Posted July 15, 201410 yr I've been getting a lot of really strange results from Google Maps recently. Most of the time when I type in "Main Street Cincinnati" it takes me to Sharonville's Main Street instead of Cincinnati's. When I typed in "Liberty Street Cincinnati" today, it took me to this tiny little section of Liberty Street in Lower Price Hill / South Fairmont rather than the main section in the West End or OTR: https://www.google.com/maps/place/Liberty+St,+Cincinnati,+OH+45204/@39.1147778,-84.5473845,813m/data=!3m1!1e3!4m2!3m1!1s0x8841b426a5089da3:0x2a2877fb104b42ba
July 15, 201410 yr ^I live on Main, and I had to change my "Home" address in Google Maps because even though I used the 45202 zip code in my home address, Google didn't save that and kept thinking I wanted directions from Sharonville. I had to start using Woodward. That has worked well for me since it's such a small street and right by my apartment. Really frustrating though.
December 13, 20159 yr Author Google Street View car caught another Google Street View car: https://goo.gl/maps/mDGbuxpCAU92
December 13, 20159 yr Google Street View car caught another Google Street View car: https://goo.gl/maps/mDGbuxpCAU92 Whoa!
May 24, 20169 yr Anyone else on here blown away by the quality of the latest iteration of Google's 3D maps? I used to make chamber of commerce maps in the late 90's when map making was just going digital from films and placing type by hand. I saw the days of paper maps for travel info coming to an end but had NO idea stuff like this was just about 15 years away. I explore a different city almost every day. Cant wait to get my own Google Cardboard and virtually tour. https://www.google.com/maps/place/Munich,+Germany/@48.1353946,11.591059,186a,20y,218.63h,79.68t/data=!3m1!1e3!4m5!3m4!1s0x479e75f9a38c5fd9:0x10cb84a7db1987d!8m2!3d48.1351253!4d11.5819806
October 19, 20168 yr Author Up until recently Google Maps was still showing Jack Casino Cincinnati as "Horseshoe Casino". I submitted a correction and they have now changed it to "Jack's Casino".
October 19, 20168 yr I noticed that the streetcar's robovoice stop call out says Horseshoe Casino too. I wonder if that is in the works to change too? People here probably realize the change but it may confuse out of towners.
October 19, 20168 yr Author Yeah, the announcements are supposed to be re-recorded to reflect the Cincinnati Bell Connector name and all of the station sponsorships.
October 19, 20168 yr Anyone else on here blown away by the quality of the latest iteration of Google's 3D maps? I used to make chamber of commerce maps in the late 90's when map making was just going digital from films and placing type by hand. I saw the days of paper maps for travel info coming to an end but had NO idea stuff like this was just about 15 years away. I explore a different city almost every day. Cant wait to get my own Google Cardboard and virtually tour. https://www.google.com/maps/place/Munich,+Germany/@48.1353946,11.591059,186a,20y,218.63h,79.68t/data=!3m1!1e3!4m5!3m4!1s0x479e75f9a38c5fd9:0x10cb84a7db1987d!8m2!3d48.1351253!4d11.5819806 The first aerial map online that I recall was TerraServer, later Microsoft TerraServer. It first appeared around 1999 and you could not scroll continuously (that first appeared around 2005 maybe). There were arrows and you had to arrow in cardinal directions. I spent a lot of time once or twice assembling large areas on photoshop...something that all of these programs do automatically now. TerraServer's imagery was all black & white and nothing like the resolution we have now. There was no measure tool or anything like that. But it was a quantum leap over what was possible before.
October 19, 20168 yr ^ Haha Yep i remember terraserver well. I did the old school assembly and would print sections out and tape them together for my own amusement too. Hard to believe that im only 40 and something i did for work (like update maps by visit planning and zoning departments to hand draw streets for new subdivisions from plats in big flat files) is laughably outdated. As much as hearing my dad used card files and later reel tapes for computer info storage when i was rocking a 2.2mg floppy disk for school.
October 19, 20168 yr The new (or maybe just new to me) 3D feature of the Maps application on the iPhone is incredible
October 19, 20168 yr ^ Haha Yep i remember terraserver well. I did the old school assembly and would print sections out and tape them together for my own amusement too. Hard to believe that im only 40 and something i did for work (like update maps by visit planning and zoning departments to hand draw streets for new subdivisions from plats in big flat files) is laughably outdated. As much as hearing my dad used card files and later reel tapes for computer info storage when i was rocking a 2.2mg floppy disk for school. I lost my scholarship because I got a bad grade in my first graphic design class because my SyQuest Disk corrupted. I lost an entire weekend worth of work (like 20 hours) and had to turn in the most recent version of a project that I had printed out, which wasn't close to being a finished project. The teacher didn't care even though I had sign-ins and sign-outs at the computer lab. So I lost thousands of dollars in scholarship money because a 50mb removable hard disk corrupted.
