I Hate Google Maps

I totally agree with Ed. It's completely let down by the crap cartography. Many street names bear no relation to reality, as well. I guess they just decided to save money by buying in cheap-ass data rather than Ordnance Survey or whoever. Even elsewhere in the world, where all online maps are a bit shit, it's not very good comparatively. I was looking at Pakistan recently, and multimap had much more detail.

There's some MS thing that is WAY better for up to date accurate street locations - but it doesn't have sat imagery.

it is fisher price and blocky, but i think thats part of its charm in a way. its good for roads (apart from the odd occasion when it looks like roads join when they dont). yes it is bad for railways, and for geographic features (but for geographic stuff, just switch to the sat imagery). i figure theyve concentrated on roads precisely because you can switch to satellite for non-road stuff

as for yahoo maps, well, theyve improved immeasurably in the last couple of years. a few months ago london was just a few made up lines, no resemblance to reality, and roads not even named. this has totally been cleaned up now. also, only the uk and england were mapped. now, i think, all of europe is mapped.

They need a bit of quality control.

The satellite photo of my road comprises mostly of a large shadow, whereas my work colleague can examine the condition of his chimney.

'The Dr'?

I actually really like the simplicity of the map (and am willing to sacrifice details I don't really need, like the railways)--the streetmap ones especially hurt my brain.

why does google love Norton so much?

i guess one good thing about google maps is that you can zoom right in to the point where street widths and lengths are to scale in relation to each other (unlike streetmap).

Someone told me that they leave off most facilities as this is "how it's done" on some standard American maps and that is where googlymaps started

Woah! Street Views on Google maps!

You can see a 360 views of streets in a few US cities.

Can you give an example? I cannot find such things.

There's a link to it on the map itself, next to the buttons for "Traffic", "Satellite", etc.

Here's the demo link

Okay you didn't warn me about the orange-shirted dork there.

Spandex-wearing dork, to boot.

i'm going to really have to learn to stop picking my nose in public

ha ha i like the way you can click on the arrow and move along the street there. WHERE IS THE MYST ISLAND?

i was going down the street but the cars coming towards me never did actually pass me wtf

http://news.com.com/Amazon+A9+takes+it+to+the+streets/2100-1032_3-5833916.html

Is it wrong to prefer the google maps look to that Bartholemew view of London? Maybe it's because in the US you're mostly looking for driving directions? Actually, it's probably because I hate most condensed fonts, especially when their basically running into the street lines at the top and bottom.

god yeah google is way better than that shit. i hate the trend toward stuffing more nonsense in the map, I still swear by yahoo "dial-up" version" map when I want to get somewhere(i also hate when companies condescend toward their own product in order to phase it out, subject for another thread). although their driving directions are by far the dodgiest.

OMG this is absolutely freaking me out. Not in a paranoid way, but in a kind of intense "next big thing" way. This just seems like it has almost infinitely massive impact as an application. Is it just me?

i like the fisherpriceness of the google map. like, you can zoom better with that. on streetmap you have to squint your eye to find anything.

google it's just YAY ZOOM WITH THE SCROLL MOUSE

yeah, google maps is the bee's knees (for my purposes, at least). those maps linked upthread hurt my eyes and head too much for the added detail to be of usefulness, while the goog has streets and the option to switch to satellite whenever things get hairy. I can even look at the lane markings and plan in advance every lane change I need to make for an entire trip!

I thought A9 had ditched the street views, but I'm out of the loop -- the ones I saw weren't perfect but it was a good starting point.

Looks like Google just has street view for five US cities now. I assume they're not available on the Google Maps handheld client yet -- once we get street views on a handheld (or on a GPS), that's a major step forward, as you've then got an on-the-fly visual navigational tool.

OMG this is absolutely freaking me out. Not in a paranoid way, but in a kind of intense "next big thing" way. This just seems like it has almost infinitely massive impact as an application. Is it just me?

If they were live or even updated frequently, maybe, but I suspect the pictures they've stitched together will never be updated, and once the novelty of looking at your own place and your hangouts wears off you'll never look at it again.

Pasadena had something called the streetbrowser on the official city site that had pictures taken every 50-100 feet on both sides of the street linked together (not the whole city) and you could type in an address and it would take you to a front view, from which you could left- or right-arrow your way down the street. I thought it rocked but it never went beyond its first generation, and I think is not even there anymore.

i'm with you forks

i bet they'll take the opposite tack: move from photo to video, link up with businesses, create a shopping experience.

i'd use it if i were going to a new city, to check out the neighborhood around the hotel and the hotel building itself.

is there a way to view Russian place names in English?

when will Georgia have more (any!) detail?

Google Maps baffled me greatly when looking for a specific street recently - because it had the wrong name, unlike all the other online maps. Maybe it's one of those copyright traps, or maybe it's just a cock-up. I was going to link to the maps to demonstrate, but then closing a Multimap window crashed Firefox. I love Multimap's cartography, and it has aerial photos too, but it's so slow (and buggy, clearly) to use compared to Google that it's not worth the wait for most things.

Why doesn't Israel have any roads?

