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Nanaimo, The Google Capital of the World
eldavojohn writes "Time.com has up a story on Nanaimo, a British Columbia coal mining town of about 78,000 that has had everything conceivable mapped into a Google database. Citizens can track fire trucks real time. The results also include Google Earth data for Nanaimo. 'The Google fire service allows people to avoid accident sites by tuning electronic devices to automatic updates from the city's RSS news feed, says fire captain Dean Ford. Eventually, Nanaimo plans to equip its grass-cutting machines with GPS devices, so residents piqued by the apparent shabbiness of a particular park or grass verge can use Google to find out when last it was groomed by the city's gardening staff. And the city's cemeteries will soon be mapped to allow Internet users to find out who is buried in each plot, says Kristensen. A new multi-million-dollar conference center, opening in June, will have 72 wireless access points to allow out-of-towners to use their laptops to navigate the Google Earth version of the city.'"
they'll plant RFID tags in every citizen so you can track THEM on Google Earth...
http://twitter.com/OLDTELEGRAM
but I didn't realize how much.
How long before they start building man-made islands in cute shapes?
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
I _love_ this. This is awesome. I think we're finally seeing the realization of the Internet's potential.
And fuck the radical privacy activists who will inevitably whine and cry about this.
I support the Center for Consumer Freedom
I misread this as "NaNoWriMo," and thought I'd have to stop reading livejournals for another damn month.
I just have to wonder how much resistance city officials will put into something like this. Would any of the corrupt city councils here in the states ever allow Google to do that? If they catch cities that are bad about updating their infrastructure, there could be a backlash against the local government. It could be a whole new way of holding them accountable...
Ambulance chasers rejoice!
Seriously, there's something about this idea that seems kind of silly. I don't know - tracking public services does make some sort of sense, I guess. I wouldn't want to pay for the cost, but if Google's willing to foot the bill, I guess I'd have no problem with it were it done locally. It's not something I'd like the local government to spend money on though - too little benefit for the cost.
I guarantee that this will never happen in the US, though, over concerns that knowing where fire trucks are could potentially allow terr'ists to strike areas where the firefighters are all busy elsewhere or something silly like that.
You are in a maze of twisty little relative jumps, all alike.
Just imagine how useful it would be to have the real time location of the city's police force as well. ;) The $64,000 dollar question is, of course, whether public funds should be invested in building Google's infrastructure. Yes, cloud computing is more cost effective that rolling your own systems, it's convenient, outsourced, on a common platform, etc. On the other hand, will this result in the city losing control of their data? Will the city share in any revenue that Google earns from their investment in Google Earth(TM)(R)(PDQ)? And, honestly, does knowing where the city's fire trucks are in real time provide any meaningful benefit to the citizens? I suspect there downfall of the system will be that city staff will begin to put more emphasis on demonstrating that a green space was mowed instead of actually picking weeds and focusing on quality of service.
So where as you used to just cheekily shout "You've missed a bit!" - now you get to email them with co-ordinates and a satellite photo as proof... and then blog it all.
Here's the upside: Exploitation of existing technology. Shows real potential for the future of the internet. Further, these are services that would not have been possible for free (or cheap) even 3-4 years ago. This is building on what I call The Google Platform. Great PR for Google, right? ;-)
Here's the downside: Since most of this is built on Google, these folks are building on an infrastructure that is mostly free. When you don't pay, you have no control. Further, there's no SLA's (service level agreements) in place, I bet. Imagine depending on these services then having an issue -- Google might say, "We're sorry that you are depending on our FREE services, they are not 100% reliable you know."
(Notice I didn't even get into the privacy issues? That's an entirely different dog.)
How to Download YouTube Videos
This is one of my favorite things I've seen google do so far.
It really is neat to see how google has gone from a company that indexes web pages, to a company that stores and indexes your email, to a company that stores and indexes maps of the world, to a company that will literally tell you ANY available information about an area on the map.
As much as the privacy advocates are going to hate this (and please, somebody tell me WHY without using a slippery slope argument), this is really where I would like to see mapping go. Maps hadn't really improved in the past couple of hundred years, but now we're starting to see just what mapping can do.
Should be an exciting next few years.
NewslilySocial News. No lolcats allowed.
Adding all graves will make it so much easier to visit the graves of your relatives. It's already possible to visit the cemetery through Google Earth/Maps, but it can be hard to locate your passed loved ones.
However, I feel there's a need for an additional service to be developed: put flowers and candles on the grave. As soon as that's implemented, you'll never have to go to the cemetery again!
