TechFold - Bold tech & web commentary

TSG on Google Maps as a Terror Tool

The Smoking Gun has an article on the use of Google Maps/Earth by prospective terrorists as a tool to scout out locations and vulnerabilities, found via TechMeme.

Should Google be censoring maps? Or reducing zoom levels over airports? Is Google responsible for the actions its tools may enable?

In a nutshell, IMHO, no. The people running airports are responsible for thier facilities, not Google. If terrorists can find vulnerabilities via Google Earth, the only question that should be asked is why the facility managers aren’t finding them first. Use the tools, people.

airports, gmaps, google, googlemaps, safety, smoking gun, terror thesmokinggun

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Google: Create & Save your own GMaps

From Dave Winer - Google’s turned on a hot new feature on Google Maps - “My Maps.” You can now create, markup, save, and share your own maps.

Features include:

1. Adding lines, pushpins, polygonal shapes.
2. Public (shared w/ world via URL) or Private (in “My Maps” only) maps.
3. Add photos - though they must be stored online elsewhere.
4. Add videos - from GVideo or YouTube.
5. Add richtext pushpin/map object descriptions.
6. Export to KML for Google Earth.

I created a map of part of an annual hike that we do along some awesome beaches about an hour north of Winnipeg. The creation process was fast and intuitive.

I can see this being a very useful tool. Explaining how to get to the above hike, drop off locations, parking, and so on, just got a whole lot easier. This would be fantastic for coordinating bike clubs, photo-walks, and basically anything involving two or more people in a location that isn’t known to all participants.

Google has done a great job of leveraging thier own API; its just odd that it took them so long to do so. Now that it has happened, I imagine their are a number of API-based sites out there that will be rapidly re-thinking their value propositions.

One complaint: clean URL’s to link to would be really nice and make sharing easier than with the current mishmash of url parameters.

EDIT: Mashable has a good roundup (read through the comments too) of sites that will get toasted by this rollout, in particular Platial. And, TechMeme is pulling it all together.

EDIT: Courtesey of SearchBlog, here’s the official Google Blog post about the launch.

gmaps, google, googlemaps, maps techfold

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