<iframe width="425" height="350" frameborder="0" scrolling="no" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" src="http://maps.google.com.au/maps?hl=en&;ie=UTF8&ll=31.456782,34.881592&spn=4.694171,7.470703&z=7&om=0&output=embed&s=AARTsJpnOA3ioEtcI9rx_v7gyZqlolGTYw"></iframe><br /><small>View Larger Map</small>

link if embed doesn't work: http://maps.google.com.au/maps?hl=en&ie=UTF8&ll=31.456782,34.881592&spn=4.694171,7.470703&z=7&om=0

I can't tell where you're gonna go with the punchline

the punchline could follow many paths

rimshot

microsoft live maps' isometric city view is so much better than anything google maps can do

Except, it only works in IE. Oh, that Microsoft!

it works in firefox too (but not safari)

You refer to the "3d" button, yea? That requires ActiveX, so it's not gonna work outside of a Wintel environment.

Why didn't they use silverlight?

No action when you click 3D
If you click 3D on the view control and nothing happens, make sure that your browser is configured to use Microsoft ActiveX controls.

To add Live Search Maps to your Trusted sites zone and enable ActiveX for that zone:

In Windows Internet Explorer, click the Tools menu, and then click Internet Options.
Click the Security tab, click Trusted sites, and then click Sites.
In the Add this Web site to the zone box, type http://maps.live.com.
Make sure that the Require server verification (https:) for all sites in this zone check box isn't selected, and then click OK.
Click Trusted sites, and then click Custom Level.
Under ActiveX controls and plug-ins, set the following options to Enable or Prompt:

Download signed ActiveX controls
Run ActiveX controls and plug-ins
Script ActiveX controls marked safe for scripting
Click OK, click Yes, and then click OK again.
Note
To enable ActiveX controls in a browser other than Internet Explorer, see the Help documentation for your browser.

In other words, it's Microsoft, and it's the same old bullshit they always pull.

hi rather hate google maps after I relied on them to get to a client appointment last week and the directions they gave me left about seven important steps out, leaving me driving up and down a highway looking for an exit or address that wasn't there for 30 minutes.

Bad about GM lately: User-contributed info. The caltrain station isn't in the middle of SF, and neither is 4th st, you knob!

Good about GM lately: Public transit link, with schedules, stops, etc.

it works on firefox

on my mac

FFX 3 Mac I ain't lyin':

http://img204.imageshack.us/img204/2505/picture3lf2.png

who uses ff3? bleurgh

I'm talking ff2, yo

(I use safari; it doesn't work in safari : /)

Seriously, what kind of bizarre directions tell you that the best way to get from central Arkansas to central Iowa is by getting a hair breath's within Oklahoma?

At least Mapquest still knows what they're talking about, even after all this time.

Google maps cannot handle Boston directions. "Was that the place where I was supposed to 'bear right?' It looks straight to me. Hmm, there's a hard right. Oh shit, a traffic circle where the exits aren't labeled!"

PP, I don't think the Google maps directions for that trip are bizarre. That's because the Mapquest directions, while shorter, go right over the Ozarks, and are thus very windy and slow. Whereas that US highway from Fayetteville through KC was built to be interstate, and has speed limit 70 the whole way (except for a little crappy strip near Fayetteville)(I've driven that stretch a bunch recently). Mapquest says that the direct route will average 55 mph, but I'm skeptical; I've driven enough around there to know how slow it can be. It's true that the Google maps directions are 120+ miles longer, and I might take the risk with the shorter route, but I'd be ready for that route to take a helluva lot longer too. If I had to get to my final goal on time, I'd choose the interstate/west MO route.

Highway 65 once you get into Missouri is a four-lane divided highway with a speed limit of 70 in most stretches (does slow down around Branson). Even in Arkansas where they built the roads on top of the mountains, as opposed to being built through the mountains, there are lots of four-laned areas as well as passing lanes all over the place. (Lots of hills and curves too in northwest Arkansas, especially around Bella Vista and south of Neosho, Mo.)

The Google version is like going from Albuquerque to Denver via Grand Junction.

That's good to know! I drive from central KS to ATL once a year or so, and it's hard to find interesting but efficient routes b/c of the mountains...particularly routes that involve Memphis, where I love to stop for a day or so, and skip TN otherwise. So I'd like to give the other route a try, heading east into MO and then south towards Little Rock.

I tried dragging the Iowa City tag east in the google maps version and it ended up routing through an easterly path through STL I think, along the river. It was only about 10 miles shorter. Google doesn't seem to consider US-65 an option.

The whole of Iowa seems to be a rigid grid - it's amazing.

<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/nedtrifle/3411952255/"; title="The Iowa grid from Google earth... by Ned Trifle, on Flickr"><img src="http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3564/3411952255_1e82eff830.jpg"; width="500" height="338" alt="The Iowa grid from Google earth..." /></a>

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3564/3411952255_1e82eff830.jpg

lol I know that part of Iowa pretty well

The roads are so straight (we have straight roads in the UK but nothing like this) - is there a history behind it? Like when the land was parceled up or something?

history:

iowa is flat(ish), america is young

yeah, if land is flat and intensively farmed in the u.s., it looks like that. the central valley of california is another good example.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survey_township

That's good to know! I drive from central KS to ATL once a year or so, and it's hard to find interesting but efficient routes b/c of the mountains...particularly routes that involve Memphis, where I love to stop for a day or so, and skip TN otherwise. So I'd like to give the other route a try, heading east into MO and then south towards Little Rock.

