BBC NEWS | UK | Online maps ‘wiping out history’

created 29 August 2008 in links tagged google and maps.

Apparently , “internet maps such as Google and Multimap were good for driving but left out crucial data people need to understand a landscape”. Which is rubbish. Firstly, as blech says, “if the OS had licenced its data to Google Maps, then maybe people would use it”. But mostly I hate this old-fashioned attitude that there’s only one possible view of a map, and that it therefore has to contain everything. As Google say in the article, churches, shops, landmarks, etc, are on the map. They’re just in an information layer that’s not visible by default. The ability to see a custom map with the information relevant to me at a particular moment is great. The interface for displaying this stuff is lacking. But I’d much rather approach the problem from this direction than trying to deal with a single map for all purposes.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7586789.stm