Techcrunch just published an interesting post on the importance of a user-generated content strategy for Google Maps to expand. This goal is being achieved thanks to the map creation tool Map Maker from Google:

while Map Maker doesn’t work in places like the U.S. and other well mapped-out areas of the world, you can edit things on U.S. maps such as place locations. It seems clear that Google Maps is a wiki of sorts now, meaning the community is responsible for a lot of the data on it.

It is interesting to picture the world as being mapped all over again. It seems like the work had already been done those past 500 years, by both scientific explorers and satellites. We are standing right now in the same world discovery stage, but in the digital revolution era. And instead of sending explorers all over the world to update info, the world knowledge digitizer (aka Google) relies on the locals to report that info to the mother ship chip.

Google has rarely been more challenged in its mission than in providing maps and local information to users in countries where there has never been any detailed digital map. (from Google Latlong blog)

I bet! the main challenge remains to decide if you can trust the people who will build that knowledge for you. In the old days, you could send a bunch of smart scientists around the world and you knew that you would get a fairly loyal representation of the world in return. Today, what would be the motivation for someone to spend endless hours building knowledge for the account of one multi-billionaire corporation?

Many NGOs also depend on a good base map to plan and execute their work. So much so that many NGOs have told us that they either cannot do their work without good maps or have to spend a lot of effort building these. (from the Google Africa Blog)

Well done Google! NGOs are trustworthy, and they need technology partners. And they’re free educated manpower.

Another issue that Google has yet to figure out is this: With all things equal, if two map-makers build a map of the same place, but with different data on it, who should Google trust? This model has its limit: Google came close to a big diplomatic incident just a few days ago because of their maps. I am really curious to see how this project will come along in Africa: The country is known for its geo-politic instability. Google will have to deal with those issues at one point in the development of Maps. How will they stand in this equation? They’re obviously going to have to take sides, and I’m curious to see how creatively they will approach this dilemma.

There are a lot of green social networks out there: Care2, Greenwala, Gaia, Greenvoice… They all offer excellent social networking tools to encourage greener lifestyles through mutual help. One of those Websites, MakeMeSustainable, created a little Google Maps mashup to enable users to mark green businesses on a map. As a user registered in San Francisco, when I open this page, it suggests green locations in my area. When maps appear in the context of a social network, they always feel more consumer-friendly (because specific to a center of interest).

Up the green mapping alley, there is a much more impressive player in the field: Open Green Map.

Open Green Map leverages the collaborative intelligence behind social technologies to provide a comprehensive geo-located resource to find green sites, wherever you are! So far, volunteering contributors have created more than 350 maps in over 50 countries. I find their tagline ‘Directions to a sustainable future’ wittingly appropriate.

As of today, the most interesting way to engage with Open Green Map is to explore their maps. There are two features that the Open Green Map team built on top of the Google Maps API that I really liked:

1. First, maps appearing in an expanded marker’s window all have the background template of OpenGreenMap.org. In terms of maps’ marketing and branding, this is very smart and well-executed.

2. In the right sidebar, you have a small window that contains info about the map, about the map creators, and a search box to look for a specific keyword in the sites marked on the map. I have looked for this feature on Google Maps, and am pretty sure it doesn’t exist. This is some untapped search activity that Google is missing, but that Open Green Map nailed perfectly.

Open Green Map is a long way from becoming a complete resource. Also, as it will grow in popularity, I’d like to see how they will control the ‘green’ label users are applying to the sites they contribute to the system. There is still a lot of clutter, mainly when it comes to creating a map (I just couldn’t access this feature). It seems like you can share documents (hosted on Slideshare) about a list of companies, but I am not sure what it is for. Building a green geo-platform is an excellent idea that will hopefully help millions find their green paths (and may it not become a leftout project).