I don't know where in KS you're coming from, but if you wanted to go to ATL via Memphis and Little Rock, I-35 to US 412 through Tulsa down the Turnpike to Ft. Smith is all four-laned and divided. Speed limit's 75 on the turnpike even.

God help you on I-40 between Little Rock and Memphis. I wouldn't wish that on anybody.

otm, that shit'll rattle your back teeth

'L.A., SoCal street traffic now visible on Google Maps'

allowing savvy, smartphone-equipped motorists to get off the freeway and find a speedier route home.

lol

Kaleidoscopic/fractal Google Maps renderings: http://www.nikolasschiller.com/blog/index.php/archives/category/renderings/fractal/

http://nikolasschiller.com/posters/gershmanyquilt3A-cut.jpg

http://nikolasschiller.com/posters/yankeesstadiumquilt.jpg

Bits of central Paris already look like that.

1) get directions
2) from london
3) to edinburgh
4) walking
5) lolz

Is there a way to save an address you look up on your PC so that when you're out of the house on your mobile you can retrieve it with the google maps app?

The Android app records your history as it's linked to your Google account, so yes. Dunno about iPhone.

http://tinyurl.com/2uv6nae

Not really surprised that the fastest on foot from Scotland to London might involve a ferry through Belgium tbh

xp for all their mastery of web searching, google's map results have always baffled me

1) get directions
2) from london
3) to edinburgh
4) walking
5) lolz

ridiculous! Why not cross the Forth Road Bridge at Queensferry instead of going all the way round Kincardine Bridge?
:)

Not really surprised that the fastest on foot from Scotland to London might involve a ferry through Belgium tbh

If ferries = on foot then so does walking to the train station/car tbh.

office real-lolz at that route, NOT GOOD. I'd be up for the swim, catch my breath with a Belgian pint in the nearest pub to where I wash up.

Glasgow to Bristol on foot also requires two ferries (Troon > Belfast > Birkenhead) :/

lol Glasgow to Stranraer goes via Northern Ireland too

http://maps.google.com/maps?f=d&source=s_d&saddr=glasgow&daddr=stranraer&hl=en&geocode=FRtxVAMdOQq__ynrzlYgVhWISDEeUe8FuIPmcQ%3B&mra=ls&dirflg=w&sll=55.6645,-4.445015&sspn=0.759089,1.974792&ie=UTF8&ll=55.090944,-4.163818&spn=3.081122,7.89917&z=7

Google Maps- it's all about the journey

Walking directions are in beta.
Use caution – This route may be missing sidewalks or pedestrian paths.

lol Glasgow to Stranraer goes via Northern Ireland too

For a while Belfast to Dublin did not go through Northern Ireland, involving a ferry to the Isle of Man, but they seem to have fixed that - maybe they have overcompensated

london 2012 olympic stadium construction site now showing up. coincidentally i took a look yesterday to see what it was like before building started - got in just in time.

is there a 'google maps throughout history (6 years and counting)' feature/app/google earth layer/whatever?

So all of a sudden, when you zoom close on the maps view, it defaults to the 3D/isometric building views, which is a real problem for me since I use "My Maps" to make (formerly) clear and readable underlays to make helpful walking maps for tours that I lead. Now it's all jumbled up with the projections and I can't see the bloody roads! Is there any way to turn this 'feature' back off?

yes, click on the dropdown menu in the upper right and unclick the 45° option.

Oh, sorry, I wasn't clear - - I'm talking about the MAPS view, where the little extruded translucent SketchUp shapes pop up when you're in the closest few levels of zooming. Not the angled/aerial-photo view in Satellite mode.

http://blog.pointlineplane.co.uk/post/18950715411/i-dont-have-much-nice-to-say-about-these-murky

Apples new map tiles. Perfectly in keeping with your 70’s leather desk calendar app I guess.

snap

lol what is this 'quest' thing?

http://youtu.be/rznYifPHxDg

Was an April 1 bit of fun , right? I thought it was neat. Found a skeleton monster in NZ

And haha, of course, a littl loch ness monster's i'there as well :D

Oh man, the famicom and cart blowing jokes.

Was cartridge blowing a thing in Japan, too?

Why wouldn't it have been, it was the same hardware rly, right?

http://i.imgur.com/er9gM.png

i was unaware until viewing this video that the japanese unit was so different

or that there is a building in japan called skytree which is a really cute name

IIRC, the redesign of the Famicom for the US market was part of larger attempt to make it not look like a video game system, since the market had tanked so hard - - therefore no visible cartridge-insertion deal, which would have been a familiar design with Atari, Intellivision etc. Rather, it looks vaguely like a VCR, and (they hoped) mostly like an accessory for R.O.B., who was basically a Trojan horse to get the unit into toy stores.

And now, how many inactive R.O.B.s are a part of cubicles and workspaces exhibited either fondly or ironicly?

The real Trojan horse: all of those R.O.B.s are programmed to "execute Order 66" some time in 2015.

that quest stuff is annoying people who like it should be ostracized

http://goo.gl/maps/WLolB

They seem to have changed their tiles or their road classifying, London is now mostly white roads with just a few arbitrarily selected yellow major ones, where it used to be a good mix of white, yellow, and green. Looks more like shitty featureless apple maps, wtf.

