Spamming Google Maps

An anonymous reader writes "Google organized a flyover of Sydney, Australia last Friday for Australia Day. The images taken on the day will be posted to Google Maps in a few weeks. A number of dotcoms spent hours making huge signs that would be visible from the air. It will be interesting to see whether Google will repeat the event in other cities. If they do, get prepared early. What sign would you make?"

None

[Turn-X Alphonse (789240)]

None, because it ruins the entire point of maps if you turn them into nothing but billboards.

Re:None

[morgan_greywolf (835522)]

None, because it ruins the entire point of maps if you turn them into nothing but billboards.

Does it, though? I could see, for instance, fast food chains getting in on the action. Imagine, if you will, if all of the KFCs got together and on the roof of each of the KFC restauraunts is a huge image of Colonel Sanders at the time Google is doing the fly-by photos. You'd know right where get your Original Recipe(tm) Bucket of Chicken without even searching!

Re:

[suv4x4 (956391)]

None, because it ruins the entire point of maps if you turn them into nothing but billboards.

This is easily solved by the online maps simply not announcing where they'll shoot next week. Unless you have the money to spam the entire world, for an year...

Re:None

[suv4x4 (956391)]

This is easily solved by putting in place a corporate policy to include roof decoration for all franchises.

You can't actually be against people doing what they want with their own roofs right? In fact, putting readable symbols on your own roof will make the building easily recognizable in a map, so it's a positive thing.

The problem in my opinion is people like those in the article which "spammed" a public park.

Re:

[DjReagan (143826)]

Did they really fail? What was the point of the "experiment" that Google tried? What was the purpose behind them announcing the flyover in advance? Perhaps this is what Google wanted? Perhaps they wanted something else? What makes one action a success and another a failure?

Re:

[SCHecklerX (229973)]

I'm only replying because the parent was modded 'insightful'. You don't need to spam images. The query 'KFC near whereveriam' works just fine. That's the powerful thing about google doing maps in the first place. Heck, I use google maps as my primary phone book these days.

Re:

[Omestes (471991)]

Good point, but this isn't how things work anymore. For some reason companies have eschewed things such as the concept of brand loyalty, for the idea of shoving their image down your throat until you gag.

Go watch some sports, especially NASCAR, and notice that you've somehow been conned into watching a 2 hour commercial for Redbull, Oil, and Viagra, with the added joy of some commercials in between. All sports are like this now, I caught part of ESPN2's recap of the winter "X" Games, pardon, the JEEP wint

Re:

[Hrodvitnir (101283)]

"I'm wondering how long it will be until all Americans are legally forced to tattoo some product to themselves in a visible area."

Don't be silly. The government won't need to make a law like this. The free market will handle it. By 2040 we will all need the revenue from these tattoos to stay above the poverty line.

Bullseye

[krygny (473134)]

If you look at the roof of the Target store in College Point, NY, there's a huge logo. Not such a good idea.

Re:Bullseye

[ortholattice (175065)]

If you look at the roof of the Target store in College Point, NY, there's a huge logo. Not such a good idea.

For those too lazy to look it up: Target store in College Point, NY [google.com]

Re:Bullseye

[maxwells_deamon (221474)]

So if I am flying over this is a hot air balloon, do I have permission to drop things on that roof?

Re:

[1u3hr (530656)]

If you look at the roof of the Target store in College Point, NY, there's a huge logo. Not such a good idea.

Why isn;t it a good idea?

Terrorists? Martians? Pigeons?

Re:Bullseye

[jlindy (1028748)]

Gives a whole new meaning to "Google bomb"

Re:None

[harlows_monkeys (106428)]

Uhm...if Google maps gets you to the right intersection, and then you can't take over from there and figure out which of the four corners has the Taco Bell, you shouldn't be going out for food on your own in the first place.

Re:

[Dachannien (617929)]

Around here, there's only room for one Starbucks per intersection, what with all the CVSes, Walgreenses, and Rite-Aids in the way.

Re:None

[Score Whore (32328)]

None, because it ruins the entire point of maps if you turn them into nothing but billboards.

Ummm. This is Google we're talking about. The guys who do everything they can to convince people to place ads on every page on the internet? (As an fyi, Google's ads frequently make up 20-30% of the data transfered when you load up a page with their ads.)