October 19, 20168 yr ^ Haha Yep i remember terraserver well. I did the old school assembly and would print sections out and tape them together for my own amusement too. Hard to believe that im only 40 and something i did for work (like update maps by visit planning and zoning departments to hand draw streets for new subdivisions from plats in big flat files) is laughably outdated. As much as hearing my dad used card files and later reel tapes for computer info storage when i was rocking a 2.2mg floppy disk for school. I lost my scholarship because I got a bad grade in my first graphic design class because my SyQuest Disk corrupted. I lost an entire weekend worth of work (like 20 hours) and had to turn in the most recent version of a project that I had printed out, which wasn't close to being a finished project. The teacher didn't care even though I had sign-ins and sign-outs at the computer lab. So I lost thousands of dollars in scholarship money because a 50mb removable hard disk corrupted. Oh, and I forgot to mention that our entire graphic design class was in black & white. Our computer lab didn't have computers good enough to run color on Photoshop 2.0 or Quark (Illustrator didn't exist yet). So our print-outs were all monochromatic.
October 19, 20168 yr ^ 20 years later and i still have design school flashbacks like that but luckily didnt live them in real life. Ouch. Zip drive disks may have cost a half days pay but at least they were somewhat stable. You were just on the curve ahead of me in the electronic graphics world, it may have taken hours&hours to render simple scenes in 3d but at least we had photoshop & color.
October 19, 20168 yr Yeah, you had a lot of time to think while computers were rendering back then. It was a lot different working with computers before the internet because there wasn't a constant distraction luring you in its direction. The area where computers and the internet are the most distracting is in recording music. I hate having an illuminated screen and the distraction of phones in a band setting. It's hard to get the guys to concentrate on the task at hand. It used to be the case that when you recorded (or just practiced) you were quite isolated from the outside world, not unlike working in a photo darkroom.
October 19, 20168 yr It flat-out ends up taking longer to jam. Now you pretty much have to block out 3 hours for it minimum since there will be so much stopping to deal with s/o texts. It's a lot harder for 3-4 people to find 3 hours in their 30s than in their teens/early 20s. Or, oh God, mowing grass -- now that takes a century since people always pick that time to text the crap out of you.
October 19, 20168 yr It flat-out ends up taking longer to jam. Now you pretty much have to block out 3 hours for it minimum since there will be so much stopping to deal with s/o texts. It's a lot harder for 3-4 people to find 3 hours in their 30s than in their teens/early 20s. People wonder how all those ska and swing bands came out of nowhere so quickly in the mid-90s and it's because marching band guys know how to practice. They can put 3-5 songs together in three hours no problem. Meanwhile the druggie guys who have some natural swag simply can't organize a practice, let alone a song.
November 6, 20168 yr Author It's funny that Google has gone to excruciating detail to add detailed mapping and Street View photography to random parking lots. Surely this is connected to their self-driving car efforts in some way.
November 6, 20168 yr The google streetview cars are performing other tasks as well, like scanning to wifi hot spots. I had *two* 1099 jobs eliminated by the google cars -- the first was a job walking neighborhoods taking photos of every single building (which I loved), and other driving every single street in each zip code with a device hooked up to by cigarette lighter that scanned for wifi.
January 7, 20178 yr The google streetview cars are performing other tasks as well, like scanning to wifi hot spots. I had *two* 1099 jobs eliminated by the google cars -- the first was a job walking neighborhoods taking photos of every single building (which I loved), and other driving every single street in each zip code with a device hooked up to by cigarette lighter that scanned for wifi. Is there a legit purpose for that?
January 8, 20178 yr Author The google streetview cars are performing other tasks as well, like scanning to wifi hot spots. I had *two* 1099 jobs eliminated by the google cars -- the first was a job walking neighborhoods taking photos of every single building (which I loved), and other driving every single street in each zip code with a device hooked up to by cigarette lighter that scanned for wifi. Is there a legit purpose for that? Phones use nearby wifi networks to triangulate their location. There is also a free service called WiGLE that does this, it's pretty interesting to zoom in and see network names on the map.
January 11, 20178 yr Author Typed "Tokyo to Kyoto" into Google Maps and got this: Not quite, Google. Nice try, though.
