Hi Jeremy,
I'm not talking about giving up control of the data, I firmly believe
in a custodian for it, but I'm suggesting that you make it more
accessible. You guys are good gatekeepers, to be sure! But if you
can serve it up in, for example, a Web Mapping Service (WMS) protocol
- then you maintain control over placement/location and timeliness
stuff... while allowing people to view maps more easily and a top
their own datasets, etc.
I am a little confused though.. you do already give the data away
though - it's just a bit tougher to get at - either behind a premium
membership (or one page at a time - not insurmountable for the
determined web scraper :)
I can imagine the Magellan contest scene - ouch!
All the best, not trying to knock your google map work! ... keep
smoking :)
Tyler
On 14-Jul-06, at 7:29 PM, Jeremy Irish wrote:
I need to write a white paper one of these days about the mixture
of data and real-world locations and their social implications. In
the meantime I'll offer one anecdote so you understand where I'm
coming from when you reference vendor lock-in - or the loose
sharing of data.
A situation occurred a few years ago when Magellan created a
promotion around geocaching. They placed caches around the US that
contained prizes from hats to GPS units, and posted coordinates on
their own web site.
Unfortunately in one situation they posted the wrong coordinates
that were sitting smack dab in the middle of a retired family's
back yard. The result? Geocachers from all around hit GoTo on their
GPS unit and ended up parked out front and standing on the patio,
in the driveway, and out in the street. The family, obviously
clueless, called the police and mayhem ensued.
This is a more extreme example but caches are archived, moved,
adjusted and changed every day. Some caches have the wrong
coordinates while others were just inappropriately placed. At
289,000 geocaches and counting you can imagine that one or two of
them were causing trouble one way or another. And you definitely
want to limit the number of people hitting GoTo with stale data.
So imagine if you took this data and made it downloadable for
anyone to share and use on the 'net. Once that data is out there...
it's out there. The original owner of the cache and the listing has
no further control over the cache. At any time the cache changes
and data becomes invalidated.
In many cases park managers allow geocaching because they work
closely with Groundspeak to ensure that they are able to manage the
geocaches in their parks. We decided to be open - in our actions -
and therefore have to create policies to work well with others.
When a park manager removes a cache or lets us know it is
inappropriate, we move the listing off the web site. And they are
confident that it is removed off the net' - therefore restricting
impact or dangerous decisions for others.
Now when it comes to our new site, Waymarking.com, I feel that this
kind of data should be easier to access and use by third parties.
We're not there yet but we do intend to provide APIs to allow
access to Waymarking data, since things like historical markers,
whispering giant sculptures, factory tours, and science museums
won't cause a waymarker to end up in someone's back yard.
... most of the time.
Jeremy
-----Original Message-----
From: Tyler Mitchell [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Sent: Friday, July 14, 2006 6:59 PM
To: [email protected]
Cc: Jeremy Irish
Subject: Re: [Geowanking] Geocaching Google Mashup
Hi Jeremy,
I'm glad to see some geocache maps opened up! Some of us would be
thrilled to help you serve these up using open standards if you were
at all interested. This would protect you from, what should we call
it.. vendor lock-in - and conceivably boost interest in geocaching in
general.
Once you've made that leap, I think you'll find us wrapping up
geocaching maps using several technologies that you could also copy/
re-use, etc.
Any thoughts?
Tyler
On 14-Jul-06, at 6:47 PM, Jeremy Irish wrote:
For those new to the mailing list, I posted in the past my concerns
about taking something like Google Maps and mashing them with
existing applications - and therefore relying completely on an
external company with no formal relationship. Well, it didn't take
long for us to realize that we might and well hang out with the
cool kids and smoke some Google Maps.
Here’s a link to our approach with Google Maps + Geocaches:
http://www.geocaching.com/seek/gmnearest.aspx
It centers on an area close to Groundspeak headquarters, but you
can use the Yahoo web geocoding service to zoom in on whatever
region you like.
Our approach in the page design was to have a basic application
where you could seek out all the caches, and a premium version that
would allow you to use additional features like bookmarking
different caches you want to seek out. Our hope was to increase
Premium Memberships which are ultimately the lifeblood of the
company, while still providing useful tools for the casual
geocacher. As you can see I think we created a happy medium.
Our approach at this point is we can still provide the basic,
previous method of doing searches from a distance and showing those
results while experimenting with alternate mapping methods like
Google Maps and Earth. Like this:
http://www.geocaching.com/seek/nearest.aspx?zip=98121
We also played with Ka-map but decided it is still a bit too early
in its infancy to rely on for a production mapping tool, but are
happy to know there is an alternative in case the mapping switch is
turned off or mangled with advertising.
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