haha - this google maps stuff is getting bettern and better.

Here are 2 more mashups by one guy, which look like they took Paul Rademacher's code (the craigslist/Maps combination - http://paulrademacher.com/housing/ ) and converted it to display different data.

http://www.ahding.com/cheapgas/ - Combines gasbuddy.com and Maps to map out the cheapest gas stations for major cities. Once you select a city or state, it appears to get the 75 or so cheapest prices and maps them out, and gives a sortable table on the right. Lacking is ability to search by zip code, which I wouldn't think would be too hard, especially considering that's how you search on gasbuddy.

http://www.ahding.com/movie/ - pulls movie listings from IMDB and maps them on Maps per city. Right now you can only pick from a few cities, and it again lacks zip code searchability. But once you're at a city, you can filter by movie, which is nice. I suspect this would be really nice in big cities like LA and NY where there are hundreds of theaters.


Here's one that's not quite as sharp as the previous ones, but with some work could be great. It mashes Maps and with traffic data pulled from Yahoo Traffic and Traffic.com
http://supergreg.hopto.org/google-traffic.com/
You again select from a (limited) number of cities, and it will show you in real time traffic delays from wrecks and construction. It also pastes some weather data at the bottom of the map.

Anybody have any other ideas of data that could be integrated into Maps?


Finally, for some fun - here are two ways to play pranks on friends/co-workers by showing Google is a mind-reader.
http://www.krazydad.com/bondoogle/
and a more powerful GreaseMonkey user script to do the same thing, and more - http://www.krazydad.com/greasemonkey/googlefool.php




edit -
hmmm, it looks like http://www.ahding.com may have gone down in the last 10 minutes. I don't think it was /.'ed, but maybe too much traffic from the search/google blogs. Anyway, if you can't see it, let's hope it'll be back later

[Edited on May 17, 2005 at 3:49 PM. Reason : .]

5/17/2005 3:37:29 PM

wow - this may be the most ambitous Maps mashup yet - http://www.chicagocrime.org/

This site is a full index of crime reports in Chicago with Google Map overlays. It breaks down crimes by date, time, police beat, type, neighborhood, street, block, and more, with the index populated all the way back go early February.
This is they way indexes are supposed to be done - everything is linked - all addresses, dates, etc. This could be a hell of a tool in looking for neighborhoods to live in or finding high concentrations of sex crimes. Arguably, all big cities should have such an easily accessible crime index.

It even has RSS feeds for crime updates by neighborhood. This page isn't some geek's experiment, like the craigslist and other are - this appears to be a full blown funded project. Just imagine when Google releases a Maps API, instead of people putting together hacks like this by reverse engineering - more and better applications will pop up everywhere!

5/17/2005 8:50:39 PM

^ wow it's like comstat on 'the district'

5/17/2005 9:00:35 PM

http://www.technewsworld.com/story/g8bY7kYPqrRHhj/Google-Launches-Enterprise-Desktop-Search-Tool.xhtml

Quote :

"Google Launches Enterprise Desktop Search Tool Unlike the consumer version of Google Desktop Search, none of the search information collected by the desktop tool is transmitted over the Internet to Google, a key security enhancement that Google said business users had asked for. The tool also features the ability to search Lotus Notes e-mail files, thanks to a partnership between Google and IBM. Google (Nasdaq: GOOG) Launches Enterprise Desktop Search Tool Google Brings Desktop Search to the Enterprise Keith Regan Google rolled out yet another search product today, turning its focus back to corporate users again as it unveiled an enterprise version of its desktop search tool, one that features enhanced security and other features. ..."

5/18/2005 10:55:12 AM

^ here's the site for that http://desktop.google.com/enterprise/index.html
Note too that you can disable sending info back to google using regular desktop search.

in addition, you can now upload video to the Video project (http://video.google.com/) on Mac or Linux andmore using a Java uploader - http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2005/05/video-uploader-for-rest-of-us.html
Although i'm kind of spent on the Video thing b/c i uploaded 2 over a month ago and haven't heard anything about it yet.

