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[babbler]

I'm going to follow the Seventh Law of Academic Publishing: Since I have no ideas, I'll add data.

Attached is a file listing the distance between the lat/long for iLB's WHOIS address (37.763439,-122.434385) and each point. (Caveats: calculations assume Earth is a perfect sphere, not safe for navigation, do not use for operation of nuclear power plants, &c., &c., &c. -- in other words, the numbers are not precisely perfect, but I used generally accepted algorithms for the calculations.)

[Kagehi Kossori]

It occured to me that this might be a literal network map, like:

http://www.cybergeography.org/atlas/cox_1457_large.jpg

However, there may not be enough points, nor are they necessarilly in the right place. The other maps on the site are not any more helpful.

However, there is also http://www.wigle.net/, for wireless networks. Which is still not quite right, but there are definite similarities. It may be pure coincidence due to population centers though.

This one is GSM Cell Phone coverage: http://www.gsmcoverage.co.uk/maps_go/namerica_init.html

Again, strong similarities. Only thing I can think of is that the GPS locations are not really that accurate (terraserver using a lot more decimal places for 'exact' location) and maybe these are supposed to represent the 'physical' locations of ISPs from which packets to the ILB site came. It is at least another possibility.

[Gurbe, the Netherlands]

I don't know if anyone's noticed this, or if it significant, but if you go to the distancecalculator provided by dana's blog it reads:

Initial heading from San Francisco to Beijing:
northwest (318.8 degrees)
Initial heading from Beijing to San Francisco:
northeast (42.7 degrees)

Now, I'm a bit of a noob but from SF to Beijing is almost due west, and if any, it's SOUTHwest
I dunno if this is important, but has anyone checked this out?

[acki2003]

[GaUDeNTiUs]

Going by the crazy 3 and 7 idea . . .

Screwed up Long number:
33.8669
3+3+8=14
6+6+9=21

PM corrected Long:
37.8669
37.8 | 669
3+7+8=18
6+6+9=21

Lat number
-122.2588
122.2 | 588
1+2+2+2=7
5+8+8=21



GD

[Gurbe, the Netherlands]

[GaUDeNTiUs]

Staying with the Berkley theme, one of the points is on Telegraph Avenue. One block west of that is a street named . . . wait for it . . . DANA STREET. Maybe nothing. But one thing, how close to Telegraph Hill in San Francisco did Dana live at?

GD

[sfsdfd]

I, being (apparently) the sole member of the Cleveland beekeepers branch, visited all four spots tonight. Conclusion: Two point to ponds, one might point to a tree, and one appears to be within a clump of woods. All four are clearly on private property, making them difficult to pinpoint, and impossible to search for geocaches.

Here's my report on the four coordinates near Cleveland (and I'll cross-post this elsewhere, including the Wiki.)

41.3053 -81.4166
This coordinate points to a pond in someone's front lawn. In fact, it appears to point to a spot past the pond, but that was too far into private property to investigate.
The pond has a small dock or walkway, for what it's worth. There's also a single fairly large tree between the driveway (the closest point that I could comfortably investigate) and the pond, but I think that was too far off. Finally, the mailbox at the top of the driveway (pretty far away from the spot) read "Hook," presumably the last name of the residents.
That's all. It's also the most interesting of the four spots, unfortunately.

41.3068 -81.3641
This one was harder to pinpoint - it's in the middle of a very upscale country club neighborhood, practically one step removed from a gated community! Most of the streets in the neighborhood were designated "private drive," and the local signage otherwise made it clear that the whole neighborhood was for residents only.
The coordinate appeared to lay in the backyard of several residents. Nearby, however, was another pond - more like a small reservoir, really. Otherwise, triangulation didn't seem to indicate any particular house, street, or other interesting feature - just this reservoir.

41.0885 -81.2057
This one lays in a private yard. It was pretty empty, by the looks of things, and the house was nondescript. There wasn't even a name on the mailbox. However, there was a single, rather large tree on the tree lawn - that's my best guess.

41.0923 -81.2138
And this one is the worst. It points to nothing, apparently. The surrounding neighborhood is an under-construction development: many winding roads, many half-built but empty houses. Pretty damn creepy, in fact, especially at night (it was dark by the time we got to this last one.) Some plots have been cleared for additional building, but some aren't (i.e., there are many patches of dense trees in parts of the neighborhood where the road doesn't go.)
We couldn't come close to pinpointing this one, because as best we could tell, the coordinate lay in a wooded stand of trees. Mostly inaccessible, and probably privately owned. I doubt there's anything back there, and I'm not about to go traisping through undeveloped private property to find out.

End result: Pretty damn disappointing. Oh well.

- David Stein

[nobodyman]

[floorneyne]

[digital_nihil]

just throwing some more ideas into the cauldron...
i began thinking maybe the coords could be sky coordinates, identifying some stars; after all, in astronomy some kind of polar coordinates are used. but the fact that, reporting the coordinates on a world map instead of a sky one, they all fall into u.s. borders make this idea probably wrong.
another thing i was thinking is that maybe the coordinates have something to do with "bee dancing", the kind of movement bees do to communicate the position of food source or the similar. Probably this idea is wrong too, because the pattern of coords has little to do with the 8-shaped movement of bee dancing and moreover (from what i know) there is no exact formula that would allow to infer a certain destination from the shape, even if the points were really (and probably they aren't) in a bee-dancing-like shape.
could have kept this speculations for myself, but i hope this helps somebody else in lateral thinking some better way out of this puzzle...

[Glitch]

I was reading PlayerOni's post and he said something about google so i typed in "ANAHEIM, CA bees" from the gps cordinates locations and it came up with a "Local results for bees near Anaheim, CA" link. When you click the link it gives you a bunch of addresses. http://www.google.com/local?num=50&hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&newwindow=1&safe=off&q=bees&near=Anaheim,+CA&oi=localr


it says "See these results on a map of this region" so what i'm figuring is that microsoft or whoever is doing this, typed in a keyword which came up with results from that keyword, and from those results they just typed them into mapquest or something and got the gps cordinates. I'm not sure what this has to do with the puzzle but it seemed interesting.
this might be confusing but i'm not good at explaining stuff plus im a newbie.

[logjones]

Even if similarities between the locations cropped up, I don't see how a solution like that to this puzzle would then take us further on in the game.

Unless this is just solving a puzzle for solving a puzzle's sake - which doesn't seem very rewarding.

So the the question then becomes: what if the physical locations themselves are indeed random?

Which leads to (among other things): what if the co-ordinates are actually a code for a sentence / paragraph / whatever that is the next clue to the next part of the puzzle?

[KiLLyourTV]

I believe if the above text file was configured into THIS we could possible be onto something...

[AngryEd]