The Radar: Montmartre Open House, Living Social Escapes, Google Map Error

• Artists residing in the famed Parisian neighborhood of Montmartre will open their studios to the public this month. The weekend of November 19th to 21st is the annual Artists' Studios Open House Days: Anvers to Abbesses, which began in 1990. 124 artists in 74 locations will open their studios to the public to talk about their work and sell pieces. [NYTimes.com]

• Clear your calendars. Not satisfied with brokering cheap rates on everything from restaurants to yoga classes to housecleaning, group buying site Living Social dipped their toe into the travel pool yesterday when they announced the launch of their weekend Escapes program. Their packages to hotels across the country include fun activities like cooking classes, ski passes and champagne breakfasts. [Living Social Escapes]

• A Google Map error of up to 2.7 kilometers was enough to raise a border dispute between Nicaragua and Costa Rica. Last week Nicaraguan troops crossed the border and took down a Costa Rican flag, raising their own, because Google Maps said the land belonged to Nicaragua. The Organization of American States and UN Security Council are being called in to mediate the dispute. [Wired.com via Infoconvulso]

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Photo: Anna Koszeghy/My Shot

Post originale: http://blogs.nationalgeographic.com/blogs/intelligenttravel/2010/11/the-radar-montmarte-open-house.html

Nicaraguan Incursion into Costa Rican Territory Blamed on Google Maps Error

Nicaraguan troops crossed the border into Costa Rica and raised the Nicaraguan flag; the commander apparently cited erroneous maps from Google that showed the territory as belonging to Nicaragua: About.com Geography, Fast Company, Search Engine Land. (The border is shown correctly in Bing Maps.) Google says that they got the erroneous border data from the U.S. State Department, and they’re working on a fix.

This has led to a certain amount of Schadenfreude on Twitter from representatives of competing map providers, which I think is ill-advised. There but for the grace of God, etc. — which is to say that it could have easily been your maps, and probably will be at some point. You don’t see airlines chortling about their competitors’ crashes, do you?

Nicaraguan Incursion into Costa Rican Territory Blamed on Google Maps Error first appeared on The Map Room: A Weblog About Maps on November 6, 2010. Copyright © 2010 Jonathan Crowe. Distributed under a Creative Commons licence.

Post originale: http://www.mcwetboy.net/maproom/2010/11/nicaraguan_incu.php