Google puts far too much stock into the "accuracy" of its Maps data.
Here's my fun story: in order to verify my dad's website with Google's 'My Business' service (now a defunct product?), they had to mail a physical postcard with PIN code to ensure the address was legitimate. Picking the mailing address was hooked into Maps/ Maps data; a "real" address had to be among their existing database of addresses.
Well, my dad lives in a somewhat-rural area outside St. Louis. His street is "Alt Road" -- named after the Alt family, German immigrants who started a large farm in the area 150+ years ago.
Yet Google Maps had the street listed as "Alternate Road". Clearly some data entry person presumed it must be an abbreviation and took liberty to 'correct' the apparent mistake.
So it was literally impossible to have a postcard mailed to his address on Alt Road. I had to have it sent to Alternate Road instead. I recognize, of course, the verification steps taken thereafter will have permanently corroborated what was bad data in first place. Now I'm part of the problem.
I'm guessing Maps will now forever have renamed the street. Should I alert the county to Dad's 'new' mailing address?
The county couldn't care less what Google Maps shows. Outside large cities, Google Maps is often pretty inaccurate, just outside Seattle in Kitsap County, Google Maps has yet to gain the 300k renumbered addresses that the county put into place over the last five years. Makes Google Maps fairly useless except where locals have manually updated their favorite stores and the like.
The funny thing is, Google can get updated road info in a timely manner as most counties offer a weekly dump of their map data. Open Street Maps is often on point in rural areas due to pulling these weekly dumps, meanwhile the 3rd party vendors Google buys their address data from rarely pull down the publicly owned dataset, contributing to the shoddy quality of Google Maps outside most cities.
Have you tried using the "Send Feedback" menu option in Google maps? It can take some time (on the order of weeks), but I've found they do seem to be responsive to feedback about incorrect data.
I'm not the OP but I have found this menu option to be incredibly useless. Google Maps has strangely lost the ability to point to my address and has refused to fix it for many years now. What's most frustrating is that the "Send Feedback" option offers no way to specify that an address is in the incorrect place, I can only select roads. I have resorted to trying to explain the problem in text but they never got back to me.
Every time a HN thread like this pops up I write about my annoyance with this and nobody has any solution apart from this suggestion. It shouldn't be this hard. Open Street Map is a breath of fresh air in comparison.
I wonder about this type of stuff since the place I am at now has no mailable address other than a PO Box. During my high school years, I remember ordering packages with "House 313 behind the School" or "House 313 School Loop" to satisfy the place we were order from. The UPS driver would know where to drop it off, and US Mail made you pick it up anyway.
And the reverse, near me, there's a "South Extension Road" South and Road might reasonably be abbreviated: "S Extension Rd." but Google maps just displays "S Ext Rd" and businesses have addresses of "123 S Ext Rd".
Also doing it in rural Missouri. I grew up & lived in the St. Louis area/ suburbs first 30 years of my life; that's where (most) family still resides.
I have a small agency and work independently from home. Currently have a sweet gig for a Global Fortune 500 corporation with offices all over the U.S. and around the world. Every day I collaborate with colleagues spread across North America, yet I still get to enjoy the beauty of the countryside. Occasionally I'm asked to travel into St. Louis (90 minutes) or Nashville or Cincinnati (6 hours each, respectively) for meetings.
Several years ago I "escaped" to a large wooded property just outside a small town with population around ~4500. Fortunately I also have a small college town 20 minutes away - home of the University of Missouri tech & engineering campus - with full-year population ~25k (it's also the county seat), where I can shop at Wal-Mart, Lowes, Staples, Kohl's, etc. In fact, there is also a brand new Starbucks + new development just opened with a Menard's, PetSmart, TJ Maxx and more.
So while I enjoy the privacy and peace of rural living, I also have a number of modern conveniences within easy reach. Also worth noting: my small town is fairly affluent, so there are nice restaurants (including a place with 20+ craft beers on tap), and we have a full-size grocery store.
Upsides of working rurally:
* Money goes significantly further. Not so much for typical everyday items and consumables, but especially because:
* Housing is VERY affordable.
