Crazy Mapshare idea: "Send me!"

[RobertB]

As I understand it, Mapshare works by accumulating input from GPS users. Corrections that reach a certain threshold are approved to be distributed to other GPS users, with a level of trust assigned based on how many people have reported the correction. That's fine and dandy for finding a new exit ramp on a high-volume urban expressway.

But what about a frontage road that went from one-way to two-way? Most people won't even notice the change, unless the GPS originally sent them the wrong way down the now-one-way road. Or a street that's been blocked in the city, but it's in a rural part of town, or perhaps a less-affluent area where GPS units aren't often found?

There must be thousands of orphaned Mapshare corrections out there, ones that will age out with the next map without anyone ever adding a "me too!" to confirm it.

I have a solution, though: Send me!

Say I'm a roadgeek at a motel, and I'm bored. I go into the "Corrections" menu, and pick the "Send me!" option. The GPS finds the nearest unconfirmed Mapshare correction, and plots a route. Maybe it tells me what to look for, or maybe it just gives me a hint. "Can you turn left here?" "Is the street name correct?" "Is this road paved?" "Did they *really* put in *another* Starbucks?"

The success of "crowdsourcing" depends on validating input. This feature would provide free validation for TomTom/TeleAtlas, and would tend to attract the most detail-oriented roadgeeks. It's not a direct revenue generator, but every time they improve their maps, they move ahead of the competition.

(And if someone patents this in the future -- I got yer prior art, right here!)

 

[Malouff]

RobertB,

Mapshare does accumulate input however only pertaining to the same map version

In other words if you made corrections in the 8.25 map and now got the new 8.30 map the correction will not transfer over unless TomTom decided to include it with the 8.30 map like they did for some corrections for the first time with the 8.25 map.

So although your idea does seem very good the way corrections are implemented by TomTom to be specific to the map version it is not very practical.

That is unless you and a lot of other people are willing to keep going around town(s) correcting road names, speed limits, etc., until TomTom decides to include them with the next map revision.

I don't know about you but this just makes me mad
[quote="My Example]When I first got my 730 I was very much like you and wanted to correct everything I noticed wrong and wanted to share with the mapshare community.

There must not have been very many corrections/people reporting for my area that I live in or it would have already have been fixed/applied with mapshare.

So like you I started taking the time to drive all over town and fix things.
Even difficult speed limits (horribly implemented to correct and very time consuming)

It probably didn't however get shared with anyone unless they had there trust level set to low or other there was a massive surge in mpashere corrections for the area by other people (doubt it)

A new map then came out were I could use my Latest Map Guarantee.
Guess what all that time was wasted even for myself as it did not carry over
(Like I said it will however benefit anyone in the area that gets the older 8.10 map out of the box and has their trust level set to low and assuming TomTom indefinitely stores corrections in their system for every map)

I first thought maybe the update erased a file or folder where the corrections are stored so again made some corrections to the 8.15 map.

But was still puzzled and researched into why and finally learned about corrections not carrying over.
[/quote]

But I do agree with you RobertB that it is a good idea and hopefully TomTom will change how they are keeping track of corrections.

I am thinking come on TomTom doesn't this thing use coordinates?

I understand that the location the road was stored in the map changed between versions because roads were either added or removed in the map update. Also you probably compressed it more etc.,
In other words it is not the same map (not having the same MD5 Sum)

But the coordinates of the correction have not changed.

They obviously need to change what is either being sored for the correction, and/or how it is being applied to the map.