Google showed this off a couple months ago - in short, everything is shittier because of Google's edict that everything must be mobile and social. The most odious change is the predictive display on the maps itself. As you search for things, gMaps skews what's displayed on the maps to what you've searched for in the past (and inevitably from places mentioned by your Google+ contacts).

this is horrible

before:

http://www.the2012londonolympics.com/forum/attachments/travelling-into-london-watch-2012-olympics/8210d1312061783-google-maps-launches-feature-london-can-tell-you-when-get-off-bus-just-time-2012-olympics-google-maps-london-2012-park-directions.jpg

after:

http://i.imgur.com/8VzkST2.jpg

this really makes zero sense to me. "hey apple maps was a great hit! let's make ours look more like it!"

the real question here is why are members of parliament reduced to taking public transport to the handball arena, are there no hackney carriages?

Is it just me or did subway stations just get straight up deleted? I can get the lines to appear by turning on "transit," but not where the lines actually, uh, stop.

hey is the new google maps like a lot fucking slower than the previous version? zooming in and out is fucking painful. switching between the full-screen map and the directions view is super tedious.

It's absolutely awful - slow, slow, slow. And goddammit, I don't want "Earth," I want satellite, fuckers! I switched mine back to 'classic' but periodically have to use the new one on someone else's computer. Amazing they haven't gotten it any better yet, since they must have tons of feedback telling them it's not working too good.

google are a bunch of dbags

pretty sure they got tons of feedback when they were going to close reader too.

i use lite mode, its a lil bit faster. still shit tho

Everyone OTM.

started using bing out of frustration

I LIKE THE NEW GOOGLE MAPS IT'S NEAT

Bing doesn't have the street view yet (well, they do, I just don't wanna download searchlight).

But everything else is more intuitive, faster and easy to use. I ask for a bird's eye view from the east, and yup, there it is. I don't know off the top of my head where that function is on Google Maps anymore.

I've even noticed that when I zoom in from satellite mode on Google, it turns everything into its puffy "3-D" Google Earth version. That's... not what I want to see, but thanks.

Yeah, also super data intensive, pretty fucking annoying actually.

i bet you people also drink pepsi instead of coke

google maps is widely acknowledged as the best. accept no substitutes. fuck bing maps.

if you're gonna do that, you may as well use bing itself and switch to windows phone and dumb gmail for outlook.

dump

derp

I didn't know you could switch back! I've been cursing the new maps every time I've used it.

i didn't know you could switch back either. classic still seems slow though!

the slowness and new interface suck, but the bigger problem seems to be the fucked up search results. it's hard to offer anything beyond anecdotal complaints, but it seems like half the time when i search for something (esp. when i search for something like "coffee near X") the results are completely wacked out

It seems to me that it's been rejiggered to REALLY favor business results over anything else.

it's a mess but the one time i used bing it guided me several miles away from where i was supposed to be going so i guess now i just can't leave the house.

switched to rand mcnally

yea google maps may have gone downhill but bing is not an option

i dunno, i saw spider-man use it in that one movie

people used it in the 70's no problem

facebook defaults to bing. which mystifies me as much as its hatred of 'most recent stories'

it shouldn't. g+ is a competitor. microsoft doesn't have one.

"one" being a social network

unless you count "socl"

which i've never even seen

Listen, I hate Microsoft products and software with an eternal fiery passion. Just the whole "download searchlight to see these 42 miles of roads we've photographed, possibly by accident" feature is enough to keep my hate alive.

BUT my complaints about Google Maps remain. If they're the Coke to Bing's Pepsi, we are in some New Coke rollouts right now.

Something simple: I want that bird's eye view from the east. Let's look at the Arkansas State Capitol in all its glory.

I type in "Arkansas State Capitol". It finds it fast, has the correct address and even features an actual photograph.

http://i.imgur.com/FXrPK06.jpg

I try the same with Google Maps. FInds it just as fast, but the address is wrong. No big deal, it's the State Capitol, not the hardest building to find in the city. I double-click on the map and instead of zooming in, I place a marker (no pun intended) on the Capitol's property. Oookkay, I double-click again and we start zooming.

Now I want to see satellite view, but all I see is "Earth". And "Earth" is not a true documentation of what I want to see. Can't find "satellite" anywhere. I do keep bouncing user pics of the Capitol up and down on the bottom, something that's not even the remotest bit necessary to have on this feature. I have to hover over the icons to figure out which one's bird's eye (or tilt.) I swing it around and finally see this.

http://i.imgur.com/GFKDCG0.jpg

What the hell is this.

