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Google Crowdsources Map Editing
An anonymous reader notes that Google now makes it possible to edit the map location designated by (almost) any address. Registered Google users in the US, Australia, and New Zealand can move incorrect markers for their homes or businesses to the correct locations. Access to some listings is restricted — hospitals, government buildings, and businesses whose listings have been claimed through Google's Local Business Center. In addition, moving a place marker more than 200 yards (or 200 meters) from its original location requires a moderator's approval before the change shows up on the map. Once a marker has been moved, a "Show Original" link will direct users to the original location.
Registered Google users in the US, Australia, and New Zealand can move incorrect markers for their homes or businesses to the correct locations.
That's great, but what about moving correct markers to an incorrect location? Or the location of a competitor to the address of the local hog farm?
The theory of relativity doesn't work right in Arkansas.
Now all those illegal immigrants will be able to get in easier.
I just fixed the one for my new house.
-- Hillary
My blog
Now I can be in Melbourne(Aust) and Melbourne(UK) at the same time
http://openstreetmap.org/ is actually open, user generated, user-editable, map content (semi-automated from GPS trails). Why help google when you can help real open source?
Can we pass legislation making the use of the word "crowdsourcing" a Class C Felony?
NAVTEQ's MapReporter tool to submit updates to NAVTEQ's data by the casual user, Tele Atlas' Map Insight and TomTom's MapShare. But I won't lie, the best map crowdsourcing project is doubtlessly OpenStreetMap.org
Animoog.org
"In addition, moving a place marker more than 200 yards (or 200 meters) from its original location requires a moderator's approval before the change shows up on the map. Once a marker has been moved, a "Show Original" link will direct users to the original location."
Google covered their bases. All their bases.
There IS a reason why Google's (and everyone else's) data is incorrect. I'm wondering if Google got their data directly, or wasted money paying for it from TeleAtlas or NavTeq or one of the other companies that gets it for free...
The US Tiger-Line Data it is based off of (SAME errors in data - I know, I've got the whole Tiger-Line set to use for comparison) clearly states in the massive 369 page "Technical Document" (well I think 369 pages is kinda large) that the data is purposefully innaccurate to ensure that it cannot be used to pinpoint the exact location of any residence to help ensure some level of privacy for each citizen.
By allowing users to correct the information, it also means the interpolative data for other addresses becomes accurate or more accurate... for instance, if my neighbor corrects his location pointer, and you look addresses on the street, even if his is in the database as an exception rule, you can easily spot the exception and re-plot the rest of the data.
For reasons of National Security (second reason cited in the Tiger-Line Docs), that also can be bad, because figuring out a pretty near exact location of sensitive areas just requires someone(s) who live on each side to correct their info.
Especially considering the data set works with 6 decimal places of latitude or longitude precision (which is about 13" give or take for most US locations... in Alaska it is far more accurate on the longitude portion at 6 decimal places)...
I'm still up in the air as to whether this ends up being a good thing or a bad thing...
StarTrekPhase2 - The Five Year Mission Continues!
I have a business login and PIN for our local village hall in the UK. The current Google Earth marker for the hall is about 1 mile out of place and the yellow pop-up box that appears when you click it has the name of a completely unrelated Web site advertising party planning services. I moved the marker to the right position over a month ago but it's still wrong and I have not found out how to remove the Web site that has 'hijaaked' the marker - anyone!?
Thanks
AT&ROFLMAO
That's unakseptible spelling, Dowie.
I'm 10 minutes walk from a beach. In about an hour or so, it's gonna be waterfront, baby!
I actually enjoyed it that my address showed up a couple of houses off and I am not going to fix it.
Following Calvin and Hobbes strategy, one never knows who hits from above.
Yeah, lots of addresses are off... but it seems like (for non-urban areas) it wouldn't be too hard to identify where buildings are (as compared to asphalt or grass). Couldn't they write something that moved the points to the nearest building location? Seems like that would work in a whole lot of cases.
--
Educational microcontroller kits for the digital generation.
The summary claims that this feature is limited to users from the US, Australia and New Zealand - yet the article makes no mention of this. As a UK user, I can confirm that such a claim is not true.
Dammmmmmnnnnnnnnnnnnnn.
I hope they never turn evil, because come 10 years, 95% of internet connected users are going to be using their services.
I wonder how many presidents have actually made use of that tennis court.
Next, I'd like to be able to add locations that aren't in the database yet, for example new housing developments. My house is over a year old and its street and address aren't locatable by anybody's mapping website yet. It's a bit inconvenient when I'm trying to have a friend over who hasn't visited my house yet.
