Maps on Path to Mass Innovation 153
Ryan MacCarthy writes "When Google and Yahoo! released their map APIs last week they unleashed a horde of hungry developers eager to integrate their data with the user-friendly maps. Brilliant hacks like Chicago Crime and Craigslist Real Estate are in the midst of switching over to the new API, while sites like MetroFreeFi use the new API to make it easier to find free wi-fi locations in US cities (San Francisco, for example). Imaginative developers, like Alan Taylor (Transparency concept), are digging deep into experimentation to dream up new uses for the maps. It's great to see the innovation when hacks turn to apps." I want to see Los Angeles maps of the action in James Ellroy's novels, and a national map of the worst, funniest tourist traps across the U.S.
Coming soon to a neighborhood near you... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Coming soon to a neighborhood near you... (Score:1)
Seriously, is it only me or hasn't there been a few too many map-related news reports lately just telling the same craigslist story over and over again? *yawn*
Re:Coming soon to a neighborhood near you... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Coming soon to a neighborhood near you... (Score:2)
Re:Coming soon to a neighborhood near you... (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Coming soon to a neighborhood near you... (Score:5, Funny)
What I would personally like to see (Score:1)
Re:What I would personally like to see (Score:1)
http://www.frowl.org/gods/geography.html [frowl.org]
Comment removed (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Land ownership / plot mapping (Score:2)
Komi
...there bound....in a book... (Score:2)
So you are saying that in some book is something called a "bound"? Or where you saying that the're bund in a book? I don't understand.
Re:Land ownership / plot mapping (Score:1)
Re:Land ownership / plot mapping (Score:1)
Let's focus a bit on the potential evil uses. Spam that knows where you live?
Re:Land ownership / plot mapping (Score:4, Interesting)
http://webserver.vcgov.org/Address.html [vcgov.org]
Starting from the address page, enter a valid address like "544 s floyd cir deltona". This will give you everything on the property, including a rough sketch of the floor plan. Scroll all the way down to "PALMS Mapping" and you can work thru an interactive map of the city getting data on various parcels.
-Charles
Re:Land ownership / plot mapping (Score:2)
In more humble words... (Score:4, Funny)
Dan East
Re:In more humble words... (Score:3, Funny)
I don't care how well-documented the API happens to be, or whether it's a hack, it's an app, or it's a map. This is not Fark, you are not Admiral Ackbar, and we are not going here [mapquest.com]!
Re:In more humble words... (Score:2)
It's a Trap!
Nothing to see here. Move along. (Score:2)
It just looks like an excuse to post about google with no new information, and links to sites we all have already seen.
Did I miss something?
Re:Nothing to see here. Move along. (Score:2)
Yes, Google and Yahoo have opened up offical APIs, with terms of service people can use, rather than the existing hacks of their services.
Re:Nothing to see here. Move along. (Score:2)
Re:Thank you!!! (Score:2)
Perhaps Google could extend their API to make use of other road maps such as "www.vicmichelin.com" - Or maybe that could become a third party API.
Re:Thank you!!! (Score:1)
Wow, that is cool (Score:3, Funny)
Speaking of Craig's List, this could be a disease spreader too. Think of being able to find that horny date close to you from the online personals. Little tags all over saying "Yea! I'm horny! come on over!". lol.
News headlines, "STD's spread like wildfire with Google's new map API".
Re:Wow, that is cool (Score:2)
More likely you'll click on their personal only to find the address was entered randomly, its a stock porn/model photo, and it tells you to go check out her live webcam.
Soo.. (Score:2)
Never mind maps... (Score:5, Interesting)
Go 'head and try it. Save a location, or folder of locations, as a
Re:Never mind maps... (Score:3, Informative)
Sombody converted all georeferenced Wikipedia articles of the german version into such a file....
Flying around the earth, and having a click on mountains, rivers or cities open the wikipedia page in the lower window really feels like playing real world civilisation
Re:Never mind maps... (Score:1)
Thanks for your interest in Google Earth, but we're sorry we can't offer you a download right now.
that's all i've ever seen from google earth
Re:Never mind maps... (Score:5, Informative)
Enjoy!
Re:Never mind maps... (Score:2)
Re:Never mind maps... (Score:2)
"Due to huge demand (even compared to my own aggressive estimates), the Google Earth free download and activations have been temporarily disabled. If you are running Google Earth on your machine, it will continue to work, but you won't be able to install it on a different machine."
Gee, that sucks.
Re:Never mind maps... (Score:2)
You're the second person I've had to correct about this issue. It's getting old.
It's been done. (Score:3, Funny)
This [roadsideamerica.com] will satisfy all your "worst, funniest tourist trap" needs.
Re:It's been done. (Score:1)
With all this innovation... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:With all this innovation... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:With all this innovation... (Score:4, Informative)
Re:With all this innovation... (Score:4, Informative)
Local Search on google uses some crazy algorithms to find things by doing a GOOGLE SEARCH for what you entered, and then showing you addresses on a map found in the pages you referenced. (Basically.)
