"... We've had guys right out of college throw map applications together pretty quickly. All the hard work is done by others. ..."
Really. I've worked as a Cartographer. Can you show me some of these applications?
What Everyblock has done (I've read the article quite a while ago) is assemble a whole lot of opensource technology and make it scale. But is this what really makes the Everyblock product impressive? The simple answer is no. I'm pretty sure the EveryBlock product is far more complicated than the simple apps your College mates whacked together. In fact I put it to you the EveryBlock technology is just as impressive as googles if not better.
It's an easy mistake to make as technologists to just see - technology! The real interesting bits of the Everyblock product can be found in
Data collation: the collection, massaging and scrounging of information and correctly applying it to a position. If you read the article carefully there is some very clever collection of data. Not all your data is given to you on a plate. Some you have to extract from third parties then work out the best way to display it with the limited information you have. Everyblock not only does this to the geographical cadasta but at the Thematic layers as well. With google maps due to it's expansive coverage even the base layer is dodgy. I noticed this in some of the google examples in my own hometown (melbourne, au).
Generalisation: the way the data is portrayed at various levels so it makes sense to the user. For example notice how not all the roads are added (but the block structure is). So if you know the major roads you can still count the minor streets & guess their name.
Themes: the way separate layers of information can be interrogated independently. google does this but as a toolset only. It is up to individual developers to do this and hence we have very little meaningful comparisons of various thematic data in specific geographical areas
Ground Truth: is what you see on the map is what is on the ground? This is one problem that Everyblock solves particularly well. They control the geographical database so only official geo data is added from reliable or known official sources. Thematic overlay information can be verified by individual users. If the user information is wrong at some stage the opportunity is given for others to correct it.
Style: The google map layout has no style. There is no subtlety in type-faces, word placement colour. Everyblock developers seem to understand that the difference between an accurate usable map and one that is really easy to read and understand is in the typographical and graphic design.
Everyblock succeeds where google does not, because they have concentrated on several big cities instead of trying to map the earth and fail in all but the big cities. In the end maybe I'm comparing apples & oranges. Google has written an API for others to use. I don't think google cares about the end users as much as Everyblock does.
"... The question is... was this comment posted before or after this xkcd comic was published ..."
The irony is not lost on me. Probably both at the same time. I guess I could have said the poster was wrong & left a pithy joke I suppose but duty calls ~ http://xkcd.com/386/
