Yelp is definitely a great resource to follow the flair of the crowd and chose the next place where you will eat out. I also like their maptastic page, where the browsing experience evolves around a map. Definitely a killer app when you are looking for joints in your neighborhood.

Just for the fun of playing around with Click2Map’s map creation features, I slurped in the first 90 top-rated restaurants in San Francisco, laid it down on an excel sheet, converted it into .csv, and fed it to the Click2Map’s import tool that automatically generated the 90 markers on the map.

To view the map in a full page, go here.

The funny thing is that a lot of those businesses are just food stands. For example, ranked 15th is the Tamale Lady. All San Francisco locals know her because she shows up in the city’s downtown bars with a small cart full of tamales. She looks like a bum, but she ranks 15th on Yelp. Props to that! Some businesses would pay a lot of money to have such a high ranking in the city.

Another advice for businesses trying to boost their ranking in the popular business social directory, invite Elite Yelpers to come to your place, for free, and hope they will review it. Some businesses rank in the top 20, even though there aren’t more than 20 reviews on their business profile page, but a third of those have been made by Elite Yelpers.

Wine Library TV - for those who have never heard of it - is a popular Web show hosted by Gary Vaynerchuk. The show is aired on a regular basis and the host invites viewers to join him for a wine tasting session (wines that he sells through his online boutique).

Here at Click2Map we like the show and we thought it would be a good idea to put all of the wines reviewed in the show on a map. In the end, wines are best defined by their region of origin, so it makes sense to browse the products of a wine boutique through a map.

Thanks to Click2Map, I just had to download a spreadsheet withholding the info about all WLTV’s products, associate an address for each wines, and let the Click2Map import tool slurp that info and create markers almost instantly. I then used the auto-detect clustering tool, grabbed the embed code of the map, and here I am writing this post.

The map below shows the wines reviewed (tasted) in the first 130 episodes of WLTV. There are 224 markers scattered mainly through California, Western Europe, and a little in Australia, South America and South Africa.

I grouped the wines according to their year of production, but I could also group them by type of grape (shiraz, merlot, cab…), by the grade range the host gave to each wine he reviewed, by price, and so on.

To view the map on a full page, click here.

xavierv

Mike Blumenthals wrote today about the latest Google Maps scandal (for the mapping community) where spammers were eating up flower merchants ranking and contact info on Google maps, provoking huge profit losses for those businesses. Apparently, things are back to normal, or almost.

Anyhow, these days, I’m a lot into (benign) hacking, and I thought it would be interesting to list a few useful Google Maps hacks here. I’ll try to leave third-party applications on the side as much as possible to focus only on tweaks, but this is not an easy task (mostly for a non-developer like me).

The first category of hacks are video games: Developed by Japanese Katsuomi Kobayashi, Geoquake is a driving simulation game using Google Earth. It is a flash application that allows a 40 frames per seconds visualization (compared to Google Earth’s traditional 20 frames/sec). In the same type of hacks is the flight simulator, a fun way to fly over your town using the Earth plug-in. Also, as reported yesterday on Google Maps Mania’s Friday fun, another Japanese developer has created this game that plugs the Wii and Street View together to allow you to jog around your neighborhood without leaving your living room.


Try to run on the google street view like a jogging game of wii fit from katsuma on Vimeo.

A Google Maps hack to keep an eye on is the Easy Google Maps hack, a project started this week during the Hack Day event, which plan is to tackle Google Maps’ lack of usability by creating a maps “player” based on the same idea of the Easy Youtube player. The project idea is really good and could be very useful, so I hope those developers will reach their goals.

A more practical hack was found on LifeHacker. The hack offers a mean to zoom way in on a map by tweaking the maps’ urls. Also found on LifeHacker is a way to make your Google Maps searches a little faster by entering your geo-location directly in the url, as follows:
http://maps.google.com/maps?q=1683 Mass Ave, Cambridge, MA

By now, I think we all heard of the biggest drawing in the world, right? Well, this actually was a hoax, but it inspired a few people to apply this drawing technique, and others to apply this hoax technique, like BoingBoing, which developed a quick app that lets you easily draw shapes on a map (this is not a Gmaps hack, but it is worth the mention).