This is utterly retarded. Google apparently wants to know everything, I wonder why...
Oday ouyay antway otay ayplay away amegay?
So we can now grep through real life. Awesome.
Hope they don't start tagging people though. Not so awesome.
Surely with all of that intense technology eldavojohn or Time could have figured out that coal mining stopped back in 1938 in Nanaimo. Since then it is primarily known for being one of the finest examples of really bad urban planning, for at one time having more square feet of shopping mall per capita than any place else on earth, and of course for theNanaimo International Bathtub Race.
To quote Ember Swift: "This is the city that Engineers enter to demonstrate just how not to build a city centre This is the city used as a symbol of haste. "
Three Squirrels
Haha, my parents live in Nanaimo. Never saw it as a technological hub :P I'll tell you what it is good for though: Summer work. All you have to do is work for one of the 87% (estimated) retired people there. Once you work for one, they will tell 3 friends, and you can work for them, and your workload grow exponentially. It is glorious. I worked full-time for an entire month without sending out a single resume.
i was standing in the supermarket about a week ago, looking over my shopping list on my palm phone, and as i read the next item i had to get, i wondered why everything in the supermarket couldn't be available to my phone, such as where it is, if it is on sale, if it has been moved from it's regular spot in the isle to the end of the isle to attempt to make it more visible when on sale. It would make shopping more easy, but that is just one tiny way the world could be organized, i am not going to say that as i wandered around looking for the crushed tomatoes isle i thought off uses like this town is using, but it did get me longing for a more organized world. Of course those hopes were dashed when i thought of all the groups and companies that would have to come together to agree on one easy format, or at least formats that would mesh with each other. In the end i figured it was just either not going to happen, or a long way off. Shame i never thought about google being the driving force behind something like this.
09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0
There was a time when cities just grew out of towns, streets went anywhere, etcetera; complexity grew organically, with the odd extreme here and there. In newer developments, streets started getting laid out in grids years ahead of need ... cue cookie-cutter houses, the 1950s, etcetera again. Now I'm no urban planner, so I shouldn't comment on it (-grin-), but this urban-information-integration prototype sure seems like a Good Thing, to me (in the sense that it's a prototype/trial of a planned information infrastructure).
Just because something doesn't make (business/economic/monopolist/technological/political/social) sense now, doesn't mean it won't later, and having infrastructure in place, however crude or preliminary, is better than nothing. So here's an exercise: imagine this sort of thing has already happened where you live, and that everyone has an Android-friendly iPhone-whatever that talks to anything nearby ... what do you think would really change things? What would an open-access, high-bandwidth information utility be used for? (Assume funding is whatever mix of private, government, and donation/subscription makes sense.)
And now, the $64,000 question: what exactly is information? ;-)
.f00Dave
because the city already sounds like a futuristic sci fi japanese anime city, or a place in a videogame, so why not have everything mapped that way too?
furthermore, "google maps nanaimo" is exactly the kind of nonsensical phrase from the future no one would have predicted in 1978
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Although I really, really lament the fact that Ordnance Survey decided that they didn't like the work that had been done for the 3D London. I was really hoping to be able to check out what me flat looked like in 3D. The only alternative is to go outside, and that doesn't bear thinking about... It'd also be really good for plotting trajectories so I can pick off the local chavs with my soon-to-be-complete trebuchet.
http://xkcd.com/313/
" ... will have 72 wireless access points to allow out-of-towners to use their laptops to navigate the Google Earth version of the city."
Now, I don't have to go there at all. WHEW!!
Research shows that 67% of those who use the term "research shows", are just making shit up.
All I can say is: neat!
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
Words/Lyrics: dusty
Music: TheDataminersJugBand
Tag the babies, tag the pets.
Tag the children, tag the rest.
We want to watch the little dots.. That are people!
We want to watch the little dots.. That are people!
On our screens!
Tag the old ones, tag the cold ones.
The cold ones don't move too much.
Naw lord, the cold ones don't move too much.
We want to watch the little dots.. That are people!
We want to watch the lttle dots.. That are people!
On our screens!
So tag the babies, the dogs with rabies.
Just dont tag me, no sirree. Just don't tag me.
But i want to watch, the little dots on my screen.
Tag the babies (chants lead into guitar solo-- pyrotechnics --fade to black)
Google, the eyes and ears of Skynet.
Nanaimo will be the host to the 2010 Olympic games.
It's just outside of Vancouver, and will host many of the events. It's snowboarder mecca, etc.
That has a lot to do with where all the funding for this kind of stuff came from.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
Google should put the recipe for Nanaimo Bars on their front page :) It's a very tasty dessert ...