5/18/2005 11:11:54 AM

hmm, check this out - i imagine it won't take long for spammers/advertisers/spyware, etc to exploit this - http://blog.outer-court.com/archive/2005-05-18-n30.html

If you have your Google "My Search History" turned on, click that link, then go to yoru Search History in Google, and you will see an entry for "Google Blogoscoped sneaked in through the backdoor", with no results clicked.
But you didn't do a search for "Google Blogoscoped sneaked in through the backdoor".... or did you?

There is a hidden iframe in the blog entries source code that points to a google search with that particular query. So as far as google is concerened, yes, you did make that search. That has the potential to be very annoying and can dillute your real search history if many pages take advantage of it.

5/18/2005 5:04:00 PM

maxthon has a built in google bar

5/18/2005 5:09:28 PM

http://searchviews.com/archives/2005/05/google_launches_2.php

Quote :

"Google Launches RSS Ads, Geeks Discuss Google's busted out with their RSS Ads Beta, offering publishers with over 100 subscribers the opportunity to insert ads into relevant feeds. If you remember back in April, we reported that Google was testing RSS ads, on LonghornBlogs.com, of all places. The Google Blog has its usual yawn-worthy post, but check out Andy Beal for the half-full view and Deborah Branscum for the half-empty. We think it's too early to make the call, though we will say the Google Best Practices for RSS Feeds is pretty useless/simplistic to all but the most novice of publishers. Among the gems of advice: Don't include more than one ad per article. Heavy stuff. Whether they wind up agreeing with it or not, publishers might be better off reading more in-depth commentary such as RSS Ads Done the Wrong Way! on Bob Wyman's blog. Speaking of agreement, not sure if we agree with Dave Winer's post calling for separate, RSS-free feeds for bloggers. Should every amateur movie reviewer get to see preview-free films? As it stands, all but a very small, elite group go to theatres and watch them with the rest of us. Not saying that everyone being subjected to ads is a good thing, but how do you determine who gets access to the ad-free feeds? What's to stop a normal blogger from dubbing himself a reviewer? I could be wrong, have to give this one more thought."

way to make your own rss feeds first. this was a pure financial move haha

5/18/2005 11:21:58 PM

hopefully they've updated how the RSS ads work. I was subscribed to the Longhorn Blog through Bloglines when they started testing the ads, and everytime I checked bloglines it showed there were 15 new stories on the blog, because the ads had changed. It got so frustrating to look at the longhorn feed to see if there really were any new stories, i just unsubscribed.

5/19/2005 8:06:40 AM

type in google "answer to life, the universe, and everything"

5/19/2005 1:17:20 PM

see very first post

5/19/2005 1:40:42 PM

according to some slides from the "Google Factory Tour" occuring right now, sometime today Google Labs will post a link to a personalized Google homepage, accessible through your Google Account, which means basically Google.com is now officially a portal.

see screenshots at the end of the post here -
http://www.pandemia.info/archives/2005/05/google_personal.html
and a pre-writeup -
http://blog.searchenginewatch.com/blog/050519-141359



I'm all for it - as I alluded to earlier when they announced the Google Account, there must be a way to access all your account settings and features from one centralized location, and this looks to be it. And as you would expect from Google, this will no doubt be more innovative and customizable than MSN, Yahoo, and other portals.

[Edited on May 19, 2005 at 3:42 PM. Reason : .,]

5/19/2005 3:41:49 PM

this could be useful - a Trillian Pro plugin that emails a copy of all your IM conversations to your Gmail account. (note Pro only, not with the free version).
http://metame.org/sw/

5/19/2005 4:36:59 PM

yep, the Google portal is upon us. Go to http://www.google.com/ig
There you can personalize your front page. The options are pretty sparce - you have your choice of the following sections:
Gmail
Stock Market
New York Times
BBC News
Google News
Weather
Wired News
Slashdot
Movies
Driving Directions
Quote of the Day
Word of the Day

and of course each of those are customizable by zipcode, number of stories, etc. I wonder how they chose the selection of Wired, Slashdot, NY Times.
Then once all those are show, you can drag and drop them whereever you want on the front page however you like. The Gmail section shows the subject lines of your latest x messages, and of course you can click on them to read or go to your inbox.

overall i think a very nice implmentation. It still lacks a good bit of customization that I'm sure they will integrate. And it still doesn't solve the problem that you cannot easily access your other Google Accounts - it needs a section to show all your accounts, like Video, Groups, etc.