Recently on Click2Map, we announced a new addition to our service that enables our users to easily cluster their markers on Google Maps to make their cartographic info more easy to browse and click through. While this is the easy and mainstream way to group markers, developers can also use this Javascript hack to cluster markers. The technique is a little complicated, but it definitely fits the Gmaps hack section.

A great site that integrates Google Maps and offers a wide range of geographic services is heywhatsthat.com, developed by Michael Kosowsky. The service is so hackalicious that the creator gave a keynote speech for one of the Google TechTalks.

There are probably so many more hacks out there, but they are so hard to find that I will stop here and rely on your good will to share tips and urls to further this discussion. I couldn’t find a single hack for MyMaps, despite intensive search, and this disappoints me a little, as I am sure there could be great creative ways to use this marker creation tool.

xavierv

We wrote a few weeks ago about the opportunities/threats of building a business on top of Google Maps. The “mainstreamization” of maps shouldn’t even be argued anymore, but the technology isn’t at the top of its performance, and here are a few reasons why:

1. Submitting local listings: Anarchic vs Tyrannic.
In an interview of Frazier Miller and Shailesh Bhat from Yahoo! Local conducted by Eric Enge of Stone Temple (and found through Mike Bluemthals’ blog), the two managers explain their company’s approach for maps and local ads.

For professional map creators, the process of submitting geo-defined listings to mapping providers is long and uncertain. While Google is still a little loose on the control it handles over user-submitted data, we can see in the interview that Yahoo has set strict control rules to extract and exploit only quality data.

In the case of Google Local, you can’t be sure that some witty SEO brains won’t push their business in pole position on a category that they could not even be related to. In the case of Yahoo!, this is the opposite approach: Most of the information is manually scrutinized (urls, geocode, user-generated changes). “They do geo-code verification so a listing will be rejected if the address doesn’t code to an actual location”: That’s a tough one, because we’ve all experienced several time submitting an address, and getting an error message, whereas you are pretty sure that the address is correct. Your whole listing is at stake with Yahoo!

In both cases, submitting listings to maps providers is not a crystal-clear operation, and at the end of the day, you may be very disappointed with the way your markers rank and perform on a map.

2. Mapping is an art, not an exact science
Back in April, Chris Silver Smith wrote an excellent article on Search Engine Lands, Top Causes of Errors In Online Maps. He explains that mapping errors - like getting a location point on the wrong side of the road - are pretty common for multiple reasons:

“The vector shape files break curved lines down into straight line segments, and there are cases where the straight line approximation of curved features can make locations get pinpointed erroneously.”

“online mapping systems often interpolate (distribute evenly) addresses along each side of a street when, in fact, business addresses may all be clumped up at one end of the street.”

“When online mapping systems do not know the correct location for an address, they often will still generate a map for the user, making a map pinpoint default to the center of a ZIP code area, or default to the centroid of a city.”

There are seven more error reasons on Chris Silver Smith’s post, so I recommend reading it. This shows that computers can’t always provide an exact and reliable result for maps, which is embarrassing when the purpose of mapping technologies is to point to an exact place in space.

3. Crowded maps
That’s the downside for map consumers: Crowded maps. Sometimes, there are so many markers on a map that the laser-focused precision of maps gets distilled in a sea of markers. This automatically drives visitors away from a page. Crowded maps are a no-no. This recent discussion on Google Groups confirms this statement. A massive number of markers can also slow your browser down.

A solution for this problem has yet to be figured out. There are numerous map-based local merchants search engines that constitute great sources of information, but the vision of hundreds of markers all overlapping each other on a map just drives visitors away. Tackling this problem could mean enhancing the performance, ie the business, of such service providers.

xavierv

As I immersed myself into the mapping blogosphere to provide the best articles possible to Click2Map’s blog, I was surprised to find a lot of crime-related maps. Public data and maps are a good match when it comes to conveying the heavy load of socio-demographic info about a place. Looking at a crime map feels like watching Fox News: it’s a condensed summary of unfortunate events.

