Darth Parsons

People often ask me, "Uncle Ed, how do you combine geopatriotism and down-to-Earth geobanter while being a great manager?"

But that's not what I want to talk about today.

I've been working my British behind off launching my Isle of Man in my maps !! I took a broadside from the freetards at their wacko conference about my MapVader product and I'm not going to let a bunch of pot-smoking sandletards have a better map of some bike racetrack in the Irish Sea. No siree. 10.0 to Uncle Ed.

Darth Brin and Sith-Master Page have instructed me to use my GColor powers to rid the planet of the rebel scum. My keynote at the rebel base showed the freetards that the Deflector Shield will be quite operational when they arrive. There is no Skywalker, only a pathetic beeping R2-D2 to be struck down by the righteous sabre of 'gol.

The teachings of Emperor Schmidt have been instructive. Like Sith-project Knol we will disrupt and destroy their communications. We will tempt them to the Dark Side with promises of CPC revenue sharing, split their ranks with promises of 'server uptime'. One by one their number will fall.

Dah-Dah-Dah da da-da da da-da. Dah-Dah-Dah dah-de-dah dah-de-dah. DAH Dud-De-Dah dah du-duddy-dah dad-dah dah-de-dauddy-dah duh dua dah de dah.

My plan. To turn the republic in to my instrument, and their best saviour

in to a pupil of Darth Parsons, Emperor of Maps.

Emperor Schmidt has revealed to me the true nature of the Google Moonbase project. We will turn it in to a weapon capable of projecting our power in to the far reaches of the Galaxy. This is the very reason that we as Googlers must maintain our absolute mission and use our Powers only toward the vision of the Emperor.

I have been entrusted with owning the maps and destroying the rebel base. With the help of my fellow Darth pupils breaking apart wikipedia and undermining the GPLv3 we will turn them in to Sith-projects like Android, it's very name turning the volunteers in to our robot minions. To be sent out and eat Nokia alive.

I say to you rebel scum, join me and we can rule the Galaxy together.

20% time

People often ask me "Ed, how is it possible to be a geovisionary and a great manager at the same time?"

But that's not what I want to talk about today.

Many of you are also curious about what I do with my 20% time. In the beginning as I got to know my place at the top in Google my 20% time was what you mortals call 'Saturday' but these days Uncle Ed sets aside the time to think the thoughts required of a geovisionary.

I couldn't possibly tell you most of what I do (unless you get a few pints of the dark stuff inside me in ol' Ireland !!) but let me tell you what I did today. Today, I spent 8 hours training with the SAS.

The SAS are the super army soldiers, the elite in ol' Blighty. You've seen them in such events as the Iranian Embassy Hostage Crisis and World War II. But I know, I know. Why is Uncle Ed training with the SAS? Well, partly it's to teach them about search and my maps but also it was to gain some first hand defence and combat experience... because I have an upcoming trip to Mogadishu.

Uncle Ed's Maps are needed in Somalia, and they don't have running water or internet let alone the comforts ol' Ed is used to like my personal masseuse and my karmic guide. I'm going to get Mogadishu mapped, but I need the training first. The next stage is to find transport in and out. Currently I'm planning a helo drop from 3,000ft armed only with two knives and a GPS unit, plus an iPhone to signal for immediate evac if pinned down.

Sent from a secret base using secret technology (look I say secret but Google had all this stuff back in the mind meld days)

So plans change...

I am adding streetview to Blighty, see here for more. I bought a car, fitted the roof rack and built the camera mount. In the back, I built a stack of harddrives and all the processing software and now I'm driving it around London with an emphasis on my house. My goal is to drive around terminal 5 with this baby but without the large Google logos on the side the tanks might roll in !!

Some bunch of privacy wankers are objecting that I'm putting more surveilance data online than the Labour Government (it's hard, but someone has to do it). I say follow the lead of the YouTube team and fuck privacy, viacom can have the data !!

But yes Uncle Ed fans !! I'm coming to Limerick !!

Last year I was the show but now we are moving on to stage two in our embrace, extend, extinguish strategy. For this stage, Google Security will be joining me to ensure my personal safety at all times and you just don't want to fuck with these guys. They're all ex-SAS and may be carrying semi-automatic weapons. You probably won't see them anyway, we sent them on a course to blend in with freetards !!

If you have any criticsm of MapMaker please submit it in advance... I will make Private Eye proud. For example if you say "MapMaker is the greatest way to screw the freetards" I will massage that in to "MapMaker is greatest". By framing the discussion and handing out Google candy I think I can hoodwink the freetards.

I will be flying in on the Google plane, Uncle Ed doesn't do RyanAir. And I don't want any questions about the Google plane being used for CIA rendition flights, I've made clear I have only used it [redacted].

Sent from [redacted] via [redacted]

No input file specified.

The comments are getting heated so I've turned them off on advice from Sergey... 'No input file specified.' seems vague enough while I figure how to massage the message !!

What Map Maker is /is not [DRAFT]

Bit of a down moment in the last post, time to pick it up !! I'm hurt by this but they will not drag me down !!

Last week I introduced Map Maker a set of online map making tools to very positive… but not universal acclaim.

I can't understand where SteveC is coming from - it's just fucking amazing and we're going to shit all over everybody, but I think it’s important to clarify a few points.

Map Maker is clearly not an freetard project, and as such is not in competition with the freetards and does not I believe represent a forking opportunity for the creation of open geodata. If you wish to help build an open geodata based global map then go live in your hut or buy a prius, hippie.

What Map Maker represents is the revolution coming home. While I invented maps, location and croud sourcing of map data, the key for me was the love of the people. We are now telling the users of Uncle Ed's Maps to do our work for us by providing mapping data using this cobbled together tool. The data submitted is licensed by contributors to Google and NavTeq can go fuck themselves.

This is a key difference in approach to the freetards, most end users of Google Maps/Earth etc. and most developers using their api’s don’t want or need rants about licenses, access to every little number is a database or whatever it is they do. They of course want Uncle Ed's Maps.

Although never a freetard project, it does produce data that is 'free' to users, the information contributed by the community becomes freely available to them via Uncle Ed's Maps and the Maps and Earth API’s. And we pay for the servers with some ads.

This is the thin end of the wedge. I really wanted to launch it worldwide but I was still in paleoland when the Red Level Googlers signed agreements with our data suppliers so we can't screw them yet - but I'm going to see their 'oh' face before long. 'oh!' 'oh!' 'oh!'. You know what I'm talking about.

Written and submitted from the Virgin Galactic lounge using it's mind network.