I'll tell you what Nanaimo is the real capital of: Yummyness
JJ
OH YOU IDIOTS!
I want you guys to scan for topless housewives sunning themselves, sorted and categorized by areola diameter and areola darkness. You can use fuzzy logic to guestimate and thus normalize areola size, uncontracted, on a contracted nipple.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
I like the idea of mapping the cemeteries. Now, when I need a brain for an evil science experiment, I can figure out exactly which plot to target, and can even send a screwup like Igor to dig it up.
I can't remember the last time I saw an SLA that had any kind of meaningful penalty clauses in it. The best thing you can get is a rebate on your fees, but nothing that can come close to compensating you for lost revenues.
Given the huge disparity between my risk and the tiny insurance that the common SLAs provide, I just don't care about those SLAs at all.
I wish I could find a provider who was willing to put some real skin in the game, but alas I am sure I couldn't get my PHB's to accept the necessarily higher rates that provider would have to charge.
No, it is bad for their business. Surrounded by a dozen of them, you can negotiate a bargain while being carried away to the hospital just before you lose consciousness. Their profit margins will drop.
Bert
I was born there. Nanaimo, BC has huge problems but is a very ingenious city. It survived the crash of the mines and subsequently the crash of the logging industry by continually re-inventing itself. My dad and others are huge techolnogy users. In fact, my great uncle, Kenneth MacKenzie (developer of Astitine on the periodic table of elements, part of the Manhattan project, UCLA professor Emeritus) was from there too. There are tons of tech geeks in this city and real estate is really cheap.
"Question everything, including this!" - http://technoracle.blogspot.com/
Nanaimo is also the WEED Capital of the World. Think about it: they came up with Nanaimo bars for a reason. As they say, if you've been in Nanaimo for 20 minutes and you find someone to sell you pot, you're already baked. Wait, maybe that's Nelson. Hold on... what?
...Whether my Maker is prepared for the great ordeal of meeting me is another matter.
Churchill
"She waits for me in Nanaimo...."
Those lines have been in my head for many many years now.... = )
Nanaimo used to be quite the dump--and rough, but they've been doing a lot to fix it up since the 90s. Wonder if that hot pink Mexican restaurant on the hill is still open....
Nice to see that they are continuing their efforts.
Yeah, I have family friends who live in Nanaimo and from what they tell me, this definitely helps the gangbangers shoot eachother more effectively, y'know, without getting lost on the way. I could also make mention of the fact that they all seem to be under the age of 14, but, that would be hijacking this thread
Hi, I Boris. Hear fix bear, yes?
I used to love this idea of making everything internet capable. Everything electronic. Sensors everywhere! But then I got a little older and figured out that, (wow!), Earth is pretty neat and no monitor can really do justice to its genuine brightness, contrast, and overall realism.
I used to want a cell phone that did everything. I used to want to wear a computer on my sleeve. I thought it would be great for my refrigerator to tell me I'm low on mustard... but it's things like this complete Googling of a city that make me yearn more and more for a job that requires muscle strain more than brain drain and life in a small town that will never be cached in Google's infinite storage space.
Indexing a cemetery? Seriously... what happened to walking row by row and seeing names you think are familiar? Or finding that someone was buried with his/her dog. Or reading a beautiful epitaph and thinking "Wow, I hope someone loves me enough to think of something so beautiful to mark my resting place."? -- all on the way to see Nana because you need to talk and she has been and always will be there to listen. I'm sure I'm not alone in this sentiment.
I am very well known in my department and my prior places of work to be the super-geek. I hide it well, initially, but it always shows eventually. So when people propose, "Let's get the students laptops" and I say, "No way in hell!", they stutter in shock. I tell them "No" because I understand that computers are a great tool, but they're also the great distractor (ask any professor who has had his/her TA stand in the back of the lecture hall to see which one of the 85 laptop-users is actually taking notes).
But still, the lay yearn to have ubiquitous technologies and strive to make everything computer accessible to the point to where they will have to do little else than sit down, flip on, and nod off. I guess we could have seen this coming with television. Who is this benefiting? At what cost? To what ends?
Who else thinks that we've peaked in acceptable technological immersion? Who else turns their cell phones to silent when they're not expecting a call? Goes out on Saturdays just to 'get away' from the computer? Scoffs at the idea of being globally traceable even if we lived within the confines of a genuinely benevolent global government?
I know I've peaked. I'll always love to tinker with new hardware and software, but beyond simple information acquisition, entertainment, and person-to-person communication, you can count me out.
