Re: *BUY* an update for new GPS?
- From: Neon John <no@xxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Sat, 12 Jan 2008 10:00:42 -0500
On Sat, 12 Jan 2008 00:58:15 -0500, "Flo Cala" <floDELETEcaladot@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:
Last night I saw restaurants and other businesses, which went out of
business four+ years ago, listed in the GPS's food and lodging
section.
Congrats. You just discovered how useless those GPS points-of-interest databases are.
The update won't be any better.
The problem is that none of those GPS companies compile the databases. They buy them
from one of a couple of outfits that specialize in the task. They get their data
from who-knows-where? Certainly not current white pages!
Even if their data were current when acquired, by the time the data gets massaged
into a saleable package, the GPS company buys it, massages it into their format, gets
into a unit and the unit gets to you, the data is already a few years old.
Take my old home of downtown Cleveland, TN. In Street Atlas 2008 my restaurant is
still listed even though it closed 2 years ago. As is another one that close over 5
years ago. None of the currently open restaurants that have opened in the last 5
years are listed. Oh, and they had my place located 2 blocks away from its actual
address.
Right now Google Maps is the only way to go for reasonably current geolocation info.
They seem to have a tie-in with some database that is fresh, probably a white pages
directory. I've tried MapQuest but their databases were as stale as SA's.
When I was truck driving and had to locate J-random-business, if SA couldn't nail
down the street address, I went to google maps over the wireless internet, looked up
the address, used the satellite photo to confirm that the building looked about right
and then transferred the coordinates to Street Atlas. That process worked very well.
A nice service that Google offers is their text message-based geo-location service.
From your cell phone just send a text message to Google per these instructions
http://www.google.com/intl/en_us/mobile/sms/
Along with either your zip code or even better, your GPS coordinates (works best on
phones with GPS receivers built in) and what you're looking for, say "sea food
restaurant" and Google will return the three closest ones.
That's the slickest and most accurate method that I know of to locate commercial
points of interest. The only cost is whatever your service charges for a text
message.
John
--
John De Armond
See my website for my current email address
http://www.neon-john.com
http://www.johndearmond.com <-- best little blog on the net!
Tellico Plains, Occupied TN
Better remain silent and be thought a fool than to cite Wikipedia and remove all doubt.
.
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