Hi.
I am finding this an interesting discussion, as it illustrates many difficulties
with handling geographic information.
Quoting "Ricker, William" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>:
> Ben> For instance in Denver, Colorado you can stand at the
> Ben> intersection of Colorado St and Colorado Ave.
>
> How do the websites find that?
>
> But the non-trivial case can be found in Boston, of course.
> Dorchester St & Dorchester Ave, Boston MA
I live near the corner of Fairmont and Fairmont in Cambridge:
http://maps.google.com/maps?q=fairmont+and+fairmont,+cambridge,+ma
Pizza delivery guys often show up at the wrong house. It is worth noting that
Fairmont Avenue is the smaller street. Even if you get "Avenue" vs. "Street"
correct, my house typically shows up much farther down the block on a map than
its actual location. A friend of mine once claimed after visiting that he had
proved that Cambridge streets were non-Euclidean by having made three 90-degree
left turns from Fairmont and ending up back on Fairmont.
But the test case I use for evaluating any map service is the address of my
favorite tea shop: Tealuxe in Harvard Square. Their address is Zero Brattle
Street. Geocoder will not acknowledge its existence; Google fails to recognize
"0 Brattle" but will find "Zero Brattle", although that is in the wrong
location; Mapquest and others have difficulty with it as well. I suppose that
part of the problem is the zero. Another part is that the shop is in the
middle of a block. Another is that Brattle Street makes a right turn in the
next block. Various mapping services tend, if they find a location at all, to
extrapolate it linearly onto a different street entirely.
Geography is hard.
+ Richard
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