http://maps.google.com/maps

sweet. (might be U.S. only)

It's got some of Canada as well (the important bits )

Bruno

Heck, it's even got a street-level map of my tiny home town in New Brunswick.. if one ignores the lack of anything north of the USA on the the overview map. Out of date, but it has it!

Cheers

There are important bits?

Hell yeah! Stripclubs, casinos and bars for under-21 americans.

http://maps.google.com/maps?q=Club%20Super%20Sexe%20montreal

Yep, is US only - and there are a few tweaks needed (hey that's what beta is for, right) - like for long journeys there is so much route info that to see it you need to scroll down - which currently makes the map scroll away. So I reckon the route info needs to be in a separate scrollable area.

but it does look very nice - they've definitely done their homework as to what users want.

I'm curious where they get their map data. Does anyone know? Is it the USGS? It appears that it isn't from Mapquest, because there was an interesting error in their maps that I'd corrected them on several years ago.

There's a main road that my neighborhood is off of. A little further down that road is another neighborhood. Towards the back of the neighborhoods, when mine was built, there were plans to have two streets connect between them. However, they decided that they didn't want this, and no pavement was ever put down, although somehow the plans for such a connection made it into the maps. That was over 20 years ago. But to this day, everytime I tell the navigation system in my car that I want to go somewhere, it wants to take me through 100 feet of trees and a creek

Like I said, I told Mapquest about this around 4 years ago, and noticed that it had been corrected a month or two later. This Google maps thing does not have it correct, though. But it doesn't seem too old in other aspects. It's the only online map service that has the address of my work, for example, which I find odd considering it's a national monument

I read the map data came from Keyhole which Google seems to own now.

Ah, I see. I know Keyhole got a significant portion of its data from the USGS, but for some reason I think they didn't get their road map data from them. I could be wrong, though (and probably am).

Yeah, I got them to make two corrections to roads near me, both of which were changes to connecting roads that didn't connect

It says right on the bottom right corner of the map where the map data comes from. NAVTEQ & Teleatlas. The same people responsible for (arguably) the best in-car nav systems: http://www.navteq.com/ It's practically the same experience (map viewing when you zoom in) as the in-car nav systems they make.

"Keyhole" doesn't own any map IP. They just buy data from providers and link it all together.

Bruno

I'm sure you can submit corrections to Navteq. The Google beta doesn't include any type of preferences that I can see yet. This has the potential to be a LOT better than Mapquest though. First off the maps scale to the window size, so you're not limited to tiny little maps. Now they need a way to scale larger than the window size for people with low resolutions and a way to paginate the maps.

There also don't seem to be any route preference options - I didn't like the route it told me to take from work to home. It would take a lot longer than the route I take now (but it was a very direct suggestion).

Again, the beta currently includes US and Canada. Navteq also has European data, so I'd expect to see that online sooner or later.

Bruno

And people thought Microsoft was like Cyberdyne... "Skynet will be online shortly... Shutting down beta systems, please wait for mainframe initialization."

Damn, missed that. I was looking all over the site to try to find it, too. I've never heard of that company, though. What cars are their systems in?

Quote:
"Keyhole" doesn't own any map IP. They just buy data from providers and link it all together.

Yeah, I said they got a large chunk of their info from the USGS. The rest they get from other places, but I'm sure that's the largest portion.

Here's a really interesting how Google Maps works dissection. Well, I suppose "really interesting" depends on certain things....

They have some work to do. Take a look at this route, which should take perhaps 30 minutes:

http://maps.google.com/maps?q=from%201%2...2031%2C4.404263


Interesting... A little bit of a bias toward freeways. Unfortunately it's picking freeways in the wrong country...

Bruno

NAVTEQ makes the data for the nav system in the Acuras I've seen. I saw a list somewhere a long while back of other manufacturers using their stuff. Should be able to google for it.

You guys should see this site running on Apple's 30" Cinema HD stretched full screen (requires Firefox on the Mac). Wow!

Bruno

Interesting. Considering the Honda connection, I would have thought it was Alpine, as that's what's in my Odyssey. Mine is great, though I haven't seen any other Alpines that I've liked. I'm starting to see the effects of an aging map disc, though. There are more and more addresses that are simply not in my system, and it looks like the newest one for my system was made like three years ago and costs over $150. Not good enough for me.

NAVTEQ doesn't make head units... They provide the data on the CD's used by the manufacturers. I wouldn't be surprised if your Alpine was using their data.

Bruno

Thanks for posting this! I might start using this for some of the web sites that I do with maps on them! I love having the map full screen!

Navteq's map data is arguably the best and most up to date data commercially available. They have street level GPS for major cities in most countries, and just about every street in the US. You'll find their data sitting behind many of the commercial GPS offerings, and behind in-built systems from Ford, Mazda, VW, Audi, Jaguar, Porsche, Volvo, Lincoln, Maserati, BMW and Mini. Their data is _very_ good.

With regards to map errors - most if not all maps have them, some deliberate. It's a way to prove that someone else copied your map and passed it off as their own.

Google has Alaska, but the detail seems to fall off quickly

Actuall... no, the detail is there. This is Alaska, remember -- there are only three major highways in the entire stateQ

tanstaafl.