We’ve come a long way in the past five years, but a couple of recent experiences reminded me of just how far there still is to go.

First one: I can walk from NYC to Ottawa in 5 days.

As Wen and I were going home for Christmas, I decided to see what the directions would look like ‘by foot’.   I was impressed that it would only take about five and half days to do that.   That’s about 72 miles a day.

You get a great sense of how Google’s algorithms work here.  The average human can walk about 3 miles per hour.  There are 24 hours in a day.  Ergo, 72 miles per day and 5.5 days to Ottawa.

My second moment came when I stumbled upon this nameless street when trying to find a cafe:

Of course, this street does have a name (Greenwich).  And this example speaks more to the power than limitation of online mapping tools: they’ve become such a part of my life that a part of me almost questions why the street has no name, rather than thinking there’s something wrong with the program.

That’s not too bad, right?  400 hundred miles in 5.5 days.  Totally doable, right?  Oh wait, that’s six miles an hour 12 hours a day.  What’s interesting is that the average finish time for a man in a marathon is ~4:30 – or about 5.8 miles/hour.  I guess we all just need to learn how to run faster than average marathons back to back to back to back and then we’ll have a similar fitness level to those at Google!

(Note: this is, of course, a tongue-in-cheek post.  It’s awesome that you can drive around and get on the fly directions.  Just might need a little bit more work on those ‘walking’ ones)

A couple of themes emerge:

• Manhattan is ridiculously oversized in the MTA version.  Note how much smaller it should be
• If you live in East Brooklyn or the entire borough of Queens you’re pretty much out of luck when it comes to subway transport
• It is ridiculous how far the subway lines are from both JFK and LaGuardia

The NYPL has over 60,000 maps of NYC in their Digital Gallery, but they’re simply digitized images.  They lack any actual mapping points: latlongs, etc. that can actually be use to project the map onto other maps.  As a result, they’ve decided to build a tool – the Map Rectifier – that allows anyone to convert an image of a historical map into an actual working map and share the results with the world.

The process is simple: you find an old map you want to convert into a working map.  You put it side by side with an OpenStreetMap map of New York.  You then click on a point in the old map and click on a corresponding point in OpenStreetMap.  Once you’ve done at least four points, you click “rectify” and the system warps the image of the old map to fit it onto the real map.  At this point, the old map is converted into a set of latitude and longitudes and can be used elsewhere (the system is also smart enough to tell you if you did a bad job).  I’d show you screen shots, but I can’t get a login to the system; it’s still in invite only mode

There’s some other cool functionality in the tool: it’s got the ability to crop maps (so you can skip parts of the map) and you can also trace out buildings and add data about them (e.g., it’s a public house, etc.).

This gets better and better because once you’ve converted the map into a set of KML coordinates and you can view it in Google Earth.  For example, here’s a projection of a 1924 aerial set of photos vs. what’s there today (a lot more farmland back then):

Here’s another example, from the 20th Ward’s fire insurance map.  You can see what Madison Square looked like before the Garden and the Farley post office were built:

This technology is impressive as you can start to tell and visualize the history of the city.  Moreover, once the system launches, it’s going to be open to the public and anyone can rectify a map (that’s a sea change in how libraries work).  Also, kudos to the NYPL for making the entire system open source: you’ll be able to install the software on your own server and start rectifying your own maps.

It was really cool to see, but I couldn’t help but think of how archaic it is and how every single thing it does is now available on my phone or computer.

Here’s a shot of the lower Manhattan portion:

Here’s how the same scene renders in Google Earth:

It’s almost identical-except that the Google edition is constantly up to date, lets me zoom and has info added to highlight places of potential interest.

Similarly, here’s a photo of both the panorama and the same location in Google Maps on my iPhone:

I’ve now got the Panorama to go.

In fact, I can now do things on my phone that the Panorama will never be able to do: UpNext allows me to see individual building across Manhattan in 3D.  The Old Map App actually lets me watch the same point evolve through time (whereas the Panorama has only been updated twice: 1964 and 1992).

Interestingly, the Museum is now trying to make the Panorama a little more interactive: they’ve placed pink triangles on all locations (outside Manhattan) where 3 or more foreclosures have happened.  Note the swath from Bed-Stuy to Jamaica via East New York:

Of course, this is also a totally outmoded way to do this.  The New York Times’ foreclosure map makes in a lot easier to visualize.

The Panorama is well worth seeing if you ever come to NYC – and seeing the model is a million times more impressive that looking at an image on a screen.  It’s just incredible to think that you can now take it with you everywhere you go.

This got me wondering: if I had only gone one way, where could I have made it to?  Fortunately, the interpipes are here to answer this.

According to Google Maps, I wouldn’t have made Chicago, but would be in Fort Wayne right now.  I would have blown past Detroit and gone all the way to Flint.  If I was feeling Appalachian, I could have almost made it Knoxville, Tennessee.  If I’d wanted a some Southern comfort, I could have gone down to Myrtle Beach.

Alternatively, I could have headed north to North Bay or Jonquiere (where, I’ve been told by my bro, the cheapest house in Canada is available for $4,000 – caveat emptor).  Alternatively, I could be on the Bay of Fundy today, feasting on fish & chips.

Here’s the rough map:

Here are a few random things I learned on the trip:

• If you turn on the maps on your iPhone and drive fast you can actually see your location move.  I do not condone this and only found out by accident.  Definitely do not try this and claim you heard it from me.
• The Customs Service only got the new photos of Barack Obama about three weeks ago; they’re still waiting for a Biden (next time you’re at the border, glance behind the agents – there are always photos of the President & VP plus possibly a cameo by the Secretary of Homeland Security).  However, they don’t show a Cheney in his place; it’s a vacant frame waiting to be filled.
• Hitting blinding rain just outside the city after thirteen hours in a car is not fun.