January 12, 20178 yr The google streetview cars are performing other tasks as well, like scanning to wifi hot spots. I had *two* 1099 jobs eliminated by the google cars -- the first was a job walking neighborhoods taking photos of every single building (which I loved), and other driving every single street in each zip code with a device hooked up to by cigarette lighter that scanned for wifi. Is there a legit purpose for that? Phones use nearby wifi networks to triangulate their location. There is also a free service called WiGLE that does this, it's pretty interesting to zoom in and see network names on the map. Looking at that map, why are there so many dots that are along freeways?
January 12, 20178 yr The google streetview cars are performing other tasks as well, like scanning to wifi hot spots. I had *two* 1099 jobs eliminated by the google cars -- the first was a job walking neighborhoods taking photos of every single building (which I loved), and other driving every single street in each zip code with a device hooked up to by cigarette lighter that scanned for wifi. Is there a legit purpose for that? Phones use nearby wifi networks to triangulate their location. There is also a free service called WiGLE that does this, it's pretty interesting to zoom in and see network names on the map. Looking at that map, why are there so many dots that are along freeways? People that have the WiFi hotspot turned on on their phones.
February 13, 20178 yr I read from a tech blog a while back that stated on the Android version of google maps/google navigation that in some cities the speed limits were being displayed. Has anyone on here seen this?
March 16, 20178 yr Author I had forgotten that in Germany, Google is required by law to allow people to blur out their homes on Street View: https://goo.gl/maps/z3wMYeQNsDt
March 16, 20178 yr That's nuts, but Germany is infamous for it's privacy laws. And kind of unfortunate for curious people on the other side of the world.
December 20, 20177 yr Author Pretty interesting article on how detailed Google Maps is getting these days: https://www.justinobeirne.com/google-maps-moat They are now using satellite data to identify the precise shapes of buildings in small towns so remote that the Google Street View car hasn't even been there yet.
December 20, 20177 yr The Google Streetview car has barely visited some easily accessible cities in the US. Wheeling, WV is still mostly not mapped. Only a couple of state/US highways are able to be viewed on streetview
December 20, 20177 yr The Google Car doesn't make it through most of Appalachia very much. I think they focus on areas that people look up often. People in that region spend a lot of time on Facebook rather than on the rest of the internet.
December 20, 20177 yr There are suburbs of Cincinnati that have had residential streets mapped 3 times. We don't need updated streetviews on quiet residential streets. I would much rather have some of these medium-sized cities like Wheeling mapped out.
December 20, 20177 yr Author Maybe satellite mapping technology will become so good that Google doesn't need to run Street View cars anymore. Alternatively, Google could just put Street View cameras on top of its Waymo self-driving cars and get updated imagery of major streets on an hourly basis instead of once a year.
December 20, 20177 yr There are suburbs of Cincinnati that have had residential streets mapped 3 times. We don't need updated streetviews on quiet residential streets. "Honey come look, this picture was taken back when we owned the Equinox."
February 11, 20187 yr Author Google Maps Street View has new images from August 2017 for many OTR streets. https://goo.gl/maps/QEQaHkAJnaz
April 12, 20187 yr Author I found the fourth dimension on Google Street View: https://goo.gl/maps/cTNk8gR2JHS2
May 15, 20187 yr Author Google Maps Street View has new images from August 2017 for many OTR streets. https://goo.gl/maps/QEQaHkAJnaz The Google Street View car was in OTR today. So they're refreshing the images that are ~9 months old. Good news for all of us that use the time machine feature, as parts of the neighborhood are changing really quickly. I also came across this article talking about the latest generation of Street View cars. They have 2 LIDAR sensors, so they're essentially building a 3D model of the streets they drive down.
June 6, 20187 yr Author When your town has a street festival, but for some reason doesn't close down the street to cars, and the Google Street View Car drives down that street...
June 6, 20187 yr The Google Car doesn't make it through most of Appalachia very much. I think they focus on areas that people look up often. People in that region spend a lot of time on Facebook rather than on the rest of the internet. Possibly another reason: https://mashable.com/2016/03/12/google-street-view-pulled-over/#h5o_TlpEePqX
June 6, 20187 yr When your town has a street festival, but for some reason doesn't close down the street to cars, and the Google Street View Car drives down that street... #PeakAmerica ;D
June 6, 20187 yr When your town has a street festival, but for some reason doesn't close down the street to cars, and the Google Street View Car drives down that street... #PeakAmerica ;D There's even a stage with a band!
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