Hate to say it, but scoreboard says Google 619, Bing 8.

yeah, i also find the controls for the new google maps, esp. when you are trying to get directions b/t point A and point B, not very intuitive.

i suppose they will improve it over time.

i find google's generally lack of any kind of external accountability really creepy btw.

i hate that the whole internet is getting reformatted for tablet screens and touchscreen navigation.

don't worry, thanks to the FCC you soon won't be able to access most of it, anyway.

i hate that the whole internet is getting reformatted for tablet screens and touchscreen navigation.

just got a new computer, which jumped me from windows xp to windows 8.1

at the risk of being lex, it's pretty enraging to see that conscious choices have been made to make my user experience worse. a lot can be tweaked, but not everything

pepsi > coke, tho

they did it just to fuck with you

I got a sweet all-in-one w/ a big touchscreen and I dig windows 8.1

also I support any google product getting worse because it slightly delays their world domination plan

h8 u

except for the google part

started using bing out of frustration

― mattresslessness, Thursday, May 22, 2014 3:55 AM (6 hours ago) Bookmark

My god

also I support any google product getting worse because it slightly delays their world domination plan

― iatee, Wednesday, May 21, 2014 9:17 PM (55 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

except, not really. you'll eat their shit and love it.

if you're gonna do that, you may as well use bing itself and switch to windows phone and dumb gmail for outlook.

― markers, Wednesday, May 21, 2014 4:15 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

dump

― markers, Wednesday, May 21, 2014 4:15 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

derp

― mattresslessness, Wednesday, May 21, 2014 4:19 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I realize you guys have already had a big nerdy conversation between now and then, but I like outlook/hotmail so much better than gmail these days.

I used a hotmail account for an ILM poll, and it wasn't half-bad.

It wasn't Gmail/Drive good, but it wasn't as 1998 as I thought it was going ot be.

Google needs to stop trying to do everything and concentrate on like, three things

I really admire the chutzpah Google's got. I mean, strapping a camera to hundreds of cars and photographing nearly every street and road in a dozen countries... twice, in some cases. I've used GSV for plenty of entertainment purposes, but it's also useful for us at the business publication to check on what storefront was there before they went bankrupt last week, find a landmark to an obscure address, what kind of logo is on their sign out front since they have three different ones on their website, etc.

And when I read about them trying out hot-air balloons to offer wi-fi to New Zealand - like, I know that's a sentence that reads like it was created using MadLibs, but as crazy as it all is, that could lead to something pretty big in 20 years, if not sooner.

But going back to Maps, I just don't get where they're coming from at all. They had the best product in its class online and they've really started to fuck it up. It's difficult for me to use it on a desktop computer at work - how that shit is supposed to fly on a mobile device inside a car is beyond me.

Yeah absolutely. That recent article about Google's driverless cars (might have been in the New Yorker?) sounds to me like the whole reason they made Maps was to get driverless cars to be a thing. Which I don't know if that will ever happen.

I hate when they remove labels on Drive, Gmail, Maps, etc. Makes it so hard to navigate.

The few people I know in GPS land say that Bing has always had better data for their maps anyway vs. Google.

Maps got real fun when I realized they had mapped other countries.

I hate Bing just because of the name. Oh my god, could that BE any more derivative?

still in google land because of 37,000 messages but if they really start fucking with gmail i'm out. for a month there, google maps would literally not load which is why i started using bing.

Should ''nearly every street and road'' get scare quotes? Hasn't it been shown that they tend to be pretty skimmy in poorer neighborhoods (with fewer businesses mapped) and rural areas?

LOL

https://helpouts.google.com/home

Should ''nearly every street and road'' get scare quotes?

I don't know? I have noticed coverage gets skimpy in rural areas, but I assumed it was because those cars can only make so many trips to BFE and cover as much ground as they can while the city cars can get to those hard-to-reach areas when they feel like it.

I haven't seen any spotty coverage in poorer neighborhoods, not urban ones at least. Not saying it hasn't happened, but it's not something I've experienced.

gmail has been bothering me for a while...I keep getting mail that's not been sent to my email but maybe contains body text of someone who has the same name as me

It weirds me the fuck out

It's difficult for me to use it on a desktop computer at work - how that shit is supposed to fly on a mobile device inside a car is beyond me.

this reminds me - while i can't 100% confirm the causes here, i can 100% say that last year i was in france for four days not using much internet besides google maps, and it put about £10 on my european roaming bill, and then last week i was in france for 2.5 days doing the same, and found myself with a surprising £30 bill.

because google maps is gonna be accessing the internet constantly?

I have been kind of converted to using "Waze" lately -- it's really good with traffic circumvention. I was kind of against it because I guess it was emasculating or whatever to have this app barking counterintuitive directions at me in places where I knew my way around, but given that my area will pretty much always have traffic on 1 or 2 of your three possible routes, it's become invaluable.

seriously, wtf

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/BoVc-aPCcAAbRsE.jpg:large

a search like "camping near annapolis md" used to produce somewhat relevant results, didn't it? am i just making up those memories? now i get a mobile home park and a family nudist club

nudist nudist club means you wear clothes

My granddad would've made a Navy joke by now.

Re: poverty, etc., I was thinking of this story: http://www.cnn.com/2013/11/07/opinion/sutter-google-maps-income-inequality/ - - - but maybe that's an isolated case, in my head there were like, a bunch of these articles but I suspect I'm crossing some wires.

I would agree that it's an isolated case. He's got a point, wondering how in the hell an entire part of a major town in the region – and the poor part of that town, no less – could be missed because of a technical glitch, but as someone who's conducted full interviews with people without realizing the tape recorder wasn't turned on, it's possible.

