Occasionally, I use twitter to broadcast information about local events through the @newcastlemusic account. For example, one of my recent tweets was about the Newcastle Improvised Music Association (NIMA). The association is organising weekly jazz nights at the Grand Hotel in Bolton St, Newcastle. That’s Newcastle, NSW, Australia, not just any Newcastle.

Within a few hours that information had been retweeted by @NewcastlePlaces. All well and good you may well say … except that they had linked to a map for the event that placed it somewhere in the UK. The Schmap indicated that the jazz nights would be taking at The Grand Hotel in Newcastle Upon Tyne.

I replied to their tweet and, to their credit, they removed the tweet and the map immediately, however the incident made me curious. How did this happen? Had it happened to anyone else? So I took a look at their account to see what their other tweets were like.

Places and Events in Newcastle. Indeed, but which Newcastle?

The @NewcastlePlaces account had tweeted nearly 800 times. The bulk of the tweets were regurgitating someones elses information about an upcoming event, then adding a handy map for the event on the Schmap.it service. Their twitter icon featured an image of Newcastle Upon Tyne in the UK, so I assume the operators of the account are based there. The majority of their followers seem to be from the North East of England.

Schmap’s about page describes the service as ” … a location technology service provider and local publisher, with cutting-edge expertise at the intersection of local, social, commercial and the real-time web”.

If they’d made a mapping mistake with my tweet, perhaps they’d made others too.

So, using a little local knowledge, I decided to read through their most recent 400 tweets to see if I could find some more #schmapfail. To my astonishment I identified 60 tweets that contained a Schmap showing an incorrect location.

Here is an example of one of their more recent mapping failures:

RT @1233newcastle A protest is being held at the top of King Edward Park against the redevelopment of th… http://schmap.it/3QTQrx?a <--MAP
5:44 PM Feb 23rd via schmap.it

Schmap showing incorrect location for the King Edward Park protest

This tweet was posted by 1233 ABC Newcastle, a radio station located in Newcastle, NSW, Australia. For some inexplicible reason, @NewcastlePlaces had mapped the protest as taking place at the King Edward VI School in Morpeth, UK, over 15,000 km away from it’s actual location.

Another recent mapping failure involved a retweet of @mediahunter‘s callout for interns for autumn 2011 at Sticky. @Mediahunter is a prominent Twitter user from Newcastle, NSW, Australia. His twitter profile clearly states that he is indeed based in Newcastle, Australia.

Map for Sticky: http://schmap.it/Sn2WQv?a – RT @mediahunter Closing applications today for Autumn internships at Sticky. Hurry!!! http://…
Tuesday, 15 February 2011 9:58:56 AM via schmap.it

Map showing incorrect location for Sticky

The Schmap incorrectly indicates that Sticky Ads is located at 152 Hawthorn Road, Ashington, a small suburb located about 20km North of Newcastle Upon Tyne in the UK. This is in fact the location of Sticky Fingers, a takeaway food shop.

Here’s yet another example that should have raised some eyebrows. The tweet specifically mentions that the poster is at “Australia’s most famous beach”. Yet somehow the Schmap ends up pointing to a small frozen food supplier in Gateshead, UK.

Icebergs: http://schmap.it/RIqs3H?a – RT @Maya_Abeille It was lunch at Icebergs at Australia’a most famous beach (baked herb encrusted se…
Wednesday, 5 January 2011 3:40:51 PM via schmap.it

Lunch at Icebergs at Australia's most famous beach

One final example, this time involving the location of a dead body.

Body in Singleton pool: Police are investigating the discovery of a body in a backyard p… http://schmap.it/JstXbT?a (via @newcastleherald)
Friday, 22 October 2010 9:59:35 AM via schmap.it

A dead body, located at Singleton, Winn, Saunders Solicitors by schmap

So the #schmapfail suggests that there was a body at 232 Shields Road, Newcastle Upon Tyne. This is in fact the location of the offices of Singleton Winn Saunders Solicitors. I’m sure they appreciate the insinuation that they are connected with a murder case.

