Thursday, July 12, 2007

Personalized maps on Google

Looks like google has done it again. They've given you a small key to one of their very small rooms. You can go in, rummage and come out with something shiny, smelly and interesting. If any of you are avid google followers or use google maps often, you would have noticed a new tab called 'My Maps' on the google maps page. This is the small key to a whole new world.

Google Inc. will introduce on Wednesday a new feature that lets users create personalized maps which plot the locations of everything from cheap gas locally to the latest earthquakes worldwide.

MyMaps, as the new feature is known, allows consumers to select from more than one hundred mini-applications created by independent software developers. These allow users to overlay data on top of Google's popular online map service.

Visitors to http://maps.google.com after Wednesday at 6 a.m. PDT (1300 GMT) will find a new tab that contains links to dozens of the mini-applications, which Google calls Maplets.

The service is simple, but surprisingly useful, efficient and a lot of fun. You could go in and check gas prices in every gas station in your area, combine this with a restaurant trip or measure the distance of one lap around the park across your house where you usually run (472 m). Now that google has given the keys, there will be be hundreds of new applications to satisfy every need.

One map application allows users to watch YouTube videos based on the locations where they are uploaded. One could switch from the video confessions of a teenager in Ohio to tourist videos shot in the Andes mountains of South America.

Among the applications created by software developers over the past month are programs that allow users to link famous photos taken in locations around the world to Google Maps.

Alternately, photos that have location information on the Flickr photo sharing service can be found on a Flickr Maps application. Users can map local real estate prices, plot hotels or locate the cheapest gas station nearby.

Putting geography as an extra dimension in everything has been one of google's mantras all along. For example, even picassa web allows you to tag photos with the location information. In a world that's become increasingly small but cluttered with information and chaos, getting location-specific information has become something of a priority. For example, I don't care how many people get mugged in downtown Chicago, but I'm certainly interested in crime statistics in my suburb. Now, I can access that. And with the ability to overlay maps on top of each other, you can come up with some interesting stuff.

"We are putting the Web into maps," said John Hanke, a product manager for Google Maps, said of the diversity of information users now will be able to locate geographically.

Furthermore, users can overlay multiple applications on top of Google Maps to find interesting geographical correlations.

Before buying a house, a potential property owner could overlay local crime statistics on their new neighborhood.

Tourists could check out photos posted by other tourists to sites such as Yahoo's Flickr to figure out what the hotel or the surrounding region looks like before they book a reservation.

Consumers who have signed up for a Google Gmail account can save personalized maps. Users who choose not to sign into Google services can remain anonymous but use the service, Hanke said.

This might seem like just another small step in google's world of innovation hyper-activity. But I really feel that this has the ability to add a whole new perspective to tourism, travel and sharing location-specific information. For example, I've started creating a personalized map of all the local restaurants we frequent in my area (like this). I can probably share it with my friends and get them to add their picks as well. And when someone visits me, I could just give them the link to this map and let them decide where they want to go and how to get there. This saves me the trouble of maintaining a list of all restaurants somewhere along with their web-sites/addresses, phone nos etc. and then having to find driving directions when I have to get there. Also, when I hear about some new restaurant in town, I plan to immediately add it to my map. It'll fester there till I have to visit that particular neighborhood sometime. Then I could incorporate a visit to the eatery as well. The possibilities are endless.

I'll probably create additional maps with other local attractions, pubs, bars, clubs, movie theaters etc. Visitors can overlay a combination of these maps. Say you are free on a saturday evening and feel like doing something fun. Say you wanna go try out a new restaurant and then maybe go shake it in a club. You could overlay my restaurant map on top of my club map, and find a restaurant and club not too far from each other. You could click on it, access the web-sites, phone nos. etc, make your reservations and share the plan and the map with your friends.

That sounds like a good saturday evening, doesn't it?

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