Yahoo Yellow Pages is actually a database of business listings, and when you search that, 99% of the time you will get all the businesses.
Example: I search for haircut near my area in Google Maps, and I get a few nearby haircut salons. I do the same thing in Yahoo Yellow Pages, and I get ALL the salons nearby, which gives me more choices, especially when there is a specific entry I am looking for. I know I will find it with YYP.
I wish Google would just hurry up and buy some Yellow Pages company's data so they can compete against that. The "Local Search" idea was interesting, but is not comparable or adequate.
Re:With all this innovation... (Score:2)
Re:With all this innovation... (Score:1)
Everyone's gotta eat... (Score:1)
--
Check out the Uncyclopedia.org [uncyclopedia.org]
The only wiki source for politically incorrect non-information about things like Kitten Huffing [uncyclopedia.org] and Pong! the Movie [uncyclopedia.org] !
Re:Everyone's gotta eat... (Score:2)
Hey, that looks cool in a totally random way... Kinda like how Everything used to be cool before a bunch of uptight assholes went and ruined it by trying to be all serious. Thanks!
Re:Everyone's gotta eat... (Score:2)
Re:Everyone's gotta eat... (Score:2)
They killed the funny. Most of what's left is a bunch of elitist snobs, and the rest are the people that can't admit it sucks now.
If you're not writing serious nodes or silly wish-they-were-blogs posts they get nuked. The whole fun before was that you could put []tags around things that were amusing out of context and see what popped up. Now if you do that you get kicked out.
Google Earth (Score:2, Interesting)
Google Earth-151,000,000 hits for Earth (Score:1, Insightful)
Funny how no one wants to see the bandwith bill, however.
Re:Google Earth (Score:4, Informative)
Have fun!
Chris
The worst, funniest tourist traps across the US (Score:2)
Bike/Run maps! (Score:3, Interesting)
Ideally, the interface should allow me to highlight a route over existing roads, with fudging for off-road stretches. Locations of water fountains, food stores or restaurants, and bathrooms would be a major plus too. Does such a thing exist yet?
Re:Bike/Run maps! (Score:1)
Re:Bike/Run maps! (Score:1)
Let he who is without freakiness make the first post...
Re:Bike/Run maps! (Score:2)
Gabba gabba hey!
You're one of us now.
Gabba gabba hey!
Re:Bike/Run maps! (Score:2, Interesting)
Map places (Score:5, Funny)
So I thought I would look it up with Google Maps, and sure enough, I found it!
Thus rendering my need for the store irrelevant.
Campsites in Cornwall (Score:4, Interesting)
So, I have extracted the data of each site from the Cornwall tourist board website and have used it along with the Google maps API to create: Campsites in Cornwall [blerg.net]
By the way, Cornwall is in the south-west of England.
Re:Campsites in Cornwall (Score:2)
"A script is causing Mozilla to run slowly. If it continues, Mozilla may become unresponsive." Then it asked if I wanted to cancel the script.
Have you noticed this?
Re:Campsites in Cornwall (Score:2)
Re:Campsites in Cornwall (Score:3, Informative)
Do you want to abort the script?
[OK] [Cancel]
Have these people heard of UI guidelines? Which button am I supposed to press if I want the script to keep running? Cancel?!!!!
Re:Campsites in Cornwall (Score:2)
The whole page is 64KB, plus whatever Google sends which is probably at least another 100KB. I might try cutting down what I send by experimenting with AJAX. Thats another rainy weekend sorted!
Re:Campsites in Cornwall (Score:1)
Actually, it's next to South-West England, not in it.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constitutional_statu
Good work though.
Re:Campsites in Cornwall (Score:2)
Re:Campsites in Cornwall (Score:2)
Google Maps API doesn't allow postcodes to be entered for the positioning. Everything is done with latitude and longitude. I got around this by determining the postcode of each campsite and then parsing that through Multimap. So, in fact I am using Multimap postcodes. I've also checked for a few campsites the maps on th
wiki by location? (Score:2)
Somebody must be doing this already... links?
Re:wiki by location? (Score:2)
map (Score:2, Funny)
it should also overlay with oil fields, poulation density, fresh water supply, and power lines.
muwahahaa.
Funny you should mention that... (Score:4, Insightful)
This [google.com] is the overhead of the niagara falls hydropower resevoir. The power station is lo res, but the neighborhood isn't.
This [google.com] is the site of a Dupont factory, a Dunlop Tire factory and a General Motors plant. All low res.
This view [google.com] shows a CSX rail depot in the north east and the Buffalo River (which has a plant for making HCl among other things iirc) in the south west. Both blurred.
Now, I have no problem with denying high resolution images of sensitive areas to the civilian population (especially since the areas I've shown you are all prominently featured in the bad dreams of local emergency services types). But if that's the criterion for deciding what's obscured and what isn't, the result is slapdash. This [google.com] photo shows a cheese factory. Those white tanks are NH3 tanks for the refrigeration system. Since the winds here are usually from the south west or west, the cloud resulting from a leak in the ammonia system would blow right over one of the more densly populated neighborhoods in Buffalo. Clearly, this should have been obscured as well (Except you can see pretty much the whole thing from the street, which isn't true of the other examples).