Through our friend Keir Clark’s Googlemapsmania.blogspot.com, I found Ucrime. Ucrime is not a new form of mapping technology. The site offers a comprehensive source of information about crimes going on around US university campuses. For students going back to school this week, and looking for a place to rent, Ucrime is a good start. Plus you can access Ucrime from your iPhone and it offers a geo-based SMS alert system.

The service was launched a month and a half ago. The product already looks finished, but I was looking for the most dangerous university campuses in the US and couldn’t find that info, nor on their site, neither on their blog. Also, to get the word out, it would have been nice to get an embed feature to paste the maps on any web page (like here).

Students are a hard to get demographic. No later than yesterday, I was talking to an early investor of AllStudentRentals.com, an off-campus housing provider for students. He explained to me how hard it was to go from university to university to create partnerships with each of them and grow on the students’ market. I also met the Founders of Uloop - the students’ marketplace - a few weeks back: they tackle the hard penetration of the universities’ population by doing aggressive on-campus guerrilla marketing coups.

Students looking for a place around campus are often leaving their parents’ house for the first time. This is a stressful experience for parents. Families want their child to move out in a secure environment. Ucrime is the perfect destination to start looking, and once again, since it’s on a map, it’s the more intuitive way to look for a place to stay.

Just for fun, I looked at the map of one of my former schools, the City College of San Francisco. Lots of shootings going in the neighborhood! (don’t forget to check the ‘user reported crimes’ box to see them appear on the map)

xavierv

With Hurricane Gustav shaking the tranquility of the Gulf of Mexico, a lot of people are structuring social media tools to facilitate the flow of information in this particular area.

On Twitter, Mark Mayhew - New Orleans local and heavy-user of the Web-based SMS platform - keeps track of all signs of climate change or threat.

Journalists from the Chicago Tribune are also implied full time in reporting on the moods of Hurricane Gustav.

All big media houses are actually covering the Hurricane, using traditional online tools, like Aljazeera on Youtube.

From individuals to corporations, everyone is implied in tracking and reporting any climate changes, ready to pull the emergency alarm at any time.

Another great way to follow the Hurricane is through Live News Camera, a video hub syndicating a variety of local and national TV networks. The Website has a dedicated page, the “Hurricane Center“, where visitors can search for local TV networks on a (Click2Map) map.

The concept of Live News Camera is made possible thanks to the technology we develop here at Click2Map, which makes it really easy to explore new ideas with Google Maps. In the case of Live News Camera, the map creator created 2 groups of markers (USA TV and World TV), but each group contains close to 70 markers total, and some markers contains several tabs. Because we make data management a breeze, map creators using Click2Map have the richest detail-oriented maps online.

Thumbs up to Live News Camera for offering such an original source of info in those times of climate uncertainty!

xavierv

The Royal Geographic Society’s annual conference in London generated more fuzz this year than it usually does. At the epicenter of the bustle, British Cartographic Society President Mary Spence blames Google and other Internet map providers juggernauts for “demolishing thousands of years of history — not to mention Britain’s remarkable geography — at a stroke by not including them on maps which millions of us now use every day.”

Needless to say, the online map blogosphere was really astonished by such a vision of online maps. At the Map Room, Jonathan Crowe interprets this reaction as a conflict of approach: Technology providers are focused on simplified geo data, and the Royal Geographic Society is focused on protecting centuries of mapping savoir-faire.

Adena Schutzberg blames a slow news month. Vector One blames a British society that “does not put geography and its associated technologies at the forefront.”

I don’t think that the President of the Royal Geographic Society seriously believes that online maps are too dull, simply because I can hardly see her not grasping the fact that online map providers are not focused on adding rich content to their maps.

