Wednesday 9th February 2005
Cartography
So everyone is going wild over the new Google Map. It’s pretty cool, but only held my attention for about 20 seconds yesterday - because I went wild over a similar thing I saw last month. map.search.ch is a satellite photo equivalent, with a street map overlay. And it’s of Switzerland, which is so much more pretty. More info here and here. Hackable URLs - nice.
I’d never realised how much of the States is a grid-iron pattern of roads - I’d love to go and build a new town in Kansas either on a NW-SE and SW-NE axis, or maybe just squiggly roads everywhere. That’d keep the locals at bay - they wouldn’t know what’s going on.
Finally, I wonder if we’ll ever get something like this for the UK. Currently Multimap’s adverts go skitz every time you click on the map, and boy is it boring waiting on the adverts to reload each time. If we had just one sensible politician, I’m sure the government could spent a few thousand quid buying the rights to some satellite photos (or strongarming the MoD…), and then release them to the public domain. But that’s not going to happen now, is it?
I like the street naming in this town
Comment by Andy — 9/2/2005 @ 11:23 am
Your browser is not supported by Google Maps just yet. My IE is too old. And no, I can’t be bothered to change that for some maps of the US.
Comment by Nia Stevens — 10/2/2005 @ 5:39 pm
Anyway, this was what I really wanted to say.
Comment by Nia Stevens — 10/2/2005 @ 5:42 pm
It’s not really quite the same thing, you know. I don’t see any zooming, scrolling, or anything else. I did once start a streetmap-sraping project, so I’ve got a big satellite photo montage of west London, but that’s not really the same either.
You should get a new install on your computer - I’ve heard there’s even people whose job it is to do that for you - for free!
Comment by Andy — 10/2/2005 @ 5:54 pm
Okay, the swiss thing works and that’s quite cool. Shame I’m not planning on travelling in Switzerland soon.
Comment by Nia Stevens — 10/2/2005 @ 7:50 pm