Also, unfortunately, you can only seem to access through the google.com/ig URL - you can't move the personalization to your google.com page. I don't see why not... should be easy. Curiously when you're in the personlized page, there is a link in the upper right to "Classic Home" that takes you to google.com, but once there, there is no link back to the personalized section.



yeah, i'm definately not fully satisfied with the integration. For example, if you do a search from your personalized page, then hit the Google icon, it takes you back to the normal google page....

but in the FAQs it says "You can always switch back and forth between your personalized homepage and the original Google homepage by clicking "Classic Home" or "Personalized Home."" I'm not getting that option, however.
http://www.google.com/help/faq_fusionph.html

[Edited on May 19, 2005 at 6:51 PM. Reason : .]

5/19/2005 6:43:22 PM

well done google.

^ that option shows up for me

by the way, the drag and drop was flaking in IE (maxthon) for me, so I had to do it in firefox.

[Edited on May 19, 2005 at 10:19 PM. Reason : .]

5/19/2005 10:15:13 PM

hmm, well i've tried in FF and IE when signed into my account and my wife's account, and I still don't get a link back to the Personalized Page, although I do get a link to the "Classic Home". The drag and drop works pretty well for me in IE.

They said within a couple months they will have full RSS support so you can put your RSS feeds into your personalization. We'll see how far they take that concept, though. I'm pretty happy with Bloglines right now, but if Google works their magic and implements a slick, full featured RSS online reader, I'll gladly drop Bloglines

5/19/2005 11:06:35 PM

yeah i don't see the link back to the personalized page either

5/19/2005 11:09:04 PM

man I love google.

5/20/2005 9:43:48 AM

article on the google factory tour: http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/businesstechnology/2002281799_google20.html

5/20/2005 9:53:31 AM

lol

Yahoo vs. Google (portal-wise)
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20050520.wmathlaterfront0520/BNStory/Front/

5/20/2005 1:02:43 PM

ok, it looks like Google Earth is upon us. It's a much updated version of Keyhole - kind of like when they bought Picasa. They bought an existing product, made a bunch of updates, and now there's Keyhole2, or Google Earth.

This is a good write up on it with an impressive list of new functionality - http://www.windypundit.com/archives/2005/05/googleearth_bet.html

But http://www.keyhole.com/ doesn't make any mention of a new name or anything, and I haven't downloaded the trial yet, so I don't know if it's live or what.....

here's a new feature where it shows 3D representations of major cities


and an integration with Google Local so you can map directions, overlaid on the images


and a fully updated UI that looks much smoother -
http://www.windypundit.com/archives/2005/images/20050528-GoogleEarthScreen1.jpg

5/28/2005 2:25:25 PM

here's another Maps mashup, combining Maps with 4PPL, which is apparently yet another dating/matchmaking/stalker site -

http://www.4ppl.com/locate/

The database seems to be pretty empty, but apart from that, the implementation looks really good. I think it is a bit creepy, though, in that it goes directly to these peoples home addresses, and links to their profile with pictures and personal info and stuff. But I guess since stalkers can find all this info anyways, 4ppl is just cutting out the middle man....

5/30/2005 9:17:59 AM

here's a short, but glowing review of Google Earth - http://google.weblogsinc.com/entry/1234000683045086/

http://www.keyhole.com/ still shows no sign of "Google Earth", and I still haven't downloaded the latest keyhole client to see if it is not Google Earth, so i'm not sure wher eyou are supposed to get this program, or if it's just in limited release beta right now.

