I just did a little bit local addressing. I'm still not sure I like it, and this time there's no ice underfoot to blame. I went round a little cul-de-sac close to home and immediately hit a problem.
I live in a pleasant, fairly affluent village which has grown steady over the years. Since the local football team (Hull City) has made it into the Premier League we now have a few WAGs and Range Rover sports based in the village, but we do have a little bit of a dump too. This is where I decided to walk down today, photographing a few houses to get their positions for the address tags. I got my first direct hostility: "What are you f-bs f doing?" etc, shouted bravely from a distance when I'd left by the recent arrivals dumped there by our local council.
The problem lies with taking the photos. To get the position of an address you must record the number, so take a photo of the house, usually their front door and if you are seen this generates a response.
Actually the problem lies with a few lowlife morons who think that abusive language is normal and can't string together enough of their native English to ask a civil question, to which they would then receive as much of an answer as they would like. Still, their loss ...
4 comments:
I had the same thing happen the other day when mapping an address. The photo wasn't intrusive (no windows, etc.; just the house number itself). After explaining what I was doing the guy calmed down a bit. I offered to delete the photo in the end, and just noted the number as a POI on my GPS. It'd be a bit tedious to do all address-level mapping as POIs though...
Address level tagging and postcode tagging is an essential part of a map useful in a sat-nav. This is far from the only use of our lovely maps, but it would give us a wide exposure. To that end I want to find a better way to gather the address data.
Point the camera down the road. Pull it away from your face, and examine something on it, whilst cunningly taking a photo sideways from waist level at the house. Then put it back up in front of you, squint down the road whilst cunningly checking the screen to see if you got the housenumber.
:-)
Around here some neighborhoods have street numbers painted on the street curb. Doubt many people would raise too much hell about taking a picture of the curb. Also, mailboxes often have the house number on them and would probably also be less conspicuous to take pictures of.
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