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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.
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?
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.
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.
Hi... it's not quite that simple. Here is how the data works... let's assume you live on a straight street...
The data has StartLong, StartLat -> EndLong, EndLat and corresponding StartHouseLeft, EndHouseLeft, StartHouseRight, EndHouseRight for that segment (which may or may not be your whole street - depends on whether the street curves somewhere, or is intersected by other streets, etc). Google, Tele, Nav, etc take what address you enter, and interpolate it based off that data so...
If the data set says your street starts at #0 and goes to house #40 and yours is house #20, it interpolates your address to be dead center on the segment and calculates that lat/long point based off that... but... what if half the houses on your street have 150' frontages, while the other half have 80'? Well, then the data is innaccurate... or what if (which seems to be the standard) the data starts your street at 1, but your street actually starts at 14? (Mine is exactly like that... so the whole first segment is highly innacurate). And the segment data dont take into account the WIDTH of interesections... so segment one (when it hits an intersection) ends in the middle of it. Segment two starts at that exact point. If the intersecting road is a rural or suburban local road, it may be 30-40' across... if it is a highway, it may be a couple hundred feet across (depending on median size, # of lanes, etc). That also makes all data even more innacurate (because the start address gets located on the highway - as the corner is represented by a point intersection instead of by a 2D road and highway width intersection.
So, no, there is no way way to fix it - because even though the data does say what type of road each segment is, that still wont tell you how wide the road (or any median on it) is. For instance, Interstates in the middle of no-where are often 2 lanes each direction... or in Norther Jersey, hit 6 or 7 lanes each direction... they both show up as the same road type.
StarTrekPhase2 - The Five Year Mission Continues!