Nanaimo, The Google Capital of the World

eldavojohn writes "Time.com has up a story on Nanaimo, a British Columbia coal mining town of about 78,000 that has had everything conceivable mapped into a Google database. Citizens can track fire trucks real time. The results also include Google Earth data for Nanaimo. 'The Google fire service allows people to avoid accident sites by tuning electronic devices to automatic updates from the city's RSS news feed, says fire captain Dean Ford. Eventually, Nanaimo plans to equip its grass-cutting machines with GPS devices, so residents piqued by the apparent shabbiness of a particular park or grass verge can use Google to find out when last it was groomed by the city's gardening staff. And the city's cemeteries will soon be mapped to allow Internet users to find out who is buried in each plot, says Kristensen. A new multi-million-dollar conference center, opening in June, will have 72 wireless access points to allow out-of-towners to use their laptops to navigate the Google Earth version of the city.'"

City corruption

[darjen]

I just have to wonder how much resistance city officials will put into something like this. Would any of the corrupt city councils here in the states ever allow Google to do that? If they catch cities that are bad about updating their infrastructure, there could be a backlash against the local government. It could be a whole new way of holding them accountable...

GPS on lawnmowers?

[stoofa]

So where as you used to just cheekily shout "You've missed a bit!" - now you get to email them with co-ordinates and a satellite photo as proof... and then blog it all.

This is cool

[blhack]

This is one of my favorite things I've seen google do so far.
It really is neat to see how google has gone from a company that indexes web pages, to a company that stores and indexes your email, to a company that stores and indexes maps of the world, to a company that will literally tell you ANY available information about an area on the map.
As much as the privacy advocates are going to hate this (and please, somebody tell me WHY without using a slippery slope argument), this is really where I would like to see mapping go. Maps hadn't really improved in the past couple of hundred years, but now we're starting to see just what mapping can do.

Should be an exciting next few years.

So much easier to visit your dead relatives

[ozamosi]

Adding all graves will make it so much easier to visit the graves of your relatives. It's already possible to visit the cemetery through Google Earth/Maps, but it can be hard to locate your passed loved ones.

However, I feel there's a need for an additional service to be developed: put flowers and candles on the grave. As soon as that's implemented, you'll never have to go to the cemetery again!

Re:This makes me happy

[cromar]

I am a bit of a privacy nut, but I am all for more transparency in government. This story is somewhat interesting; it's neat this sort of thing is getting off the ground (finally). At some point, though, too much transparency isn't really worthwhile (like knowing when the ruddy green was mown last).

Re:This makes me happy

[CastrTroy]

I've always wanted to be able to see where the city buses are in real time. In Ottawa, they all (well, most anyway) have GPS units on board, so it probably wouldn't take much to have them transmit their location every 5 minutes. It really sucks when you end up waiting in the cold for 20 minutes because the bus is late. If I could see ahead of that it was going to be late, I would just stay inside until I knew the bus was close.

Re:This makes me happy

[Quattro Vezina]

Yeah, that sounds awesome.

As someone who takes the bus to and from work every day, I'd love this.

You know what's the only thing worse than the bus being late? The bus being early. Nothing like standing out in the cold for 20 minutes past the time the bus is supposed to arrive only to realize it must have passed your stop 15 minutes early.

Re:This makes me happy

[Knuckles]

Yeah, shabby spots in public places. OH THE HORROR!

You know, when I was at school I once worked for the municipal utility's public gardening service during summer. Whenever we had some downtime, regardless of whether it was to have a smoke or because we were waiting for the tractor to come back (so that we had something to throw the cut grass onto) we had to hide behind some bushes, because some jerk of other from the surrounding apartments would always immediately call the company to complain. Jackasses like this will have a field day with this new service.

Real time rail map for Switzerland

[seyyah]

Even better than this is http://www.swisstrains.ch/ [swisstrains.ch], where you can watch Swiss trains moving in real time.

Re:why they chose nanaimo

[dubbreak]

he city already sounds like a futuristic sci fi japanese anime city

The name is aboriginal (the politically correct term in Canada being "first nations".. ). The name Nanaimo comes from the Coast Salish name meaning "Great Mighty People", the whole", "great strong tribe" etc.

Funny thing is no one has mentioned the dessert of the same name: Nanaimo bar [wikipedia.org].

Whether the dessert actually originated there is debatable, whether it is delicious is not ;).

I love this idea of complete transparency

[jgerry]

What's not to love about this? As governments want more and more information about us, we should demand more information about them. This is our tax dollars at work. We should know where our money goes and how it's being used. If governments were to provide all this information, we'd have an army of fact finders going through every detail of every budget, every purchase, every opportunity to defraud the public or waste time, money, or manpower. The people would become the watchdogs over government instead of journalists. This is probably a good thing, as it's pretty clear that the journalists haven't been doing their job properly for some time.