 US) and a Color (~ $300 US) one.
.)
The key things they would have to consider when making a device such as this are as follows:
- don't try to make it a cell phone, MP3 player or another PDA!!
- don't sell the color version for more than $350 US
- make sure the battery lasts for at least 4 hours in use (over 3 days on standby)
- allow people to add waypoints which would be sent to your GMail account and possibly other GMail users.
- come out with a GPS add-on for no more than $100 US that increases the depth of the device a bit and has a GPS antenna that sticks out the top of the device.
- for the GPS add-on have the map be able to follow/center on the current GPS position of the device.
- possibly make the device not have a touch screen (only a joypad, a few buttons and a scrool wheel for alphanumeric input)
- possibly add a SD/MMC or a CompactFlash slot. (Allow maps to be cached to this card with more used maps
I sure as hell would buy one and so would a lot of other people.
I suspect they wanted to target Windows first because of the competition. I'd really like to see it on Linux or OS X as well. Maybe i'll check out VMWare.
"Our interests are to see if we can't scale it up to something more exciting," he said.
My employer pays mileage for overtime shifts. When we recently relocated to a new building, they used MapQuest to determine the distance from home to work for all 200+ employees, without once noticing that MapQuest had misplaced the new building by several miles. When I got my email stating my new distance I knew it was way off (because I had already measured it in my car) and did some research. It turns out that if you include both the street address and the postal/zip code, MapQuest ignores the street address entirely and uses the stored (approximately central) location for the postal/zip code. If your postal area is large enough and the address you want is on the fringe, it can make a huge difference. When we dropped the postal code and used only the street address, MapQuest's location and driving instructions were just about perfect.
You can zoom in on the White House and Capitol Bldg with very good clarity with Google Earth but for some reason you can't with Google Maps. It could be that the images on Google Earth though clear are photoshopped whereas the Google Maps ones are futzed out like those porno shots you see. I haven't checked the Pentagon out to compare the diffs yet. I'd bet terrorists probably could get or have much more detailed photos than your average Joe Citizen could get.