Megalomania.me

Walgreens just send me an automated telephone message to let me know that my prescription is ready and I should come pick it up.

I picked it up two days ago.

I previously complained about Google Maps misplacing a local barbecue joint by several blocks, relocating my friend’s San Francisco hotel to England, trying to send me to Denver to pick up a package from Amazon, and tricking me into walking through the Tenderloin when it’s entirely unnecessary.

Every time I write one of these, I think it will be the last time, and then the Google-powered Maps app on my iPhone (I’m not upgrading to iOS 6 because I want to preserve my jailbreak) stuns me again.

Yesterday I was sick and needed to go to the doctor. I was walking there from work, so I quickly punched the address into my phone: 490 Post St.

Oh wait, you know that “St.” is a common abbreviation for the word “Street,” especially on maps and such, right? Because apparently Google doesn’t realize this. Instead of interpreting “St.” as “Street,” something very different happened. Here’s the map I got:

Note that I clearly searched for “490 Post St.” and was shown a map for… “490 State.”

What and where is “490 State?” I asked.

Why, of course. 490 State is an address in Post, Texas.

For what it’s worth, here is the correct map of 490 Post Street – the one in San Francisco, California – that I got by entering the full address, with ZIP code:

So in summary: Google somehow took a request for 490 Post St., which was 0.8 miles (16 minutes walking) from where I stood in San Francisco, and instead gave me information on 490 State in Post, Texas, which is… a lot farther away.

And on further research, I don’t even think 490 State in Post, Texas, is a legitimate address. So, let that count as two failures.

When I asked Google Maps on my iPhone for the location of Memphis Minnie’s, a San Francisco barbecue restaurant, I got this:

Haight Street, between Lyon and Central. And that’s all well and good, except I did not remember Memphis Minnie’s being directly across from Buena Vista park. In fact, it is not across from the park, and Google Maps was wrong.

Later, I looked up Memphis Minnie’s on Google Maps on a desktop computer, and here’s what it gave me:

Haight Street, between Fillmore and Steiner. That is correct.

If I’d relied on Google Maps for directions this time, it would not have gotten me to where I wanted to go. Just like when I was looking for my friend’s hotel, and the time when I wanted to find an Amazon delivery location. Also, Google Maps consistently sends me through bad neighborhoods and doesn’t label them so I can know to avoid them.

I still haven’t used the iPhone Maps app in iOS 6 (staying at iOS 5.1.1 to preserve my jailbreak), but I doubt it will be much worse than the Google-powered Maps when I eventually do switch.

BusinessLeads.com:

StarStar:

Hire Marla:

Dear Mayor,
Pitch me your city!

I can’t think of anyone more qualified than you to convince me that living in your city is the right match for an active young professional like me.

You know your city best, so I’m asking you to help me decide where to settle down.

Are you up for the challenge?

​Can’t wait to hear from you!

Sincerely,
Marla Schuchman

While the uproar continues over Apple’s Maps fiasco, Google Maps continues to give me information that’s false or questionable (I’m not upgrading to iOS 6, both to preserve my jailbreak and to preserve my transit directions, so I have not tried Maps without the Google-supplied data).

I’m ordering an external hard drive on Amazon now and see that Amazon has expanded to offer new Locker locations (they ship to a location that’s open 24/7 and I can go to pick it up there). I searched in regular Google search for the address of one of the Amazon locations: 1475 Fillmore St.

Google knows that I am in San Francisco. In fact, the first three results in Google organic search (and seven of the top ten) were all about a residential building at that address in San Francisco. But the Google Maps result at the top of my organic results? See for yourself:

That’s right, I’m 0.7 miles (thirteen minutes walking) from 1475 Fillmore Street, San Francisco, and Google Maps is directing me to a 1475 Fillmore Street in Denver, Colorado. If I decided to walk there, it would take me 394 hours and I’d cover 1,214 miles.

Nice one, Google.

As a new resident in a city whose police force isn’t interested in preventing crime, I prefer to avoid certain areas when walking around late at night. Where are those areas on the map below?

