Mislead by Google’s map on way to Mind Camp

November 6, 2005 By

Oh, nasty little online maps.

Quick, I want you to head to your favorite online map service.

Now, look at the front of the Seattle Mind Camp ticket. Type this into your map service:

 2811 102nd Street Seattle WA 98168

That’s the address of the Seattle Mind Camp. But, now, look at Google Maps and what it changed the address to:

2811 SW 102nd Street Seattle WA 98168

Buzz Bruggeman (CEO of ActiveWords) and I didn’t notice this yesterday when we first did it. Buzz was driving and stayed at my house. Guess what? That address is about five miles away from the real address.

Virtual Earth takes you to the right address.

Yahoo Maps beta takes you to the wrong place, but at least warns you that it didn’t find the right address.

Lots of people got mislead by the online maps, I learned after we arrived 20 minutes late.

What saved the day? Buzz had Streets and Trips loaded on his computer and that brought us to the right address.

But, other than that, the Mind Camp was great. Buzz and I stayed until about 10 p.m. Wireless was hard to get on, but I didn’t even try after the morning. The conversations were more interesting.

The Seattle PI’s Todd Bishop took good notes. The thing I came way from it? I need to get into Second Life and understand what’s going on there. Another thing I saw for the first time was Amazon’s Mechanical Turk. Tara Hunt wrote that session up too. I want to create a virtual software company in that virtual world.

Other good reports are from Rob Stevens, Eric Butler, Nancy White, and Alex Barnett – more on “Mind Camp” on Technorati.

Andru Edwards organized the event. Well done Andru and team! Bunch of photos are over on Flickr. Update: more photos are on the “Mind Camp 1.0″ Tag on Flickr. Update2: I fixed that link, and Ted Leung has a great report on his blog here.

Filed Under: Blog Tips, Geeks, Google Calendar, Marc Canter, Web
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  • http://www.jbctech.com James

    Robert, just as a FYI, your Virtual Earth link points to “S 102nd St, Seattle, WA 98168″ when you do a Google map search for that, it works:

    http://maps.google.com/maps?q=S+102nd+St+Seattle,+WA+98168&iwloc=A&hl=en

  • http://scobleizer.wordpress.com/ scobleizer

    James: yes, but you didn’t follow the directions. Go back and try the directions again.

    Virtual Earth turns the incorrect address into the correct one.

    Google turned it into an even more incorrect one and didn’t warn me.

  • http://scobleizer.wordpress.com/ scobleizer

    James: yes, but you didn’t follow the directions. Go back and try the directions again.

    Virtual Earth turns the incorrect address into the correct one.

    Google turned it into an even more incorrect one and didn’t warn me.

  • http://www.mashable.com/ PeteCashmore

    Robert,

    I’ve got an account in Second Life. I don’t use it all that much, though – turns out RL is better. But there’s some pretty interesting stuff going on in there: Make Magazine has its own piece of land, for instance. (Last time I checked, they were showing RocketBoom on the TV screens in-world). And the economy is pretty interesting, too.

    These guys have a nice blog if you’re trying to grok SL:

    http://www.idealworldmovie.com/footage/

    Introductory movie here:

    http://www.idealworldmovie.com/short/

  • http://www.mashable.com PeteCashmore

    Robert,

    I’ve got an account in Second Life. I don’t use it all that much, though – turns out RL is better. But there’s some pretty interesting stuff going on in there: Make Magazine has its own piece of land, for instance. (Last time I checked, they were showing RocketBoom on the TV screens in-world). And the economy is pretty interesting, too.

    These guys have a nice blog if you’re trying to grok SL:

    http://www.idealworldmovie.com/footage/

    Introductory movie here:

    http://www.idealworldmovie.com/short/

  • http://www.jbctech.com/ James

    Robert, I did follow directions…I was just pointing that out, because you should have linked to the same one for all 3 sites to show that point.

  • http://www.jbctech.com James

    Robert, I did follow directions…I was just pointing that out, because you should have linked to the same one for all 3 sites to show that point.

  • http://scobleizer.wordpress.com/ scobleizer

    James: I did. You’re not getting the point.

    If you put the original MindCamp address in all three you get different results.

    I STARTED WITH THE ORIGINAL MIND CAMP ADDRESS.

    You’re not listening.

  • http://scobleizer.wordpress.com/ scobleizer

    James: I did. You’re not getting the point.

    If you put the original MindCamp address in all three you get different results.

    I STARTED WITH THE ORIGINAL MIND CAMP ADDRESS.

    You’re not listening.

  • http://scobleizer.wordpress.com/ scobleizer

    On all three services I started with this address, not with the one you see on Google:

    2811 102nd Street Seattle WA 98168

  • http://scobleizer.wordpress.com/ scobleizer

    On all three services I started with this address, not with the one you see on Google:

    2811 102nd Street Seattle WA 98168

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  • http://www.jbctech.com/ James

    Haha Robert. I am listening. I do get the point. I understand fully that you started with “2811 102nd Street Seattle WA 98168.” ***AND*** I do understand that Google changed it to the incorrect one ***AND*** that Google did not even notify you of the change. I also understand the same with Yahoo! except that Yahoo! notified you. ***MY POINT*** was that your hotlink above was incorrect. Here is the link you provide:

    http://virtualearth.msn.com/?sp=adr.S%20102nd%20St%2C%20Seattle%2C%20WA%2098168

    This was for “Virtual Earth takes you to the right address.”

    Clearly your link was incorrect, because you just said “On all three services I started with this address, not with the one you see on Google:” However, your hotlink was pointed to “S 102nd St, Seattle, WA 98168″

    I wasn’t trying to argue with you, but apparently that’s how you read it. I was simply pointing something out. AND I understand that wasn’t the point of your entry, but I was just noting that it should have been:

    http://virtualearth.msn.com/?sp=2811%20102nd%20Street%2C%20Seattle%2C%20WA%2098168

    where we could have seen VE find the correct address.

  • http://www.jbctech.com James

    Haha Robert. I am listening. I do get the point. I understand fully that you started with “2811 102nd Street Seattle WA 98168.” ***AND*** I do understand that Google changed it to the incorrect one ***AND*** that Google did not even notify you of the change. I also understand the same with Yahoo! except that Yahoo! notified you. ***MY POINT*** was that your hotlink above was incorrect. Here is the link you provide:

    http://virtualearth.msn.com/?sp=adr.S%20102nd%20St%2C%20Seattle%2C%20WA%2098168

    This was for “Virtual Earth takes you to the right address.”

    Clearly your link was incorrect, because you just said “On all three services I started with this address, not with the one you see on Google:” However, your hotlink was pointed to “S 102nd St, Seattle, WA 98168″

    I wasn’t trying to argue with you, but apparently that’s how you read it. I was simply pointing something out. AND I understand that wasn’t the point of your entry, but I was just noting that it should have been:

    http://virtualearth.msn.com/?sp=2811%20102nd%20Street%2C%20Seattle%2C%20WA%2098168

    where we could have seen VE find the correct address.

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