GOOGLE WIKI'S MAPS

I thought this might make an interesting post since we have been discussing wikipedia in class. What do you think?

According to an article on computer world.com by Heather Havenstein, Google map users in both the U.S and Australia can now edit the locations of their businesses or homes in order to allow others to correctly locate them. The article said the following.

"The program requires a user to search for his home address to find an arrow that will have information about the location. After clicking edit, a user then can move the arrow to the correct location and save it. When anyone else searches for the address, they will see the edited marker at the correct address, Google said."

According to the article Google users will also be protected from ,those individuals seeking to put markers in the wrong spot because their will be a feature that allows users to back track the original marker on the map.

I think that this is a great thing and the only sure way to make sure that the maps provided by Google is accurate. People get lost all the time using maps that they are sure were accurate. I am sure that Google ,maps are no different. Google has come up with a smart idea to make this service that they provide better, and the feature that protects the users from incorrect map location moves will ensure that users feel comfortable using the site. It is very interesting to see how the wiki idea can be applied to more things than just written information.

Google always getting better...

Google being the most visited, most profitable, arguably the most powerful company on the internet is always trying to improve to keep up its standards and popularity.

"Google remains a search engine. And its search pages, blue hyperlinks set against a bland, white background, have made it the most visited, most profitable and arguably the most powerful company on the Internet. Google is the homework helper, navigator and yellow pages for half a billion users, able to find the most improbable needles in the world’s largest haystack of information in just the blink of an eye."

This quote is taken from the NY Times article "Google Keeps Tweaking It's Search Engine".

This article touches on the fact the Google is the number one search engine yet often you are able to search something and not find it. The article also explains how they built a system able to not only give you what you ask for but to understand what you need , being that people sometimes spell words wrong, or mean one thing but say anothe. Overall Google is never complete. Google's engineers are steadly searching for new ways to improve the site as well as make it better.

LINK TO WEB 2.0 GOOGLE ARTICLE

Last week I published a post about Tim O'Reilly, the father of web 2.0 bashing Google. Here is a link to this article.Just click the link and please give feedback!

O'Reilly comments