Unblurred Google Satellite Images Is The Equivalent Of Yelling Fire?

from the say-what-now? dept

Earlier this month, we wrote about how a politician in California, Assemblyman Joel Anderson, was looking to force Google and other providers of online mapping/satellite offerings to blur images of schools, churches and government buildings. News.com ran an interview with Anderson, where he attempts to defend his proposed legislation as a matter of public safety. He claims that there is no good reason why anyone would need to clearly see these buildings online, and that it can only be used for bad purposes:

Who wants to know that level of detail? Bad people do.

But since when do you have a First Amendment right to yell fire? This falls under the same category.

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UK Police Worried About Online Crime Maps

from the so-go-where-the-crime-isn't? dept

One of the first sites that kicked off the whole "map mashup" craze was Adrian Holovaty's ChicagoCrime, which showed the locations of crimes in Chicago placed on a Google map. The site has since been integrated into Holovaty's startup, EveryBlock. However, the idea of an online crime map is certainly now considered quite a useful concept. Unless, you're the police, apparently. Over in the UK, police are complaining about a proposed online crime map, saying that it will help criminals figure out how to go where the police aren't. Indeed, we've already seen that various police departments use data mining tools to try to predict where new crimes will occur, but it seems a bit overblown to suggest that an online crime map would really be such a problem.

First of all, it assumes that criminals are smart enough to plan out their crimes by going online and seeking out low crime areas ahead of time. While that may be true of a few, it seems unlikely that your average criminal is going to do that. Second, there's usually a reason why crimes cluster in certain areas, and it's not like criminals are suddenly going to run to a new neighborhood because an online map shows there's plenty of (or little) crime there. It seems likely that most criminals in high crime areas already know that it's a high crime area. And, if all these criminals suddenly run to low crime areas, then the police should be able to adjust, right? Worst case, they just send more patrols to the low crime areas, since according to their own logic, that's where the criminals will head. And that, of course, shows the fallacy of the police officers' worries. They know that criminals won't rush to low crime areas, or there wouldn't even be an issue here.

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Google Inches Toward Wikified Maps

from the community-needed dept

I've been saying for a few months that Google should begin wikifying Google Maps, so that users can make corrections and add missing information to Google's map database. Google took a tentative step in that direction this spring when it allowed people to edit business locations. But now John Battelle reports that Google has unveiled technology that would allow Google to turn Google Maps into a full-blown geographical wiki, with "roads, lakes, parks, points of interest, businesses, cities and localities" all fully editable. Not surprisingly, Google is rolling this out cautiously, making the functionality available first in obscure places like the Bermuda, Grenada, and Jamaica where Google hasn't been able to acquire good map data of its own.

Playing around with the site, the technology is a little clumsy to use, but it works and I'm sure it will get better as Google's UI wizards get some user feedback. The really hard part, I think, will be cultivating the community that's required for a successful peer production effort. People tend to think of Wikipedia as a website, but as Clay Shirky points out, it's better to think of Wikipedia as a bureaucracy for arguing about edits that happens to produce a website as its byproduct. Wikipedia depends on a dedicated core of Wikipedians who referee the editing process, combat vandalism, and resolve disputes. Without them, Wikipedia would dissolve into chaos in a matter of days. So Google needs to figure out how to cultivate an analogous community of Google Map editors. There's a chicken-and-egg problem because they need to let people edit their own neighborhoods to really draw on local knowledge, but the site could be destroyed quickly if they don't have enough public-spirited editors in place beforehand. The incremental strategy they're pursuing so far seems like the right one: get people familiar with the technology, recruit people interested in map editing, and most importantly develop the processes and principles that allow the editing process to proceed smoothly.

Google will also want to think hard about licensing. Wikipedia uses the GNU Free Documentation License, which gives anyone the freedom to reuse Wikipedia content. This serves as a kind of social contract with users, ensuring that the data generated by the community continues to be available to the community. Google may find that it needs to make similar commitments before a significant number of people would be willing to participate in the editing process. On the other hand, freeing the map data might prove different if the vendor currently selling Google mapping data sees it as a threat. In that rather sticky situation, Google might be forced to start from scratch, creating a parallel site created entirely by users.

Timothy Lee is an expert at the Insight Community. To get insight and analysis from Timothy Lee and other experts on challenges your company faces, click here.

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Google Maps Becoming Even More Like A Wiki

from the User-Generated-Geography dept

A few months ago, we noted that Google had taken some tentative steps to make Google Maps more wiki-like, and we encouraged them to take further steps in that direction. Now Techcrunch reports that they're doing just that, giving users more ability to edit the data on Google Maps. Now, not only can you move the pin showing the location of a particular address, but you can edit the information associated with that address. Best of all, Google allows you to delete markers that are inaccurate or inappropriate, and even to add new ones. This is going to make Google Maps even more valuable. The next challenge Google is likely to have is dealing with vandalism. They've got some tools to deal with that already, but I think they could improve things even more by making the editing process more transparent. For example, as far as I can tell, there's no way to see all of the markers in a particular small section of the map (say the block where I live). There also doesn't appear to be any easy way to automatically monitor changes within a certain radius of a particular location. These features (analogous to Wikipedia's watchlist feature) would make it a lot easier for public-spirited Google Maps users to keep tabs on map changes and quickly revert vandalism. I'd personally be happy to help police edits in the area around my apartment, but there's currently no easy way for me to do that.

Timothy Lee is an expert at the Insight Community. To get insight and analysis from Timothy Lee and other experts on challenges your company faces, click here.

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Google Maps Should Push The Wikipedia Analogy Further

from the peer-production dept

Google comes out with a seemingly unending stream of little enhancements to its stable of excellent online properties. One of the more exciting additions to come along in a while is the fact that users of Google Maps will now be able to move the markers on Google Maps. So if you search for your house and find it points to a point far down your street, you just click "Move Marker," drag the marker to the correct location, and hopefully save future visitors difficulties. A lot of people have pointed out the parallels to Wikipedia, but it seems to me there's a lot of unrealized potential to apply the lessons of Wikipedia to improving Google Maps. For starters, Google Maps is missing a lot of information. For example, there's a sushi restaurant on my block, but a search for "sushi" or "restaurant" won't bring it up. I should be able to click "add marker," enter the relevant information, and drop a pin in the appropriate place. Similarly, I should be able to add tags to existing markers; right now, if I search for "restaurant," a lot of restaurants near me don't show up, even though they're in the database. I should be able to add a "restaurant" tag to existing markers. I should also be able to add other types of tags to the map to mark road construction, historical sites, and other points of interest. And Google might even want to allow users to edit the information in existing markers, which is often incomplete or out of date.

Timothy Lee is an expert at the Insight Community. To get insight and analysis from Timothy Lee and other experts on challenges your company faces, click here.

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