Hail Eris, full of mischief...
E pluribus sanguinem
Google maps still won't find my address. I'd like to add my whole street/neighborhood. It's been around for 5 years now. The satellite images have been even updated with higher resolution ones. Yet the map view still doesn't have any streets in my neighborhood.
There are two types of people in the world: Those who crave closure
Could you incrementally move a marker outside the 200m zone?
Control is an illusion, order our comforting lie. From chaos, through chaos, into chaos we fly
Nope. Says there - from the original location. There goes my cunning plan. And I can't be bothered with moderators, either.
How come the markers on the mobile version and the "regular" web version, are not always in the same location? I know of circumstance where the markers for the same address differ by about a mile.
anyone know how to get rid of the sidebar on google maps? I find it highly annoying (esp. because I use a 1024x780 screen & real estate is v. limited)
It would have been better if they tied the map data to real estate ownership records. Much of that data is available in machine-readable form. It would be cool, and useful, to zoom in and see the property lines. Displaying the ownership information would be even better. It's a public record, after all.
Or if they recognized house numbers in the imagery taken by the StreetView truck.
I moved my home's marker just fine, but when I went to move my parents', I got this error: "Because of technical restrictions, you cannot edit this location at this time."
I wonder, does it check to make sure my IP address is near the location I'm moving, or is it just a glitch?
ZuluPad, the wiki notepad on crack
I managed to edit the markers for my former homes in the US, but the "edit" link is missing for the Canadian addresses I've tried.
In that case I would move markers by 200 meters, it gives you 18 yards more power.
I assume that you can move a marker only once, so that you can't keep moving markers 10 times in a row to move it 2000 yards (or 2km).
I foresee edit wars, markers that move constantly in a radius of 200 yards (or 200 meters).
And how would a moderator know if the edit >200 yards (or >200 meters) is correct or not? Maybe the company moved to a different building and google's info isn't up to date yet.
Does it let me fix the maps?
:(
Here's my house (please keep arial bombardments aimed at my neighbours)
Not only are the maps not lined up with the satelite imagery, but my property is aparently twice as big as its supposed to be... unless I now inadvertantly own two houses and some crazy people who say otherwise are living my second house.
If they trust me enough to let me fix the marker, can't they let me fix the maps too?
Your parent's house is the exit from a large subterranean Umbrella Corp. base.
Google can't allow you to move those or their GoogleArmy may get lost when sent to erradicate the zombie invasion.
I moved my address a few houses down. However, it now says "last moved by *** *******" a minute ago."
Isn't that very insecure for those who have unlisted numbers and non-published addresses?
While I fully expected my new subdivision not to be addressable through google maps and similar I certainly didn't expect these search engines to show roads through where I live that don't exist nor have they EVER existed.
I can locate my house from satellite, even see it. As soon as I switch to hybrid or "roads" it becomes a little silly. I've checked with old timers in the area; meaning they still have their farms and family plots; and all agreed that the two roads in question never were there. (I haven't found either of them either, I have driven around the area and can't seem to find them, next stop is the county courthouse to see if they know where they are, the sheriff didn't)
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
But you used the word "crowdsourcing"!! Stone him!!
I wonder, does it check to make sure my IP address is near the location I'm moving, or is it just a glitch?
More likely they used cookies to mark you as having moved your address marker. They may have then noted that "you" were trying to edit a second home address.
Consider that there is no mapping from IP to physical address that works for all IP addresses.
Except Google lists my house in a different city and zip code than the one it's actually in.
:-)
Naturally, that information is not editable. I've complained about this to my Google employee friends for years (not in a whiney sort of way), and even they have no idea how to correct it. On the other hand, I suppose I can live with being placed in Ventura, CA rather than Carpinteria, CA.
Weeks of coding saves hours of planning.
This is really cool. For years all map locations have been incorrectly reporting my parents house as being the turn onto the street leading to our house. Now it's actually moved to the correct spot.
:)
Thanks Google!
If you were offended by anything I said... No, I'm not sorry. Please lighten up.
Or you know... they could simply ask the residence/bussiness to confirm the location on Google map themselves. ... if only Google had some way of communicating map locations online...
