Google Street Maps

are a bit keen, current Cambridge photos are August 2013 and just been photoed today as their car came down the street this morning. Seems a bit OTT revisiting every year!

Their maps do seem much more up to date these days. Just passed a parked up street maps car myself on the way home.

I’d love to know how much Street Map costs them, can’t be cheap unless they only update certain towns regularly.

We used Nokia Maps to navigate Australia and got very confused when roads were marked that they hadn’t even started building yet.

Read a while back that they use the info from road signs to help with their navigation, ie one way streets, etc. amazing stuff.

Great for planning bike rides and drives through the highlands and random tropical islands….

Not been down my street since i moved in – still has the previous owners caravan in the drive and not my half land rover 🙂

Oh and helps me at work trying to work out where to dig roads up!!

Not been down my street since i moved in – still has the previous owners caravan in the drive and not my half land rover

I’m guessing only certain hot spots get regular updates e.g. Touristy places….

I had no idea that they sold the maps to other companies to be used for in house apps ect. Cheap too.

Use it at work all the time to check houses and blocks. Saves loads of hassle with site visits.

Dknwhy – you are a house surveyor who does mortgage valuations ?

@trailrat – no, I’m a data analyst for local government. Use it to look up the housing stock and compare what we have on the system to real life.

I’ve seen 3rd party companies doing more detailed surveys in Cambridge, they describe every house type & construction etc. Met a chap walking down our street with a PDA writing away outside each house and had a chat about it. Seems a very expensive way of collecting all the data.

@footflaps – we have surveyors that do stock condition surveys like that. We also have people carrying out EPC surveys and Accessible housing register surveys. All of which can’t be done by Google maps.
I use it for double checking data, such as number of storeys, UPVC glazing, shared front door frames or making sure that tenants haven’t fitted barbed wire (this did happen once, along with a crossbow trap rigged behind the front door)…

In my last place of work we bought data that had been collated from energy performance certificates and surveyors like these, it was a pile of poo. Both the properties I’d lived in were marked as having no loft insulation despite the existence of certificates to the contrary. There were a number of houses that had their roofs listed as thatch (there are no thatch houses round here) and there was a ground floor new build flat that had it’s walls listed as being made of cob, with the storey above being brick!

My daughters house in Yeovil is still a demolition site on streetview and she’s lived there at least four years!

We used Nokia Maps to navigate Australia and got very confused when roads were marked that they hadn’t even started building yet.

try a whole city – that has all its street named (some have even been street viewed) but has then never been built. California City was incorporated in 1965 and and geographically speaking its the 3rd biggest city in the state – but the theres nothing there.