Google Maps and Street View verses ProximityCast

The ProximityCast Advantage

Google's street view is an amazing and useful program, however ProximityCast has advantages over street view that will be exposed in this post.
Google's street view has recently gotten to Mountain Home, Arkansas. Colton's Steakhouse Restaurant has also recently opened in Mountain Home, Arkansas.

At the time of the creation of this post, if you type into Google Maps search maps: "Colton's Steakhouse Mountain Home, AR" you will be taken to an obviously wrong address. Using Street View will reveal no Colton's Steakhouse. Google Maps took me to these coordinates: 36.29030141495939, -92.32628524303436 and said it was this address: 2390 Highway 62 E, Mountain Home, AR‎
Pasting the street address into Google Maps took me to the same wrong coordinate location. A check of Colton's website shows the Mountain Home address as: 22370 Highway 62 E

Pasting in the correct street address (2370 instead of 2390) still produced the same wrong location.

ProximityCast.com requires the Latitude and Longitude coordinates of where the picture was taken to be placed on all establishment pictures submitted. The Mountain Home, Arkansas Colton's Steakhouse coordinates are: N 36°21.45'W 92°20.75' If these coordinates are pasted into Google Maps search maps box you will be taken to the correct location for Colton's Steakhouse Restaurant in Mountain Home, Arkansas.

Wrong coordinates can be placed on a photo or erroneously entered into the database, but ProximityCast.com allows users to flag inaccurate coordinates and photo submitters will be given an accuracy rating that alerts you to locations with inaccurate coordinates. Google Maps also has a means to correct inaccurate locations, so the bogus location for Colton's may be corrected by the time you are reading this. It is not hard to find wrong locations in Google Maps.

The placement of a location's coordinates on ProximityCast Establishment Images may seem unnecessary and a lot of trouble, BUT it is a photographer's means of certifying that the location is correct at the time the photo was taken. (Businesses do go out of business or move).

Now back to Street View comparisons... If you paste the coordinates from the ProximityCast Colton's Steakhouse image, N 36°21.45'W 92°20.75' into Google Maps search maps box you will arrive at the correct location. BUT, when you explore street view you will only find an empty lot with a Colton's construction sign indicating the restaurant will be built on this site.

Street view is a remarkable means of adding and showing a lot of visual data quickly. Its weakness three fold: 1) as in Colton's Steakhouse for the Mountain Home, AR location the restaurant actually exists now but did not exist at the time the street view camera rolled through the area. By contrast anyone can contribute a current picture of any place to ProximityCast.com at any time. You the user have control. For street view we have to wait for the Google car to cruise an area again. 2). Businesses go out of business or move. When will street view indicate that condition? ProximityCast once again provides the user with the control necessary to flag either condition. 3). The quality of the street view picture is sometimes found wanting. ProximityCast.com provides a photographer with the means to control the quality of an image. ProximityCast also allows multiple images of the same location showing different perspectives or night and day shots.

Okay, so I did a lot of trashing of Google Maps and Street View with this post. Actually I love their technology and think they are both a great product. I could point out some weaknesses with ProximityCast also. When the two are combined the total capabilities are simply amazing. You can get to Google Maps and Street View (when it exists) quite easily from ProximityCast.com. Google Maps difinitely complements and enhances ProximityCast.com. Likewise ProximityCast.com complements and enhances Google Maps and Street View giving all end users control over location data.

Now all we need is a little bit of traction and users to start utilizing and submitting ProximityCast Establishment photos so all of us will have a better location technology experience.

Big News

"Anything that relates to where a person is, saves a user time, and makes the web more relevant — especially geographically — is big news." source
Way to go ProximityCast!

Getting Coordinates of of Google Maps revisited

1. Open Google Maps


2. Right Click on the spot where you want to know the Latitude and Longitude coordinates.


3. Select "Directions to here" or "Directions from here" on the pop-up menu


4. The coordinates appear in the "Get Directions" box top left side of the map.

The coordinates are in "decimal degree" format. You can copy and past them into the Google Search Maps text box and click "Search Maps" to have a marker appear on that spot and also see the coordinates displayed in Degrees, Minutes, Seconds.

understanding of coordinate formats

The decimal degree format can be pasted directly into the ProximityCast Antipode Tool to see what is on the opposite side of the world.