From the review, the program sounds great, and the small screenshots looks good too (does the interface remind anyone else of OS X's Brushed Metal?). I'm looking forward to seeing the "fly to" feature, where you can enter driving directions, then it will take you on a virtual flyover from one place to another. The integration with Local and Maps seems to be coming along nicely as well.

5/31/2005 9:57:32 AM

does the google personalized home page update automatically with news and email?

and does google news cause anyone else's browser to lock up for a sec? i didn't do it in firefox, but it does in my maxthon.

6/1/2005 1:26:11 AM

nevermind - it does auto-refresh.

what about the google news delay to load?

6/1/2005 1:58:53 AM

nm

[Edited on June 1, 2005 at 5:55 AM. Reason : ,]

6/1/2005 5:53:21 AM

personalized home pages be down

6/1/2005 10:02:18 PM

This is.... interesting, i guess?
http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2005/06/webmaster-friendly.html

Google is introducing "SiteMaps", which encourages webmasters to make XML sitemaps of their sites, and update the sitemap whenever content is updated, and the Google webcrawlers will visit the XML at intervals determined by the webmaster to update the Google index.

In short, although they never say it directly anywhere, they are trying to turn Google into the largest RSS subscriber in the world, and attempting to make all webmasters supply them with RSS feeds. I find this ironic, as for some reason, Google has been one of the slowest major sites to adopt RSS to deliver its own content.

But, in theory, I think this could be a very good thing. If webservers like Apache and IIS came with this functionality built in and all website information reporting was a standardized XML format, imagine how much eaiser it would be for Google and the others to index sites efficiently and correctly. Instead of now, where from what I understand, they kind of haphazardly crawl the text and meta-data of websites looking for good indexing information.

Here's the main page - https://www.google.com/webmasters/sitemaps/stats
They allow you to submit and track your sites, and have all the FAQs and stuff there.

6/3/2005 9:23:38 AM

nice

6/3/2005 10:11:22 AM

lol somebody broke google

they lost my personalized homepage, i can't POP in to gmail, and gmail web access stalls at 'loading...'
hahaha

at least the search still works.

[Edited on June 4, 2005 at 2:29 PM. Reason : .]

6/4/2005 2:28:44 PM

Shit happens.

Actually, has there been a major Google outage in recent years? They seem to have their stuff together.

6/4/2005 10:46:43 PM

all Google services were down for 15 minutes on May 8th this year - http://news.com.com/Google+experiences+brief+outage/2100-1038_3-5699450.html?part=rss&tag=5699450&subj=news

6/4/2005 11:02:41 PM

here's a list of major Google outages. They do seem to be more common recently
http://google.blognewschannel.com/index.php/archives/2005/06/05/gmail-goes-down/

6/5/2005 10:56:07 PM

Yea, I'm not ready to trust my entire life to them yet.

6/5/2005 10:59:50 PM

haven't been able to get in gmail for a day now..

6/7/2005 7:38:18 AM

hmm, works fine for me, and I haven't seen any reports of outages in the past couple days.

6/7/2005 8:08:00 AM

it gets stuck at the "loading" page. my notifier works fine, I just can't access my mail.

6/7/2005 8:48:09 AM

ah, i've had that problem before in FireFox. Are you using FF? Maybe try IE. If you're in FF, disable any extensions or greasemonkey scripts that may interfere with Gmail.
Also, as soon as you open FF or go to gmail, see if you can click Stop before the continuous reload starts, then reload it manually.