Online map providers are merely recreating the earth digitally: they gather all the geodata of planet earth to build the backbone of tomorrow’s GeoWeb. But - thank God - those corporations’ intention is to enable users to bring knowledge to maps. They encourage merchants to list their business on online maps. They encourage individuals to bring their own knowledge of a location through free editing tools. They even have APIs to make it easy for institutions to display their loads of public data on a map.

Today, all of this is in the making. There are still a lot of hacks and cracks to be found in the online mapping space. The technology is not entirely stable yet. It’s easy for a conservative mind to step in the game and say that new ideas are less secure than old values. But in the case of online maps, the opportunities far outmatch the threats. It is way too obvious.

I would like to point out a new Website that was launched two months ago by the ex-Founder of Technorati. The service, Offbeat Guides, offers personalized travel guides. The system is fairly simple for the user: answer 5 simple questions about your next trip. In the background, the service fetches information from both proprietary sources and user-generated content to build a complete, good-looking and customizable guide, exclusively focused on the place you are about to visit.

The result - which is impressive - is made possible by geo-based technologies combined with search technologies. And it proves Mary Spence wrong (with all due respect, of course): Online maps are just a component of the rich and useful knowledge that is shaping the Web today. If the British Cartographic Society thinks it’s lacking information, I suggest they contribute to the user-generated effort.

xavierv

Google has become so much more than just a search company in the past years, that I wonder how they would define themselves today. When you think about it, Google offers a whole suite of Web-based (and desktop-based) softwares for free. Many of their products have outgrown their initial purpose to become priceless tools of our everyday lives.

In the case of Google Maps for example, the mapping service goes way beyond spotting a geographic location and telling you how to get there. First, thanks to crowdsource efforts, it is smart enough to show you the cheapest gas stations around. Not only will it drive you around, but it will tip you on which roads to take to avoid tolls. Those two tools alone can help anybody reduce their car-related spending.

This positions Google very closely to our transportation habits. The Mountain View juggernaut has pushed a bit their product in a fantasy world by adding street view to their map. This means that you can save even more gas dollars by checking out a home and its neighborhood from your computer screen. An increasing number of real estate companies are adding in street view to their sites. One could start to argue that Google Maps is a transportation mean all to itself (like a car or a plane).

My point is not to say that I will spend the week end in Vegas on Google Maps, no. However, all those elements perfectly show that Google thrives to become a major provider of transportation solutions. The project RechargeIT is the perfect example to illustrate this idea. RechargeIt is a project to design an electric car which tank you fill up with sunlight. Here is a short explanatory video from the Google.org team:

The next generation of cars will be smart cars, and what was initially a project to create and share maps online is quickly turning into a crowdsource wisdom for electronic devices. Google Maps is the cornerstone of all this, and so we at Click2Map are proud to be a part of this cultural movement.

xavierv

As Darren Herman states in a recent post, “widget” is one of the dominant buzzword of 2008. As the Web turned into a shattered media environment, the portable and sourceable nature of widgets made it a must-have for marketers, advertisers, and distributed service providers. That it be for your Myspace profile or for your blog, there are so many types of widgets available out there that, just like Facebook Apps, end-users are now less compulsive about those flashy little objects. The market is reaching a point where the supply overwhelms the demand, therefore a tougher competition between widget providers is getting off the ground.

So what makes a good, competitive widget? To answer this question, I turned to widget-expert Lawrence Coburn, Co-Founder and CEO of RateItAll, publisher of the Sexy Widget blog, and early-adopter of widgets (RateItAll was the first Web company to offer distributed rating widgets). Here is Lawrence’s answer:

I typically look for three things in a widget: 1) Fresh content; 2) Fast load times; 3) Easy share-a-bility. In my experience, the best widgets are those that are constantly showing new and interesting data, don’t slow down the host site, and do their best to enable the easy republishing of the widget elsewhere.

Obviously, if a widget doesn’t show fresh content, there is no point in using a widget. An iFrame with a static page src’d would do. The fast loading aspect of widgets is crucial on the end-user side of things: if retrieving information for a widget takes up too much time in the page loading process, site/profile publishers will get rid of the widget to gain in accessibility. Regarding share-a-bility, I think there are two dimensions implied there. First is the embed code that makes grabbing and placing a widget a breeze. Second is the customization features that enable site/profile publishers to adapt the widget to the look & feel of their sites.

