Author: James

I’m giving a talk later today at the Salt River Project on the future of geospatial technology and though why not show what Google has been up to with their mapping product. So I did what anyone would do, zoom into Google Maps and see how it looks. When I did so I saw something that made me do a double take:

As you can see, there is a lake with roads across the top. I know that there isn’t a lake there, but a parking lot and a building. Of course the Google Maps aerial confirms this.

So what the heck happened? How could Google put a lake in the middle of a desert? Enter Legend City. Before my time in AZ, there was a small amusement park in Tempe. It of course failed and SRP bought the land and put one of their buildings on it. The park closed in 1983 and I’m sure the lake dried up or was drained in weeks.

Map of Legend City – See the lake on the left side of the map?

So I know you are thinking the same thing I was. Let us take a look at the USGS Quad map for the area.

So there it is, Google Maps are no worse than 30 year old USGS Quad maps. What makes it even more fun is you can search Google for Legend City and get everything but a phone number.

Google best clean this stuff up. I’ve gone ahead and “reported” the problem so hopefully it will be removed here soon, but how can one build routing and other online apps on an API that has data which is so inconsistent? I guess it is up to the community to fix Google’s maps for them.

From the Microsoft Labs…

So this looks interesting (the video dates from July so I’m wondering how I missed this before), but the practicality of it seems far-fetched. I guess I could look at them on my laptop/iPhone before driving the route, but looking down at a video while I’m driving seems dangerous. Plus how often would they update these? Would they have nighttime versions to help navigate when the sun is down (to me a city I’m not familiar with looks totally different at night)?

Oh and is this a preview of Microsoft’s Street View?

The gates are now open. If there is one ESRI show you shouldn’t miss, this is the one. Not only is it a meeting of the tribe, but everyone pays to come so you don’t run into this problem. Plus you never know who might show up!

This question comes up almost every day. If you ask me I’ll tell you the same thing every time, use the ESRI REST API with OpenLayers. Picking an ESRI ArcGIS Server API always makes me think of a good movie.

If you are heading out to FOSS4G this weekend, make sure you stop by the 3rd Ignite Spatial next week.

Ignite Spatial – Sydney

Wednesday 21st Oct, 2009
5.30pm for 6.30pm
Shelbourne Hotel
200 Sussex St, Sydney

You can see a list of presenters here. If you’ve never been to an Ignite, this is your chance.

Michael Jones’ “article” on Directions Magazine does a great job of pointing out all the great crowdsourcing projects Google has going.

I know that users are now better served with an easily correctable, rapidly updatable, widely usable base-map built from the synthesis of hundreds of data feeds, hundreds of thousands of individual contributors, and potentially, hundreds of millions of local-expert users. Think of it this way. If tomorrow every Web user in the USA took one minute to look at their neighborhood or workplace on Google Maps and make any necessary corrections, every Internet user would then have access to an up-to-the-minute national map for the first time in world history. This is how it always should have been and I’m glad that it has finally happened and excited about what the future holds.

Wait! Did he just describe OpenStreetMap? Sorry SteveC, sounds like your project is dead outside of Europe.

On another point, why does Google not want to just tell us where they got the data from? I suppose in the end, it just doesn’t really matter because everyone uses Google Maps for the Aerials, right?

These aren’t the basemaps you are looking for.

It looks like the new update to Google Maps gives us more than we thought. Sure the parks looks nice in a blog post, but if I’m reading the tea leaves right, Google is now using their own data in at least parts of the world.

So I think this means that what we all expected to happen, did. Tele Atlas is gone from the maps as far as I can tell and we now report our errors right back to Google.

Questions arise though… Where did Google get this info from? I’m guessing that it is USGS, MapMaker and probably some TIGER data. Plus they’ve also cut deals with local organizations to get vectors. The parcels, who knows… But if counties are giving it to Google and charging the public, we’ve got problems. Also do they have rights to republish the data in the first place (due diligence)? If I make corrections to their data, will they push those back to the organizations that donated the data or keep it themselves (and in turn own the data outright)?

Right now most of this looks visual as I can’t seem to access the parcels via their API. Only a matter of time I suppose.

Looks like Google is going to walk on over all data providers, open or not.

Let me just say, what a great time I had all weekend here in Portland. WhereCampPDX is definitely an experience you should try and experience once in a lifetime. OK, so maybe that is a little overboard, but so what? I’ve never been to any unconference that has been better run, had the right mix of people and had so many people ready to engage each other. I can’t recall anyone sitting on their hands not saying a word. Some highlights for me:

• Meeting many of the folks I’ve only ever had a change to talk with on Twitter/email.
• Giving the keynote
• Hacking Foursquare (mayor=1)
• Whiffies Fried Pies
• Sessions on topics that I wasn’t very familiar with. Learned a ton!
• Government getting involved with open source and open data. Keep an eye on Portland.
• Eating fresh fish on the coast of Oregon. Being from AZ… all fish, even those that say they are fresh, are actually frozen.
• Bridges; I’m not sure, but I think I hit every bridge. Once I think I have them all, I see another. Should have added them to Foursquare.
  Check out GeoPDX and MapLoser for their take on WhereCampPDX.

My slide deck is below:

//speakerdeck.com/assets/embed.js

Not much to say other than:

• Support for Firefox 3.5
• Support for Dojo 1.3.2
• Ability to force a mouse cursor style change
• Optional HTTPS access of the ArcGIS JavaScript API
• Bug fixes

So if you love Dojo (and I don’t know why), you’ll want to make the simple change to your code.

<script type="text/javascript" src="http://serverapi.arcgisonline.com/jsapi/arcgis/?v=1.5" />

What’s new document is here.

Just one word; ESRI. Enough said…

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PSxihhBzCjk&w=560&h=315]

Don’t forget, WhereCamp PDX is this weekend. The WhereCampPDX blog has a good overview post of where you need to be and when.

I’ll see everyone on the WhereCampPDX boat this weekend.