When I ask Google Maps for walking directions, it regularly routes me directly through the Tenderloin and other filthy slums when it could just as easily (no extra time, no extra distance, no extra altitude) send me through nicer, cleaner and safer areas.

This doesn’t mean that Apple’s maps don’t suck, but it’s another area where Apple can use external data to make a product that’s eventually superior to Google’s.

CNET:

Apple has quietly updated its second- and third-generation Apple TV set top boxes today to make it work with iOS 6 features…

AirPlay – Send audio content from Apple TV to AirPlay-enabled speakers and devices (including AirPort Express and other Apple TVs). Also includes the ability to require an onscreen code to use AirPlay with your Apple TV.

So now, instead of having an AirPort Express base station + speakers in each room for iTunes, plus planning in parallel to get a stereo receiver and a set of speakers for my living room to use with the Apple TV, I can use the investment in AirPlay devices to have kickass surround sound when I watch television shows in my living room.

I have no idea what took Apple so long to do this, or why they waited until now, but HELL YES.

Lots of insanity about losing Google Maps data in the Maps app in iOS 6.

For people who drive primarily and who do it in heavily mapped suburban areas, this won’t be a big deal, and they’re getting turn by turn navigation so there’s a lot of reason for them to rejoice.

But for those of us who take public transportation and rely on Maps for subway schedules, who expect to be able to use Maps in cities and for it to make any sense at all, going from Google Maps powered Maps app in iOS 5 to Apple getting data from lots of other sources in iOS 6 is going to suck. It will prevent me from upgrading to iOS 6 (though the biggest reason not to upgrade is not to lose my jailbreak).

No need to dwell on this point, except to add that it most definitely sucks for Apple, a company that very carefully decides to enter only a few niches, to butt heads against Google, whose mission is to get itself into every business it possibly can. For Apple, being in the maps business is directly relevant to one of their core businesses – handheld mobile devices. For Google, being in the maps business is an opportunity to sell advertising, both against content they own because they bought it and against other companies’ content, by throwing around their weight as… a search engine.

And that brings me to the reason why, even though I use Google Maps every day and will continue doing so for the foreseeable future, I am very eager for Apple’s maps to grow and be more useful and better than Google Maps in every way.

A friend of mine is visiting San Francisco and staying at a hotel at 465 Grove Street:

When I was a few blocks away from the hotel, I looked up the address in Maps to find out the cross street. Here’s what I saw:

My first reaction: Weird, it must be showing me 465 High Street in Berkeley or some other suburb, because San Francisco streets have a grid pattern and I don’t see it on this map.

My second reaction: Wait a second, I search for 465 Grove Street, not 465 High Street. How and on what basis did Google decide that I wanted an address different from the one I clearly entered? Especially when I’m just a few blocks away from the exact address I was trying to find!

Here’s what I got when I clicked on the arrow for more information:

That’s right, I was a few blocks away from 465 Grove Street, San Francisco, I searched for 465 Grove Street in Maps app powered by Google Maps, and Google gave me information about 465 High Street in a place called Sutton in the United Kingdom.

That is about the most useless and obstructive mapping experience imaginable. I’m sure Apple won’t have a hard time competing.

Good for me, at least:

This screenshot was taken a few hours after the iPhone 5 was announced.

President Obama’s religion. Would you have guessed that he’s been influenced intellectually as much by Judaism as by any other religion? Or that the grandparents who raised him were Universalists?

Why does Rand Fishkin dislike Google? He doesn’t, but he thinks that Google is doing a lot of things now that are bad and inconsistent with “don’t be evil.”

What I saw on 11 September 2001. May be history to some, but it’s still current events to me.

Ghostery. You can use it to eradicate that obnoxious Meebo bar that some websites add at the bottom of your browser window.

Tweets from my college roommate to the people who attacked the American embassies in Libya and Egypt:

1. Really Libyans & Egyptians? You’re using excuse of some stupid offensive internet movie to attack our embassies and diplomats?
2. I can’t wait til you find out about “2 Girls 1 Cup” then. Assholes.