A few days ago, Google launched a really smart campaign to create incentives for business owners to register with the Local Business Center: They distributed real-size markers (even though markers only have a virtual size) to local businesses in various cities across the globe. Those lucky businesses - they are getting some local media attention - were selected by ‘local experts’. It is not clear how these ‘local experts‘ were selected though…

I happened to bump into one of those markers at the Butler and the Chef (picture above), and asked the chef how it happened.

It seems that the business owners who received the giant marker knew way ahead of time about this PR coup. Google dropped all of their markers during the night of Monday to Tuesday, around midnight. The Chef even painted the sidewalk blue in front of his restaurant to make the trophy stand out more. A reception was also organized at the City Hall, where the local business owners mingled with Mayor Newsom and a bunch of Google top executives.

I agree with Techcrunch writer MG Siegler who finds the operation :

This looks like a very smart way for Google to promote Maps. It’s also a good way to ensure that businesses list themselves on Maps, for the possibility that they’ll receive one of these markers, which are basically a (presumably) free endorsement of the establishment.

We often wrote about how local business owners should put themselves on the map. Now Google is trying to make it obvious.

Looking for a house online usually implies viewing dozens, even hundreds of pages to search for the perfect home. Quite an opportunity for ad networks with real estate-related inventories. According to the National Association of Realtors, 84% of home buyers search online.

On top of the real estate search are Trulia and Zillow. Roost (recently out of beta) operates in a smaller league in terms of popularity, but this real estate search engine was created by the team who launched Kayak, probably the most practical travel search engine on the Web. In a more offbeat philosophy, Realius offers to discover new homes through gaming.

Up until recently, those search engines were our destination to engage in a serious search for a home. Things could play out a little differently now that Google Maps launched a real estate search feature.

So, from today, if you enter a query like < > on Google Maps, you’ll see that we make it easy for you to see all your results on a map with a one-box that will take you to real estate listings. Previously, you had to specify “real estate” from the search options menu, but now we’re making it easier to find available listings

So is Google Maps getting in the real estate search business, and crushing smaller search engines in the process? Kind of. Obviously, the real estate search feature will very soon be integrated in Google’s universal search results. The one-box you see in the sidebar of Google Maps holds the same content that should be delivered in a classic results page. However, as Google states:

Is Google a broker? A national MLS?

We’re neither. Our role is to connect users as quickly as possible with the information they need. People come to us looking for all kinds of information, including housing listings, comparable pricing, and how to find an agent or broker in their area. In all cases, we want to deliver these users to the industry experts who can provide the most useful answers.

Google’s going to play it the way it always does: Google is the origin of a search online, sos real estate search professional will have to do two things to compete on Google’s grounds: 1. Connect their database to the Google’s Base to constantly provide Google with the freshest homes on sale; 2. Use Adwords to compensate for a weak natural search presence. If Google can show that real estate search very often start from google.com, then their real estate search feature opens a new multi-billion advertising revenue channel for the not evil-at-all search company.

On the other hand, this will probably highly increase the competition in the real estate search arena. First all search engines will need to hook up their database to Google, and obviously the largest players with heftier marketing budgets will monopolize the top searched keywords and until the competition dries out. I know, I’m oversimplifying.

How do you think smaller real estate search engines will adapt to this new real estate leads catalyst that Google is slowly unveiling?

Juan Carlos Perez brings up a good point today in PC World about the Google Maps developers’ community. Citing Ray Valdes - a Gartner analyst - the journalist explains how Google fails to create incentives around its Google Maps’ API:

“When you meet a developer in a social setting some will say ‘I’m an iPhone developer’ or ‘I’m a Facebook developer’ or ‘I’m a Microsoft .Net developer.’ It’s rare to hear a developer say ‘I’m a Google developer’ or ‘I’m an OpenSocial developer.’ Google needs to get to that level of engagement with developers,” Valdes added.

The cause identified by analysts is Google’s shaky platform coherence: Google products are hardly connected to one another, a real puzzle for developers who wish to integrate different products into one. Analysts see the Android mobile platform as Google products’ convergence point. Google Maps is Google’s gateway to the mobile phone - on Android and beyond - yet its developers’ community is held in muddy waters.

