11th May 2009, 08:02 PM
The three main issues with HERs using Google Maps are:
- Advertising. Google *will* start placing adverts on their maps at some point. They have to give 6 months notice in advance, but any responsible HERs using GM will have strategy in place for this. I'm sure.
- QoS. You have no contract with Google, and you get what you pay for. If GM goes down for a day, so does your mapping.
- Data ownership. The thorny issue of derived data...
Of some relevance to this topic is this post and associated comments:
http://www.freeourdata.org.uk/blog/?p=262
and this
http://www.edparsons.com/2008/11/who-rea...ce-anyway/
And a quick sidenote - Google Maps uses a Spherical Mercator (ie Mercator overlaid onto a sphere, not an elliposoid), not UTM.
Ideally though, the HERs would provide API access to this data so people could start doing interesting stuff with it, rather than just looking at dots on a map.
- Advertising. Google *will* start placing adverts on their maps at some point. They have to give 6 months notice in advance, but any responsible HERs using GM will have strategy in place for this. I'm sure.
- QoS. You have no contract with Google, and you get what you pay for. If GM goes down for a day, so does your mapping.
- Data ownership. The thorny issue of derived data...
Of some relevance to this topic is this post and associated comments:
http://www.freeourdata.org.uk/blog/?p=262
and this
http://www.edparsons.com/2008/11/who-rea...ce-anyway/
And a quick sidenote - Google Maps uses a Spherical Mercator (ie Mercator overlaid onto a sphere, not an elliposoid), not UTM.
Ideally though, the HERs would provide API access to this data so people could start doing interesting stuff with it, rather than just looking at dots on a map.