Hot or Not on Google Maps - Updated
ScenicOrNot
ScenicOrNot is an interesting project from MySociety to find the most attractive places in Britain. The site uses a 'hot or not' format to get users to rate photographs taken around the UK. The site includes a leaderboard of the most scenic locations, as voted on by the crowd, and each photograph includes a link to view it on a Google Map.
One reason this project could be really successful is that the site is leveraging the 1,426,857 pictures submitted to Geograph. The Geograph British Isles project is aiming to collect geographically representative photographs and information for every square kilometre of Great Britain and Ireland. By crowdsourcing the rating of these photographs ScenicOrNot are presumably hoping to eventually produce a fairly accurate 'attractiveness' map for the UK.
Barry Hunter of Geograph has also produced this Google Map showing the locations of the top rated photographs by ScenicOrNot. The images are shown on the map as small thumbnails. Clicking on the thumbnail image will open an information window with a larger picture of the same image.
It is easy to see how having data that contains the attractiveness of most places in a country could be very lucrative. Real estate companies are just one potential customer of such data.
ScenicOrNot say they are gathering the data for a 'secret project'. They provide a link to the secret project 'Mapumental', which contains this video:
As you can see from the video the project shows users commute times on all public transport, including buses, trains, trams and the tube. Combine the commute data with house property prices and you have a sophisticated search application for house buyers.
Once Mapumental add in their attractiveness ratings from ScenicOrNot to the map, you can quickly see how the resulting map becomes very useful. Potential properties can be assessed not only for how long it would take to get to work but also for how attractive the place is to live.
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ScenicOrNot is an interesting project from MySociety to find the most attractive places in Britain. The site uses a 'hot or not' format to get users to rate photographs taken around the UK. The site includes a leaderboard of the most scenic locations, as voted on by the crowd, and each photograph includes a link to view it on a Google Map.
One reason this project could be really successful is that the site is leveraging the 1,426,857 pictures submitted to Geograph. The Geograph British Isles project is aiming to collect geographically representative photographs and information for every square kilometre of Great Britain and Ireland. By crowdsourcing the rating of these photographs ScenicOrNot are presumably hoping to eventually produce a fairly accurate 'attractiveness' map for the UK.
Barry Hunter of Geograph has also produced this Google Map showing the locations of the top rated photographs by ScenicOrNot. The images are shown on the map as small thumbnails. Clicking on the thumbnail image will open an information window with a larger picture of the same image.
It is easy to see how having data that contains the attractiveness of most places in a country could be very lucrative. Real estate companies are just one potential customer of such data.
ScenicOrNot say they are gathering the data for a 'secret project'. They provide a link to the secret project 'Mapumental', which contains this video:
As you can see from the video the project shows users commute times on all public transport, including buses, trains, trams and the tube. Combine the commute data with house property prices and you have a sophisticated search application for house buyers.
Once Mapumental add in their attractiveness ratings from ScenicOrNot to the map, you can quickly see how the resulting map becomes very useful. Potential properties can be assessed not only for how long it would take to get to work but also for how attractive the place is to live.
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Comments
Rob
Thanks for the info on the public transport data. I've taken out the reference to Where Can I Live and added your corrections to my original post.
Nobody is implying a political or geographical body called "Great Britain and Ireland".
And if you think they don't exist here are the links on Geograph.
GB = http://www.geograph.org.uk/explore/places/1/
Ireland =
http://www.geograph.org.uk/explore/places/2/
To clarify ScenicOrNot (and hence Mapumental) is only covering Great Britain, including Scotland (just that house price data is not used in Scotland - other parts still work)
Also its not Google Maps being used - but rather OSM.
Should someone make a quick GMap mashup of ScenicOrNot now? (I can only offer OS maps using OpenLayers:
http://www.geograph.org.uk/mapper/ (open the layer switcher to enable ScenicOrNot data)
Once all of them have been rated it will add more photos.
I also can offer this:
http://www.geograph.org.uk/search.php?i=6904081&displayclass=gmap
as a Google Map featuring ScenicOrNot data. Shows the top 50 locations on one map.