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January 04 2012
Microsoft Patents a Way to Tell You Where Not To Go
Anyone who’s journeyed on foot through a strange city can confirm that there’s a lot maps don’t show. For instance, whether it would be a really bad idea to wander through certain neighborhoods with an expensive camera around your neck. Or whether there’s a low-lying neighborhood that will be about 3 degrees cooler than it is everywhere else. Those kinds of things.
Though you won’t find that variety of information on Google Maps’ walking directions, you might soon see it on Bing Maps. Microsoft has just received a patent on a method for incorporating information like violent crime statistics into walking directions, so users could choose a specific rate of crime that they are personally comfortable with when planning a route (bike gangs, OK, murders, no). Other layers of information, like temperature measurements or falling-apart sidewalks, could also make appearances.
A tool like that will have plenty of users, though you know people are going to be disgruntled when their favorite neighborhoods get slapped with a D for dangerous (prepare yourself for an Internet freakout, Microsoft). What we’re really looking forward to, though, is a layer that routes you past all the grocery stores with free ...
October 01 2010
Google Street View Goes to Antarctica, Brings Maps to the Penguins
Google’s expansion of its Street View project to all seven continents has the sweet reward of allowing you to visit Antarctica while sitting on your couch in your leopard-print snuggie. (They also filled in the holes of Ireland and Brazil, but much as we love those countries, Antarctica is still more exciting.)
Ed Parsons, Google’s geospatial technologist, told The Guardian that this feat was “hugely significant” to the Goog:
“One of the challenges we wanted to crack is to go to these remote places, and one of geo team at Google went to Antarctica so he took some kit and took some imagery. It’s called Street View, but there aren’t many streets in Antarctica,” he said. “This allows people to understand the contrast between New York Times Square and being on the edge of a glacier looking at penguins.”
It’s also making the chinstrap penguins and red-parka’d researchers that inhabit the island the victims of some pretty intense privacy invasion. The images were shot in Half Moon Island, a part of the South Shetland Island chain in the northern most part of the continent, under South America.
You can explore the colony and other views of the earth on Google’s Street View gallery. The Antarctica views were shot by Google’s own Brian McClendon, vice-president of engineering, who carried around a camera while visiting the area with his wife. He announced the new features in a blog post, saying:
We hope this new imagery will help people in Ireland, Brazil, and even the penguins of Antarctica to navigate nearby, as well as enable people around the world to learn more about these areas.
Related content:
Discoblog: Confused (and Injured) Pedestrian Sues Google Maps Over Bad Directions
Discoblog: Pedestrian-Removing Software Makes for a Creepy Google Streetview
80beats: Researchers Use Feather “Fingerprints” to Track Penguins
Not Exactly Rocket Science: A fossil penguin gets its colours
Not Exactly Rocket Science: Are emperor penguins marching to extinction?
DISCOVER: Big Picture: 5 Reasons Science [Hearts] Google
DISCOVER: The Coolest Science Experiments in Antarctica (PICS)
Image: Google Maps
June 01 2010
Confused (and Injured) Pedestrian Sues Google Maps Over Bad Directions
On a midday stroll through Park City, Utah, you decide to turn onto the quaint-sounding Deer Valley Drive. You see this:
If you think you should turn back, you are not the intrepid Lauren Rosenberg. Armed with a Blackberry and Google Maps, she marched on, and could not believe when Patrick Harwood struck her with his car. She is now suing both Harwood and Google.
As CNET reports:
Perhaps some of you might think of Rosenberg as just a perambulating chaser. Yet she and her lawyers reason that Google’s walking directions were “careless, reckless, and negligent providing of unsafe directions.”
But what about Google Maps’ warning to such adventure-seekers? There’s a yellow box that appears whenever you request walking directions using their website: “Walking Direction are in Beta. Use caution–This route may be missing sidewalks or pedestrian paths.”
Apparently this isn’t enough. On Rosenberg’s Blackberry, the route lacked the warning. She feels this entitles her to over $10,000 in medical expenses.
Though GPS victims haven’t won in similar suits, Rosenberg’s turn in court will soon come. Here’s hoping someone drives her to the hearing.
Related content:
DISCOVER: Think Tech A GPS to Augment Your Entire Reality
80beats: Lost in Space: GPS System May Soon Begin Deteriorating
Discoblog: Teen Sues Mom for Hacking His Facebook Account
Not Exactly Rocket Science: Google Earth shows that cow and deer herds align like compass needles
Image: Google Maps / Danny Sullivan
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