James Bond and Maps—”Ugg, Hollywood?”
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I saw the newest James Bond movie this weekend, Casino Royale. It’s friggin’ awesome!
The one thing that irks me though and it has been bothering me since Saturday. . . the mapping apps he used were also friggin’ awesome. Now, I’ve amost illeagally downloaded the movie to clip the images that I want to show you, but I should just say the laptop Google Earth-like app Bond uses in the movie is pretty kick ass. With your traditional black background, Apple IIe vectors, with slippy map and almost OSM/MasterMap/NavTeq-degree attribution—it made me jealous that Hollywood could graphically create such a mapping app for the world’s greatest secret agent.
As cool that I thought the whole Bond and maps thing was, I started getting into the logistics that would have gone into such an MI6 toy. Data collection, preparations, storage, custom code development, database creation, encryption, on-the-fly overlays, and the list goes on and on. Then I realized, Bond would have made MI6 go broke with that app’s development and deployment.
The closest thing the Brits have to what Bond had in Casino Royale is Ed Parsons. They must have also had a few international OpenStreetMap parties too to carry the data requirements for Bond.
