Accuracy again.

I use both Google Earth and Terraserver (http://terraserver.microsoft.com/default.aspx) to determine the latitude and longitude of an address. And consistently, the two are different. If I can get a visual on Google Earth, I'll use that. But one location I submitted, even after getting what I thought was an acccurate sighting, translated into a location a good 15 miles from the actual address. Terraserver came a lot closer to the actual site, but no cigar. So if there are errors on any of the locations I submitted for the hot dog stands file, I do apologize. I'm going to be eating a lot of hot dogs while I verify the ten or fifteen addresses I added to the file!

I use this one a lot, specially when i cant get a close idea of the place i am looking for.

http://www.gpsvisualizer.com/

Thanks! I forgot that GPS Visualizer had that feature, and it's easy to use! I already had the site bookmarked.

I have been updating the Supercenter Wal-Mart poi, adding addresses, etc. I have found Wal-Marts located on the top of mountains, in the middle of forests, and in plowed fields.

I use Google Earth enter the coordinates and go to the location. I then switch to find business with Wal-Mart entered. The coordinates are accurate about 60 % of the time. That’s not very good.

I check the Wal-Mart store locator for the store location based on what I have found using Google earth. The store may be in the general location of the coordinate and today I thought (uh oh) the address is a clue to which side of the street it’s on. Google earth was telling me it was on one side of the street, but using the Los Angeles addressing format, even numbers are on the south or east side of the street,… they all seemed to be on the wrong side of the street.

So I googled for the information, and according to one site, even numbers in the U.S. are on the right side of the street, what ever that means… Further checking showed it depends on what city you live in, so I guess in Arizona it’s the opposite of L.A…. The only folks I know who live I Arizona live on a cul-de-sac... How does that work?

Anyway the bottom line here is, I’m doing my best to get you to your local Wal-Mart, but if it tells you that you are arriving at the store on the right, and it’s on the left, I did my best… If there is a big store at the coordinates, I’m using it…. When you get there look around….

And if it's a plowed field, well that's where Wal-Mart, Google Earth and GeePeeEx editor said it was...

Make sure to keep in mind that some of these areas area being developed and what was a corn field a few years ago when the last pictures were taken can very well be a mall or other shopping store.

What I have done before is to call the store and work with someone in the location as I look at the map overview.

Miss POI

Let's just make the edits and changes to files when the errors are reported, or else we are going to have a big confusing mess.

The pictures from my area are a few years old.

Miss POI

I am adding addresses, and double and triple checking things. I have found new locations that appear to be a vacant area, but Wal-Mart says a store is there so I add it...

Ok, johnm, I checked the email box.

I exported the data from the non-Excel software I use to Notepad. No line numbers to reference. So, I imported it to Excel and found where I had double quotes and some missing commas and looked them up on my nuvi.

Hopefully, I have corrected them. I am now on my way to update the post with the corrected entries. I found about a half dozen punctuation errors. Could you check the 3 errors you found vs. the new file and let me know if there are others I didn't catch.

Lesson to learn... import to Excel to catch the formatting errors!

Thanks for catching them! AJ

I've found that the easiest thing to do with highways (and the Farm-to-Market roads we have in Texas) is to enter just the number "45" rather than "Interstate 45" or "I-45" and choose your best match from the resulting list. Saves some typing too!

Then again, sometimes you have to learn to recognize the cartographer's typos. Bacliff St. MUST be entered as "Baclidd" or you'll not find it.

Sure will still good job with this one.

AJ yes you got the three I seen. wish others that are new and start poi's would do as much work as you did to provide a good accurate poi. Great job. There is more work than most realize.

Dear John,

Thank you. You put it very well. I have been wondering whether the promotion of software that "decodes" batches of addresses into coordinates might be part of the problem.

I must admit that the project on which I am working lends itself to identification from satellite photographs and not all projects fit into that category; however, quite a few do. I am not sure what solution there is to promoting accuracy and I hope to learn from this thread how to improve my own accuracy.

david

The batch geocoders that I use (gpsvisualizer.com and batchgeocode.com) simply call Yahoo's mapping APIs and are just two of the many tools available to geocode and verify POIs. As this thread shows, these tools are good but far from perfect and often require verification using other methods.

As imperfect as they are, I still consider them absolutely amazing.

I am amazed at the time and number of poi's that are avaiable on this site. I would like to have a penny for every hour that has been spent putting them together. Even with a error here and there they are very helpful for the majority of us. Thans to all for their contribution to this great list of POI's

Dear Andrew,

I am sure you are quite right about all of that. The batch decoders are great tools but it seems to me that they encourage the practice of neglecting verification by satellite photograph in those projects that lend themselves to such visual identification. As Creeper put when he started this thread: "Quantity is not good if the quality is off."

As already stated by me, some projects do not lend themselves to identification from the satellite pictures and using batch decoding software to obtain the coordinates may be the best solution -- leaving the identification of errors to those who live locally.

As a member of this community of Factory workers, I hope to learn how to make my file as accurate as possible. I believe the best approach is that of the craftsman with hand tools in a small shop rather than the worker on a mass-production line (although I have great respect for both).

I would also like to echo John's thoughts. I too am deeply gratified by the time and effort invested by my fellow workers at the Factory. It is clearly a labour of love and we must all support each other's creations.

david

I guess this thread is proof that the Metro project is a good idea.

If you live in one of the metro areas listed, go verify some locations for us - so others can avoid the problems you;ve had. RIght now, personally, I'm concentrating on some local gaps in the Cigar store database, but I plan actaully verifying entries in the local Metro section when I have time.

I guess my point here is - this site is here for people to SHARE information. Feel free to gripe, but just be sure to also pass your info along to the maintainer of the POI file you had problems with, so the next person does't have the same problem you have had.

anyway..didnt read all the posts...forgive me if someone has already ranted about this

May have found your problem..

..aren't lines & angles usually taught in geometry class ??

/.

I checked my settings to see if I had set highway or not; and the only settings were for fastest route and shortest route. Am I missing something?

http://www.goonybird.org/MapsourceRoutesToGPS/

Tutorial on using Mapsource to make routes and loading htem into your garmin GPS....a Nuvi 760 is the GPS i used in the tutorial, but they should all be similar i would think

I use http://itouchmap.com/latlong.html
It works off google maps. Put in the address you are interested in and it will put a red marker with a crosshair where the address is. I have found quite a few addresses given out by businesses way off when it comes to Lon & Lat especially business in strip malls. The neat thing about this site is you can move the red marker and crosshair on the satellite pict and it will give you exact coordinates. It is accurate down to parking spaces in a parking lot. I have verified it many times and found it to be flawless.