

Trekking the Grand Canyon for Google Maps   - danso
http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2012/10/trekking-grand-canyon-for-google-maps.html

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joshmlewis
This is something that I don't see Apple ever doing on their own. I don't
think you'll ever see a blue shirt sporting genius with weird looking camera
headgear trekking around the Grand Canyon.

But, maybe they'll buy a company who would? What do you guys think?

P.S. I'm not an Apple hater at all, writing this with a Macbook Air, Cinema
Display, iPhone 5, and an iPad on my desk. But I do feel like as far as this
much dedication to their mapping service, it's not going to happen.

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marshallp
They'll have to. The future is local mobile social.

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davidw
And here I thought the future was social global device-agnostic...

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lancefisher
I've been waiting for this! I'd love to volunteer in order to get trails
around my town on the map. Even better would be to accept user-submitted
street-view data, and open the backpack design. Maybe a backpack rental
program even?

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wgoodwin
I'm torn between enthusiasm for these awesome additions to to Google Maps, and
the longterm effect on one's sense of wonder at the vastness of the world.

Something of the wonder of hiking into the Grand Canyon is lost when you can
walk it in Google Maps. Some of the mystery is gone. Oddly enough, that's part
of the reason satellite maps are so engaging, and have far less of this
effect: you're getting a perspective that you would never otherwise have, and
thus nothing's particularly lost. If anything, browsing around Google Earth is
an invitation to explore. Walking the Grand Canyon on Streetview...that's an
invitation to second guess making the effort. Or worse, spend countless hours
comparing streetviews of different trails to see which is better.

That last point might be the worst: previewing trails and outdoor experiences
just accelerates the paradox of choice problem, as you are constantly
comparing what you see beforehand to what you see in real life to what you
also saw elsewhere digitally.

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rezrovs
Does anyone know if it's possible to sign-up to trek with their kit for them
to map out other remote places?

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chime
Just a decade ago, this would have made a fine April Fool's Day joke from
Google but now it seems like the obvious next step. After this, I can imagine
live web-cams on busy intersections or frequently changing views (construction
sites like 1 WTC) being integrated into the street-view so you can see updates
in real-time. Or quad-copters roaming around updating the views much faster
than ground-based cameras.

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Pwntastic
Didn't Microsoft have some tech demo / event a few years back where they had
integrated a live video feed of a street marketplace into bing maps?

I wonder what ever came of that. It would be a really cool feature to have on
a/b/g maps

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Achshar
The great barrier reef, Grand Canyon, and snow mountains, the street view
needs to be renamed. It is very exciting, the street view technology is
turning into something more. They are now on path to capture rest of the
planet's surface. It seems like a fun future where we can zoom google earth to
anywhere on planet and keep zooming and it goes to street view, everywhere.
Awesome.

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dockd
I feel like Google has went too far with their maps. They've always claimed
"Google’s mission is to organize the world’s information and make it
universally accessible and useful." However with their maps, they're actually
_creating_ the worlds information and making it accessible and useful.

What do I mean by creating it? Well, can you get these trails as public domain
data?

If you want to volunteer to get trails onto a map, use www.openstreetmap.org.
(And you'll run into the same problems with the accuracy of GPS signals in
canyons.)

I'm not looking forward to the time when I try to find the Pacific Coast Trail
and the result comes back with ads for backpacks and boots.

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alalonde
Or worse, street view on the PCT requires a paid "premium" subscription.

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alexsb92
Wanted to point out that the Alt+Left key gets broken on their page and you
either have to do a Backspace or just click Back.

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swalsh
What'll be really cool is being able to walk parts of the earth 50 years from
now when all of this stuff is historical.

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aw3c2
IF Google decides to let you.

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danso
It'll be interesting to see how the navigation will work from an end-user
perspective...I imagine it's a relatively easy job to interpolate the position
of the camera along hard-coded coordinates of a street.

...though I guess the Google MAps user could be confined to the exact path
that the trekkers chart in their walk. It'll be interesting to see how tight
winding curves are handled through the nav interface.