* Property taxes are extraordinarily low. I have a 4000+ sq/ft home with 5BR and 3BA on 160 acres. Total annual real estate tax is less than $2k. Smaller home on 1/3 acre lot in STL suburbs was 2.5x that amount.
* Personal property tax and sales tax rates are also quite low. That makes it much more affordable to purchase/own vehicles, farm equipment, etc.
* Multiple, awesome farmer's markets every week -- 52 weeks/year -- where you find (inexpensive) produce, eggs, meat, dairy, baked goods, and you buy directly from the actual farmer/producer.
* Don't see any neighbors. Rarely hear them.
* True sense of ownership over your environment - no need to "keep up with Joneses" like you do in Suburbia
* Feeling of isolation. That's an upside for me, but won't apply universally of course.
Downsides:
* Maintaining a large property is a lot of work. A DIY mindset is helpful. So is a chainsaw.
* Poor cell service.
* Few/expensive internet choices. Currently using a 20Mbps satellite connection (which works just fine, including for realtime screensharing via Skype or WebEx) that costs $120/month. Earlier this year my telco line-carrier (CenturyLink) finally began offering DSL, so I plan to look into that -- cheaper but may be slower.
* Not much nightlife, few opportunities to socialize.
* No Whole Foods, Costco or Sam's Club. So I generally go into St. Louis once or twice a month to stock up.
If you're considering making the "escape" yourself, I would strongly consider the following:
* Road access. Rural properties differ significantly -- even within a small area -- based on the length & quality of roads you need to travel. Personally, my driveway connects to a _numbered_ state highway with hard pavement in good condition (maintenance and slow plowing are prioritized over smaller _lettered_ highways & county-maintained roads). Plus it takes only 10 minutes to get to the Interstate highway... a huge win. Compare that with some rural areas where you might either: A) travel a long distance on two-lane roads to reach the Interstate; and/or B) drive for miles on a gravel road just to hit pavement.
* Related to above: your driveway. In case of snow you'll probably need to plow yourself. If it's gravel, you'll need (or need to hire someone with) a tractor for periodic road maintenance/grading. Likely need to haul in & spread more gravel every few years.
* It's stark contrast from life in a metro area. Everywhere you look parking lots -- including at the golf course -- are filled with pickup trucks. I was previously accustomed to an abundance of luxury cars as far as the eye could see.
The number of private aircraft owners in the US (immediately addressable market) is around 300,000. Overall global market is somewhat larger, but not tremendously since aircraft ownership per capita is MUCH higher in the US than any other country.
On the downside, too, the market size is admittedly shrinking slowly. Private aviation is generally less popular than it was, say 15-25 years ago (likely the result of increasing costs and regulations).
There are upsides to the aviation market, though, that may help outweigh its size: A) upscale/luxury/wealthy market - costs for everything are staggeringly high, so premium pricing applies; and B) aircraft enthusiasts are typically technology-driven and likely to be early tech adopters.
In terms of applying the software to other markets, which may be larger, we've given this some thought as well. While car/truck owners (or fleets) might benefit from this type of application, there are existing software solutions aimed at solving the problems of roadgoing vehicles.
Likewise, aircraft are fundamentally different from a regulatory standpoint. Failing to perform periodic maintenance can be illegal - and lead to fines, censure or losing certifications/licenses altogether… yet nobody is going to be arrested if they fail to change the oil in their Toyota every 5k miles.
Plus, aircraft are somewhat unique in that records and scheduled maintenance are all based on # of hours (not on mileage as in the case of cars & trucks). I have heard suggestions, though, similar software might be applied to "heavy equipment" - like bulldozers and cranes - which also have hourly logs. Market penetration seems much easier for aircraft, though, since the aviation community is smaller, more consolidated and more tightly-knit.
Thanks for your feedback. Great point about signatures; yes - the signature of a certified Airframe & Powerplant ("A&P") mechanic is required for maintenance entries. We foresee implementing a feature for collecting, and validating, electronic signatures.
In terms of retroactive conversion, you're absolutely right most aircraft in service now are generally decades old - and are going to have historical paper records. We have considered several novel approaches that would allow aircraft owners to electronically archive their existing paper logbooks (and maintain historical records alongside the newer all-digital records for user convenience).
