The $3.4 billion market for local search is heating up between Yahoo, Google, America Online, MSN Virtual Earth and Amazon’s A-9, with mapping a key component. But maps come in different flavors and may not have a search component.
Take, for example, the Akamai Net News Index. It offers a near real-time display of internet interests in major regions of the world.
Akamai helps speed delivery of 15 percent of the world’s Internet traffic over its network. Because its computers serve up billions of pages of news to Internet readers each day, Akamai is in the unique position of being able to track news consumption on a global scale.
- Aggregate, real-time visitors per minute on over 100 global news portals
- Map site traffic levels by continent over a 24-hour period
- Show historical trends and chronicle the world’s collective attention.
But who (really) cares what’s happening on a global scale. News, like politics, is local. The rest is filler. Cyber maps of local news, friends, and events might be more interesting — and useful.
Google Maps was the real breakthrough. Their open API allowed developers to roll their own interfaces, embedding Google Maps in their own web pages with JavaScript. Soon map widgets were being profiled in Make Magazine, O’Reilly, Dasnet.org, Map Room, GeoBloggers, Google Maps Mania and many others.
Google Earth (the downloadable application), can swoop in from space and circle as you please. Navigational tools let you zip around any locale, moving in and out, panning around, and circling.
Even though Google Earth’s world is mainly based on flat satellite photos, it does some trickery with perspective that results in a surprisingly three-dimensional look, such as in this view of Wrigley Park (above). WiGLE.net is a submission-based catalog of wireless networks. Portland’s WiFi hotspots use Google Maps.
O’Reily has collected a flood of new map hacks. Here’s O’Reilly’s Collection of Map Hacking Goodies:
- Weather on a Google map, with clever use of custom icons to indicate wind speed and direction.
- How to geotag photos.
- How to make KML files for Google Earth. Don’t miss Google’s KML tutorial and KML reference.
- Map of free Wifi in NYC. It’s worth noting that Google Local does this too, but without a master directory.
- gmapPedometer. Double-click on the map to mark waypoints, and the app tells you the total distance defined by the waypoints. You must click at every intersection, otherwise it assumes you can walk through buildings, because Google hasn’t exposed a routing API.
- Google Maps Transparencies lets you view a street map in the context of the satellite photo of the area. It’s interesting how the map doesn’t line up with the photo. It’s unclear how much of this is a datum problem (c.f. the Google Earth demo at Where 2.0 where someone in the audience pointed out that the overlaid road didn’t line up with the actual road) and how much is the natural fuzziness of the Ajax UI being imprecise about clicks and locations.
- Yahoo! News over a Yahoo! map. Either the app or the Yahoo! maps API seemed easily confused by clicking and dragging: it was soon displaying the wrong map for the points (or vice-versa).
- Google Earth Hacks is a blog devoted to cool stuff done with Google Earth. Notable examples: London Attacks and Tour de France locations. The site seems more about being a downloads.com for KML files that about actually hacking stuff with Google Earth.
- Been Mapped is adding community to the Google satellite imagery sightseeing craze. You can build your own playlist, vote and rank locations, etc.
- Find US webcams by zipcode. This is slow and doesn’t appear to contain nekkid web cams, so I don’t predict it will take the net by storm.
- Latest 2.5+ earthquakes. Uses mygmaps as the platform. Mmm, Pacific Rim of Fire goodness!
- IncidentLog.com plots publicly-available incident data (only available for selected cities, as it relies on the local cities/counties putting the information online and most don’t).
- Vancouver tourist map. Very cool!
- Add geocoding to the Google Javascript API. It uses geocoder.us instead of scraping the geocoder built into the Google Maps website.
Other novel maps include10×10 (above) and NewsMap. They’re realtime PET scans of global consciousness.
CyberGeography.org (above) has dozens of inspired maps of internet and global connectivity.
Real-time maps can shape-shift people, places and things with ElWire. Transform her.
U/C Berkeley has found a speedy way to capture a city. Using a concept dubbed “virtualized reality,” they mix LiDar with digital imaging to scan a city, and can build a 3D model of a whole city in about an hour.
Soon, $300 X-Boxes and Playstations will produce stunning, real-time 3D graphics. Web3D will transform the mobile world and VR Glasses will produce immersive environments. Cheap. Global. Real-time.
