It's the geographic center of Canada, that's the coordinate that the geo-ip database gives us back when no specific city is available. Works well for smaller countries, but in Canada it's quite visibly "off" :)
Yup, you'll occasionally see the same "bug" result in a bunch of hits to Kansas.
Even more visible in Australia, nobody lives in the center.
Well the NSA's listening station is in Alice Springs, so that part makes perfect sense.
I do know that Alice Springs exists, but it's an error in the Geo IP database they are using rather than true data. That's where the general hand-waving "australia" marker is placed when they don't know more than the country of allocation. There's a huge disparity between the number of people that live in NT and in other states, so the large number of results "coming from" there is telling in itself.
I have this gripe with mapping in general - area of uncertainty doesn't seem to be plumbed well. The assumption that everything is a point seems to permeate everything.
Seriously. I just spent a good deal of time roaming around Churchill on Google Street View and it seems utterly desolate. Wikipedia says there are 813 people. One of them's blowing this app up. Probably not so private for that person.
Ha...was coming to ask the same thing. I couldn't for the life of me figure out why there was so much activity on the shore of the Hudson Bay!
First I thought; given the population density of Northern Canada, that seems very unlikely.
Then I thought; given the population density of Northern Canada, this makes a lot of sense...