Must be you - the whole things shows in my browser (Opwera/Mac) - both times.
Three Squirrels
We are the Hell's Angels Capital of Canada (though the government recently seized their clubhouse complete with huge Hell's Angels logo). For those of you not familiar with the Angels imagine if in your city the local organized crime lords had a big banner above where they met saying "Mafia" or "Triads" and a store which sold merchandise (closed for a while now.) I suggest we track the crackhouses, grow-ops and hooker corners.
I agree with you that many things can be mapped using modern technology that just weren't feasible or possible to map before. That *ability* is a great option to have at our disposal. But how many of these things make financial sense to do? Which ones have minimal privacy implications? At the very least, I'd be concerned whenever I heard a city was "trying to make everything accessible via the Internet", because it sounds like they're too caught up in the "big picture" to be carefully analyzing the specifics.
Over 10 years ago, I used to work with a guy who developed software for cemeteries to track plot locations and family data associated with them. With his program, someone could visit a cemetery, ask where they could locate a certain person, and get a little map printed out that showed exactly which grave marker was theirs. It wasn't Internet-capable or anything, but realistically, this is public information. Putting it online just saves people a physical trip to the cemetery to get the same info. So this is a case where, sure, I have no big "privacy concern" about putting it on Google Earth.
On the other hand, real-time tracking of emergency personnel and their locations? Not so sure that's wise. What about situations where someone wants to disrupt emergency service for whatever reason? You're just handing them free tools to make it easier to cause problems. What about the fire-truck/ambulance chasers out there who may have good intentions, but ultimately just get in the way at accident scenes - because they make a hobby out of taking pictures at the scenes, or get a thrill out of seeing these events in real life? You're just helping "enable" their behavior.
The town of Nanaimo has completely vanished, leaving behind only a flat and barren landscape where there was once a thriving, interconnected community. One relative of a Nanaimo resident reported receiving a phone call from the town shortly before it vanished.
"I got a call from my brother Earl in Nanaimo," said Harry Wacker of Fresno, California. "He was babbling on about how they may have gone too far in connecting the town up to the intertoobs, and some sort of hogs pizzle about a 'singularity' or something. Utter nonsense, but that's Earl- loonier than a sack of weasels. You'd have to be to move to gol-damned Canada. Broke his mother's heart, he did."
Other relatives and friends have reported hearing the voices of former Nanaimo residents coming from their game consoles, computers and other Internet connected devices, but these reports are unconfirmed.
Slowly but surely, and we'll recall with hindsight that it started in an obscure mining town in British Columbia...
I get up, I get down...
It's a good thing this isn't in the US, because all of that publicly available tracking is clearly a threat to national security. That would never fly here. Radical extremist groups could use data on the locations of fire trucks to attack them before they reach critical destinations. They could analyze grass mowing patterns and put too much fertilizer on lawns right after they're mowed, and the grass would be burned beyond recognition before someone checks again.
People will do anything to avoid rush hour.
Next thing you know, they can use this tracking information to let me know when the next train arrives on the Nanaimo Metro so I can get to Nanaimo International Airport in time for my flight to Prince George.
Give a man a fish and you have fed him for today. Teach a man to fish, and he'll say "WHERE'S MY FISH, YOU IDIOT?"
I wish they had spent the money on actually figuring out how to get around the mess that is downtown Nanaimo. The street grid dates back to the 19th century, and it shows. Ugh.
Who needs streets when there are more malls to build! From the B.C. Ferries terminal to the north edge of town you pass at least 4 enclosed malls, plus numerous strip malls.
...laura
What? It's been like 100 years since mining was Nanaimo's thing. Seriously, coal long gave way to forestry and even that's on the wane.
I guess some sort of data mining joke is possible, but I'm not even going to bother.
the City of Tomorrow? Interesting, I wonder if they've had any security issues or pranks to actually test the safety of the system.
"Teach a man to build a fire, and he's warm for a day. Set a man on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life."
Even better than this is http://www.swisstrains.ch/, where you can watch Swiss trains moving in real time.
When I zoom in on a city, I want the little ants to be moving in real-time, live video from the sat. Not little symbols moving over a static image, I mean real-time video.
I wonder what it would take to keep the entire Earth covered in that level of detail. Why do I want something like this? So I can show it to Dick Cheney. He'll spooge so hard in his pants his heart will explode.
Kwisatz Haderach
Sell the spice to CHOAM
This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne
Woot! Sadly, this is the first I've heard of any Google friendliness of the place.
