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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.
I just fixed the one for my new house.
-- Hillary
My blog
Move the border 200 yards south?
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!
No, but maybe a bad unscrupulous competitor can have a hog farm built within 200 yards of their location :-)
If it's on the same street, the moderators may have a tough time verifying the placement anyways; short of going there, finding another map, or sending a fax to the business to verify their location on a written map.
It's not like a Google rep can call residences/businesses on the phone and easily ask them to verify that X is their right physical location. (No way to communicate a map in a phone call -- requires a printed graphic, or something online)
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.
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!
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
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.
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.
- RG>
Hey pal, this isn't a pleasantforest, so don't waste my time with pleasantries!