Have you ever put something like "Mt. Rainier" into Google maps? Does it seem fucking stupid that Mt. Rainier is not one of the returned results? Maybe Google has already "ruined the entire point of maps."

Re:

[sethawoolley (1005201)]

For places without street addresses, the geocoder can look up the information directly in the POI (point of interest) database and find coordinates for any feature the website is exposing. Google's map interface isn't the most well-written, even though the geocoder software they use/license (or used at one point) is perfectly capable of this.

For road routing of non-road-network points, they can either "snap to" the nearest road, or the POIs often have "entry links" where you're supposed to be routed to on

Re:

[General Wesc (59919)]

I thought maps were for finding your way around. Seems like if my house had 'Wesc's House' painted on the roof, it would be beneficial.

I think putting something up just for the mapping and then removing it could be problematic, as you're intentionally making the map quickly become out-of-date, but unless your banner obscures something, still no real harm. Though, I suppose it could get annoying if everyone did it.

Of course

[LlamaDragon (97577)]

"Hi Mom!"

She always loves that.

Re:how could anyone forget....

[gardyloo (512791)]

I can't decide whether you're talking about the parent poster's mom or not, but I like it either way.

Naughty naughty

[rawket.scientist (812855)]

An arrow pointing to my asshole neighbor's house with the caption "Unsecured wireless network here!!"

"Here's your sign"

[wowbagger (69688)]

There's only one thing to put on such a sign:

"Mostly Harmless"

Re:"Here's your sign"

[SkyDude (919251)]

There's only one thing to put on such a sign: "Mostly Harmless"

C'mon, we're geeks here: "Hello world" is what belongs on the sign

We apologise for the inconvenience

[nietsch (112711)]

If we're doing hitchhikers guide the sign should be in big flaming letters saying 'we apologise for the inconvenience'

Wouldn't that be a nice message from dog?

Btw: Hey Wow where is my insult?

All Your Base Are Belong To Us

[Fuyu (107589)]

All Your Base Are Belong To Us

I'm still waiting for this area to be updated

[markh1967 (315861)]

Where I live right now is just a very low-res blur on Google Earth and Maps. We've had a banner on the roof of our garage that reads "Fuck off Google!" in 3' high letters for the past two years just waiting for the day they update their imagery. We're still waiting...

Get a life

[kevin_conaway (585204)]

or GBTW

I guess spam's cool now

[solevita (967690)]

Over the last week or so there's been a lot of Slashdot stories about spam, but I guess now it's cool!

1: Get your preppy nerd mates to spam google about your blog
2:Spam /. about your blog
3: ???????
4: Profit!

Who cares if we have to wait an age to see if Google actually took your photograph? The important thing is that, as with most weekends, news articles are hard to come by and someone who probably describes themselves as "whacky" or "insane"* managed to spam Google and /.. Cool.




*If you're the type of

The best part.

[Eevee (535658)]

The signs were too small. All you'll see in the final resolution is a thin white line. You're talking about possibly four or five pixels wide.

Nah, you can see penis drawing from space

[Mr. McD (166893)]

This fine rooftop example for instance:

http://googlesightseeing.com/maps?p=1211&c=&t=k&hl =en&ll=54.506361,-1.35223&z=19 [googlesightseeing.com]

Or this gem in Arizona:

http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=en&q=85022&ie=U TF8&z=17&ll=33.634542,-112.059485&spn=0.004582,0.0 13475&t=k&om=1 [google.com]

As long as they had a ballpark sized ad, they should be ok.

Ryan-

Penis Spam on GoogleMaps

[blantonl (784786)]

There is even Penis Spam on google maps:

The Yarm School in the UK (Kids Drawing a Penis on the Roof)

http://googlesightseeing.com/maps?p=&c=&t=k&hl=en& ll=54.506361,-1.35223&z=19 [googlesightseeing.com]

.. and of course the classic Penis-on-the-frozen-lake:

http://googlesightseeing.com/maps?p=1211&c=&t=k&hl =en&ll=41.049308,-73.600947&z=18 [googlesightseeing.com]

Re:

[ZorinLynx (31751)]

What's the obsession with penises in public anyway?

It's like the idiots that parade around Second Life with huge wangs strapped on.

What is this, 7th grade? These things aren't funny and they never have been!

-Z

Does it matter...

[ForestGrump (644805)]

Does it really matter when google has spammed first?

