testingdistance

Good bye Wednesday.  

http://mapmaker.google.com

Last month Google dropped Tele Atlas data from its United States maps,choosing to rely instead on government data and other sources, including updates from users.

Faraz Ahmad, a 26-year-old programmer from Pakistan who lives in Glasgow, took one look at the map of India and decided he did not want to see his homeland out-mapped by its traditional rival. When Mr. Ahmad tried to work on the part of Kashmir that is administered by Pakistan, he found that Map Maker wouldn’t allow it. He said his contributions were finally accepted by the Map Maker team, which is led by engineers based in India, but only after a long e-mail exchange.  At his request, Google is now preventing further changes to the region, after people in India tried to make it part of their country, Mr. Ahmad said.

A Google spokeswoman, Elaine Filadelfo, said Google sometimes blocked changes to contentious areas “with an eye to avoiding back-and-forth editing.”

Everyman Offers New Directions in Online Maps - NYTimes.com

(The video shows how the map of Bucharest grew quickly from 5 highways to a complete city over a two week period)