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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.'"
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!
I've always wanted to be able to see where the city buses are in real time. In Ottawa, they all (well, most anyway) have GPS units on board, so it probably wouldn't take much to have them transmit their location every 5 minutes. It really sucks when you end up waiting in the cold for 20 minutes because the bus is late. If I could see ahead of that it was going to be late, I would just stay inside until I knew the bus was close.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
Yeah, that sounds awesome.
As someone who takes the bus to and from work every day, I'd love this.
You know what's the only thing worse than the bus being late? The bus being early. Nothing like standing out in the cold for 20 minutes past the time the bus is supposed to arrive only to realize it must have passed your stop 15 minutes early.
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