geo2web.com

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In an utterly shocking turn of events, a very-probably homeless/alcoholic/drug addicted¹ man has quite clearly passed-out in a doorway here in Philadelphia!

This piece of shocking privacy-invasion follows the discovery of a similar image last week in which a young man was pictured passed out on a grass verge². Despite the fact the man’s face wasn’t pictured, the sight of him sleeping on the roadside was enough to make him furious, and he made sure everyone knew all about it by venting his anger to Britain’s crappest newspaper.

The privacy issues surrounding the launch of Street View in Australia have been widely publicised, and in response Google Australia have been pro-actively removing potentially offensive images extremely quickly - this one was removed before it even appeared on Street View Fun.

Given that our Philadelphian is more likely to be drunk and homeless than a student from a nice Australian neighbourhood, you have to wonder whether this latest image will be removed as quickly, if at all³.

Thanks to Scott Roberts.

Locations: Pennsylvania / Categories: Street Views

View in Google Earth

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You’re reading an entry from Google Sightseeing, which is copyright © 2008 Alex Turnbull & James Turnbull and must not be reproduced without permission.

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Feed Maps

Feed Maps is a new API from Map Channels that lets users create Google Maps mash-ups from a number of different data sources. The data sources that can be combined in one map are; KML files, GeoRSS, My Maps, Tab-delimited text and Google Spreadsheets.

Being able to combine geographical data from a number of different sources is a great idea and the API is very easy to use. I cut and pasted one of the example maps from Feed Maps and in a matter of seconds changed the addresses of the My Map feeds to three New York My Maps that I found on Google Maps. So in about ten minutes I was able to create my own New York Video & Restaurant Map.

Feed Maps has produced a number of its own example maps created using the API:

Tutorial 1 - Simple Map of London with preset bounds and no feeds
Tutorial 2 - Silicon Valley Historic Tour
Tutorial 3 - Silicon Valley Historic Tour, with Street View added
Tutorial 4 - London Landmarks from a Google Spreadsheet
Tutorial 5 - Interesting Street Views from a Google Spreadsheet
Tutorial 6 - Portland Farmers Market Vendors, using marker and description filters
Tutorial 7 - Miami Hotels (using paging to display a large number of places)
Tutorial 8 - London For Free, combining multiple KML feeds
Tutorial 9 - Interesting Street Views using Google Earth

If you interested in using the API Mapperz has a good post today discussing the advantages and disadvantages of using each data source.

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Map Channels Feed Maps New!

Multiple Feeds from MyMaps or Google Spreadsheets can be brought together on a single map.

How to do this…
To save the KML file, goto ‘My Maps‘, right click on ‘View In Google Earth’ and copy the link location. Open a new browser tab and paste in the copied link. Edit the link and replace ‘output=nl’ with ‘output=kml’, then press ‘enter’ and save the KML file.

If you locally host your KML data you can use Google Site Maps to get your data included in Google Searches.

GeoRSS Format
My Maps have a GeoRSS option which Feed Maps can use (using the Google AJAX Feeds API). GeoRSS has the advantage that the data is read from the current copy of the My Maps data. Feed caching is used, so changes can take up to an hour to be included in the GeoRSS file.

Advantages and Disadvantages…
The drawback of using GeoRSS is that the style information for markers, line and polygons is not included. You can get around this problem by creating a separate My Map for each place type. Within your Feed Map code load each My Maps as a separate GeoRSS feed and set a different marker style for each feed.
Google Spreadsheet Format
Data from Google Spreadsheets can be used in Feed Maps. The spreadsheet must be published to be used. The first (header) row of the spreadsheet is skipped.

JSON Slow - Tab-delimited Fast
Unlike My Maps, Google Spreadsheets supports JSON format which lets you load in updated spreadsheet data. However the JSON format used does contain a large amount of unnecessary data and as a result map data may not load as quickly as other formats.
Tab-Delimited Text Format
Tab-delimited text files are probably the most efficient feed format. Fields are separated by single tab characters and rows are separated by carriage return (\r) and line feed (\n) characters. You can use a spreadsheet program to edit the file. The Header line is always skipped.

Recommend is the London Tutorial to see how it it done.
http://www.mapchannels.com/mcfm_tutorials/tutorial8.htm

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