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Good bye, Google Maps… thanks for all the fish

plus.google.com

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Re: Good bye, Google Maps… thanks for all the fish

#81

Post by Drbble »

PhrosTT wrote: post #26
dpcan wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also not on the topic of the article, but... I wish people would stop blogging on Google plus. Period. It's the worst reading experience ever on the iPhone - nearly impossible as the text blurs, and you have to drag the article around to see it all and then wait for the blur to go away.

I've repeatedly considered building a HN Google+ scraper that grabs the text from Google Plus stuff and throws it onto a more readable cache that won't be blocked by work filters as social networking. However I'm a little worried about stealing what may be Google's content.

Are you aware that Google's entire business model is based on scraping content from websites?

Re: Good bye, Google Maps… thanks for all the fish

#82

Post by Drbble »

Confusion wrote: post #48
omfg wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think they really care. In the current landscape, Google Maps is a competitive advantage for them and the less people using it the better. They leverage it across the Android ecosystem, their new social network, etc.. and it creates more work for their competitors to play catch up.

the less people using it the better How is that? I would say the marginal cost of extra users is minimal, especially given their (lack of) customer service.

Parent means that less API users (product competitors) is better, not less end users.

Re: Good bye, Google Maps… thanks for all the fish

#83

Post by jraines »

kooshball wrote: post #7

I really wish there is a way to show more than just the domain name next to the title. >Good bye, Google Maps… thanks for all the fish (google.com) is simply misleading.

Here's a userscript that makes HN show all subdomains. If you're in Chrome, just click on "Raw"to install.

https://gist.github.com/1522657

Re: Good bye, Google Maps… thanks for all the fish

#84

Post by peteretep »

ubercore wrote: post #35
zackola wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Rest assured that we will be adding the subway stops and various other awesome related data sets shortly.

Not to sound like a downer, because I really appreciate open source mapping, but that's the part where I think the costs, long term, will swing back. Google maps is deceptively simple, in that the javascript library and tiling is a relatively solved problem. Google has the best datasets, and the best large-data know-how in the business, so outsourcing things like an up-to-date transit location and route database is b…

> Forgot to mention my own personal white whale. Google's geocoder is far from perfect, but it's the best I've seen

Lulz wht? Google's Geocoder is by far the suckiest of any of the ones I evaluated. I'd highly recommend Bing or Yahoo before Google's geocoder.

Re: Good bye, Google Maps… thanks for all the fish

#85

Post by chc »

damncabbage wrote: post #78
JohnnyBrown wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've never developed for iOS, but on my iPhone when I go to okcupid.com it somehow 'redirects' to the okcupid app on my phone. So it seems there is some capability for this built in that website developers can take advantage of.

iOS apps can register foobar:// hooks. If a site redirects to a URI with a custom protocol, it'll wake up the app that's tied to it. (I'm not sure how they're detecting whether that hook is registered or not, though.)

It looks like they basically ask whether you want to use the site or the app the first time you visit on a device, and if you choose the app, it sends you to the App Store and sets a localstorage setting that triggers a redirect on subsequent visits. (Edit: OK, it's a little bit more sophisticated than that. But I think that's not too far off.)

Re: Good bye, Google Maps… thanks for all the fish

#86

Post by lazerwalker »

smackfu wrote: post #76
chc wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let me get this straight: You think it's more reasonable for Apple to have to build in special support so requests for webpages on plus.google.com go to the G+ app instead of Safari than for Google to just make their site work on mobile platforms like everybody else on the planet? You are, as the kids say, straight trippin'.

Mobile Safari does support apps registering custom URL handlers, so google could rewrite the links as gplus:// and they could open in the G+ app. Unfortunately I don't think this behaves nicely if you don't have the content handling app installed since it just errors.

That's correct. If you don't have the app in question installed, you get a nasty "Page could not be found" error. There are hacky and unstable JS tricks you can pull with setTimeout to send the user to the app store if they don't have the app installed, but I haven't heard of any reliable way to deal with this (pretty glaring) failure case.

Even just the ability to suppress the error message would be more or less fine.

Re: Good bye, Google Maps… thanks for all the fish

#87

Post by MetallicCloud »

kooshball wrote: post #7

I really wish there is a way to show more than just the domain name next to the title. >Good bye, Google Maps… thanks for all the fish (google.com) is simply misleading.

I'm using an extension in chrome for that...

https://chrome.google.com/webstore/category/home

For me it displays as (plus.google.com)

Re: Good bye, Google Maps… thanks for all the fish

#88

Post by aasarava »

Does anyone have any pointers to tutorials on how to get started building OSM maps? For example, if I have my own "map" of the US (a simple graphic image), how do I go about connecting that up to state boundaries and plotting lat/long on it, and then breaking it all up into tiles? I feel like that part of the puzzle is always missing from blog posts like these (though the post is helpful for the bigger infrastructure picture.)

Re: Good bye, Google Maps… thanks for all the fish

#89

Post by ajross »

jasonkester wrote: post #71
brudgers wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reasonable or not, that is the expectation Apple has encouraged iPhone users to hold - every website should have its own app in a way reminiscent of AOL keywords.

Expectation for who? It has never occurred to me to install an app to view a single website. Maybe this is something you do, and therefore think that other people also do. But you're mistaken. I browse the web using a web browser. Even on my iPhone.

I call shenanigans. Practically every "content" site out there has its own app, and loudly proclaims its existence whenever you visit its site with a compatible device. It's simply not possible that "it never occurred" to you. You can obviously choose not to install a Google+ app if you like. But I don't believe for a minute that you are surprised at the need for it.

Re: Good bye, Google Maps… thanks for all the fish

#90

Post by estel »

forgotusername wrote: post #66
meepmorp wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Protip: hovering over the link will display the full URL in the status bar. You should really spend more than a few milliseconds before deciding to get excited about something. You're assuming he's using a device with a mouse. And why not add a simple feature that makes usability better on all platforms? Special case google plus here, just because this is such a common complaint. I've wanted it for a while, too.

You can also trigger the status bar prompt via the tab key, link search, and probably assistive technologies have their own approach. I'm amazed that offering up a potential general solution that already exists, or suggesting someone measures their response before jumping at headlines, would result in downvotes here.

Even if you weren't somewhat wayward of the point, you'd still not be considering touch devices, which the parent was more likely to be referring to.
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