Google Maps takes shelter from the British summer
Google has extended its indoor mapping, launched in America last November, to the UK, providing guidance around any property the owners care to share. Google is priming the pump with floor plans for 40 sites around the UK, including Kings Cross, City Airport and the V&A, but anywhere else that wants visitors to be able to …
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none are the supermarkets
That would be a full time jobs for a team of people for a large chain, everytime I go into those near me everything has been rearranged. Unlik ethe local hardware shop, I can tell my wife over the phone the exact aisle/location on the shelf where anything is. Try that in a supermarket and you'll be sprinkling washing powder on your cornflakes.
I wish zoos and such would do this
While I understand why shopping malls would salivate over the chance to be in Google ("Consume and reproduce. Stay asleep.") I'd like to see more zoos and museums do this - especially if they make the appropriate links to the displays (e.g. the bears cage links to info on the bears, the Liberty 7 exhibit links to the restoration information, etc. - bonus for zoos with webcams on the animals).
Liberty 7
Liberty 7? ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercury-Redstone_4 )
I don't think we're in Kansas (Cosmosphere and Space Center ) any more, Toto.
Mine's the one with the Ruby Slippers.
How long...
...before miniature Google drones, like humming birds, are flying in through open windows to map the interior of your property as they surreptitiously seek out USB ports to slurp your data nectar from...
Of course, this could only happen if one of their rogue programmers slipped up again.
Re: USB Humming Bird Drones
Wow!
I'd tick "Allow" just to sit and watch them.
works just fine
I typed in "hershey bar" into Google maps, and the nearest one is 200 km away in Munich.
Re: works just fine
My nearest Mars Bar is in California. I'm in India. Google doesn't know the way
Where this will be REALLY useful
Never mind the Olympics, please can you ask IKEA when they will be uploading the data for their stores. The places I really need a SatNav are in Milton Keynes, and inside IKEA. Especially their Wembley store.
Re: Turkeys voting for Christmas
"It gives Google the keys to shows ads based on nearby shops and your location. "
And yet, many many webmasters *already* give google and the like the ability to track their customers and offer the adverts of competing suppliers, by incorporating externally hosted third party code and spyware services in their sites.
I suspect the webmasters' bosses never bother to look at their own company's site with noscript and are therefore completely oblivious how good their site might be at introducing their potential customers to their other competitors.
Lets hope suppermarkets
realise its a good idea nad upload maps soon and before they realise the reasons why it isn't a good idea for them.
America
Most building inspection departments in local government have the blueprints for new construction-- I think these are accessible, but don't know if they are public domain. Since this practice started decades ago, many houses/businesses/stores have prints available *somewhere* in a government office.
Makes targeting that home made autonomous spybot with a camera all that much easier.
Why?
I can only see one single use case for this... to tell Londoners who go to a Tube station they don't know particularly well which end of the platform the exit is nearest. Is that really worth the time and effort to map everything?
While I'd normally say only mad people would share floorplans of their houses, unfortunately it probably means 80% of today's society where common sense is a totally alien concept...
What about Terrorism (TM)
If I take pictures inside a building, I'm likely to be Gitom'd faster than a bung getting transferred to a corrupt politico's offshore bank account, but Google apparently has no problems.
Loads of others working on it....
Google may be the first big player to bring maps indoors, but there are dozens of major companies and over 35 start-ups also working in the space. The race doesn't always go to the fast.... http://www.grizzlyanalytics.com/report_2012_05_indoor.html
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