Besides, I scouted out for my long-neglected closetotheborderline tumblr the "25 Worst Neighborhoods" in the U.S. and found no problems getting some scenery.

https://medium.com/@zmh/bye-google-maps-ea3ea10f84dc

the iphone app is very bad it's true

What's the source of citymaps data tho

so, i really like this: https://maps.google.com/locationhistory/b/0 but is there a way of getting it to say how far in km i've travelled/walked in that day? or will i need to get a separate app for that?

citymapper (citymaps is some bullshit social stuff) seems to pull data in from all over the place. the map tiles are apple maps. it only works in like 10 major cities.

lol let's talk about BING MAPS again!!!

iterate through markers

"new" google maps is still so awful and slow

i have to use it for work and it sucks

it's stunning. one of the most dramatic examples i can think of where the internet is actually getting slower and less useful with time. like you're trying to swim through bread dough, clicking on things, waaaaaiiiiting. and stuff that used to be one or two clicks to get to the part you care about is now seriously like five or six, with waits.

in particular using "My Maps" couldn't be less natural or smooth - oops, i forgot clicking on the name of one of my maps is no good to actually do anything with it, i also have to "open" it, but too late cause i clicked on something else on the map and all the map dots went away and now i have to re-load the map. jesus. also wow at how the directions now bury all the steps that are actually interesting and non-intuitive behind repeat clicks. yeah i figured i'd be getting off at that subway stop thanks but the relevant part is what i do AFTERWARDS and i'm kinda in a hurry to get out the door here.

I generally like it, but I've noticed some slowdown lately, and somehow I've also gone over my data allotment for the first time ever this month, which just makes me wonder if new versions of apps (including google maps) are sucking more and more data.

New Google Maps has to be about a billion times more data-intensive than the old, at least if you ever use the satellite view since that now defaults to the crazy 3D mode rather than low-res jpegs from space. I wonder if any of that gets pre-loaded while you're just in the map mode, or how much is used by both (like, building footprints as an aspect of the 3D building data).

the fact that you can't save routes on your phone for times when you know you won't have service is fucking insane. also it makes my phone hot as fuck (which other GPS apps do not).

i installed waze but it has a v cutesy startup aesthetic and it made me immediately angry so i deleted it

waze is really useful for NYC-area driving, essential even, but yeah terrible graphical interface. Also it's owned by google now so I wonder to what extent google maps now incorporates its tech and gives you basically the same directions.

also sometimes it takes you on really bizarre routes just to save a couple minutes, when you'd rather just drive a straight shot so you don't have to think as much.

Yeah, all of these things need an efficiency/laziness slider. Feels like they're already thinking in terms of hyper-optimized "shave a few seconds" directions for the driverless robot cars which all wearers of Google Glass will soon be driving. Or like, I'd really like to be able to let it know that even if a two-bus and two-train direction set are very similar in imaginary time, I will always prefer the two-train directions for a smoother ride, no risk that unknown potholes or rain will screw everything up, and not having to look up from my book out the window constantly to check whether I'm there yet. But I think people who design Google software never take the bus anyway and don't really understand these things.

Ugh, when I was in CA this summer and had to drive from Palm Springs to Newport Beach several times, it frequently tried to "help me" avoid traffic on CA-91 by taking me way the hell off the freeway through Riverside and Corona. It didn't save me a single minute, and in fact usually cost me time. If I'm going to just sit in bumper-to-bumper traffic, I want to know that the SECOND it opens up I can get back to freeway speeds.

google maps took me on a bizarre atlantic ave-traffic-avoiding route on highland blvd that turned out to be a super cool tour of a very attractive mini-neighborhood wedged in between east new york, bushwick and the cemeteries. but for every time it does that it sends me on a wild goose chase down ozone park side streets

When we were in western mass last week it kept taking us off the state or county highway to go down some weird random industrial or rural road or even at one point a dirt road, then ultimately back to the same main road

hahah. reminds me of dave barry on the german school system, where some of the grades actually lead you back to grades you've already completed

You people need to get a dedicated GPS receiver. I have a handheld one for use in cities and a satnav for the car. Much better than relying on google maps.

Every week, I discover something new that sucks about Google Maps - most often something that Google Maps used to do very well, but no longer doesn't.

Latest example - Open a map, zoom in a bit, and drop the guy onto a street to get the Street View. OK... so it takes a little longer for the street routes to load up, that's not what I'm talking about in this case. No, the thing I'm talking about is when you search for a location - like a CVS or Walgreens - and then the little orange man disappears so you can't drop him down to see what the place looks like.

i use citymapper now, it's great in nyc and london

whyyyyyyyyyy did they do this

Today I learned mapping apps sometimes send drivers on less-than-optimal routes in order to use them as guinea pigs to generate data. That's fucked up! (From "Uberland: How Algorithms Are Rewriting The Rules of Work" by @mawnikr.) pic.twitter.com/TL9eBurJeD

— Adrian Chen (@AdrianChen) October 16, 2018

footnote leads to this paper https://datasociety.net/pubs/ia/Wisdom_of_Captured_09-16.pdf

