US Search giant Google today (11th April 2013) announced the global release of its Map Maker tool, which helps citizen cartographers build useful street maps. Ironically, Bletchley Park the home of WWII codebreakers, which remained a hidden secret for more than 50 years, was the chosen site for the launch of Google Map Maker UK. British Googlers and community members kicked off today’s launch with a MapUp workshop at Bletchley Park, the first place to test out and have contributions made to its area in the UK. Google wants citizens to transform a simple map into a more detailed and accurate representation of an area’s local treasures.
Google Map Maker is an online tool that allows people to contribute and edit map data for certain regions from around the world to provide attributes more precisely for their local neighbourhoods, footpaths and forests, parks and golf courses, where maps have traditionally been less comprehensive. Once approved, improvements appear across Google Maps, Google Earth, and Google Maps for Mobile within a matter of minutes.
For more details about Google Map Maker visit www.google.co.uk/mapmaker
About Bletchley Park
Bletchley Park is the Home of the Codebreakers – where during World War Two top secret codebreaking work was carried out on behalf of the Allies. It is said that the work carried out at Bletchley Park helped shorten the war by as much as two years. The Bletchley Park Trust was formed in 1992 to save the historic site from being lost to development. Bletchley Park has since opened to the public as a heritage site and museum. The present mission of the Trust is to preserve and develop Bletchley Park as a world-class museum, heritage site and education centre in order to enhance the understanding of the critical contribution of codebreaking and intelligence in World War II, the birth of computing and electronic security, and how these unique achievements remain relevant today.
Visit www.bletchleypark.org.uk for further information