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Good bye, Google Maps… thanks for all the fish

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

#131

Post by Drbble »

rottencupcakes wrote: post #99
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 have absolutely no idea what you're talking about. Google+ is one of the easiest correctly sized columns of text to read on my iPhone. The following is a screen shot. Do you care to elaborate on what is wrong? http://imgur.com/xDksb

What's especially interesting is that your iphone layout is actually better than G+ on a desktop webbrowser, where the lines are insanely long and do not wrap when the window width is reduced.

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

#132

Post by matt2000 »

Xuzz wrote: post #23
cryptoz wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does the iPhone not open Google Plus posts in the Google Plus app? Or do you not have it installed? The reason your experience is awful is because Google doesn't care to make the G+ mobile web experience perfect since their app is the way to go. On Android, when I click one of these links it opens the app and the reading experience is very pleasant. Maybe I've just been spoiled, but I find the experience to be pretty…

Should you need a third party app installed for a good reading experience? I don't use Google+ and don't want the app on iOS, even if it was launched when I click a Google+ link (which, fwiw, you are correct: it currently does not). (On the other hand, Tumblr looks great on mobile, and it doesn't need an app. Facebook, too, is at least readable on their mobile site.)

It seems like a fair complaint that G+ should have a better mobile experience, not so fair to demand to not post on G+ anymore.

I was actually going to comment that I find G+ a great experience for these kinds of posts... oh well.

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

#133

Post by Drbble »

zak_mc_kracken wrote: post #125
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.

> It's the worst reading experience ever on the iPhone Yup, but it's probably the best writing experience for most bloggers, and also people who don't have blogs. Even if you have one with a decent readership, the engagement you get from Google+ is far higher than anything you can get when people need to use RSS and a reader to follow you.

Yeah, but patio11 would have a field day on streeteasy writing a popular blog post and giving Google all the the link juice. Unless Search Your World means G+ optimization is more important than SEO now?

OMG. Google is pulling a reverse-walled-garden.

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

#134

Post by saras »

aasarava wrote: post #88

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…

While notaddicted's reply can also be useful to you, I think the part of the puzzle that you are missing is "georeferencing". From your example, with a raster (bitmap, image) map of the US: the part where you start connecting that to lat/lon is georeferencing. Essentially, you want to tie a spatial reference to your image, so that the raster's state boundaries will correspond to state boundaries on a "real" map. You can think of it as pinning an image you know nothing about to a map you do know something about, and then copying the information from known to unknown.

There are plenty of ways to georeference an image. The easiest would be to use something like QGIS or GRASS (both opensource GIS software). You will need existing spatial data to base your (as of now, non-spatial) map on: a shapefile of the state boundaries would work great.

Once you've wrapped your head around georeferencing and the idea of spatial vs nonspatial data, you will probably get more out of the mapsfromscratch tutorial.

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

#135

Post by loupgaroublond »

ma2rten wrote: post #101
peteretep wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

I did a test with different Geocoders (Google, MapQuest, Bing, Yahoo, Nokia). Google was lightyears ahead of the rest in my test. It was for the Netherlands, though.

The netherlands is a different beast when it comes to Geocoding since each postcode only corresponds with around 10 buildings all very close to each other. Most other systems cover larger delivery areas. My complete amateur comment is that you need different algorithms for different countries.

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

#136

Post by sunsu »

dpcan wrote: post #10
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.

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.

He should just use my tool so he can host all those posts from his own domain while still posting to Google+: https://github.com/lylepratt/Plusify

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

#138

Post by fludlight »

jc4p wrote: post #130
fludlight wrote: post #123

Where does the data for building shapes come from? Both Google Maps and the OP's website incorporate it. What is the format? Can I download the raw data in bulk (preferably for free) for a data mining project?

By shapes do you mean borders? Or do you mean buildings and things... The borders come from http://www.openstreetmap.org/ which is editable/exportable in many formats.

Yes...borders.

Open Street Map looks like it only provides 2D building borders while Google has 3D. Google doesn't even provide an API for accessing it.

Bing also only has 2D building boundary data, albeit at a slightly higher level of detail than OSM.

Is there an open source database for the 3D data or is that proprietary Google info? Is OSM the only source for free building boundary data?

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

#139

Post by gcb »

Drbble wrote: post #82
Confusion wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Maybe not... This thread got me wondering, one of the points in the article is "why pay to have sites that look the same as the rest"

Maybe google prices is to remove gmaps from everywhere and sell only to premium sites.

If they disappear users are already hooked and will migrate to the premium sites that still have it

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

#140

Post by vetler »

jlarocco wrote: post #37
cryptoz wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does the iPhone not open Google Plus posts in the Google Plus app? Or do you not have it installed? The reason your experience is awful is because Google doesn't care to make the G+ mobile web experience perfect since their app is the way to go. On Android, when I click one of these links it opens the app and the reading experience is very pleasant. Maybe I've just been spoiled, but I find the experience to be pretty…

Oh come on. It's a textual web page. There's no good excuse why it shouldn't be reasonably usable in any web browser made in the last 10 years. "It's your fault for not using the Google Plus App to view the page" is tantamount to saying, "It's your fault for not using IE6 to view the page."

I agree. It actually looks quite nice in Opera Mobile on Android: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/133910/SC20120112-084903.png
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