Google Maps already makes money through the mobile deals it inked worldwide. On the Web, businesses utilizing Google Maps at the core of their product have to be self-reliable to survive. Instead of nurturing its developers’ community, Google operates occasional purges, which brings the level of stress even higher.

One thing Google Maps could do is create a reward system. This would attract more entrepreneur-spirited minds into evangelizing the Google Maps’ technology:

“The number one thing that would help us as developers is more evangelism [...]; there are great opportunities out there, just not enough people popularizing them,” (PC World)

Google Maps could also share its mobile revenues with the developers who stimulate mobile usage with their applications. This strategy could only be beneficial to Google’s convergence towards mobile phones.

Today, Glympse is launching. Glympse is a location-aware application for your mobile that lets you share your location with whoever you want. On this blog, I like to talk about location-aware technologies, because it shows how online maps are becoming a hot medium. Google Maps are at the root of all those new location-based social networks (I know, Loopt uses Mappoint).

A few days ago, I met the CEO and Co-Founder of Glympse - Bryan Trussel - for an interview, and I saved a bit of our chat for the Click2Map blog. I like this part because it talks about how the Web 1.0 was a physical space getaway, but it slowly turned inside out over time to become the best indicator of our physical existence.

This new trend makes me wonder if our next social profiles online will be maps, and the next big social network will be the place where users can feed their location in (through Latitude for example) and customize the looks of their maps. A map of my whereabouts is the best way to define who I am (hint hint Antony

A few days ago, Zack Stern from PC World shared a few tips to enhance your googling. Amongst those tips is the ‘let Google Maps Find You’ tweak. Basically, instead of zooming in your location, or typing in your default location, with this tweak, you just click a link and the location-tracking technology takes 5 seconds to spot you nice and clear.

For those too lazy to follow the link, you need to download Greasemonkey, Mozilla Geode and Google Maps & Geode - Together At Last.

Once those scripts and add-ons are running in your browser, just go to Google Maps‘, and click on the ‘Current position’ next to the search button.

I really liked this trick, and felt like sharing it through Youtube, hence the video. Enjoy the creepy music

Things are going fast, very fast in the geolocation world. Yesterday, Google added two features which are rather small, but the ramifications of this move are potentially much large.

The first change is for users of the Google toolbar. From now on, when they will open a map, it will auto-center on their location. As MG Siegler points out on Techcrunch:

1. Its recently launched Latitude location-based network is only useful if it can automatically update your location, or make it really easy to do.
And 2. there are other big things Google could do with location information — such as serve you location-based ads.

Location-aware enabled devices are starting to dominate the market, and Google is positioned front-row to capitalize on this opportunity.

Another small addition in the seed-stage world of Google’s social maps is the save and share driving directions feature. MyMaps map creators (any user with a Google account) can now easily draw a line along a road, add a note, and share a map.

We have here two very small additions, but which open up wide possibilities when it comes to make mapping easier to use. Smart enough to know my location, and providing tools which make it easier to plan my next location.

Google Maps are getting stickier by the minute!

So you thought that finding a purse through Latitude was the most offbeat news this week in the geo-consumer space? Well, I have a better story for you.

You have probably heard of those two Domino’s Pizza employees who created a video where our biggest phobia about fast-food employees are re-enacted. It’s been all over the news for the past two days. Well the way those two got caught is extremely far-fetched.

First, as it was saying on the Youtube page of the video before it was taken down:

This is a great lesson on why you never post something like this on the Internet. These Domino’s workers posted this on youtube earlier today (April 13, 2009) It was removed later this day but re-uploaded because these people deserve to be fired. If you want these people fired then Favorite, comment, and rate 5 stars so the word gets out and these people fired.