There are different strategies and technologies for building navigation models. One such technical tool is the “multi-arm bandit algorithm” and is applied to route traffic. Hypothetically about 90% of the time, traffic will be routed on the best performing route, but the remaining 10% of the time, the algorithm might divide traffic between two versions of a route from A to B to explore how well they perform (Chopra, 2012). For that exploration phase, the mapping service might recommend a route to an individual driver that is under-tested, so that that the driver will unwittingly test it out and generate more data about road conditions. This may help the aggregate of users who rely on the mapping services (and therefore the perceived efficacy of the service), but if the exploring driver is given a bad route when they expect a high-confidence recommendation, that driver is effectively being deceived.
It is worth recognizing that this deception is made possible by the fact that the platform wields considerable power over the decision-making of a given driver in a “wisdom of the captured” setting. Without explicit notice, users will have no way of distinguishing between a high-confidence recom- mendation and a low-confidence recommendation. This is particularly challenging given that full disclosure of the exploratory intent of the system may make users behave differently or be less likely to follow its purportedly personalized route recom- mendations. This would parallel studies suggesting that disclosure of persuasive intent can itself erode the influence of recommendations in eliciting compliance from users (Kaptein, et. al, 2011). When the platform makes a low-confidence recom- mendation in order to acquire more information (exploration), there is a trade-off that produces a social welfare benefit for the users as a whole, but has ethical implications for the deception of the individual. The optimization needs of the algorithm and the powerful position of the platform in relation to a driver create the opportunity for user expectations to be violated in an undisclosed and systematic way.

this is more an interesting thing to ponder the ethics of, maybe after smoking a joint, than like some terrible techfuturedystopia or whatevs

this is just MVT aka A/B testing, no? if so the suboptimal routes are not going to be THAT suboptimal otherwise there'd be no reason to test them against the canonical ones

if so the suboptimal routes are not going to be THAT suboptimal

OR ARE THEY?

well yes i see what you mean, but on the other hand they might find the control routes are actually the suboptimal ones in some statistically significant way in which case you're in the lucky 10% that got a shortcut!

if i'm understanding the quoted text correctly (i have not read the pdf)

i guess i'm not sure what "violating" the "expectations" of users is exactly; maps are a service and they can dish out whatever info they like. websites are constantly testing features and editorial choices to certain segments of their visitors in this "silent" way.

Yeah the suboptimal routes will be selected in inverse proportion to how bad they are. So once the decision is made to send you on some route other than the one it thinks is he very best, it’s very unlikely to send you on a bad route. It’s not going to add 20% to your journey. This is algorithm is good in the sense that it captures the fact that the route it thinks is best may not be best any more because the world (in this case traffic patterns) change constantly. It’s even good in the sense that, if your goal is to minimise the total amount of time users spend in their cars, or distance driven, or some other thing averaged across all users (in a utilitarian sense) it’s provably optimal given enough users.

This is a relatively informal technical argument for what I just said btw http://stevehanov.ca/blog/index.php?id=132

It’s suboptimal that Stanford hosts this amazing summary of the philosophy of technology with a big piece on engineering ethics and yet

When do we start find-and-replacing “suboptimal” with “ironic”

Or I guess if we really wanted to be nasty we could say “suboptimal” = “teleologic”

Finding the way the photo versions work pretty weird after using the program to check old street addresses over the last week.
& finding that it appears there must be gaps in the coding tying in with limited scope of how photographs were taken. Finding myself being whisked off to the next street when i go to get a close up on a front door to check the number.
NOw looking at the photo set up of the far side of the park here and realising that its cobbled together from shots from various years and some of the angles still have defunct details in them. Like they rebuilt the layout of a walkway to incorporate a road to a school that was built sometime over the last decade. & I'm seeing both before and after that road in photos that are in use.

NOticed also there were some weird Easter Egg like details in places. Looking at the area around Westbourne Grove tube station and came across a photo of one of the black Olympic team taht I couldn't get by. Kept trying to navigate around him and wound up having to go back to the aeriel shot to do so. So wondering if that happens elsewhere. I thought the shots were taken from a camera mounted on the roof of a car so surprised this would happen.
Think there was something weird about some shots of the Ha'penny Bridge in Dublin too. Trying to move around so I could see the shopfronts along the quays and finding myself having to move between 2 people with hands raised.

Can see how useful it is to have photos of teh area but can also see how intrusive it is.
Did wonder if they did use drones to shoot any of it. Would seem to be the best way to get continuopus shots of things. But can also see how creepy it would be to have that going o around you. Assume this black athlete cannot be the only person who is absolutely identifiable in the photos here. Assume he must have been intentional so wondering if that was a competition or something, or if it tied in with the 2012 Olympics or similar.
Also trying to check door numbers and then finding that there's a bus blocking off that part of the street.

NOt sure how often the streetviews are taken or if they continue to be updated still. Did see some shots from last year though.

The latest update somehow switched google maps into Croatian. Deleting and reinstalling fixed it but I have no explanation as to why it ended up that way.

Go to Myanmar in Croatian Google Maps and see what it calls Mandalay!

