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Google Crowd-Sources Maps
Wamoc writes "Google has invited 'citizen cartographers' to refine the US map for Google Maps and Google Earth. 'Today we're opening the map of the United States in Google Map Maker for you to add your expert local knowledge directly. You know your neighborhood or hometown best, and with Google Map Maker you can ensure the places you care about are richly represented on the map. For example, you can fix the name of your local pizza parlor, or add a description of your favorite book store.'"
http://www.openstreetmap.org/
Address and ratings for all the girls that put out? Sure, there is no way this can be abused...
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
My street is one way, but Google Maps displays it one way in the wrong direction. I've submitted a report oh, about five years ago, and still no change. I'm looking forward to opening this up for Hungary as well, so I can make that goddamn change, since it breaks all routes planned by Maps.
Hyperbole: I use it liberally!
After submitting that they have my street name wrong and the next one over with it's label, and another one missing, years ago,
That's strange. I submitted a correction for two streets where I live that had the names mixed up and about a month later, they sent me an email thanking me and the switch was made. OSM had the same error (must have came from the Tiger data) and I just fixed it myself. Not sure why your change wasn't made to GM.
The soylentnews experiment has been a dismal failure.
Ever discover a good side road that works to get around traffic? A friend and I who carpooled found one. One day a radio station started a segment where people could call in with traffic tips. Someone glowing described this wonderful detour. The next day it was as stalled and backed up as the highway. Years later I went that way again, still as screwed up. I suspect this sort of thing to happen with various other kind of favorite spots.
Works both ways. There is a truly major interstate highway project in my area, biggest in a couple decades, maybe the biggest project since the interstate was built decades ago. The conventional wisdom is the interstate will therefore be a parking lot during rush hour, so take any possible non-interstate route home, avoid the interstate at all costs, its the inter-apocalypse, etc. The actual result is the interstate is a ghost town and I get home about 5 to 10 minutes earlier than normal now, even though the road is all screwed up.
You should call in to the same radio show crying about how the alt route is a clogged dirt road to nowhere, until no one uses it anymore.
The sheep will follow their orders...
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
OpenStreetMaps is a classic grass-roots effort. People have sweat blood making OSM work, proving the "business" model, working out the kinks, and donating immeasurable time towards making this a success. Now that somebody has done the dirty work to prove that this method of crowd-sourcing maps can work, Google trots out its sexy service that will grab the buzz, divert the resources, advertise interest away and steal the user cycles towards improving its own closed proprietary maps. Yes, that's correct, proprietary -- there's no guarantee that what you do will remain freely available.
Has everyone forgotten the CDDB debacle? Quoting wiki: "The original software behind CDDB was released under the GNU General Public License, and many people submitted CD information thinking the service would also remain free." Those of you who remember will recognize what an understatement that is. Needless to say, those users were wrong and one day they found that all their effort was suddenly swallowed up and they were being asked to pay for access to the data they submitted.
I don't believe Google is evil and I don't work with OSM, but if Google is not evil it has to realize the negative impacts its actions can have on the kinds of grassroots open-source efforts it claims to support. Google is not stepping in to use its resources to do what the crowd cannot -- it will end up undercutting a project where the crowd was doing just fine on its own. And the ordinary Joes need to realize what is going on and channel their efforts to the project where they will own the product. OpenStreetMap.
Didn't Google have a thing about two years ago where people could photograph storefronts, send them in to Google, and get paid?
They have a "submit your content" thing now, but of course Google doesn't actually pay for the content.
Or maybe "Geez it would be nice to be able to spent 15 sec fixing that road segment that always results in google maps routing me around, which wastes 10 minutes of my day" Having worked with city and county mapping services there are a lot of little mistakes on maps that a simple tweak could easily fix. OTOH, if you don't want to, don't do it.
You're just upset because your parents never got you a sandbox when you were a kid, I understand. User generated content can and will go much much further. A simple project like "Accurately label every location of interest in the US" is a big much, even for google. And people benefit from such a map, so why wouldn't they spend a couple minutes to make a correction to their favorite businesses?
Sure, you don't get paid, but at least you get the satisfaction and sense of accomplishment that comes from seeing someone else's stock price rise.
Ok, so you won't be allowed to directly query the data yourself after you give it to them, but at least you'll know that it might come up on your page, along with their ads, if you embed their javascript.
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
Damn right I know my neighborhood better.
Yes, google maps. I am certain that my ex girlfriend lives on Whore Avenue.
And my boss does happen to live on Penis Street.
-Styopa
Gaming of the system is the next logical step. One might be able to route people to one's neighborhood by submitting false one-way streets, road closures, altered speed limits, and traffic jam reports.
The US government have made it clear that we have no inalienable rights; any we do not defend vigorously will be taken.