Mapshare collaboration?

[uocooper]

First off this may be a lame idea but I'm just tossing it out there to see what other people think. Mapshare could be the answer to resolving the number one complaint for TomTom users by fixing errors and keeping maps up to date. It's one thing for the corrections you make to be reflected on your own TomTom but for Mapshare to really be useful, those updates need to make it on to the devices of all TomTom owners. With such a huge percentage of TomTom users located in Europe, perhaps Mapshare could use some extra help to really reach its full potential here in the United States.

Mapshare allows users to select from various levels of trust and the more people that report an error, the more likely it is that TomTom will update the map resulting in better maps for everyone. Even if TomTom hasn't made a change to the map, more corrections mean it's more likely to make it to others using Mapshare. My proposal is to use tomtomforums.com to allow users to report errors that could be verified using satellite imagery. Once the error has been verified, other users could then submit the error for correction. Not all errors can be verified due to outdated or low resolution satellite images and in that case it may be best to just to report it yourself since the community can't verify that the report is legit.

Ideally, users could take a screen shot of the exact location where the error is located along with either an address or GPS coordinates to make it easier to zero in on to make the report. In addition to the screen shot, a detailed explanation of the error and how you recorded it in Mapshare would then allow other users to verify it and then submit it themselves.

As I said, this may be a bad idea. Mapshare may not need the extra reports, people could submit bogus reports, there may be too many reports to keep up with or it may just be too much work for anyone to bother participating. In any case I wanted to put this out to the community to see what you think.

Here's an example of how this might work.

Error type- Blocked road
Address 6159 Jean Road, Lake Oswego, OR
Blocked at intersection of Jean Road and Boones Ferry Road
Correction made- Blocked Jean Road Westbound and Eastbound

URL - http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=...122.73999&spn=0.001023,0.002511&t=h&z=19&om=1


You can link to Google Maps satellite imagery by zooming in on where the error is and clicking on the Hybrid button. Right click on the center of the error and select Center map here. Click on the Link to this page link on the upper right and copy and past the URL in to your report.


How to enable screen grabs on your TomTom taken from Andy_P at yournav.com

On the computer, create a directory/folder called "screen".
Create an empty text file with notepad/textedit and call it "capture" (you will need to edit the name manually in Windows Explorer to get rid of the .txt extension) and put it into the "screen" directory.
Copy the folder and its file onto your TomTom (not in any folder). Or Mac users and Windows user can download the zip file attached to this post and place the screen folder with the capture file in it on your TomTom.

Now, whenever you touch the screen in the top left corner, near the zoom in zone (+) (or zoom out if you're left handed!), it will create a .bmp screen capture file (Complete with camera shutter sound effect!), called something like "dump123456789.bmp".

You can then connect up to your computer again to download them. If you don't want the screen capture effect any more, just remove the screen directory from your TomTom and put it back if you want to use it again.

**Thanks to Eldar for the original post describing this*

EDIT - Another tip from "Sir Clive" - When naming the empty file in Notepad, if you type "capture" WITH THE QUOTE MARKS it will save it without the ".txt" extension, so you don't have to edit the name manually.