Slashdot Mirror
Maps on Path to Mass Innovation
Ryan MacCarthy writes "When Google and Yahoo! released their map APIs last week they unleashed a horde of hungry developers eager to integrate their data with the user-friendly maps. Brilliant hacks like Chicago Crime and Craigslist Real Estate are in the midst of switching over to the new API, while sites like MetroFreeFi use the new API to make it easier to find free wi-fi locations in US cities (San Francisco, for example). Imaginative developers, like Alan Taylor (Transparency concept), are digging deep into experimentation to dream up new uses for the maps. It's great to see the innovation when hacks turn to apps." I want to see Los Angeles maps of the action in James Ellroy's novels, and a national map of the worst, funniest tourist traps across the U.S.
Already done... :)
Sombody converted all georeferenced Wikipedia articles of the german version into such a file....
Flying around the earth, and having a click on mountains, rivers or cities open the wikipedia page in the lower window really feels like playing real world civilisation
HI O WISE PRINCE. WHT TOOK U SO DAM LONG?
Actually, Local Search on maps.google.com does a really good job of doing just that. Unless I am misunderstanding your question.
Never mind reverse-engineering KMZ/KML, the spec and a tutorial have just been posted on http://code.google.com./
Enjoy!
And it's a shame...
I used to work on production for Where Magazine in New Orleans. They would publish a map entitled "Where To Go In New Orleans" and I always wondered why they never published a map that showed areas where crimed occurred. At the time, New Orleans was pretty high on the murder-per-capita rates. But there were places that a tourist SHOULD KNOW ABOUT if they wanted to remain with their belongings and alive.
The magazine said they'd get sued out of existence.
Admittedly, publishing this kind of information in a magazine does push it under the umbrella of "opinion" unlike the Chicago Crime Maps, but it's a very thin hair to split. Chicago Crime Maps is merely publishing already available public data, but Where Magazine would have done that, too. What's to become of the tourist site that links to the maps?
If Nalgene water bottles are outlawed, only outlaws will have Nalgene water bottles.
You are, and it doesn't.
Local Search on google uses some crazy algorithms to find things by doing a GOOGLE SEARCH for what you entered, and then showing you addresses on a map found in the pages you referenced. (Basically.)
Yahoo Yellow Pages is actually a database of business listings, and when you search that, 99% of the time you will get all the businesses.
Example: I search for haircut near my area in Google Maps, and I get a few nearby haircut salons. I do the same thing in Yahoo Yellow Pages, and I get ALL the salons nearby, which gives me more choices, especially when there is a specific entry I am looking for. I know I will find it with YYP.
I wish Google would just hurry up and buy some Yellow Pages company's data so they can compete against that. The "Local Search" idea was interesting, but is not comparable or adequate.
Ironically, the word ironically is often used incorrectly.
I created a page that lets you customize a map for inclusion on your website. The site is at http://shiwej.com/sitemapper/. You enter in a few options, and get code that you can put right on your site. And it's easy to create the Google Maps API key that is required for the map to work on your site.
JasonBlogs
See Google Code for a link to the kml docs and tutorial.
Have fun!
Chris
Co-Editor, Open Sources
Open Source Program Manager, Google, Inc.
A script is causing Mozilla to run slowly. If it continues, Mozilla may become unresponsive.
Do you want to abort the script?
[OK] [Cancel]
Have these people heard of UI guidelines? Which button am I supposed to press if I want the script to keep running? Cancel?!!!!