[Myexperiment-discuss] Google maps/mashups article

[Antoon Goderis]

http://www.wired.com/techbiz/it/magazine/15-07/ff_maps?currentPage=1

"The annotations weren't created by Google, nor by some official mapping
agency. Instead, they are the products of a volunteer army of amateur
cartographers. "It didn't take sophisticated software," Hanke says. "What it
took was a substrate - the satellite imagery of Earth - in an accessible
form and a simple authoring language for people to create and share stuff.
Once that software existed, the urge to describe and annotate just took
off." 

"Today, the number of mashed-up Google Maps exceeds 50,000."

"Once you express location in human terms, you get multiple places with the
same name, or political issues over where boundaries are, or local
differences," says David Weinberger. "As soon as you leave the latitude/
longitude substrate, you get lost in the ambiguous jumble of meaning. It's
as close to Babel as we get." 

"In the midst of all this cacophony, Google is discovering that a smart,
effective search engine is once again the key."

+1 for the last comment :-)

Antoon