I know that Google is “listening.” So at least I know that when I make suggestions for their map services, they are going to receive them. Actually, I have been impressed that, in the past, ideas that seem good show up on the website in a matter of months. The two ideas I have are optimization related and both based on actual situations. In fact, they represent both ends of the same problem.
The first idea is a multi-person distance-traveled minimizer. Whenever several people living in several states want to convene, it can be a good idea to try to minimize the distance traveled. This has occurred, for example, when the JDGA has tried to figure out the best city to meet for drinking and golfing. Solving the problem of distance minimization isn’t necessarily difficult, but it is tedious and time consuming. Google maps should create a tool that let’s users input the starting locations of numerous travelers and the potential meeting locations. Then the system can spit out the optimized location.
The second idea is similar. Instead of numerous travelers trying to pick a centralized location, a single traveler may want to find the nearest of many non-centralized locations. This would be useful if you found yourself in the situation that occurred yesterday. Rachel and I were in Charlottesville when we decided that we wanted to buy some PowerBall tickets. Unfortunately, those aren’t sold in Virginia. But they are sold in West Virginia, North Carolina, and DC. You see the problem. What is the best way to get to some location in any of those 3 areas that sells PowerBall tickets? Google could help. Of course, this tool could also be useful if, say, you want to buy a house that will reduce your travel time to work.
As I write this, it dawns on me that I could probably work on developing a Google maps API that could do all this. I could do that. It could even help drive traffic to my wonderful blog here. But I’m just not sure that I have the time. Of course, I should probably do a Google search to see if anyone else has done this already.
But if no one has done this, I’m sure that Google will shortly.
yes but have you googled Google, I hear it breaks the internet.