I Put Seattle on the Map

Thanks to having a really cool job, I got to ride in the TeleAtlas mapping van today! What's that you say? TeleAtlas is the company that complies and sells map data to in-car GPS manufacturers, like TomTom. One of the things they do to augment their mapping data is to drive around the US in these orange minivans, with cameras and lasers mounted on the roof, mapping roads. It's got a 500MB hard drive storage on board that fills up every 2 weeks, then they send in to the home office to get the data added to the existing map data, for everyone to use in their GPS. The lasers are recording texture for a when GPS systems tell you the color, type and even texture of the building via 3D model rather than the cartoon images we're used to now. There are 25 of these vans around the US, look for them in your neighborhood and say hi!