Sunday, January 27, 2008

Looking for Someone Smarter Than Me

I have been working to get my neighborhood included in online map web sites. It was built in 2000/2001 and is still not viewable online. Some research determined that NAVTEQ and TeleAtlas provide most of the map information for the US. And, you know which company provides for a particular area based on what company logo shows up at the bottom right of a particular map you are viewing. NAVTEQ provides most of the data for the neighborhoods and town around me. I then learned that I could create a map report on NAVTEQ's web site requesting them to update their information. I did that in December 2007 (they also indicated that updates can at their quickest take 3-4 months). Then, I cruised over to TeleAtlas only to learn that their maps DO include our neighborhood!

So, why the rambling? Well, today I was doing some research on local businesses and came across a site that had an embedded Google Map (my preference), showing my neighborhood! I became excited as I hoped that finally, someone could map directions to my house! But, all it has done is made me realize there is a lot about Google's Map services I do not understand.

Here is what I found. This is a screen capture of what I found, showing my neighborhood.


Here is what I am used to seeing.


So, I examined the URL of the new map and found the &key parameter used created a much more updated map (you will notice other differences between the two maps, and in all cases, the first map is correct).

After some searching, I know very little about the &key parameter! I will start posting on some forums to learn what has been done, but hopefully someone may stumble upon this and inform me what is going on.

2 comments:

Fetchy said...

please post the links to both!!

Chris said...

I almost did on the post, but didn't.

Link with the subdivision

Link without the subdivision

So the key value is ABQIAAAAH_dCH5TkqXSDe68UKX30mhQLV_ma2foQ0kzHx8LuOP_yDpd9kBReQdYl0HqHUUVtCIQQeZf6BRlvYw