Jalopnik: google earth

Monopoly City Streets Mates Empire-Building With Google Maps

Ben Wojdyla — Tue, 08 Sep 2009 12:30:00 EDT

If you're a Monopoly fan, Wednesday will be a big day, as Hasbro and Google will release "Monopoly City Streets" upon the world. It's a massive online game of Monopoly using Google Maps as the gaming board.

Monopoly City Streets is SimCity meets Monopoly meets Risk and it will be one of the more interesting, and time-consuming things to come out of Google in a while. The game uses the Google Maps layouts as the board and a whole host of new Monopoly buildings to build your real estate empire with. Even though we found Monopoly exceedingly tedious as youngsters, this game sounds incredibly cool. Perhaps it's the aspect of building upon actual cities that makes it so interesting. In any case, the initial release will happen tomorrow, and will no-doubt be the talk of the tubes for a while.

And think of the possible side-effects, maybe some genius will come up with a workable game plan to fix Detroit proper (hey it could happen). [Mashable]

BBG’s Katayama: “GPS Made Me Lazier, Stupider, Angrier And A Worse Driver”

Peter Orosz — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 10:00:00 EDT

Is technology making imbeciles of us all? Boing Boing Gadgets’ Lisa Katayama argues chronic GPS usage has put her in touch with her inner Pinky rather than helping her be a better driver.

Aside from occasional pokes at others’ devices, I’ve never used a GPS. But I can certainly attest to the gradual softening of the brain that comes with the violent expansion of high-quality mapping tools of the past few years.

When I moved to Budapest in late 2000 from a leafy riverside town in Southern Hungary, I spent weeks memorizing the grid of my surroundings. This was years before Google Maps and this area—where I haven’t lived or worked for six years now—is still the only part of the city I know down to the street level. It took until my regular uptake of city running to re-engage my spatial skills after years of lazily indulging in the geo-glut of Google Earth.

Katayama reports on a similar experience in her home of San Francisco:

At first, the GPS (I have an old Garmin) was a novelty-a tool for experimentation. It was fun to see how long the thing thought it would take to get from point A to point B. I was just the receiving end of a network of commands relayed through the voice of a nice British lady. But then it became a habit, and weird things started happening to me.

I started to forget how to get places without it. The map in my brain became a distorted blur. And then my driving became more reckless. I invented this game where I tried to beat the estimated arrival time that the GPS gave me. Often, that entailed running yellow lights and exceeding the speed limit.

Make no mistake: satellite mapping combined with GPS is an amazing invention, a genuine HOLY SHIT which makes it hard to imagine the state of the world before.

Still, like the automatic transmission and the running shoe with kevlar arch support, it comes with a price. And while the sheer convenience of being able to navigate any random spot on Earth with fine precision is wonderful, it may not be unwise to not entirely forget how to do this with the aid of nothing but our senses and our brains. Satellites, for instance, may fall out of the sky.

And if you read Jalopnik, you’ll certainly appreciate the proprioceptive pleasures of heel-and-toeing a car with a fine manual gearbox.

Photo Credit: Lisa Maree Williams/Getty Images

The 20 Most Traffic-Congested Cities In America

Matt Hardigree — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 12:00:00 EST

From New York to San Bernardino, drivers in America's cities live in their cars. Below we use Google Earth to take an in-depth look at the intersections of the nation's 20 most traffic-congested cities.

The good news is 2008 saw a major decrease in traffic, with drivers in the 100 largest metropolitan areas dealing with a 29% decrease in congestion on average. The bad news is we're seeing it because of an increase in gas prices, which led to less driving and more carpooling, and a decrease in jobs, which led to more people sitting on the couch hoping their unemployment doesn't run out so they can afford to keep their benefits. It's a vicious circle. Much like the pain we're seeing in these community-by-community breakdowns of the most congested intersections in these 20 most congested metro areas.

Click the images below to view traffic information on each city up close

1. Los Angeles	2. New York	3. Chicago	4. Dallas Fort Worth
5. Washington, D.C.	6. Houston	7. San Francisco	8. Boston
9. Seattle	10. Minneapolis-St. Paul	11. Philadelphia	12. Atlanta
13. Phoenix	14. Miami	15. San Diego	16. Denver
17. Baltimore	18. San Jose	19. Detroit	20. Riverside-San Bernardino

Though traffic does correlate to population rank, with the top four metropolitan areas also in the four worst cities for traffic, there are some anomalies. The Washington, D.C.-Arlington-Alexandria area is only the eighth most populous region in the country but is the fifth worst when it comes to traffic due to its high capacity of employment in the area and the lack of good housing stock for middle class families within "The Beltway" area.

Detroit is 11th largest in terms of population but only has the 19th worst traffic situation, primarily because of a 47% decrease in traffic year-over-year due to the economy and dramatic job loss. The collapse of the housing market hit Riverside-San Bernardino, a.k.a. the Inland Empire, hardest of all. The area saw a drop of 57% in traffic congestion, which is almost the same as the 55% drop in median home prices. While there's probably not a 1:1 ratio between the change in home values and congestion, they're likely connected.

Areas less affected by the housing market still experienced decreases in traffic, but at a lower level. For instance, home prices in Dallas remained stable and traffic congestion only decreased by 13% year-over-year, causing Dallas to move up to the fourth most congested city.

Los Angeles, New York City and Chicago are, as expected, still the worst cities for traffic in America. Los Angeles is so bad that peak hour congestion in Los Angeles is twice what it is in Chicago. The combination of a large population and low density makes L.A. even worse than the more populous New York. Compared to the Big Apple, Los Angeles also has fewer mass transit options.

Click on any of the cities above to see their current rank, population, congestion change and worst time of day for traffic. You can also view a gallery of the 100 worst intersections that fall within each city. A look at the hotspots reveal a few similar trends: intersecting highways, two-lane sections with onramps and merging lanes.

If you're reading this post it means you've actually made it home or made it to work. Congrats. There's probably someone still stuck in traffic.

[via Forbes, Google Earth]

New York: America's Second Most Traffic-Congested CIty