Google Maps blunder

[berneyarms]

If it's not in the right place, request Google maps to move it.

Exactly - I've sent in several requests to relocate items on google maps and they've fixed them.

Far better to be proactive than simply moan about it on the Internet.

 

[Paul Kelly]

I think another issue with some of these types of problems is that because the positions of things are specified as a single point (rather than as a map grid square as was the old-style way of specifying the positions of things), it is very easy to accidentally interpret the points with much more precision than was intended. Here is a good example of this problem that I came across recently:

http://fusion.net/story/287592/internet-mapping-glitch-kansas-farm/

How an internet mapping glitch turned a random Kansas farm into a digital hell

[...]

The trouble for the Taylor farm started in 2002, when a Massachusetts-based digital mapping company called MaxMind decided it wanted to provide “IP intelligence” to companies who wanted to know the geographic location of a computer to, for example, show the person using it relevant ads or to send the person a warning letter if they were pirating music or movies.

There are lots of different ways a company like MaxMind can try to figure out where an IP address is located. It can “war-drive,” sending cars around the U.S. looking for open wifi networks, getting those networks’ IP addresses, and recording their physical locations. It can gather information via apps on smartphones that note the GPS coordinates of the phone when it takes on a new IP address. It can look at which company owns an IP address, and then make an assumption that the IP address is linked to that company’s office.

But IP mapping isn’t an exact science. At its most precise, an IP address can be mapped to a house. (You can try to map your own IP address here.) At its least precise, it can be mapped only to a country. In order to deal with that imprecision, MaxMind decided to set default locations at the city, state and country level for when it knows only roughly where the IP address lives. If it knows only that an IP address is somewhere in the U.S., and can’t figure out anything more about where it is, it will point to the center of the country.

As any geography nerd knows, the precise center of the United States is in northern Kansas, near the Nebraska border. Technically, the latitudinal and longitudinal coordinates of the center spot are 39°50′N 98°35′W. In digital maps, that number is an ugly one: 39.8333333,-98.585522. So back in 2002, when MaxMind was first choosing the default point on its digital map for the center of the U.S., it decided to clean up the measurements and go with a simpler, nearby latitude and longitude: 38°N 97°W or 38.0000,-97.0000.

As a result, for the last 14 years, every time MaxMind’s database has been queried about the location of an IP address in the United States it can’t identify, it has spit out the default location of a spot two hours away from the geographic center of the country. This happens a lot: 5,000 companies rely on MaxMind’s IP mapping information, and in all, there are now over 600 million IP addresses associated with that default coordinate. If any of those IP addresses are used by a scammer, or a computer thief, or a suicidal person contacting a help line, MaxMind’s database places them at the same spot: 38.0000,-97.0000.

Which happens to be in the front yard of Joyce Taylor’s house.

[...]

A very interesting read about the unintended consequences of geographical information being interpreted with more precision than was intended, if you have the time.

 

[IanD]

More importantly it's on the wrong side of the line, and would send anyone unfamiliar with Wakefield to a place with no road access, no way of getting into the station, and in a narrow poorly lit space between the railway line and the prison holding some of the country's most notorious and dangerous killers!

Or they could get there and look up and think "Oh, that huge structure straddling the railway might just be the station, maybe if I try making my way round the building I might find the entrance."

God knows how anyone survived before GPS.

 

[snowball]

A lot of fun images from Google satellite view:

http://www.postcards-from-google-earth.com/

 

[30907]

It appears correctly now.

 

[centraltrains]

Google's rail maps are very annoying. The cross over to allow train to terminate at Shirley was still there until earlier this year. I sent a request to delete the Shirley one an add the new Whitlock's one. They only deleted Shirley and didn't add Whitlock's cross over. :roll:

 

[Peter Mugridge]

A lot of fun images from Google satellite view:

http://www.postcards-from-google-earth.com/

The Salvador Dali theory of 3D imagery?

 

[jon0844]

If it's not in the right place, request Google maps to move it.

My house is in the wrong location on Google Maps, and I really must get around to asking for it to be fixed.

I'd also consider reporting the same error to Apple, but would probably get told that I'm living in the wrong house and should move.

 

[Andrewlong]

My house is in the wrong location on Google Maps, and I really must get around to asking for it to be fixed.

I'd also consider reporting the same error to Apple, but would probably get told that I'm living in the wrong house and should move.

We are talking misplaced markers on Google maps - I haven't got a clue as to what you are talking about given they are photos!

 

[jon0844]

We are talking misplaced markers on Google maps - I haven't got a clue as to what you are talking about given they are photos!

Huh? Who said anything about photos?

 

[Trog]

Less of a blunder than the total omission of Bletchley station (hardly a rural backwater) from Apple Maps!

That's not an omission, its wishful thinking.

 

[Bevan Price]

Some (mainly printed) maps include deliberate errors so that the publisher can identify any breaches of their copyright.

 

[mirodo]

Some (mainly printed) maps include deliberate errors so that the publisher can identify any breaches of their copyright.

Copyright traps (usually trap streets).

I think I've found a railway related one on my digital copy of the OS maps on my phone. On the 1:25k version, the now removed bridge over the A212 Coombe Road in Croydon (which used to carry the Woodside and South Croydon Railway) is still shown as being in situ. It isn't present on the 1:50k version of the map.

 

[jimbo99]

Copyright traps (usually trap streets).

I think I've found a railway related one on my digital copy of the OS maps on my phone. On the 1:25k version, the now removed bridge over the A212 Coombe Road in Croydon (which used to carry the Woodside and South Croydon Railway) is still shown as being in situ. It isn't present on the 1:50k version of the map.

On the subject of that line, until a few months ago, the Woodside-Addiscombe branch would sometimes reappear on google maps, even though the line closed in 1997.

 

[Mordac]

On the subject of that line, until a few months ago, the Woodside-Addiscombe branch would sometimes reappear on google maps, even though the line closed in 1997.

A branch from south of Shawfair to Loanhead still shows up, even though the Borders line doesn't!

 

[SemaphoreSam]

It has indeed! I started it when I had an (adult) bout of chicken pox and was confined at home for several days. I would love to have the time to do some more work on it. One of these days...

Dr. Fegg; if you are, indeed, the publisher of the New_Adlestrop project, let me thank you for the many hours of pleasure you have afforded me! Your map makes it easy for this North American to figure out which lines are active, and which are defunct, among other things. By now some things are dated, but, so what! Anyway, thanks. Sam