One Picture with Multiple Establishments

ProximityCast.com continues to improve!

You don't need a GPS to contribute pictures!

Get coordinates off of Google Maps

Strip Mall with Six Establishments

One Picture with Multiple Establishments is now complete!
You can use Morrilton, AR as a cast initiation point to check out this strip mall with “6” establishments.
Now pictures with up to “9” establishments can be loaded with each individual Establishment uniquely identified.

Dual Establishments Under One Roof

It is common to find dual establishments coexisting like this Taco Bell and KFC all under one roof but clearly two separate establishments.
Now the multiple establishment routine makes it easy.

Baskin Robbins inside an Exxon Station

This Baskin Robbins inside an Exxon is not as clearly divided as the Taco Bell and KFC, but still lends itself to One Picture with Multiple Establishments to help users find just what they need. As always, if you have any questions or suggestions use the contact form to pass them along.

Now: check your data after upload

Also, there is now a page that lets you check the database coordinates against the coordinates on the picture after upload. There is a button that will also allow you to check the location on the map. If you find you have an error use the contact form to let me know. Eventually I’ll enable an editing routine where you will be able to fix them yourselves.

Till next time my friends, thanks for all your photo submissions!

ciao

Google Street View

Wow! Google does so many things well. Street View is such an awesome application that it is almost enough to cause me to see ProximityCast as unnecessary, however I think the two applications are quite complementary in many ways.
In this blog entry I'll show how easy it is to go to street view from ProximityCast when desired or necessary.

On the CastNet page shown in the image:
1. Copy the establishments coordinates for pasting into Google Maps.
2. Click on MAP VIEW for easy access to Google Maps.
3. Click on the Google Map logo found on the lower left of the Map View to go to Google's full map services.
4. Paste the coordinates copied from step one into Google's Search the map box and select Street View for a better look around!

For the user's convenience ProximityCast displays the database coordinates in all three commonly used formats:
Decimal Degrees: D 34.75098 -92.30665
Degrees Minutes: DM N 34°45.06' W 92°18.40'
Degrees Minutes Seconds: DMS N 34°45'3.6" W 92°18'24"
Any of the three formats should work great in Google Maps. Copy the one of your choice. The coordinates shown will take you to a street view covered area and let you see the Oyster Bar restaurant which had a great oyster Po Boy on the day we ate there. Use your left or right arrow keys to rotate the view around until you see the Oyster Bar.

Contact Page added

Thanks to a nudge from a good friend I got busy and added a Contact page to ProximityCast.com
Feed back is useful, motivating, and appreciated.
As a solo act things don't always go as fast as I might like, but I take all constructive criticism seriously and try to get to things as fast as I can. There is still a lot to do to make ProximityCast all it can be. I still need a means to encourage users to submit their "Location Pictures". If everyone contributes just a little the site will become a whole lot more useful for all of us.
I'd be happy simply taking and contributing pictures, but there is so much to do and I can't capture the world by myself.
It is fun though doing what I can as I can.

Till next time my friends,

ciao

Embracing Rejection

yCombinator for ProximityCast.com was a fluke and a long shot, however so was it a good exercise. How do they say, “learn to embrace the rejection?” This whole journey into entrepreneurship has been quite an experience. Only conjecture and speculation can presume as to why yCombinator chose to reject ProximityCast.com. There were some hard hurdles I anticipated: solo founder, old founder more than twice as old as the average chosen. Location; Although I wasn't born nor raised here, I’ve been enjoying my camp in the Ozarks for a long time now. Good for family and good for me. Good for my business? Well, as long as I could keep my camp and the pieces came together where my wife could understand and it was workable, a move is not impossible. Then there is an already launched web app with no traction… Yeah, how do you achieve that mystical traction?

"It has no God-given right to succeed if...
... it does not give customers what they want."
Roger Holmes~British Business Executive.

