Web Mapping News
Google has decided to resume gathering street level imagery in four countries. Google announced on its European Public Policy blog that it will resume Street Viewing driving in Ireland, Norway, South Africa and Sweden. Google had halted the collection of imagery in May:
In May we announced that we had mistakenly included code in our software in Street View cars that collected WiFi payload data. As soon as we discovered our error, we not only stopped collecting WiFi data entirely, but also grounded our fleet of cars globally to give us time to remove the WiFi scanning equipment and discuss what had happened with local regulators.
Brian McClendon, VP of Engineering, Google Geo, noted in the post that all WiFi related software and hardware has been removed from the Street View vehicles. Each vehicle will collect photos and 3D imagery.
The Wall Street Journal is reporting that MapQuest will be launching an OpenStreetMap based online mapping site based in the United Kingdom. The MapQuest Blog has a post on the effort:
AOL’s MapQuest announced today, at the 4th annual international State of the Map 2010 conference, their plan to be the first major mapping site to embrace and encourage open source mapping at scale. As part of this initiative, MapQuest just launched their first site that is completely powered by open source data fromOpenStreetMap.org!
This new project – open.mapquest.co.uk – was developed using the new MapQuest.com design but using data provided by the OpenStreetMap community. The main difference between this new site and our existing MapQuest UK site is that the mapping and routing data was created, edited and enhanced by every day people like you. (via James Fee)
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Tags: Google, MapQuest, Online Mapping, Street View