Friday, June 26. 2009

MapQuest "input error" fixed in a few hours

This is just not the type of story you hear about much. In Clarksburg, Maryland if you ask for directions to the High School from MapQuest or some GPSs you don't end up there, but rather at a private street. But, unlike other private citizens and journalists, instead of contacting Tele Atlas or NAVTEQ about a data error, the local TV station contacted MapQuest and AAA. The response from MapQuest:

ABC 7 contacted MapQuest and AAA. MapQuest said they had pin-pointed the problem and would have it fixed in a few hours, citing a simple data input error. Now, maybe the folks who live along the road can have some peace.

I found the high school using MapQuest's search tool here. The track and football field convince me this is a school. Using the address given in the article from ABC7 I seem to get the centroid (I think) of the town, suggesting to me that MapQuest could not geocode the address and thus defaulted to the centroid. MapQuest's address for the high school is River Hill High School 12101 Clarksville Pike, Clarksville, MD 21029 while the article cites 2250 Wims Road. I had the same results with Google.

- News Channel 8