On Fri, 29 Aug 2008 07:12:10 +0100, Graculus put finger to keyboard
and typed:
>> And that is not all they are demolishing.
>>
>> "Internet mapping is wiping the rich geography and history of Britain
>> off the map, Britain's most senior cartographer warned yesterday.
>
>More complete crap. For a start, the headline is very in-Independent like in
>using a completely inappropriate word - demolishing.
I think you mean "very Independent-like". Such quality "reporting" is
typical of the Indy, these days.
>I bet you were drooling
>at that, only to find that no-one was demolishing anything. I'm afraid by
>the time I got to the sentence, "such monuments could fade from public
>consciousness" I dismissed the article as tripe.
And not just the article, but also the complaints from the
cartographer quoted therein. There are all sorts of different maps,
made for different purposes, and it merely happens that Google has
concentrated on creating basic road maps rather than anything more
detailed. And there's a very good reason for that - Google needs a
mapping system that is consistent globally, and they don't have access
to detailed maps of every location in the world. So they create a
system which will work even where there isn't much detail to be
obtained.
Probably the biggest difference, though, is cost. Google maps are free
to users. OS maps cost. OS maps cost a lot, if you're a business user.
So the difference in quality is very much a reflection of the adage
that "you get what you pay for". And, while Google (and their main
online mapping rival, Microsoft) provide and promote a free API for
anyone to embed their maps into a website with very few restrictions,
the OS only reluctantly does so and on terms that make it unusable for
almost any commercial site (which includes any site which carries so
much as a single advert).
There are other differences, too. The most common use of online maps
is route-finding. Google maps (and Microsoft, etc) are vector-mapped
images, which scale smoothly and can easily be used with a route
overlay. OS maps, by contrast, are bitmapped images which don't scale
smoothly and are harder to use with a route overlay.
I'm amazed that a so-called "senior cartographer" is so unaware of
these differences. No-one is going to buy a printed book of Google
maps. For offline use, the more detailed maps provided by OS,
Bartholomew, Michelin, etc are still far superior to any online
vector-mapped system. But the web is not a book or sheet of paper, and
there are applications of a web-based map which can be more easily met
by using a lower detail level. Rather than complaining about it,
surely a cartographer should be pleased that there are more and more
openngs for different types of maps, and hence more demand for the
services provided by the cartography profession.
Mark