6/7/2005 8:59:53 AM

im using slimbrowser..ill try that stuff when i get home

6/7/2005 12:03:24 PM

courtesy of slashdot - http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/06/08/203208&from=rss

Looks like Google has politely asked one of the Google Maps mashups to cease and desist. This used to be Google Wallpaper - http://gmerge.2ni.net/

Other ones are still going strong, like Paul Rademacher's Craigslist integration, which has gotten a new URL - http://www.housingmaps.com/
The chicago crime thing - http://www.chicagocrime.org/

and a new one I haven't seen yet - sexual criminals in Florida, complete with mug shots directly on the map! http://www.floridasexualpredator.com/

6/8/2005 8:25:17 PM

and news from the desk of "huh, wtf" - http://www.siliconvalleywatcher.com/mt/archives/2005/06/scoop_stick_you.php
Google is equiping a car(s) with laser and GPS something-ruther, and driving down every street in San Francisco in order to create a 3D model of the city, which will be suplemented with street and satellite photos.
cool. I guess this is an extension of the 3D modeling that will be available in Google Earth?

6/8/2005 10:06:51 PM

My mashup is still working great, though I had to update some code last week. If they want us to stop making mashups, they should go to greater lengths to secure their code. Or sue us. Either way.

6/8/2005 11:01:01 PM

^ from what I can gather, the Google Wallpapers thing was a service that would create a wallpaper for you of a Google Map/Satellite view, stripping the picture of identification with Google, like the Pan and Zoom bars, then allow you to download the picture. I can see how this is fundamentally different than all the other mash-up services, which actively use and extend Google Maps. The Wallpapers site was basically using Google Maps as a free satellite service.

Anyway, some new news.....
The Google Video Upload thing they unveiled a couple months ago may be going forward - http://www.buygoogle.com/2005/06/google-video-verified.html

A story from the WSJ has sparked lots of talk of an upcoming online payment system, PayPal rival - Google Wallet.... or GooPal, for now. http://www.reuters.com/financeNewsArticle.jhtml?type=bondsNews&storyID=8827946


There have been several updates to Maps, including marking one way streets, adding more details to zoomed in maps, but most importantly, extending the highest zoom level to a "world view", where you can view the entire world, if only the country outlines outside the US and UK. Satellite views are available for the entire world. Seems like the least they could do at this point would be to label major cities in other countries. http://andrewhitchcock.org/googlemapsupdate/

Also, something i never noticed because i use firefox, but it looks like using IE, the zoom slider bar dynamically zooms your current view of the map. It's a bit misleading because it doesn't actually increase the resolution in real time, just zooms in the current view, so the page still has to reload when you finish zooming. It does help to keep your orientation, though, while zooming. The Zoom Out doesn't work very well - it zooms out way too far as your sliding, then zooms back in somewhat to reach focus. I think this has something to do with how IE implements some CSS - this is another case where IE has taken a liberal definition of the "standards" and implemented them how they see fit, and in this case it works to their advantage by adding some extra functionality.

6/20/2005 7:58:07 AM

good thread!

-ZiP!-

6/20/2005 9:11:53 AM

Quote :

