Locals contribute to Google Map Maker
Posted by Manuela Barreto @ June 27th, 2008 in Google Applications
Don’t allow your city, state or island to just be a blob on the map! Its a good thing Google Map Maker added a new feature recently which lets you contribute or edit map information freely, however, its only currently available in certain cities.
The Google Team has realized, maybe due to continuous claims, that some of the places that appear on Google Maps, are in need for some major tweaking. Meaning, they may not even contain any rivers, roads or even bike trails. They’re just plain…blank. In the example below you can notice there’s the before and after versions of a map from Myanmar, which has slowly been modified by engineers from the area.
What better than having the locals contribute to ‘filling in the blanks’ of their own geographical region?
Some other regions in the world in need for local support and expertise are the following: Cyprus, Iceland, Pakistan, Vietnam and the Caribbean nations of: Antigua & Barbuda, Bahamas, Barbados, Bermuda, British Virgin Islands, Cayman Islands, Grenada, Jamaica, Netherlands Antilles, St. Kitts & Nevis, St. Lucia, St. Vincent & the Grenadines, Trinidad & Tobago.
Although, as I was browsing through other sites, I found this blogger’s opinion to be quite reasonable. Stephen Shankland from Cnet News commented on how Google is continuously profiting from user-generated contributions that offer users better mapping, however, and I quote Stephen’s words, ‘wouldn’t it be nice if we could do it through a more neutral mechanism that lets others benefit from the work, too?’ I agree.
The Google Map Maker functions are very easy to use and basically anyone can add to any of these empty looking maps.Its just a matter of time before users become fully aware about the fact that their local knowledge could really give the search engine monster a hand.
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Comments
Aaron
June 30th, 2008
more ‘neutral mechanism’?
What does that even mean? How does EVERYONE not benefit from these kind of additions? Google maps is free, and anyone can access it…there are no conflict of interests that I can see, so what do you mean by ‘neutral mechanism’?
Aaron
m.barreto
June 30th, 2008
Hi Aaron,
Thanks for your comment.
If you would refer to the article on Cnet I quoted, you could better understand what I meant or the blogger..
Basically, if we could use the power of mankind as Google is doing to benefit a cause, a more ’serious’ cause, instead of that of Google Maps, it’d be very cool… meaning– in a more socially responsible way.