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."
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.
When was the last time you heard someone say
they wished there were more features on the page in a Frappr map? Never, in my
experience. Via email (the company blog hasn't been updated since December) I learned tonight that you can now
chat with other members of your map.
I wasn't logged in when I clicked through a map I belong to from
my email, and thus entered the chat as User 4565. Doesn't that seem strange? Still, I imagine that some
communities might find this useful in some ways. It's a far cry from even MySpace IM, where there are
presence indicators, individual IM, sound. Frapr has always seemed pretty asynchronous to me - meaning that the
value of it wasn't dependant on being online or on the site at the same time as other group members. We'll
see.
Frappr has taken off like wildfire, but I hear complaints about visual and feature overload all the
time. Especially in a professional or even serious context. Many of the features are great, the basic
premise sure is. I participate in several Frappr maps - I just wish the system was more elegant. Maybe they
should hire Emily Chang's design firm like competitors Community Walk did, or whoever designed Wayfaring. Both of
those have different functionality, they aren't interchangable at all - but there are some similarities and Frappr
could sure benefit from taking its functionality, paring down the feature load or handling it better, and upgrading the
aesthetics. A subscription option to get rid of the AdSense and regular blog updates would be nice too. But
perhaps I'm not the market they are after.
Sure would like to see more mapping mashups use Yahoo maps, since
they have better coverage of the Global South. Try looking up anyplace in Africa on a Google Map. Pretty
frustrating. Not so with Yahoo.
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.
Emily Chang (of eHub fame) and her design firm Ideacodes have done it again, taking what was a good idea for a service that used
the Google Maps API and turning it into
something more beautiful and functional than I could have imagined. CommunityWalk is a service that lets a map creator place flags on a Google Map and
attach text and images to each flag. It's different from other services where the agency behind creating the map
lies with either users, or a group, or there are different features.
Check out the beautiful new
design, tag cloud and search that's available at Explore Community
Walk. Very impressive.
Over at the GoogleBlog it's been
announced that the company @Last Software has been acquired. They make software that's used to create 3D
models that can be used to place objects into Google Earth. The company cites architects, gamers and students as
users. I can imagine many, many potential uses. Very interesting.
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.
SoundTransit takes you travelling like Wayfaring, but the journey is for your ears.
SoundTransit is a collaborative community dedicated to sharing field recordings and phonography from around the world
— folks who've recorded ambient sound from their environments in different locations across the globe upload
their often wonderfully unintentional soundscapes for others to share. On the site you can book audio "journeys" by selecting a start point, end point
and how many "stopovers" you'd like. The result is a mashed up MP3 file you can download or play in your
browser which contains sounds from points along the path, each with an attendant description and artist information.
Everything is Creative Commons Attribution licensed, so
remixing and reuse is encouraged with attribution to the contributing phonographer. This site is a very well done
execution of a great idea, and will end up having an appeal beyond the already active global phonography community.
Wayfaring is a service that allows you to create your own customized and annotated
Google Map and share it. Or, just browse the maps others have created — from the Philadelphia Marathon route to LA gay bars to best
places to snorkel on Maui. You can leave comments on each map or contact the mapmaker directly with questions. This
is cool on a large scale to share points of interest with a wide audience, or on a small scale to set up a map of your
family's recent road trip to share with your friends, e.g. — I like that it works on both levels. The keys will
be getting people to come contribute to another data silo, and making sure folks can easily find something interesting
when they're browsing/searching.
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. 
When was the last time you heard someone say
they wished there were more features on the page in a 
