Hey - I like angry Mikel! On Fri, Sep 5, 2008 at 7:26 PM, Mikel Maron <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Does it really need to be pointed out that we're all thinking "Bowel > Movement"? > That's exactly what we're giving each other on a daily basis. > > > Just this morning, noticed that Google had added data for Israel and the West > Bank. > It's quite a bizarre data set .. no street names, sporadic West Bank > coverage, an unexplained "P in a house" symbol (anyone?) > This follows on from starting a project one month ago to map the West Bank > for the public domain, using OSM tools. > > http://maps.google.com/?ie=UTF8&ll=31.747128,35.199616&spn=0.01343,0.021887&z=16 > http://brainoff.com/weblog/2008/08/17/1349 >
Agree, its pretty bizzare data. For example there are one-way streets, but no street names. I've heard that mapping companies infer directionality of streets from the direction that cars are parked, but that requires high res aerial imagery and Google are only publishing satellite imagery. > > Coincidence? Was it also coincidence that Google Maps added data for the Isle > of Man in the weeks following the complete release of Cloud Made's data set > for the Isle of Man. LOL. Speaking as 1/3 of the people who mapped the Isle of Man in the first place... Its pretty strange, isn't it? Its like someone at Google HQ forgot to flip a switch somewhere - the "turn on maps" switch is next to the "evil / not evil" switch. Seriously though, in the case of the IoM data there's no question of Google copying it from CloudMade or OSM. The data in OSM reflects the ground truth way more accurately than Google's. I'm in a pretty strong position to say that. Was it coincidence that Google launched MapMaker that allows anyone to edit the map, without mentioning any projects which for years had been telling Google, in good faith, how to do it? > Is anyone satisfied that Google rushed to get maps of Georgia, which contain > no roads, and photos from some photo service no one ever uses? > I'm going to go add an easter egg to OSM right now "Larry and Sergey were > here, 2003". > > http://aidworkerdaily.com/2008/09/05/new-data-for-georgia-in-google-earth/#comments > > > I even read that Google Chrome comic. And it's pretty good. But then they say > things like "Fortunately, here at Google, we have an equally massive > infrastructure for crawling web pages." Good for you, Mr GoogleBot. > Fortunately you're not here in person so I can equally massive your ass. > Metaphorically of course. And is anyone fooled that privacy mode is about > anything else than pr0n? > > > If you think I'm picking on Google, they're just the biggest and best target. > The BM comes equally from freetards, startups, angry Jordanian colonels, > mismanaged charities, beauracratic nightmare international organizations. > I'll leave that rant to you. > > > It makes me wonder when some of the best work I've seen last year happened in > a city which only exists for one week. And this is when we're facing the > prospect of a world which looks like a desert all year round, except there's > no oil for generators, no 1.5 gallon bottles of water, and you hate all your > neighbors. So stock pile your gold, buy weapons to defend it and sit tight, > while I travel next to some forlorn, under seige, dusty part of the world to > GPS map sheep where people somehow seem to be happier than plasma screen > watching, hockey mom horrors. How many people on the list are involved in aid work of any kind? I know that you (Mikel) have been pushing disaster mapping for a couple of years - you have serious dedication to it. How useful is an online Google map of Georgia to aid workers anyway? Wouldn't they rather also have a paper map they can draw on, or a shapefile in ArcGIS that they can figure out the optimal route on? I met with some guys from MapAid in the UK a couple of years ago to talk about OSM, and they were pretty frank. The message was that in a lot of the places they go to just trying to get some kind of a radio working is struggle enough, let along getting enough bandwidth to run a web app. It seems that MapMaker goes part of the way to solving New Orleans bridge type issue that Mikel and other pointed out. But at the end of the day these are still pictures in a web browser, rather than queryable vector data in an analytical tool. > > > > ----- Original Message ---- > From: Andrew Larcombe <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]; [email protected] > Sent: Friday, September 5, 2008 9:34:33 AM > Subject: Re: [Geowanking] Geowanking at BM? > > > On 3 Sep 2008, at 04:56, Tyler Bell wrote: > >> And here I thought by 'BM' you were referring to 'British Museum'... > > You and me both... > -- > Andrew Larcombe > Freelance Geospatial, Database & Web Programming > > web: http://www.andrewlarcombe.co.uk : http://blog.andrewl.net > email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > mob: +44 (7760) 258623 > icq: 306690163 > > > > > > _______________________________________________ > Geowanking mailing list > [email protected] > http://lists.burri.to/mailman/listinfo/geowanking > > _______________________________________________ > Geowanking mailing list > [email protected] > http://lists.burri.to/mailman/listinfo/geowanking > -- Nick Black -------------------------------- http://www.blacksworld.net _______________________________________________ Geowanking mailing list [email protected] http://lists.burri.to/mailman/listinfo/geowanking