It may be a tiny town, but it is very important as being the last big island before you get to Queen Charlotte Sound, where
there are huge amounts of commercial fishing and ship transport, and some of the post popular recreation areas in Canada.
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
The problem was an oddity in his taxes. Then the second problem was that she was a prostitute, which is what the previous poster was alluding to. They are probably going to charge him under federal laws prohibiting solicititation of sexual services across state lines.
:wq
I work in Nanaimo and this is great to see.
For every citizen who uses the location data of a firetruck to avoid the fire, there'll be 10 moronic disaster tourists who'll turn up at every fire.
What's not to love about this? As governments want more and more information about us, we should demand more information about them. This is our tax dollars at work. We should know where our money goes and how it's being used. If governments were to provide all this information, we'd have an army of fact finders going through every detail of every budget, every purchase, every opportunity to defraud the public or waste time, money, or manpower. The people would become the watchdogs over government instead of journalists. This is probably a good thing, as it's pretty clear that the journalists haven't been doing their job properly for some time.
Obscure? Have you never heard of Nanaimo Bars? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nanaimo_bar
Tesla was a genius. Edison however was a overrated hack who liked to torture puppies.
...with a stinky pulp mill nearby. Of course that's the smell of MONEY :)
"What's that you say? On a playground, during recess? Well, the law's the law!"
[Rolls eyes]
after a meal of poutine, do you have a heart attack in 12 hours or 24 hours?
you canadians must need a lot of body fat for your 9 month hibernation season i suppose
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
You take the good, you take the bad and there you have the facts of life.
I ran: That should have been: I should have a back up from last year on tape somewhere...
The television will not be revolutionized.
The ones you're thinking of, in Canada we spell as "dikes," eh?
I don't think they'll be making any man-made islands soon, especially since we have no shortage of natural ones. No argument there, especially considering any man-made islands would get pulverized by the storms, fast tides and floating debris. Our ocean is not exactly gentle and placid.
A gay necrophiliacs wet dream.
"Little things hitting each other. THAT'S WHAT I LIKE!" - Time Bandits
I don't have to argue the slippery slope argument because we're already at the bottom of it on voice communications and (probably) all internet traffic. Our executive branch is already illegally tapping communication networks with their full cooperation. How long before they intimidate Google and other commercial data aggregators to do the same?
That's even assuming they haven't already. Banks routinely report transactions well below the legally specified limit to avoid any appearance of wrongdoing. Lexus-Nexus can already tell whomever what your favorite foods are and what brand of TP you're wiping your butt with this week.
I *think* I understand what you mean, but you didn't say it. What you did imply was "consenting adults should be able to have sex any time, anywhere, under any conditions they like," since you said you wanted to get rid of all laws that govern that.
I was trying to humorously make the point that some such laws are a good idea, and that simply because two people are consenting adults doesn't mean their actions don't affect other people.
Bingo. WHY this was tagged "privacy" by some is beyond me, we're talking about tracking PUBLIC services, not citizens. I recall a news story locally last year about a City truck, and 4 or 5 employees, who took an entire 8-hour shift to fill 1 pothole. I mean, I KNOW we get big potholes, but no way are they THAT big.
If you live on Vancouver Island or nearby, and rely on BC Ferries like many of us do, they post real-time GPS images of ferry location and direction. They're highly addictive, since either the ferries are late, or I am. I'm a mac user mostly, so I have a web clip of my spouse's daily commute ferry one touch away.
I think all major transport systems would benefit from this.
Damn those pesky terrorists
Yah, well, they could've called it a logging town to the same effect, with much better accuracy. Though given the recent massive sell-off of mill infrastructure, who knows how long that will last.
Damn those pesky terrorists
Relocating Spitzer to Nanaimo is going to be a punishment enough.
3.243F6A8885A308D313
I'm not the GP, but I think I can safely say... no. I've never heard of Nanaimo bars.
I'm surprised when people don't know about Nanaimo Bars, they're delicious!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nanaimo_bar
Nanaimo is not too far from here. Well an hour of road time plus a ferry.
My marketing prof. once told us about Nanaimo. It's a "good" size, about 100K people, and it's relatively isolated geographically. Things like radio ads don't "leak in" as much from other cities.
So, many companies have used Nanaimo for market research. IIRC, my prof mentioned McDonalds and P&G. Google doing some test projects there doesn't surprise me at all.
Too bad I just got home. Wish me luck collecting mod points on this post...
So... when are we going to do the Vancouver Island /. convention?
Then I can safely say you have yet to truly live.
Tesla was a genius. Edison however was a overrated hack who liked to torture puppies.