Entries in collaboration (8)

Monday
Feb142011

Embarcadero Center - Google Maps issues and problems

Update: Two Embarcadero Center officially dubbed “Chevy’s Fresh Mex Center”

Update: “Reported a problem” to Google on this item and this too, first in my list.

Previously: Correcting and improving Google maps (Embarcadero, Osha Thai, Waterbar)

For the Embarcadero neighborhood in San Francisco, all “user contributed” edits need to be moderated. That is not the issue. Overall features and UI design are what is at issue here. That includes how markers, labels, and addresses are handled, and what is editable, what is not, and what can reasonably be expected of “user contribution.”

Duplicate entries abound, but aren’t easily corrected. Embarcadero One through Five are not clearly marked. Many visible businesses have the markers in the wrong place. The very definition of where the marker goes is ambiguous — “place the marker at the entrance” — does not mention automobile or pedestrian entrance. I have a big problem with the 5 Embarcadero Center marker that is five blocks North (outside this view), and the difficulty in managing duplicates. I’m certainly done trying to “edit” these issues into submission. I will however point Google at this map, reporting it as “a problem.”

Here is the map overview. I had to remove the lavender polygon on mine because it occludes mouse clicks. Here are screen captures of Google’s and my map, click to go there.

 

 

Business (postal) addresses not very useful here. Street view needs a golf-cart size vehicle for the “pedestrian view,” straght down the center pedestrian corridor from One to Four. Note that some key improvements were made, and here you can see that Commercial alley is the pedestrian route. Street view doesn’t go inside but it does let you “advance” one block at a time, sort of like a “teleport.” 


View One Embarcadero Center - pedestrian and parking entrance in a larger map

Budget rent-a-car’s “address” is Five Embarcadero Center, which no-one knows is actually the Hyatt. regardless, the “entrance” to Five Embarcadero Center is… the Hyatt front door, isn’t it? That would work for both cars and pedestrians. But no, the Budget marker is on the divider at Sacramento and Drumm, looking toward Three, and no mention of the valet.

On my first visit to Budget Rent-a-car, I was at Justin Herman Plaza and was directed by Google Maps to Mission St. west, then Main to Market to Drumm. That was before “walking directions.” Here I show how walking directions have improved a lot, but the stupid 5 Embarcadero marker has the wrong location but the right zip code. You have to pick the one with the wrong zip code or you will be sorry. There are two of them, one with “5” and one with “Five.” At this point I don’t know if Google Maps searches for Marker titles or addresses, but it seems OK if you have a single “Five Embarcadero Center” marker with the correct information. It’s the bad markers and wrong zip codes and duplicate entries that conspire against finding one’s way to the Budget counter. 

Apparently the Hyatt marker occludes the Five Embarcadero marker, which follows from what I’m seeing: Markers with the exact same address and location hide one another, and there’s only one winner. So, looking at the map you will never see “5 Embarcadero Center.” You have to search for it and select the marker. Side note: I will henceforth call Two Embarcadero Center “Chevy’s Fresh Mex Center” after the long-closed (and demolished) restaurant that prevents the Two Embarcadero Center label from being seen. Even more amusing, this would be fixed by moving the marker for a venue which is long gone. This is the sort of “edit” that I decline to make, since it requires the moderator understand the bigger picture. 

My actual destination, the Budget counter, was in the Hyatt lobby (it is now on the street level just behind the main entrance.) I will probably notify Budget that they also need to direct first-time customers better. Either way, the only good Google Maps solution to these problems is to use the marker position I suggest, or make an exception to the description so first-time visitors don’t drive (or walk) around looking for a sign that doesn’t exist. Why is it so difficult to understand that directions to a rental car company are most useful for people who are picking up a car? In other words, how can one get to the effing COUNTER assuming one does not ALREADY HAVE A CAR, which is why ONE IS GOING TO RENT A CAR. It’s fortunate that there is a solution at all, which is the straight-line vector from the street view closest to the valet drop-off to (approximately) the counter, which passes through the Hyatt front entrance.

I defy anyone to explain to me why the definition of where a Marker goes seems to 1) assume one is driving 2) be completely useless for 99.99% of first-time visitors to the Embarcadero Center. If the definition of “Marker” is the automobile entrance, then almost all the markers will pile up around the parking garage entrances. If “Marker” is “entrance of location” then someone has a lot of ‘splainin to to. And if the address is “One Embarcadero Center” there are many entrances, some for the complex, some for access to elevators, and others are individual doors for businesses giving out onto the street, or inside the center. I don’t believe Google has a good solution for this, mostly because we Americans are car freaks and they (Googlers) are too in love with Street View.

Bing maps does do labels better: Bird’s eye view and map view all have One through Four properly labelled. Bird’s eye view can be rotated. User contributions can be enabled and even “subscribed to.” 

 

Let’s also not forget that The Embarcadero is a divided road just to the east. “5 The Embarcadero Center” is very evil. So is “5 Embarcadero”. Did I mention that there are very few addresses on The Embarcadero? Yes, they are piers mostly, but not consecutive no no no. Odd numbers going North of the Ferry building, even numbers going south. Unfortunately, often “Pier 1, The Embarcadero” gets turned into “1 The Embarcadero” which is perhaps why I’m seeing some usage of “1 Pier.” We don’t make it easy, certainly. Pity the tourists!


View Embarcadero Center - Google Maps issues and problems in a larger map

Wednesday
Aug042010

Wednesday, August 4, 2010 (busy day)

Today I 

I’m going to give myself a reward

Google Bike

Tuesday
Dec222009

Web War: Contemporary content battles and the future Web

UPDATE: in defense of Demand Media

Demand Media May Be Bad for Social Media, but Not for Journalism

The history of the Internet is being re-written so quickly it makes the future web a constantly moving target, even for the simple question “how will we access general information?”

