Mapping Hacks

In spite of the enormous press, and the pretty pictures, Google Earth represents the pre-infancy of user oriented spatial tools.

I hate to be ‘just’ a freaking whiner…so I have been actively trying to use the darn thing as part of my attempts to collect and manage the raw data from my experiences.

Sadly every time I try to count on it for anything beyond zooming me in to look at part of the world it fails me.

The ‘outrage’ that fostered this particular rant is the completely broken way in which it supports ‘management’ of ‘my places.’
Basically, it just doesn’t work for any definition of work which includes what I consider the bare minimum functionality. The only interface to your data is to organize it hierarchically. And frankly the drag and drop interface is persnikity as hell, and painful to use.

And when Google Earth crashes, which it does for me regularly (though I admit that might be my computer) _it loses my work_.

I don’t want to lose my work, like I just did, because the program crashes. Just save my work, please. Pretty please? Will it help if I beg?

I’m also annoyed that Google Earth seems to ‘think’ that I need to see the ‘featured content’ whether or not I think I want to see it. Sure there is a nice check box, and I regularly click it to hide the damn thing. I have nothing against ‘Featured’ content, except that _it isn’t my content_.

Let me repeat that: All of the pretty pictures and special content is nice. It even has a place, but frankly what I care about is my own content.

Sometimes I want to see what other people think, but mostly I don’t. And it annoys me that every time I restart the program the ‘Featured’ content box has been helpfully checked for me.

I can’t stand investing time in creating, managing and maintaining my own material and then losing my work because the program crashed.

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