For example, look
here [google.com]. It is off the california coast, near LAX.

Grump

Re:

[pla (258480)]

For example, look here. It is off the california coast, near LAX.

Sorry, I don't get it - I see you got modded funny, but unless the joke comes from getting people to follow the link for no reason, I just don't know what you meant to link to.

Do you mean the Google watermark on all their images, which shows up better on smooth water than on varied terrain?

I tried zooming both in and out, but see nothing.

Mt. Fuji Cherries

[F34nor (321515)]

I just want them to fly over when the cherry blossoms are out.

this field is...

[picob (1025968)]

Intentionally Left Blank

Already done?

[Bigbutt (65939)]

Don't know if it's on Google's maps, but GeoEye has done it already.

http://www.denverpost.com/search/ci_5047747 [denverpost.com]

[John]

Many of you are missing the point

[Syde (1047152)]

Its kind of hard to be calling it spamming when Google actually asked people to do this... If you think its stupid, then call google stupid, not the people that participated. http://www.google.com/intl/en_au/events/australiad ay2007/index.html [google.com]

new spin on old news

[thekm (622569)]

Many companies have invested a lot of money/effort into putting signs on the rooftops of warehouses and large buildings. This is just that there's a "new" reason to put a sign on the roof, one that has companies without warehouses wanting to do it (like a .com). Sydney's a great example... take a train from western sydney into the city, and you'll pass a half dozen places with truly enormous signs on their rooftops. Arnotts is one of them.

...these signs have been around for many decades. My father (a signwriter) explained them to me on my very first trip into sydney as a kid. He actually made one for a tractor parts distributor that had a huge shed under a flight path (regaled me with how interesting it was to create such a big layout accurately). So, it's certainly not time now to be getting all bent out of shape because there's just one more reason to make signs for a higher viewpoint.

When the pics finally make it up to google maps, you'll see all the signs that have preempted this article by probably more than my life time. Anyone mad about rooftops becoming big billboards... you'll need to find something actually "new" to whinge about :)

goatse

[smoker2 (750216)]

see subject (if you're exceptionally unlucky ! )

Re:

[BillX (307153)]

Thanks for that. Now if I ever go to Google and they've added an "I'm feeling exceptionally unlucky!" button, I'm selling my modem and becoming a forest ranger.

An old nostalgic favourite...

[RealGrouchy (943109)]

"Here be dragons!"

- RG>

Shocked at the negative comments

[gary gunrack (956165)]

People (slashdotters?) left some really vitriolic comments on their blog. It would be a completely different situation of soulless corporations were making the ad. But this is just a geeky couple doing something creative that took alot of their time and energy, and was obviously done out of love, not greed.

Re:

[wombert (858309)]

Well, except it wasn't their own land. From the write-up, it sounds like they were in a public park (and almost got kicked out, but for a park ranger who decided to let it slide). So anyone looking up a map to that park gets to see their ad.

Douglas Adams

[smilinggoat (443212)]

So long, and thanks for all the fish.

An obvious one...

[niktemadur (793971)]

John 3:16

Rest assured, if and when Google announces a flyby over a United States city, this one will rear its' obnoxious head.

Reactions

[NoahKing (785167)]

Interesting to compare the response generated by this article to another where a group of open-source advocates built a crop circle [slashdot.org] in the shape of the firefox logo. As a community, our response to the giant firefox logo was overwhelmingly positive, while this article has had an overwhelmingly negative response. What makes this one spam, but the firefox advocacy a cool way to spend a weekend?

No-Fly Zone Spolied the Day!!..

[Guzzitza (1000386)]

Turns out that Google didnt think the plan through, with several portions of Sydney being deemed a no-fly zone on the day - in particular several parks and beaches such as Bondi Beach - where many people congregated to create large signs. One company even spent $10,000 on a sign, only to miss out!!

See article here:

http://www.smh.com.au/news/biztech/google-botch-sy dney-flyover/2007/01/29/1169919256978.html/ [smh.com.au]

Re:

[ShieldW0lf (601553)]

That's clever... I was going to go with "Kill Bush", but yours is punnier.

Maybe you should...

[mdobossy (674488)]

... the park ranger stopped by, but was nice and "turned a blind eye". They were there for the "event", and were not $800 out of pocket.

But yes, a homeless man did help them pick up.. AFTER the event.