 

(you really expect me to give up and go home?)

Overshadowing this issue is the way search engines crawl the Internet and rank pages on relevance. Google and Bing seem to be the two left standing. I remember having to sift through pages of AltaVista results back in the day

Search engines can be considered your primary filter for the Internet; but as they are bombarded with new content from “Content Farms” they — or we — must adapt. Some think “social search” will become the new primary filter, creating ad-hoc “ambient feeds.” These feeds would use human filtering to fight search engines defeated by 1) “SEO” gaming, or 2) drowning in a sea of mediocre content.

I already use Google reader, Twitter and FriendFeed for much of my content discovery; search engines are most useful when I need references for a topic I’m writing about.  However, it’s hard to imagine this solution working for the vast majority — who don’t “stay on top of” breaking news, and are happy enough with answers returned from any old portal like Yahoo.com or Ask.com.

Completely separate from yet completely bound up with the issue is business and profit, open collaboration and community and social issues, online public libraries and access to educational resources. Many blogs are profitable and growing, where news organizations are failing; some by federation and streamlining, some by ad revenue and huge traffic numbers. Some have started down the road of quantity over quality, and often echo each other, especially in the tech sector. This isn’t nearly as large a problem as that presented by “Content Farms” however.  The number of “hot stories” in the tech sector is a drop in the ocean compared to the number of different search engine queries at any given moment. The latter is what “Content Farms” aim to capture.

(if you don’t accept our low buyout offer, we will bury you until dead)

“Moderated collaboration or curated knowledge gardens”:

“Content farms”:

(don’t let this happen to you)

Required reading

(live to fight another day)

Still images from 300 (film) Imdb link

Related Post: Expert Village Advanced Piano vs. Lang Lang with Orange

Wednesday
Dec022009

All-time best of YouTube: Michael Wesch (digital ethnography, KSU)

Youtube user “mwesch” is an Assistant Professor of Cultural Anthropology at Kansas State University and represents to me the very best potential of YouTube and “citizen media.”

This is a playlist of some of his hugely successful YouTube videos.

From his page at Kansas State:

Dubbed “the explainer” by Wired magazine, Michael Wesch is a cultural anthropologist exploring the effects of new media on society and culture. After two years studying the implications of writing on a remote indigenous culture in the rain forest of Papua New Guinea, he has turned his attention to the effects of social media and digital technology on global society.  His videos on culture, technology, education, and information have been viewed by millions, translated in over 15 languages, and are frequently featured at international film festivals and major academic conferences worldwide. Wesch has won several major awards for his work, including a Wired Magazine Rave Award, the John Culkin Award for Outstanding Praxis in Media Ecology, and he was recently named an Emerging Explorer by National Geographic.

 

Monday
Nov302009

Jennifer Leggio of ZDNet is Wrong (Wikipedia 2008)

FROM THE ARCHIVES: November 30, 2008

Wikipedia is getting a fresh round of scrutiny amidst observations that contribution has dropped precipitously in the last year.

Related Post: Unabashed Plea: Leave Wikipedia Aloooooone (sob)

See Also: Communications During Terrorist Attacks are Not Bad - Schneier on Security


ZDNet article by Jennifer Leggio (November 28th, 2008)

Mumbai attack coverage demonstrates (good and bad) maturation point of social media

The content on Page 2 leaves me with two choices. Either she does not understand Wikipedia, or is using it as a punching bag to make some grandiose claim about the shortcomings of social media and citizen journalism.

I attempted to clarify. See that FriendFeed conversation here. Note that she issues me a “correction” and did not respond to my concern that she flat out does not understand how Wikipedia works.


The Wikipedia article pictured on page 2 was seeded with valid information and grew from there. She saw it defaced for a moment, but didn’t manage to get a “screen shot.” She got the “screen shot” from a friend.

Here is the latest revision of the Wikipedia entry titled “November 2008 Mumbai attacks”. I looked for the revision she cites, and failed to find it. Needless to say, that’s beside the point See below.

At the time of this writing (half-past Midnight the morning of November 30) the article has extensive information, time lines, pictures, and 179 references. The number of entries in the Page history is in excess of 1500.

Is it possible Jennifer and her friend don’t understand that a Wikipedia article about a disaster such as this is the result of thousands of contributions? Does she not understand that for it to appear as she shows it, someone has to delete all of the content and replace it with “Bush Sucks?”

Does she not know that this sort of defacement is extremely noticeable to the hundreds of people making contributions in real time, and the next contributor will simply “undo” the defacement before making their changes?

She is betraying a stunning ignorance or bias here. I have less and less patience with lazy opinion pieces, or pieces that take cheap shots to make some trumped-up case. And in light of the tragedy of the actual events in Mumbai, I am appalled that it is reduced to “Bush Sucks.” I must say, in this case “ZDNet Sucks” also.

How many more ways can “main-stream media” fail? I’m not sure I know the answer to that one.

UPDATE:
Found the notorious defacement(s). Two of them. Lasting 5 and 7 seconds for a grand total of 12. 


OMG STOP THE PRESSES. WIKIPEDIA IS BROKEN. I CAN HAZ PULITZER NOW?



My last comment on the article:

I will eagerly anticipate articles from ZDNet on how wikipedia has attained the success it has now, and what can be improved.

I will not entertain casual sniping at one of the best examples of a massive collaborative effort to date.

I wonder if Jennifer, and others at ZDNet would care to take an “official” anti-wikipedia position, and explain that this in no way is affected by business motives and an erosion of the authority of such as ZDNet. Looking forward to it!