http://www.edparsons.com/2005/07/visiting-the-mothership-despite-microsoft/ The blog of Ed Parsons, Geographer. Mon, 06 Feb 2012 22:11:39 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.1 http://www.edparsons.com/2005/07/visiting-the-mothership-despite-microsoft/#comment-62 edparsons.com » Blog Archive » Guardian article just plain wrong !! Thu, 09 Mar 2006 06:30:40 +0000 http://www.edparsons.com/?p=81#comment-62 [...] The much admired data in Google Maps, MapPoint etc. comes from commercial vendors, which Google etc. have had to license, the base government supplied data does not meet their needs.. Remember the famous “Where is Apple” discussion last year, a result of government funded data used by Microsoft being so out of date it did not show the location of Apples’ offices in Cupertino ! [...] [...] The much admired data in Google Maps, MapPoint etc. comes from commercial vendors, which Google etc. have had to license, the base government supplied data does not meet their needs.. Remember the famous “Where is Apple” discussion last year, a result of government funded data used by Microsoft being so out of date it did not show the location of Apples’ offices in Cupertino ! [...]

]]> http://www.edparsons.com/2005/07/visiting-the-mothership-despite-microsoft/#comment-61 Grady Meehan Sun, 31 Jul 2005 14:47:31 +0000 http://www.edparsons.com/?p=81#comment-61 I agree that free data is often worth the price (little or nothing and worse, possibly misleading). University GIS programs often depend on free government (in the US) so the student mindset develops around using free data even if out of date (especially demographic data). For business use, using 2000 population data is appropriate if planning for 1999, not 2006. Microsoft's Virtual Earth probably uses the old Terraserver image data from the US Geological Survey. Once again, Google can be praised for using imagery that is of a more recent date. Thank you for your observation. I agree that free data is often worth the price (little or nothing and worse, possibly misleading). University GIS programs often depend on free government (in the US) so the student mindset develops around using free data even if out of date (especially demographic data). For business use, using 2000 population data is appropriate if planning for 1999, not 2006. Microsoft’s Virtual Earth probably uses the old Terraserver image data from the US Geological Survey. Once again, Google can be praised for using imagery that is of a more recent date. Thank you for your observation.

]]> http://www.edparsons.com/2005/07/visiting-the-mothership-despite-microsoft/#comment-60 Mark Sat, 30 Jul 2005 19:32:14 +0000 http://www.edparsons.com/?p=81#comment-60 While in the "Valley" you should have stopped by the Computer History Museum [http://www.computerhistory.org], a utterly fascinating place not so far away from Apple headquarters. You could have seen some of the first Apples [http://apple.computerhistory.org/] ;-) Google is just up the road (and yes, it exists too!) While in the “Valley” you should have stopped by the Computer History Museum [http://www.computerhistory.org], a utterly fascinating place not so far away from Apple headquarters. You could have seen some of the first Apples [http://apple.computerhistory.org/] Google is just up the road (and yes, it exists too!)

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