" http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/20/technology/20google.html?hp&ex=1119240000&en=d744a832bf5766a9&ei=5094&partner=homepage Google Said to Plan Rival to PayPal Sign In to E-Mail This Printer-Friendly Reprints By SAUL HANSELL Published: June 20, 2005 Google is preparing an online-payment system that would compete with PayPal, according to an online retailer who has been approached by Google to take part in the effort. In addition to representing a direct challenge to eBay, which owns PayPal, the largest Internet payment system, the move signals Google's intention to become much more deeply involved in online commerce. Google's flagship search engine and its Froogle shopping service are significant sources of customers for Internet stores. But so far, Google's only way to profit from its presence in online shopping is by selling advertisements that appear next to its search results and on Froogle pages. Google has long been rumored to be developing a classified advertising service, one that would compete with eBay and with the popular free site Craigslist. A payment system would help Google bring into its marketplace individuals and small businesses who are not authorized to accept credit cards online. Discussion of Google's plans arose on a panel at a conference for investors held last week by Piper Jaffray, and the talks were reported on Friday by the online edition of The Wall Street Journal. Google was not a part of the panel. The chief executive of a major online merchant not involved in the conference said that his company had been approached by Google to take part in the service. He spoke on the condition that he not be identified because his company had agreed to keep its discussions with Google confidential. Steve Langdon, a Google spokesman, declined to comment. Scot Wingo, the chief executive of ChannelAdvisor, a company that helps merchants sell on eBay and other online sites, said that several of his clients had told him that they had heard from Google about plans for a payment service, which they referred to as Google Wallet. Mr. Wingo said in a telephone interview that he had called Google executives to see how his company could support the new service, but that the executives had declined to discuss it with him. In April, Google filed documents to establish a new corporation in California called the Google Payments Corporation, a development first published by SearchEngineWatch, an online newsletter. Sara Bettencourt, a spokeswoman for PayPal, said that her company had heard rumors of a pending Google payment service but that it would not comment on a product that had yet to be announced. PayPal has 72 million accounts and handled $6.2 billion in payments in the first quarter. One question about the prospective Google service is how ambitious it will be. Yahoo, Amazon, Microsoft and other companies offer "wallet" services where users can store credit card numbers for use while shopping at participating merchants. Such services aim to save time for users and help them feel secure because they need not provide financial information to an unknown merchant. PayPal also allows such credit card purchases, and it also gives each user an account into which they can deposit and withdraw money by way of electronic transfers to bank accounts. This allows PayPal to be used to send money between individuals. Mr. Wingo said that merchants had told him that Google's system was intended to rival the broad scope of PayPal rather than the narrow wallet systems. The prospect of a payment system could help Google's core search advertising business as well, online commerce analysts said. Google has a rich trove of data about what people are searching for and what Web sites they click. Data about what people actually purchase could help it fine-tune its site to offer more effective advertisements. Some merchants wonder what Google could offer that would make its service more attractive than their own credit card systems. "I have nothing bad to say about Google, but I don't see what the advantage would be," said Michael Golden, chief executive of Homeclick.com, an online store. He said he had not been approached by Google to discuss its plans. He said he accepted PayPal only for the part of his business that conducts auctions on eBay, but not on the rest of his site. For those customers who do not want to use credit cards, there are other options, he said, like a private-label credit card that Homeclick offers in conjunction with Wells Fargo Bank. But others suggested that just as eBay can promote PayPal, Google's vast reach and reputation with consumers may well be able to promote its service. Google could, for example, place an icon on advertisements, or listings on Froogle, indicating that certain stores accepted its payment system. This could be enough to get merchants to take part. Google has often given away some products that others charged money for in order to build traffic to its site. For example, its free Gmail service offers 2 gigabytes of storage, a level most other companies charge fees for. And Froogle does not charge merchants to list their products, as does Yahoo and other shopping services. Some e-commerce analysts suggested that Google could well offer free or discounted payment services in order to expand its transaction business. Or it could offer its classified listings free, as Craigslist does, hoping to make money on payment transaction fees. "

6/20/2005 9:17:25 AM

good lord, theyve added global imaging

6/21/2005 4:41:21 PM

yep, now you can sitesee the world without leaving your computer

rome - http://maps.google.com/maps?q=rome&spn=0.097675,0.191231&t=k&hl=en
athens - http://maps.google.com/maps?q=athens&spn=0.012209,0.023904&t=k&hl=en
barcelona - http://maps.google.com/maps?q=barcelona&spn=0.097675,0.191231&t=k&hl=en

6/21/2005 4:56:43 PM

http://www.google.com/technology/pigeonrank.html

6/21/2005 10:40:54 PM

hrm.... well as long as you're posting Google April Fool's jokes from 3 years ago, here are some more recent ones....
http://www.google.com/jobs/lunar_job.html
http://www.google.com/googlegulp/

6/21/2005 10:50:35 PM

sweet,
vatican city:
http://maps.google.com/maps?q=41.900000,+12.450000&ll=41.901072,12.456415&spn=0.008723,0.010890&t=k&hl=en

[Edited on June 22, 2005 at 12:36 AM. Reason : adfad]

6/22/2005 12:33:37 AM