Oh you fixed it

Mandalay is Kathmandu in Croatian google maps. Kathmandu is also Kathmandu

https://joemorrison.substack.com/p/google-maps-moat-is-evaporating

The coding/AI for the mapping itself is still amazingly buggy, I always get incredibly wonky routing recommendations like this:

https://i.imgur.com/sI6mbg9.jpg

all change

?

https://i.imgur.com/st0toYJ.png

yesterday:

https://s1.cdn.autoevolution.com/images/news/the-latest-google-maps-update-comes-with-an-unpleasant-surprise-for-some-users-147113_1.jpg

got that a couple of months ago. do not like.

idgi

It might be an unpleasant surprise to find yourself in the centre of Paris if you do not like Paris

you sure are making me work today tracer.

https://www.techradar.com/computing/software/the-latest-google-maps-redesign-makes-it-look-a-lot-more-like-apple-maps

article says the new background is white - looks grey still to me. looks like it was rolled out a while ago but I defintiely only got it today, I've been obsessively mapping running routes recently and did so yesterday. my phone is on dark mode, that hasn't noticeably changed.

any geographers up in here? been using Google Earth Engine and it's pretty incredible

anyway here's google maps a while ago telling me how to get to embankment pier from trafalgar square:

https://i.imgur.com/g3dSFy9.jpg

what you wanna do mate, you don't want to cross the road there, far too busy, what you want to do is walk across the bridge - yeah i know you're already on the same side of the river as where you want to go - walk across the bridge, walk down the side of the river in the wrong direction a bit, then walk into the river - walk, swim, i don't mind - go down the middle of the river, back over to the side you were on already, bob's yer uncle.

lol sorry i must suffer from some specific blindness particular to map design, i see it now

the embankment directions look p bad but i’m not gonna lie it also looks exciting

come on you hadn't asked to go to embankment pier but via embankment pier and google maps was merely suggesting you might think about starting from the millennium eye pier instead, have a nice look at the river from the bridge on the way

It wanted you to take a water taxi.

Google maps bugs me but I don't know of an alternative that:

- in the UK, always shows road names by default instead of road numbers
- prioritises walking and public transport when giving directions
- doesn't litter the map with logos of companies who pay to be there
- pulls in business names and address information
- pulls in public transport GPS/waiting time data

any geographers up in here? been using Google Earth Engine and it's pretty incredible

― Heez

I make maps. Primarily, I do/oversee a lot of socioeconomic and sociodemographic mapping. About 95% is in QGIS. What sort of things are you using Engine for? I've been curious about it whenever I'm reminded it exists.

We're running automated change detection on the entire US, looking for new construction. We have been using ESRI's land use/land cover for this, but our initial model in GEE was so much nicer. Also moving into object extract when we find new neighborhoods.

https://i.imgur.com/TcNDRVN.png

They made it more like openstreetmap?

It's fine, just taking some getting used to.

had planned to drive from brooklyn to jersey city this afternoon and kept monitoring traffic conditions throughout the morning on google maps

when we departed, estimated trip time was 55 minutes with traffic (up from 30 minutes when we had checked an hour or so earlier)

it ended up being a 4.5 hour journey down broome street to the holland tunnel -- all the while maps estimating the trip would be over in 35 minutes

obviously an algorithm can't accurately account for shitty drivers doing bad behavior in traffic (and it seemed like several people had abandoned their cars in the middle of the road?) but either way, i may never trust google maps with any information it provides ever again! an insane ordeal

ugh that sounds awful

waze, which is owned by google, does traffic way better ime

Waze is better for flagging up roaming speed cameras as well.

I'm not really disputing that Maps is a miracle of an invention but goddamn it's absolute insistence on finding the 'shortest' route is maddening. It's particularly insane in rural areas.

Someone explain this to me. I'm booking/managing a business in London (remotely from the US as it happens). A client booked for today managed to turn up at the old business premises on the other side of the city as they'd followed Google Maps instructions. However, we relocated in 2011 and have been listed on Google at the new place ever since! Client is based in Spain I think, so maybe using Spanish Google on their phone? Could a Maps app from a different region have an old cached database that doesn't sync with the UK site? I'm baffled.

I have no idea. But!

Could there still be a label pinned over there?

Google will let the laymen stick anything on their maps, such as this "Truck rest area" label on the side of the interstate. There's no website, no phone number, no address even. Just a stretch of highway shoulder.

https://i.imgur.com/1QMWpLV.png

Even though you all have moved and may even have an "official" pin from Google, could there still be an informal label at the old place?

Just had a look and no! In fact the old building has now been converted to residential, with a beautiful view of the A406. I'll probably never know how this happened, hopefully there won't be a repeat...

there's a local "park" labeled on google maps along the river and every reference to it i can find is on websites that clearly scraped the name from google maps. the city and county don't mention it anywhere, and the city's parcel viewer just says that the land is owned by the federal government, probably because it's next to a levee.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trap_street

I was just looking at Google Maps and noticed a tiny little "Great Britain" in italics, somewhere between Clitheroe and Blackburn. It disappears altogether if you zoom in too close or too far out. The text also doesn't change size. And that is my only comment on Google Maps.

Quite a concerning story about tagging places on Google Maps from a couple of weeks ago:

https://www.crikey.com.au/2024/01/17/google-maps-tracking-business-locations/

If you’re old and can’t see shit on G maps (even if you zoom in) …increase the font size, it’s a miracle

This man is a fucking hero

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2zIII9HiNtM

How weird, I noticed this guy yesterday for the first time as he popped up in Streetview in Slough and I recognised that I'd seen the name a couple of times previously

Ah, I've seen his name on so many images! I've benefited from his work on river wanders, for sure.

Glad he's sorted his filters out nowadays, his pre-2018 pics shade a little dark