"(No way to communicate a map in a phone call -- requires a printed graphic, [b]or something online)[/b]"
I'm not sure this is about being two houses down the road, (yet, and we will get back to that) but it's about being in the right spot. My sisters house was always marked in the middle of the block, not in the road but somewhere in here neighbors backyard, which meant that Gmaps would mark her house on the wrong street. Yahoo didn't do this. So I think more than fixing how far down the street you go this is going to help assure the markers are on the right street. My hope is say Sony and Lexmark share a skyscraper in New York and I want to visit and they have two different entrances to the same building then I would be sent to the correct entrance. Back to the yet, I'm hoping / guessing this is step one. I would like to see step two be, add a near buy parking marker so when I go to visit Chicago Sears tower I can know where people park. I'm also going to assume this has something to do with the Gphone because GPS likes to bring you to the right spot or it just makes there data more accurate than other data so they can sell it.
I'm thinking glitch.
I gave up religion for Lent.
Yes, starting with this very map 'service'. I've submitted updates to them pointing out that the directions they give for getting to my office go through a building that shows up in their satellite imagery. 6 months later (when they say they refresh every 3), directions still go through the building. Why should I expect that correcting a location by up to 200 meters will be actually propagated, when they don't get that a road no longer exists and hasn't for years? And how often do you get bad directions because the street numbers are backwards, if not outright wrong? I've had too many errors like this that are significantly greater than 200 meters. I've given up trying to correct the data, and given up using it. Call your destination, talk to a real person, and chances are you'll get better directions than Google.
;-) they were good at well anymore.
Oh, and search results continue to get worse. Email list archives, digg and de.lico.us aren't content but show up at the top way too often. Google doesn't even do the one thing (other than hyping themselves
My work is located about 150 meters from where google says it is, and I can move the marker, and it says "Changes Saved", but the marker immediately snaps back to its old location. And no, my company isn't registered with google.
You know how you can drag your route around when you get driving directions on Google maps. I think it would be a neat idea if they tracked how users changed their routes, and then used that to improve their directions. People change routes to account for traffic, times of day, stop lights, closed roads, etc and Googles algorithm probably doesn't know about those things right now when generating directions. It really would revolutionize directions.
What say you, Slashdot?
The impossibility of helping more than entity is one of the more tragic constraints facing us in our daily life.
We all need to be very careful to not help unless absolutely forced to, since a more worthy cause may appear later. Don't be caught helpless!
Thanks for the helpfull reminder!
With the first link, the chain is forged.
What sucks, and is possibly even more egregious is that companies like Ditech use these or some subset of these databases to try to "help" generate quotes or other information for callers looking to refinance or take a second mortgage against their home.
I called them, back in 2001/02, when I HAD a home (lost it (sold it orderly) to the dot-commie economy crash...). It was listed on country property tax rolls, correctly, as a 2533 sq ft, 2-story, 4+ bedroom, 3 full bath, LR, DR, FR, nook, kitchen, 2-car attached garage home on a lot measuring 50'x~80'.
Ditech INSISTED my home was a one-story, 3BR home on a smaller lot. I confirmed with them the address, and they CONTINUED to insist MY home was something that it was not. It was inFURIATING that they could claim to have the latest information databases, and were probably issuing inflated or inadequate rates, loan amounts, and more, wasting inquirers' time, screwing up the paperwork, incurring more fees upon the borrower, and more.
This kind of inaccuracy, though is worse in other ways. In Alameda, CA, a woman drove off a road and into the bay, buried in her own car, hidden under a pier, for days or a couple weeks. I don't know if she passed out or what. But in New York, IIRC, around 2000 or 2002 an elderly couple drowned because the were too reliant upon the GPS navigation system and blindly followed its instructions which told them to go such and such and then turn and proceed. They ended up driving through a closed street, into the harbor. It seems NEITHER street had sufficient barriers to destroy and stop the car rather than allow users to drive to their peril, by GPS, or by seizure or other maybe being chased by would-be car jackers.
I don't know that lawsuits should be issued against these cities, but which is more important: manipulating and obfuscating fixed objects like homes, ostensibly on privacy grounds (in the backwards-ass US, on this issue, of all places...), or on identifying stationary or time-sensitive/project-dependent, life-saving obstacles?
As for Ditech, they never got my business. And, frankly, why should they have? If I'd been in a hurry to capture or lock a rate, and depended on them, they'd have been a kink in the process.
Previously: "Linux... Toward the Sunrise..." Now: "Linux... Toward the-- No, now, part of Every Sunrise"
(and to answer the anonymous coward who replied to my parent post, OSM is the best map crowdsourcing project, no one said it's the best map project)
Animoog.org