Maps

I was just playing with the built-in map feature in Flock, which uses the new Yahoo! Maps.* Their maps aren't much different from Google's, or Microsoft's. How many ways can you Ajax up a map GUI. And, after all, it's all the same data, isn't it?

The funny thing is, it's not all the same data.**

According to Google, that train track that runs two blocks down the hill from me is called CalTrain, and the stop is called 22nd St. CalTrain Station. It carries trains all the way down to the Google Shuttle Transfer Station (which most of the world calls the Mountain View CalTrain Station) and beyond.

According to Yahoo!, that train track is called Southern Pacific, and there is no stop to be given a name. For a forward-looking company like Yahoo!, that's charmingly old-fashioned.

Yahoo! also thinks that Chavez is still called Army between Mission and Bayshore--just as old-fashioned, if not quite as charming.

On the other hand, according to Google,*** 22nd St. runs all the way from Potrero to Missouri. This would be a really handy street if it existed.

In fact, the day after I moved to Potrero Hill, armed with a Google Maps printout, I got off a bus at 22nd & Potrero to walk home across 22nd. I immediately discovered that this was wrong unless I wanted to jump over the freeway. But after detouring, everything looked fine. Until 22nd St. became a dirt path, a stone stairway, someone's driveway, a back yard, an unmarked and unlit path, and, finally, a cliff overlooking a fenced-in construction zone. (If you make it down the cliff and past the fence, it becomes a real street again for two car lengths or so.)

From that cliff, I think I could have jumped on top of the first house on the block, run downhill along the rooftops, and then rapelled into my flat. But I didn't have my climbing gear, or my action-movie theme music, so I had to detour two blocks out of the way.

At least I didn't try to drive across 22nd.

To Google's credit, there are actually signs saying 22nd St. every step of the way. Even at Connecticutt, where it's a path into someone's backyard to the west and a cliff to the east, it's clearly marked as 22nd St.

Yahoo! has 22nd St. running from Kansas to the point where it turns into a staircase. That not quite right, but it's the part that's theoretically drivable as long as you don't mind driving your SUV on narrow dirt paths that clearly don't go anywhere other than a staircase.

Looking up one of my old neighborhoods, I discovered to my surprise that Stanley Ave. connects up to Nichols Canyon and Curson. To get to Curson would require driving through someone's front door, out their back door, around their pool, through a hedge, and then up a 45-degree incline. To get to Nichols Canyon would require using their neighbor's garage door as a ramp to jump over the garage and the cliff behind it. I think you get an Insane Stunt Bonus for that one.

* Do I really have to type the exclamation point whenever I write Yahoo!? If I end an exclamation with their name, do I need two, as in "Damn that Yahoo!!"? I had a phone interview with Yahoo!, and the guy on the phone actually said, "The point of this interview is to find out if you're a Yahoo!" I could hear the exclamation point. At that moment, I began to wonder if maybe I was a Google. I didn't feel like one, but I called. They took so long to set up a phone interview that I already had four offers. So I guess I'm not going to work for a company that makes AJAX maps. Oh well.

** There's also search data, in addition to map data, and Google clearly beats Yahoo! here. If I leave off the Ave or the N on N. Stanley Ave, Google asks whether I mean Stanley Ave or Stanley Dr, or N or S. Yahoo just puts me three miles away from either of the two streets.

*** A big chunk of this was written shortly after I moved, whenever that was. Since then, Google appears to have fixed their data, and now has exactly the same 22nd St. as Yahoo! Maybe someone heard me complaining? Meanwhile, there's a dirt trail down from Connecticut and around the construction, at a manageable slope, not far from where 22nd should be. And some of the sillier signs are gone.