Make-Up Assignment for 2/9

1.For the first article, How Google Builds Its Maps—and What It Means for the Future of Everything, talks about how a google map is actually built, with lots of underlying logic and databases. And the article also mentioned that they don’t merely collect data from single reliable source, they would try to look for more information and data by themselves. For example, in building the imagery of street view, they incorporate the idea of OCR into it and state that with the improvements in computer vision and OCR, they may have the chance to turn any word into the physical world.  

As for the second article, Google Maps: a decade of transforming the mapping landscape is talking about the evolution of Google Maps and about how the features become a reality in the Apps. For instance, the article is describing how street view is created by a car equipped with sensors and cameras.

Eventually for the third article, it is quite self-explanatory by the name of it, Seven Wonders of the world to explore on Google Street View. Actually, it is about the successes of Google Maps in getting street views of beautiful places, such as Yosemite in California.

2. For the idea that Google Maps links the online world to the offline world, it’s partly true. But however great the Google Maps is, we cannot deny the fact that google maps makes us rely more on the technology instead of recognizing the routes ourselves. Sometimes Google Maps can be misleading and can lead you to routes of a longer distance. So, basically this idea is partly true. Whilst Google Maps provides technological advances and convenience to us, one should know how to strike a balance between technology and its one cognitive ability.

3. I watched the one about Kenya’s Samburu Park, and I am amazed by how they utilized camels to record the street views. In the article, they also mentioned that they used the street camera to spot more than 600 elephants. This makes me wonder the possibility of Google Maps working in environmental aspect, such as using real-time processing skills to track the species.