Friday, November 15, 2013

Google Map Maker for 'quick' updates to Google Maps

First off, let me say that I don't like Google Maps.  The data is not accurate most of the time, however some of our Councillors love it and question why things like parking lots and changes to trails are not shown on Google Maps.

It's been mentioned before that we are at the mercy of Google to update our data when they see fit - however it appears there is a workaround to get your data updated quickly if you want to use Google Map Maker for your town.

http://www.google.ca/mapmaker

I added some new points to Google Map Maker representing our public parking lots, as well as a simple centre line for our new Pedestrian Bridge across the Bow River. The additions were visible in Google maps the next day!!??
The only remaining issue is the routing capabilities don't seem to take the new bridge into account, but that's fairly minor I think - and I assume it will be included the next time Google updates its Routing dataset.

Anyhow, just wanted to pass along that Google Map Maker seems to be the ticket if you want to add/update data shown on Google Maps for your town/city.
Steve

Monday, November 4, 2013

Economic value of open data estimated at $3 trillion annually

Some comments related to Canada in this posting...

http://geospatial.blogs.com/geospatial/2013/11/economic-value-of-open-data.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+typepad%2Fzeissg%2Fgeospatial+%28Between+the+Poles%29&utm_content=FeedBurner