But then, do customers really know what they want or need. Then again, it could be presumptuous to decide for them. However the power of a vision is truly an amazing force. There are some who really get it, then others who don’t even come close to venturing below the surface. yCombinator was one that didn’t look deep as evidenced by the tracking logs, but I reckon their hands were full and it is easy to see on the surface if an application fits a mold they prefer. We all have our preferences and yCombinator was good enough to state some of theirs. So be it. You play the cards you’re dealt.

Is that it? Or is there something else at work? I’ve found launching a start-up is very much like raising a new born baby. An acorn doesn’t turn into a full grown oak overnight, even if we want it too. But then there are the auctomatics of the world. If it wasn’t overnight, it sure was quick. Must be nice, hey boys? Then when you are a parent you sure hope your children will grow up, amount to something worthwhile, and have a good life.

I didn’t want to tackle this project solo and even made overtures to a very small select few. M y failure to procure a co-founder could reflect on my leadership abilities or my unwillingness to be pushy. ProximityCast® has been a dream for long time that was once released and then brought back to life. There have been good parts to running solo. I’ve had to do things that I probably would have loved to pass off to others, but have grown by having to do them myself.

yCombinator’s rejection doesn’t hurt near as much as the knowledge of what I’m missing out on. I’ve tasted in another life what I can imagine yCombinator is able to supply to young, enthusiastic, and energetic entrepreneurs: a support network that are all gunning for your success! My other life was spent flying helicopters. I consider myself a talented and excellent pilot with the hours and experience to back that up. But, I know that is all a result of the support network that helped me to become a success. High School to Army Flight School followed by two years in South Korea where the man in the next seat was more often than not an experienced and talented Vietnam Vet. Hey kid, have you seen this? Let me show you how it is done. Yes I believe I truly love coding as much as I love flying, but I miss having that experienced next seat showing me the ropes before I have to take something on, on my own. To try to land a helicopter on the top of a five thousand foot pinnacle without someone ever showing you how is crazy. So does it seem trying to tackle the many aspects of entrepreneurship. But then I guess you go until you either crash, run out of gas or succeed especially if they let you hop in that baby and fly. We all gotta die someday; it is just a matter of when and how. Even so, it would be nice to have a pair of steady hands already familiar with the territory to help guide a young entrepreneur along. (Ok, so I’m an old codger, but a very young entrepreneur.) Having missed out on that is the painful part.

However, stumbling on yCombinator has definitely been my gain. My wife really related to Paul’s musing on the traits of a hacker. I wish I would have saved the link to that speech. Maybe someone will be good enough to post it. It was the one talking about having a work area with a couch to take a nap when you felt the need instead of a cubical where you have to continue to sit and gaze at the screen like you’re accomplishing something although in reality just a zombie. So much info and so little time… I pick up pieces I can really identify with and then there are the warning sign posts that say, “You’ve got a long haul up hill boy!” The 18 Mistakes That Kill Startups But they are balanced against the sage advice that might make a difference: How Not to Die Paul, where do you find all that energy? Where ever it comes from it is appreciated. It is almost as good as having that next seat of talented ability.

The vision continues to drive me on. Sometimes I wish I could move faster than I’m able, but a quote I got out of “The Essence of Leadership” by Mac Anderson continues to carry me forward: “By the yard life is hard, but by the inch it’s a cinch!” And so has been the development of my project: ProximityCast.com I always look forward to coding and adding parts. I found I enjoy the coding more than the promoting. Both are important, and both show me the wisdom of Paul’s preference for more than one founder. This is a cool journey entrepreneurs are on; even cooler than flying in my book. I wish I could have stumbled on it at a more youthful age. You can have an enjoyable life flying and earning a paycheck, but if you’re successful as an entrepreneur you can buy your own helicopter and hire a talented CFI that can give you dual when necessity causes you to have to fly. If you’re successful as an entrepreneur, you are definitely on the better side of the fence.

The best of hacking to all you guys!

David B Robert
Founder of ProximityCast.com