To diversify the ideas brought in this article, I also asked Daniel Ha, Co-Founder and CEO of Disqus (Disqus is a commenting system that offers different widgets to make commenting more engaging). Here is Daniel’s take on this question:

A good widget needs to meet just a few points that immediately come to mind: a) easy to install, b) immediately useful, c) customizable, d) reliable and fast. Because widgets are usually low-barrier applications, they should be simple to install and its benefit should be recognizable from the beginning (you shouldn’t need to wait for network effects). Being customizable and reliable/fast is important because widgets are applications that are distributed across websites, but still need to feel like they’re native.

Daniel and Lawrence seem to agree a lot on the positive characteristics of a widget. “Easy to install and customizable” are synonymous to share-a-bility. “Reliable and fast” means fast loading time. Daniel also mentions “immediately useful”. That is a very good point, probably the most important now that widget consumers are getting pickier by the minute: “Will visitors interact with it/Will I benefit from this interaction?”

If we are so interested in widgets here at Click2Map, it is for the simple reason that we are developing a widget to make sharing Google Maps a fuller experience. Even though Google is doing an awesome job at bringing online maps to the masses, the sharing features are still a little limited. Our goal is to enable our users to benefit from our unique features from creation to distribution.

To follow on the great ideas shared by Lawrence and Daniel above, I would add - at least in Click2Map’s case - that a good widget creates loyalty. Maps are a way to localize places/people on a map through markers. GeoRSS enable subscribers to be automatically informed of new markers’ creation. If a widget is visually attractive, offers useful information in the context of the site it is embedded in, and enables to create a long-lasting tie through RSS-like technologies (similar to subscribing to comments in a post), then the benefits for the site/profile publisher are worth the awful sweat of copy/pasting the widget’s embed code.

xavierv

GeoRSS is a simple way to include location in RSS feeds. In Dan Catt’s own words, “it’s pretty simple. This is what you get in the rss XLM:
<georss:point>37.79586 -122.395259</georss:point>“
It is, indeed, dead simple.
So when Google announced that the GeoRSS support had been added to Google Maps, rapidly followed by Microsoft a month later, the news got very positive feedback. By enabling the attachment of geodata to any media content online, Google made it possible to easily spot online content on a map.

Some of the interesting applications of GeoRSS include Outside.in: once you gave your zip code to the service, it automatically retrieves all the blog news in your geographic parameter. While the site is still building up, it holds a nice vision of a new way to receive news. Outside.in even received funds for this project. BrightKite - the location-based social network - is also good example of how to apply GeoRSS to online social behaviors.

Unfortunately, things get more complicated when it comes to monetizing a geoweb service. As Sean Gorman clearly explains in the Off The Map blog that selling ads on maps is Google-Yahoo-Microsoft’s business, and they have pretty much locked down the market.

I guess the real question becomes: if you cannot rely on the good-old advertising model, how do you integrate GeoRSS as an active component of your business model? What is the value added by GeoRSS that is psychologically important enough for money to be traded in the process? For some companies, and that is going to be the case here at Click2Map, it simply enables paying-users of a broader mapping service to create loyal ties between map publishers and location seekers.

Let’s take the example of Benny Benassi, the famous Italian DJ and user of Click2Map’s services. On his tour page, a map of all the oncoming shows allows fans to easily spot the next show in their surroundings. If you add a GeoRSS function to this map, then you enable all those fans to create a direct tie with Benny Benassi’s whereabouts. Such a service is extremely valuable for professionals whose jobs imply traveling a lot.

Nonetheless, this isn’t the only way to go with GeoRSS. My personal take on it is, maps might be an increasingly growing online media, it still isn’t a mainstream online search behavior. Any projects undertaken in the field of mapping and GeoRSS must be led with a spirit of patience, as mapping will become more prominent, but it’s not quite there yet.

Xavier