Oh, come on now. You can be honest here... you want $30M like Summly & Wavii :)
And maybe you should get it. The app looks very impressive. How does your program decide which snippets are the most important? Did you build that technology or license/ use somebody else's code? B/c from what I understand, both Summly and Wavii were primarily acquired for their proprietary Natural Language Processing (NLP) tech. If your app is capable of NLP- and you built it from scratch- you likely have something of real value -- and you're probably in demand as an NLP engineer too.
I do wonder, however, if those recent acquisitions had anything to do with a recent court ruling concerning "Fair Use"/ summarization/ news aggregators. You might wanna take a look & make sure your aggregation of others' content is acceptable + truly protected under "Fair Use" principles. Please note, I am not an attorney.
You are on point with that comment! Actually all of the tech is my code (outside of scraping the image and a few packages via npm). To be honest, I worked pretty hard on some of the NLP for sentence parsing. With that said however, I don't think I am in that high of demand as a developer (yet).
In terms of fair use... I am scared shitless. Right now I am not overly worried because I am not a huge site. The way the algorithm is set up is to take 15% or 3 sentences at max, whichever is less. This is something I will have to approach extremely carefully as I move forward.
In terms of this project's future: I doubt it will get acquired. But I really really hope it will help me get a job once I add it to my portfolio. (I am about to graduate in 1 year!).
Personally my experience is really on the web side of things. I am however looking at the option of doing an HTML5 wrapper around it so it can be published as an application in the stores. Should be an interesting path!
It is hilarious how clueless you are. Even if you take offense at his speculative registration of domain names, you can't criticize Jacques of lurking. Check the HN "Leaders" list . . . he's #4 on the list of all-time karma.
Jacques, I love reading your posts; they offer great insight into real entrepreneurship. Keep up the good work (including domain speculation)!
>The reality of the matter is that for every person who stuck to their passion and ultimately "succeeded," there are thousands who lived the rest of their lives in obscurity and never "made it."
How do you quantify this? What is your data? I think it's easy to claim there are "thousands" who faded into obscurity, but is it truly the case?
And for that innumerable set of folks that never made it . . . did they really stick to their passion?
I'm inclined to agree with the top-rated comment on this one:
>If you stick with it, you'll be successful. It doesn't matter where you come from, who your parents are, what you know, who you know, or how you look. All that is required is a choice -- a commitment to excellence.
I've had my 7 years of fat followed by 7 years of lean. There is a very real correlation between attitude/commitment/hard work and success.
>>How do you quantify this? What is your data? I think it's easy to claim there are "thousands" who faded into obscurity, but is it truly the case?
I think all those art majors who graduated from college and still work as baristas at Starbucks is sufficient evidence for my claim.
>>I've had my 7 years of fat followed by 7 years of lean. There is a very real correlation between attitude/commitment/hard work and success.
I'm a fitness buff too, and I have to say your analogy doesn't really hold. Success in fitness is very much about dedication, because your result is a direct result of the amount of work you put in. Whereas success in career is affected by a ton of other factors that are outside one's control. Primarily, luck. When there's 200 spots open for a job that 50,000 people are applying to, it doesn't matter how hard each of those 50,000 people work to get it. Only 200 of them will.
Here's my fun story: in order to verify my dad's website with Google's 'My Business' service (now a defunct product?), they had to mail a physical postcard with PIN code to ensure the address was legitimate. Picking the mailing address was hooked into Maps/ Maps data; a "real" address had to be among their existing database of addresses.
Well, my dad lives in a somewhat-rural area outside St. Louis. His street is "Alt Road" -- named after the Alt family, German immigrants who started a large farm in the area 150+ years ago.
Yet Google Maps had the street listed as "Alternate Road". Clearly some data entry person presumed it must be an abbreviation and took liberty to 'correct' the apparent mistake.
So it was literally impossible to have a postcard mailed to his address on Alt Road. I had to have it sent to Alternate Road instead. I recognize, of course, the verification steps taken thereafter will have permanently corroborated what was bad data in first place. Now I'm part of the problem.
I'm guessing Maps will now forever have renamed the street. Should I alert the county to Dad's 'new' mailing address?