It would seem that someone already read your mind SparafucileMan.What I want to know is who; Google, the local government, the national government (DHS or whoever), the owners of stuff being obscured?
Discuss.
Re:Funny you should mention that... (Score:1)
Re:Funny you should mention that... (Score:2, Interesting)
Maybe someone will know for sure out there, but aren't the keyhole satelites capable of resolving down to 1 meter? I thought the high resolution images we
Ding-Dong (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Ding-Dong (Score:1)
You mean Bill's house [usnews.com]? Honestly, who aims for 3000 patents [com.com] in one year?
Pedro's (Score:1)
I want to see Los Angeles maps of the action in James Ellroy's novels, and a national map of the worst, funniest tourist traps across the U.S.
It's not in LA, but Pedro's South of the Border [pedroland.com] (in South Carolina) [google.com] would have to be on the list.
Re:Pedro's (Score:1)
EVERYBODY'S A WEINER ONLY 3,726 MILES TO PEDRO'S
Re:Pedro's (Score:2)
MetroFreeFi having problems... (Score:2)
The Google Maps API key used on this web site was registered for a different web site. You can generate a new key for this web site at http://www.google.com/apis/maps/ [google.com]
I guess that some people are still having problems with the way the access is provided.
Re: (Score:2)
lawsuit waiting to happen... (Score:3, Informative)
I used to work on production for Where Magazine in New Orleans. They would publish a map entitled "Where To Go In New Orleans" and I always wondered why they never published a map that showed areas where crimed occurred. At the time, New Orleans was pretty high on the murder-per-capita rates. But there were places that a tourist SHOULD KNOW ABOUT if they wanted to remain with their belongings and alive.
The magazine said they'd get sued out of existence.
Admittedly, publishing this kind of information in a magazine does push it under the umbrella of "opinion" unlike the Chicago Crime Maps, but it's a very thin hair to split. Chicago Crime Maps is merely publishing already available public data, but Where Magazine would have done that, too. What's to become of the tourist site that links to the maps?
Henry Earl (Score:2, Funny)
It really is impressive (Score:1)
satellite-map mismatch of 0.1 to 2 kilometres (Score:5, Interesting)
The upshot of this is that if you want to put location balloons on a satellite image, you may need to do some ad hoc adjustments to the latitude and longitude ... which I would guess you'll have to keep changing as google gradually improves the satellite presentation.
I've started a thread on the topic [google.com] on the google map api discussion group, and at least one other person has noticed the same problem.
Re:satellite-map mismatch of 0.1 to 2 kilometres (Score:2)
So when are we going to be able to see ... (Score:5, Interesting)
Seems like all it would take is for Google to accept the publisher's business, and post the maps.
Maps by and for the masses (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Maps by and for the masses (Score:2)
I'll bet you there were a fair number of these professionals involved in the creation of the services themselves. It's just like any other field - it's the professionals that create the technologies that enable the amateurs to play with them.
Oh, a few see the light but leave it to the true hackers to truly push the boundaries (no pun intended) of the art.
Custom maps for your site (Score:2, Informative)
Funny Tourist Traps??? (Score:1)
Build it and they will come (Score:2)
Just more code... (Score:1)
Or make your own Maps with Open Source Software (Score:1)
It is a fairly young project, just waiting for a few more talented programmers to help push it along. I would love to see a open source alternative to Google Maps and Yahoo Maps providing base maps to these services.
Sex Offenders? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Sex Offenders? (Score:1)
Geo-Spatial Web - Right photo Say go there. (Score:1)
Google Maps is cool (Score:4, Interesting)
I'd like to see the next dimension that Google Maps add be time. It would be cool if it were possible to have all of the satellite imagery from the last 40 years or so going right up to today with a fleet of googlesats providing near real-time imagery and then scroll through it all. Man, this makes me wish I were smart enough to work at Google.
Re:Google Maps is cool (Score:2)
LS
Street directory overlays (Score:1)
Your very own Indiana Jones red line! Alive!!! (Score:1)
Not innovotive (Score:2)
Sure they are neat, but hardly amazing.
Specifically, the transparency concept isn't innovative or extraordinarily imaginitive. Websites like MultiMap [multimap.com] have had transparen
Does this mean... (Score:2)
It could be like 'jive' for Google Maps.
Obligatory (Score:4, Funny)
Come on, a username of 'iclod', a post to slashdot about a game called 'iCLOD'...it had to be done!
Re:Games (Score:1)
"Those who did not act swiftly or simply ignored the effectiveness of The Do-Not-Slashdot ACT had suffered the consequences of burnt-down server rooms and employment termination, just to name a few."
I should probably mention that the following sites are bad ideas because they make the ACT void (if anyone actually used them): Corel [nyu.edu] or