MySociety.org, a British tech nonprofit project that builds and showcases new tools for civic good, has released a beautiful series of maps illustrating various transportation data sets around England. See, for example, this sample map showing whether public transport (bus, light rail best is in red) or a private automobile (blue) will get you faster from the Cambridge station to any other part of the country. (Cambridge is in the bottom right hand corner, nearish London.) The project has created many other maps as well, illustrating a variety of data.
This is interesting, of course, primarily as a proof of concept. I'm sure it was time consuming and expensive to create, but that won't always be the case. If organizations like public transportation agencies expose their data via APIs then I can imagine that displays like this will only be a matter of processing power, which is only a matter of time. Wouldn't it be great to be able to see a map like this for any trip you were planning? "I'm at 44th and Killingsworth in Portland, and I'd like to go to 15th and Belmont. If I'm willing to be dropped off within a few blocks, would it be faster to go by light rail or car? How long is it likely to take me to get to a particular spot? That particular place I'm headed isn't a public transportation dead zone, is it?" Oh the questions you could answer! This is just one of many maps MySociety has published, which is a good thing in light of Margaret Thatcher's famous (attributed) quote - "A man who, beyond the age of 26, finds himself on a bus can count himself as a failure."
ActorTracker.com is a very impressive mashup of feeds from TV talk shows, movies and more mixed with affiliate links for videos and other memorabilia concerning your favorite actors. Most commercially oriented mashups seem a step away from cheesy splogs, but this one is very nice. Many features and a nice aesthetic let you know that the people behind ActorTracker spent a lot of time on it. Unfortunately, there appears to be some problem with the MyTracker feature, as I'm not able to log in to accounts I create.
The site has been around for awhile, but it may take some time before mass media loving consumer audiences are comfortable dealing with data like persistent search results and the like. If and when that day comes, the right marketing (and a log in proccess that works) could put this site in a good place to get many users. The service has an unintimidating interface, including e-mail subscription for new results. It's a good example of the way that RSS could end up being implemented by small players for mass audiences without waving the acronym around too much.
Given the huge amount of consumer goods available online around various celebrities and pop culture, matching affiliate links and listings shouldn't be too hard. Not always perfect, though, as the 700 Club's listing ends up next to an affiliate link to buy the movie Fight Club. I suppose millenarians do have to stick together!
Why should geeks on the fringe have all the fun? Microsoft Research has made a big move into the map-mashup space by releasing their own service called MapCruncher that allows nearly any image to have a Microsoft Virtual Earth map placed over it. Interesting - why stop at integrating an outside dataset represented only in numbers? Yahoo Maps has had its own API for some time as well, but neither of these two company's offerings seem to be getting the traction that Google Maps has gotten. Putting some of your own energy into the mix seems like a great way to kick start take-up, especially if you're a giant. There's a virtual cottage industry of 3rd party services for accessing the Google Maps API - it only makes sense for Microsoft to makes its own equivalent.
In recognition of where the juice is, Google just
announced that Google Local will now be officially named Google Maps.
Sounds like a good move given the love they get for their APIs, the fact that Yahoo Maps is called what it is,
etc. I use Google Maps to search for local restaurants etc. all the time and I think I can handle the name
change. What about you?
Not including city locations in places like Africa makes Google Maps look bad. Now that Yahoo Maps includes
satellite imagery of the whole globe- I'm really liking it a lot. Think Google Maps will win because of its
API? Check out for example what Chris Messina, Cal Henderson and Luke Dorny did with yahoo maps API (and Flickr's
API too) in IamCalTrain.
ResourceShelf.com points
this morning to TrafficLand's new service for New York
City. Pretty neat implementation. Click on a node of interest on a Google Map and you'll get a good
view of what traffic is like in that location. Adds all over the place, could get alot of traffic - if you
will.
The company offers delivery to mobile devices and has
partnerships with cops and media outlets. Very interesting. I find private, as opposed to public,
surveillance fascinating. Hardly ever discussed. This, though, is a public/private partnership as they
say. The cameras are owned by local government agencies and presumably their feeds are licensed by TrafficLand and who knows who else.
Mapwow.com uses the Google maps API to provide an interactive map of Azeroth, the world
in which MMO World of Warcraft is set. You can zoom in and out and drag to move locations just as with Google maps.
Unfortunately/fortunately the site has received so much buzz and traffic that they had to turn off resource points for
items like mineral ore, herb and treasure locations until they raise the cash for more hosting bandwidth -- if/when
they do, this will be a fantastic resource for WoW players.
I have been totally digging on the spate of MMO-themed mashups I've been finding lately that animate in-game characters
and avatars to act out music videos or DIY scripts. Here's a nice one that mashes up Second Life with Michael Jackson's Thriller:
Want to get the best of digg, Slashdot and del.icio.us/popular all in one place? You're in luck! Check out diggdot.us for this particular blend of social news mashup.
It
only seems logical there would be a collaborative effort to add a folksonomy component to world mapping — enter Tagzania. Whereas 43places is more travel-oriented, focused on
photos and user experience and stories of places, Tagzania makes use of the Google maps API to actually add tags to the
maps themselves — so you can set a waypoint and tag it up. Each waypoint then becomes a "page" with an
RSS feed, to track what other users add over time. All content submitted becomes open content under a Creative Commons
ShareAlike license.
MySociety.org, a British tech nonprofit project that builds and showcases new tools for civic good, has released a beautiful series of maps illustrating various transportation data sets around England. See, for example, this sample map showing whether public transport (bus, light rail best is in red) or a private automobile (blue) will get you faster from the Cambridge station to any other part of the country. (Cambridge is in the bottom right hand corner, nearish London.) The project has created many other maps as well, illustrating a variety of data. 
