<story><title>Google Maps Floor Plans</title><url>https://maps.google.com/help/maps/floorplans/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>7952</author><text>Just curious, but why exactly do you want indoor mapping?  Is finding your way around buildings really that problematic?   What exactly is the point?</text></item><item><author>aerosuch</author><text>Julian - just listened to your question from SXSW last year. I was part of another discussion on indoor maps this year: &lt;a href=&quot;http://schedule.sxsw.com/2012/events/event_IAP100110&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://schedule.sxsw.com/2012/events/event_IAP100110&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;One of my fellow panelists from Google discussed ways for developers to use Google&apos;s existing map tools to create their own indoor map content. This uses the Google Maps slippy map API, but doesn&apos;t require the developer to submit indoor map data to Google: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.google.com/events/io/2011/sessions/map-your-business-inside-and-out.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.google.com/events/io/2011/sessions/map-your-busin...&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;I would also like to see indoor map data, especially for public spaces, be more freely (libre) available. There are a few contributors at OpenStreetMap working on indoor maps, but privacy/data structure/data acquisition pose significant challenges. I&apos;m sure they&apos;d be interested in your help!</text></item><item><author>aubergene</author><text>Google are building various tools which allow users to contribute data (especially to maps). However they don&apos;t provide an easy way for users to choose to release their own contributions under an open license. I asked Marissa Mayer this question at SXSW 2011 and she said they would change it, however I haven&apos;t seen this happen. I would very much like to see Google change their policy so that by default any user generated contributions are released under a license which permits reuse without further permission from Google.&lt;p&gt;My question is at 28:30
&lt;a href=&quot;http://audio.sxsw.com/2011/podcasts/GoogleMarrisaMayer.mp3&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://audio.sxsw.com/2011/podcasts/GoogleMarrisaMayer.mp3&lt;/a&gt;</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>aerosuch</author><text>Yes, we can live without indoor maps, but we&apos;re suffering through a lot of inefficiencies just because we don&apos;t know yet that there&apos;s a better option.&lt;p&gt;I want indoor maps because they can help reduce healthcare costs. It costs us all money when people get lost in hospitals. While environmental signage helps, it&apos;s often not sufficient. Visitors end up interrupting doctors and nurses to ask for directions. This directly costs the hospital money (leads to higher personnel costs), and leads to a poor customer experience (affects the recovery process for patients and families). It is surprising how many people get lost in hospitals: &lt;a href=&quot;http://twitter.com/lostinabuilding&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://twitter.com/lostinabuilding&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;In addition to navigation, there are uses for facilities management, inventory management, real estate sales, and analytics on how people use buildings. I&apos;m a big fan of using data to improve human efficiency, and these can help save time/energy/money.&lt;p&gt;For retail environments, indoor maps present targeted advertising opportunities, which can lead to more efficient advertising spending for brands and retailers, and time savings for consumers. This is part of why Google is so interested in indoor maps.</text></comment>
<story><title>Google Maps Floor Plans</title><url>https://maps.google.com/help/maps/floorplans/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>7952</author><text>Just curious, but why exactly do you want indoor mapping?  Is finding your way around buildings really that problematic?   What exactly is the point?</text></item><item><author>aerosuch</author><text>Julian - just listened to your question from SXSW last year. I was part of another discussion on indoor maps this year: &lt;a href=&quot;http://schedule.sxsw.com/2012/events/event_IAP100110&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://schedule.sxsw.com/2012/events/event_IAP100110&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;One of my fellow panelists from Google discussed ways for developers to use Google&apos;s existing map tools to create their own indoor map content. This uses the Google Maps slippy map API, but doesn&apos;t require the developer to submit indoor map data to Google: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.google.com/events/io/2011/sessions/map-your-business-inside-and-out.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.google.com/events/io/2011/sessions/map-your-busin...&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;I would also like to see indoor map data, especially for public spaces, be more freely (libre) available. There are a few contributors at OpenStreetMap working on indoor maps, but privacy/data structure/data acquisition pose significant challenges. I&apos;m sure they&apos;d be interested in your help!</text></item><item><author>aubergene</author><text>Google are building various tools which allow users to contribute data (especially to maps). However they don&apos;t provide an easy way for users to choose to release their own contributions under an open license. I asked Marissa Mayer this question at SXSW 2011 and she said they would change it, however I haven&apos;t seen this happen. I would very much like to see Google change their policy so that by default any user generated contributions are released under a license which permits reuse without further permission from Google.&lt;p&gt;My question is at 28:30
&lt;a href=&quot;http://audio.sxsw.com/2011/podcasts/GoogleMarrisaMayer.mp3&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://audio.sxsw.com/2011/podcasts/GoogleMarrisaMayer.mp3&lt;/a&gt;</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>vellum</author><text>It&apos;s for large buildings like airports or malls.  You save a few minutes by not having to find a map kiosk.&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2011/11/new-frontier-for-google-maps-mapping.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2011/11/new-frontier-for-goog...&lt;/a&gt;</text></comment>