Oi dickhead! Where are you?

February 17, 2005 5:30 AM

Google maps is still in beta form and still limited to the US. One potentially useful feature is the option to search for suppliers of a particular service. For example searching for Pizza in Chicago brings up a map showing pizza outlets in central Chicago.

Searching for an Asshole, Dickhead, or even Institutionalized economic repression, however, bring up some rather more unusual results. Links possibly NSFW. Via memepool.
posted by bap98189 (35 comments total)

google is teh smart.
posted by quonsar at 5:34 AM on February 17, 2005

NSFW? Only your post is NSFW.

And how is this all that funny? I saw the post on memepool and it wasn't funny then. Didn't need to be transferred to this fine place, that's for sure.
posted by psychotic_venom at 5:46 AM on February 17, 2005

You put in a specific city and some random terms and it ends up struggling to match them up to stuff in its database and gives a few suggestions. Are any of these particularly stand out? They don't appear so. How are they NSFW?
posted by biffa at 5:47 AM on February 17, 2005

I really, really like Google Maps. I like the way it draws its routes, I like the interactive zooming and panning, and I like the integrated Yellow Pages. But come on, leave the politics out of it.
posted by uncleozzy at 5:47 AM on February 17, 2005

Crackhouse.
posted by Smart Dalek at 5:50 AM on February 17, 2005

I don't get it. Anything will work:

leader blessed by God himself in Washington DC
My house isn't in Washington DC
If this is a crappy FPP, show me a map of Washington DC
posted by Bugbread at 6:34 AM on February 17, 2005

Watch out for the suggestive pictures of adjacent hills, too. Geography and cartography are hotbeds of smut.

(pile on)
posted by NinjaPirate at 6:34 AM on February 17, 2005

On top of everything else, it's a Double Post.
posted by mkultra at 6:37 AM on February 17, 2005

Look what happens when you search for double post...
posted by Robot Johnny at 6:37 AM on February 17, 2005

Mkultra beat me to it...
posted by Robot Johnny at 6:38 AM on February 17, 2005

Not so much a double post—he's not pointing out Google Maps, just this particular aspect of it.

Which is pretty lame. The White House has obviously been set as the geographical (symbolic?) centre of Washington, DC, so it's in the centre of all Washington, DC, maps.
posted by DrJohnEvans at 6:41 AM on February 17, 2005

If this is a crappy FPP, show me a map of Washington DC

Bugbread hits the nail on the head.
posted by soyjoy at 6:59 AM on February 17, 2005

I think this is a pretty cool example of the trials and tribulations of collaborative filtering.

From poking around it seems that every page (crawled) containing an address seems to have most of the words on said page indexed to that address. So if you click on the urls stored in the balloons on the maps provided by bap98189 above, you'll likely see a couple of his colorful phrases.

Thanks bap!
posted by johnjoe at 7:10 AM on February 17, 2005

I would have to agree that there are a lot of assholes at the Black Cat, and the people running the Ottobar are definitely a bunch of dickheads. So Google gets that much right.
posted by QuestionableSwami at 7:11 AM on February 17, 2005

Classic!
Nice find.
posted by Quartermass at 7:14 AM on February 17, 2005

This is pretty funny, bap. I hadn't realized how open the searching function was on google maps.

Also...memepool is an uninteresting cesspool. I wait for the real quality finds to make their way here or boingboing or whatnot. Cause let's be frank, sure, they're the progenitor of some interesting things, but mostly they're 98% some weird annoying corner of the web.
posted by taumeson at 7:23 AM on February 17, 2005

In an attempt to move this into cool territory- pizza in 21229 works. I certainly could've used this the other day when trying to find a drycleaner in arbutus.... drycleaner in 21227 shows them. Great!
posted by TuxHeDoh at 7:30 AM on February 17, 2005

How do you get the URL for the specific maps? [I use Mozilla]
posted by swlabr at 7:42 AM on February 17, 2005

I use Safari. Anyone know what a search on Abe Vigoda returns?

Hopefully, Google Maps will support Safari sometime in the near future. I need Google to give me directions to Abe Vigoda.
posted by AlexReynolds at 7:52 AM on February 17, 2005

swlabr: Right click "Link to this page" in the upper right, and click "Copy link location".
posted by Plutor at 7:55 AM on February 17, 2005

Seems good at finding the Miserable Failure in Washington DC.
posted by kokogiak at 8:08 AM on February 17, 2005

Seems good at finding the Miserable Failure in Washington DC.

Yeah, the National Indian Gaming Association has been nothing but a disappointment. I haven't seen a good parcheesi tournament put on in YEARS.
posted by thirteenkiller at 8:14 AM on February 17, 2005

Google maps is still in beta form and still limited to the US

Not true. Most larger cities in Canada are accessible.
posted by Neiltupper at 8:16 AM on February 17, 2005

I like that result #I for dickhead is "Church of Scientology International Office of Public Affairs"
posted by revgeorge at 8:16 AM on February 17, 2005

Forget larger cities in Canada... I found my hometown in Ontario, which is less than 5000 people, and my house too.
posted by The Thnikkaman at 8:21 AM on February 17, 2005

Metafilter: Google's viral marketing playground.
posted by KirkJobSluder at 8:57 AM on February 17, 2005

Double post. Fair enough, my mistake. I would like to add in my defence that I searched for Google Maps or Google Map before posting, both of which returned no results.
posted by bap98189 at 9:07 AM on February 17, 2005

In your defence the original link was badly written and told the reader nothing about what it linked too, and the author didn't bother with tags but googling for google maps metafilter does go straight to it. Always worth googling, the MeFi search facility is legendary for its unreliability.
posted by biffa at 9:18 AM on February 17, 2005

Huh. When you search for places of interest, such as "Pizza in Los Angeles", it'll list the places on the initial screen, but scrolling will not update with new places on the map or the list on the side.
posted by linux at 9:54 AM on February 17, 2005

Metafilter: Google's viral marketing playground.
posted by KirkJobSluder at 11:57 AM EST on February 17

Agreed.

We need a new meme; Google Spam. (I was going to go with Google Blue but that didn't make sense.)
posted by Jim Jones at 10:59 AM on February 17, 2005

Ah, I get it now. Amusing, but... yeah, I'll join the collective shrug...
posted by mkultra at 11:20 AM on February 17, 2005

Needs direction indicators on one-way roads.
posted by NortonDC at 6:07 PM on February 17, 2005

Yeh, why no Safari support? What's so lame about Safari? Shrugging on in ignorance.
posted by dontoine at 7:20 PM on February 17, 2005

What QuestionableSwami said.
posted by Luther Blissett at 8:58 PM on February 17, 2005

The Google maps are missing a scale indicator. I didn't notice it when I looked at this thread yesterday, but last night I tried to use Google maps to get a feel for how to get to an unfamiliar place, and sorely missed the scale. Ended up going to mapquest for it.
posted by DevilsAdvocate at 10:54 AM on February 18, 2005