So we can see a pattern emerging here. I imagine the process that @NewcastlePlaces follows goes like this:

1. Search through the tweets of anyone who’s twitter location contains the word “Newcastle”
2. Determine if they are tweeting about an event
3. Search for a business in the Newcastle Upon Tyne area that matches the event location
4. Retweet and include a Schmap that points to the UK business

It’s not hard to see why this process fails so often. Someone from Newcastle Australia is hardly going to be tweeting about an event in the North East of the UK.

In addition to the 60 incorrectly mapped tweets I identified there were also five apologies. Presumably these were responding to people who had complained about their events being incorrectly mapped.

All five apologies are listed below:

@newcastlemusic Oh, thanks for the info. We’ve already removed the tweet.
Thursday, 17 February 2011 2:03:39 PM via schmap.it

@SCOLLEYart thanks for letting us know, we have removed the RT
Wednesday, 16 February 2011 1:47:17 AM via schmap.it

@dmilor whoops! thanks for letting us know, we have removed the RT
Saturday, 12 February 2011 2:25:40 AM via schmap.it

@BacchusHeather we have removed the RT
Wednesday, 26 January 2011 3:09:54 AM via schmap.it

@Bibbleq oh dear, well if you give us the correct address we can fix the schmap for you … or we can also delete the tweet if you like
Wednesday, 15 September 2010 7:38:28 PM via schmap.it

Sixty-five Schmaps out of four hundred means a SchmapFail rate of 16%.

Is this a twitter account you want to be relying on for your local event information?

The article described how The Seabellies, a relatively successful local band, were travelling to Melbourne to play a gig on Saturday night. Realising that the gig would coincide with Earth Hour, they planned to participate by turning off the lights at some point during their performance.

The Seabellies

Steph Setz, keyboard player, said the Seabellies would switch the lights off for at least one song and rely on a crowd armed with glow sticks to provide light.

The Newcastle Herald article received some particularly thought provoking comments from members of the public including this one from “James”:

The entire band drives/flies all the way to Melbourne and back in the space of 2 days and then claims to be supporting the principles behind Earth Hour? They even have the audacity to state that “every little bit, at work and home, counted when it came to cutting carbon emissions”. Astonishing hypocrisy.
Posted by James, 23/03/2010 3:39:54 PM

This got me thinking … about just how much carbon dioxide does a light bulb generate compared to travelling by car or air? With this question in mind, I used an online greenhouse gas emissions calculator to calculate the impact of the band’s travel to Melbourne.

What I found was that the band will generate about 1 tonne of CO₂ emissions if they drive two small petrol driven cars to Melbourne and back. Alternatively, if all 6 members chose to fly, they will generate about 3 tonnes of CO₂.

Compare this with emissions caused by lighting. The electricity that powers a modern light globe creates about 10 grams of CO₂ per hour. Driving the band to Melbourne and back would create as much emissions as leaving a light globe on for 100,000 hours! If they fly then they’ll generate as much CO₂ as a light globe would in 300,000 hours, or an astonishing 34 years of operation!

The relative impact of a single fossil fuel powered journey far outweighs any savings that could be made by switching off a few light bulbs for an hour. Unfortunately I think the relative magnitude of the contributions of various daily activities to ones carbon footprint is lost on most Australian citizens.

Air travel can generate a surprising amount of CO2 per journey

I should point out that this blog post is not intended to be critical of The Seabellies themselves. Indeed, my own band, Erin, has travelled similar distances for gigs in the past. For example, in March 2008 we travelled over 4000 km in two cars through regional NSW and Victoria to attend the Port Fairy Folk Festival. Additionally, I am very fond of international travel and dread to think what the carbon footprint of my history of air travel would be.

What concerns me here is the way that many Australians are seemingly unwilling to modify their lifestyle in order to reduce emissions. Even worse, I believe that events such as Earth Hour can make people complacent, leaving them with a sense that they have done something substantial to reduce their emissions. This false sense of accomplishment may make it easier for them to justify not making any additional changes to their lifestyle on the other 364 days of the year.

I think we should be using Earth Hour to highlight the impact of ALL our daily activities on our carbon footprint.

Reducing our greenhouse gas emissions is going to take more than just turning off some lights for an hour.

Seabellies image courtesy of Michael Spencer. Smokestack image courtesy of Colin Purrington. Boeing 767 image courtesy of superciliousness.