User Maps

December 31, 2005 11:10 AM

Link to a map on user page? As long as you have the coordinates, creating a link consisting of "http://maps.google.com/?q=lat%20long" would be trivial. Pardon me if this has been suggested already, but I scanned the threads on the lat/long feature and didn't see it.
posted by George_Spiggott to Feature Requests at 11:10 AM (20 comments total)

Not a bad idea, though it seems stalkery. Done.
posted by mathowie (staff) at 11:45 AM on December 31, 2005

Nice that you set a wide zoom view -- I was just about to suggest that.

Yeah, I realized it sounded a little creepy too. Cue stalker remarks. I'm generally only curious to the extent that it sometimes is useful or relevant to know the time zone or general city/country that someone is in.

And I just reset mine to show the putative city center, not the zip-code center there by default.
posted by George_Spiggott at 11:49 AM on December 31, 2005

sweet, but... maybe adding "t=k" would be nicer for us none-usa folk (since there seems to be much better photo coverage than maps - see the link from my user page for an example).
posted by andrew cooke at 11:55 AM on December 31, 2005

(t=k implying that you set the GET parameter "t" equal to value "k")
posted by andrew cooke at 11:55 AM on December 31, 2005

why not hybrid?
posted by mathowie (staff) at 11:58 AM on December 31, 2005

i don't know much about this, except that when i went to it at first, it was more-or-less blank/white, but when i clicked on "satellite" (or something) i got t=k and a nice picture of where i live.

so i guess if it was already hybrid, then that doesn't work, but if it was originall "just map" then sure, hybrid sounds fine to me.
posted by andrew cooke at 12:16 PM on December 31, 2005

i just tried and hybrid is good.
posted by andrew cooke at 12:17 PM on December 31, 2005

stalkery? what utter crap. don't want to put in coords, don't put in coords. sheesh.
posted by quonsar at 1:01 PM on December 31, 2005

Cool! But Google Maps apparently uses a Bizarro Massachusetts in which Savoy, Washington, and Egremont are major Berkshire Co. cities, whereas Pittsfield, North Adams, and Great Barrington don't exist. I wonder how that happened.
posted by languagehat at 1:51 PM on December 31, 2005

*wonders whether stalkery is like celery. idly targets spare icbm on quonsar's hut.*
posted by andrew cooke at 2:00 PM on December 31, 2005

Heh. I adjusted mine to point exactly to my computer chair, +- the gps error :)
posted by pjern at 2:58 PM on December 31, 2005

Oh, and the default location for my zipcode is waaay off. something like 5.7 miles from the actual post office, and 6-something from where the center of the area should be.. Interesting.
posted by pjern at 3:01 PM on December 31, 2005

There's the stalker-type problems, but something in me, probably something OCD, really likes the idea of very precise locations such as solopsist and I have entered. I wish everyone's were like that.

Honestly, this information is important to me about other people because for some reason that I've never been sure about, where people currently live and where they're from are two of the most important facts I want to know about people. And I always remember. When other friends don't, they're always a little surprised when I say something like, "Oh, yeah; well, you know that David grew up in the San Antonio area and, as a teenager, frequently went for drives around the Hill Country" or somesuch. My mental model of people is highly informed--probably too much so--with where they live and where they're from. I usually am aware of where most mefites (those I often interact with) live (less so where they're "from").

And I think that, especially in the case of large urban areas, it's interesting and helpful to know where people live more precisely. Sure, I knew scarabic was in the Bay Area, but his coords show him to be in Berkeley, which I find interesting.
posted by Ethereal Bligh at 3:09 PM on December 31, 2005

I put myself in the middle of Green Lake. Now any stalkers will be vaguely in the right part of town but will be very wet!
posted by matildaben at 3:12 PM on December 31, 2005

Sure, I knew scarabic was in the Bay Area, but his coords show him to be in Berkeley, which I find interesting.

Yeah, but he had good reason not to pinpoint his exact location as you and solopsist did, because that would just lead authorities straight to all the dead bodies being drained in the bathtub buried in the basement hanging in the rafters uh, never mind.

*goes to write his will*
posted by DaShiv at 3:36 PM on December 31, 2005

mine will put you right in front of my house if you zoom in close enough.
posted by quonsar at 12:20 AM on January 1, 2006

This is a bit freaky, but great. It's kind of funny that the map points precisely to my house, but manages to get the road name wrong!
posted by MrMustard at 12:45 AM on January 1, 2006

I love the taste of this delicious pony. So nice for non-USians to be able to play the 'who is near me' game. Mine is only approximate, as Google Maps imagery is pretty patchy in my area, and I have no GPS unit. Might be the right street, might not.
posted by The Monkey at 1:17 AM on January 1, 2006

If you zoom all the way in mine appears to be actually pointing to the room I'm in. How'd you do that?
posted by nicwolff at 4:02 PM on January 1, 2006

Well, if you didn't give the coords, then maybe you live next to the post office that is the center of your zip code? (Assuming that's true and it's how the conversion was done.)
posted by Ethereal Bligh at 11:19 AM on January 4, 2006