So the employees posted the video online for just a few hours, before taking it down, but alas the deed was done. It was re-posted right away by somebody else, and the virality of the social Web did the rest. But that’s not it. From the video, it is pretty hard to know in which of the 6,000 stores worldwide this hoax happened. That’s where it gets good! As the ABC reports:

Readers of the consumer affairs blog consumerist.com, which posted the video early in the week, tracked Hammonds down through her YouTube account and identified the store from matching an exterior shot in a video with an image on Google maps.

I told you that was far-fetched. They matched an exterior shot of one of the employees’ video with an image on Google Maps, which made it possible to track the location of the store where the joke-gone-wrong happened. I am personally baffled. I don’t know which image search engine they used for this, but hats off! That is some military-level image search that only a pizza corporation can afford to save the reputation of its brand

So what now? Are Google mapping technologies the next crime fighter? Your neighborhood’s eye and ear? It spots your stolen purse. It detects a fart on your pizza. What’s next?

Up until now, when you land on a Google map, you have no idea who actually created this map. The person who did it gets the benefit of showing you the things he wanted you to see on the map, but we thought that this was not enough. Mapping is like blogging: It should be clearly attributed to someone. Or at least we feel this is how it should be.

Today, Click2Map is releasing a new feature that enables our users to more deeply customize the look and feel of the maps you create. Every elements of the map is now customizable: header, footer, fonts, sidebar, colors, driving directions and address finder.. You name it, we customize it! (scroll down to the end of this post to find the complete list of customizable objects)

We are really excited about this new feature as our existing users know that before today, you could customize some aspects of your map, but the modifications were not happening live. You had to hit save and see if the modifications were ok. Now if you want to remove the address finder from the sidebar for example, it happens right away. Feel free to try different color combination, experiment sidebar looks, reflect on your visitors’ experience once they will land on your map… You can make decisions on the fly, making your map creation process richer and faster.

We also added a pretty neat feature for Silver accounts and up: the URL and email in the footer. Like we mention in the introduction, someone could land on your map, but nothing would actually indicate that you made it. No attribution on the Web is like anonymity, it doesn’t benefit your business. With Click2Map’s new feature, your Google maps are becoming a real traffic and lead generation tool! That’s quite some news, isn’t it?

For our existing users, simply log in your account, hit publish, and start playing around with the new map customization tool. For new users of Click2Map, go on Click2Map’s sign up page, compare our offers and pick the one that suits you best, and start customizing your maps too!

Not convinced yet about how good-looking your maps can be? Watch this video where Click2Map takes its top off and shows you the whole shabang:

Here is the complete list of today’s new addition:

Publish map as a Web page:

• Preview in real-time
• Show/hide map title
• Show/hide map description
• Show/hide the sidebar
• Show/hide the sidebar after clicking an item in the list
• Hide the sidebar upon startup
• Modify the text in the footer
• Link a Website to the map
• Link an email address to the map
• Turn on/off the address finder
• Turn on/off the live traffic view feature (only available in some countries)
• Customize each element’s style:
  • title: font, size, color
  • description: font, size, color
  • footer text: font, size color
  • sidebar text: font, size, color
  • markers’ title: color, underline
  • active tab’s background color
  • active tab’s title color
  • inactive tab’s background color
  • inactive tab’s background color
  • borders’ color
  • page’s background color

Publish maps as a widget:

• Real-time preview of the widget
• Show/hide sidebar
• Show/hide sidebar after clicking on an item in the list
• Show/hide sidebar upon startup
• Turn on/off the address finder
• Turn on/off the live traffic view feature (only available in some countries)
• Customize each element’s style:
  • title: font, size, color
  • description: font, size, color
  • footer text: font, size color
  • sidebar text: font, size, color
  • markers’ title: color, underline
  • active tab’s background color
  • active tab’s title color
  • inactive tab’s background color
  • inactive tab’s background color
  • borders’ color
  • page’s background color

Other upgrades

• Updated HTML editor for rich text areas (markers’ description for example)
• Updated KML file uploader, now accepting drawings (polygons, lines) during import.

Happy Mapping with Click2Map!