Hi everyone!
We would like to announce that the Click2Map blog is moving to a new address: You can now find our bits of news about geomapping at http://click2map.hyveup.tv.
The feed url is also changing: http://feeds.feedburner.com/hyveup/click2map
Thank you to everyone for making the switch! See you on the other side!
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:
Publish maps as a widget:
Other upgrades
Happy Mapping with Click2Map!
This is what we keep writing about over an over: mapped business are top-ranked. The reason is not that being on a map is cuter than simply having a Website. Nor is it that geographers are really influential people.
The Web was born world wide, aka any info anywhere retrievable and displayable in front of your eyeballs. Google broke through and became the leader in the search space simply because it was the best at making sense out of this mass of content. In its quest for better search, Google realized that while it was cool to search the world wide web for content, people were intuitively more interested in what was around them (in most cases). More specifically, they want to have more info about the thing that surrounds them.
Hence Google’s focus on geo-technologies and location-aware devices. We often blog about Google’s obsession for geo-related info, because our product helps you be part of this game.
Today, another milestone is being reached, with Google announcing that they will now suggest businesses around your search query on top of their results page, even if there is no location specified in your search query:
We like to make search as easy as we can, so we’ve just finished the worldwide rollout of local search results on a map, which will now appear even when you don’t type in a location. When you search on Google, we will guess where you are and show results near you.
Google will mainly base its geo-targeted results in your IP address to determine your location, but they also have other tools to know where you are, like Gears, Chrome, and maybe partnerships with live web services that specialize in tracking where you are and what you do.
This week, we made a few changes over at Click2Map regarding our paying accounts. To refresh everyone’s memory, Click2Map offers 4 different plans for its users: The Bronze plan (free), the Silver plan (making uploads and distribution easier), the Gold plan (Bronze+Silver+ supports CSV, XML, KML and geoRSS imports and exports) and the Platinum plan, where our database becomes yours.
For pure marketing purposes, we decided to restrict the number of maps and markers each account holders are allowed to create (see it like Facebook’s 5,000 friends limit policy). It goes a little something like this:
- Bronze accounts are limited to 1 map and 50 markers
- Silver: 5 maps and 250 markers
- Gold: 10 maps and unlimited markers
- Platinum: Unlimited maps and markers
Rest assured: If you are already signed up to Click2Map, those changes will not apply to you. We value the trust that all of our previous customers have showed towards our products, and we want to reward this trust. Also, for all of our customers, starting from the Silver accounts, you can now share password-protected maps if you want to keep your markers accessible to just a few eyeballs.
There is one new addition in our line of products that we are pretty proud about: because we have limited the number of maps and markers, we are launching the unlimited option for each of our products. Here is a clear example of how an unlimited option may apply:
If you need Click2Map to embed 10 maps with several hundreds customized markers, and driving directions on your site, you have to sign up to the Gold plan (10 maps and unlimited markers). However, in terms of tools, you do not need anything higher than the Silver version. Hence the unlimited Silver version, where you can do all you need and create as many maps and markers as you wish!
We didn’t do this just because we like to add fine prints into our plans: The unlimited Silver plan is $40 cheaper than the regular Gold plan ($149 vs $190). and the same goes for each of our products. In other words, where it may seem like we limited our offer, we actually made it more fair for every paying customer, and more flexible to fit all needs.
We hope that you will find this news as exciting as we do, and we welcome any feebacks from our users. To prove that we care, there is one last new addition that our customers have been requesting so heavily that we could not not let them have it: For our valued Platinum customers, the Click2Map logo will no longer appear on your maps once you publish them!
For a clear comparison of our different plans, click here.
Late last week, we released a new design at Click2Map.com. The new interface was a much needed step to communicate on Click2Map’s new on-demand geo-mapping services.
Today more than ever, Click2Map is focused on providing an easy way for professionals to create Google Maps. Our suite of online products - that some of you are hyper-actively using - is still up and running, and we are going to keep adding new features every once in a while.
Today, Click2Map is more: Every businesses comes to Click2Map with a unique demand. Although our goal is to make Click2Map the universal mapping solution that fits all needs, sometimes we have to step out of our tracks to fulfill the most uncommon requirements.
Along with the growth of geo-location services over the Internet, the demand for geo-coding data, creating customized maps and developing new geo applications has followed the same growth curve.
Hence Click2Map’s Business Services. Here is the range of new services we provide at Click2Map:
- Address Geocoding
- Map Creation Service
- Widget Personalization
- On-demand Development
- Consulting
Click2Map has been developping mapping technologies since 2006. We have seen a great deal of changes in this space, and always grew stronger out of difficult times. Today Click2Map is business-ready. Whatever your need is concerning online maps, we can help. So come visit us, and find out how we can help you get into the geo-located Web.
Technorati Tags: geo-location, mapping, businesses, on-demand
Today, our users have the pleasure to try out some nifty new features on Click2Map.
Lines/Polygons
First and foremost, built by popular demand, you can now draw lines and polygons on your maps. We made it super easy to highlight an area, customize its appearance, name it, and publish it. So make your maps more expressive, throw a polygon or two in there!
Easier Import Wizard
Another great feature that we are adding today concerns the import tools. The Click2Map development team has been working extra-time to deliver the new easier-to-use import wizard!
Click2Map has always been dedicated to make map creation easy as 1-2-3. The import wizard was a great area of disappointment for us, as we were noticing the obvious troubles users were having with formatting their csv files before submitting it to our system.
To fix the clutter, we added an intermediary step where users manually select each of their table’s columns and associate it with the corresponding marker’s category. Now isn’t that a whole lot easier?
Group’s Default Icon
Grouping markers is one of the top product of appeal on the Click2Map’s shelves. To make groups even more appealing, we rolled out a new feature that enables users to chose which icon is the default icon for a given group. Visitors can easily identify to which group a given marker belongs to by checking the map’s sidebar.
English-French
Last but not least, Click2Map is now bilingual English-French. From now on, our system identifies a visitor’s language based on his geographic settings, and serves up the map’s information in the associated language.
All those new features are meant to make your map creating experience a breeze. So get to it, create markers, group ‘em, define geographic areas with polygons, and make the world yours all over again.
I always keep the best for the end: Don’t have a click2Map account yet? No problem, all of our features are free to try for 30 days. So give it a whirl!
Last updates on Click2Map:
Cluster Your Map’s Markers With Click2Map
Today, the team of Click2Map is proud to officially launch a feature that tackles one of the major weaknesses of online maps: Crowded maps.
The experience of maps is often diminished when markers are concentrated in a specific location, therefore lapping over one another. Here at Click2Map, as some of you already know, we are dedicated to take Google Maps to a higher level of control for your various professional needs.
Hence the auto-cluster feature! The auto-cluster feature is an easy-to-use tool of our map editor that will enable you to create a unique marker for each area where markers are too densely concentrated. Visitors can simply click on this unique marker to unveil the list of markers it withholds.
The clustering tool enables you to laser-tune the display of your clustered markers based on 3 parameters:
- Clustering rate: the higher the rate, the more markers will be cluttered
- Minimum markers: indicates the number of markers necessary to start building a cluster
- Maximum zoom: indicates from which level of zoom markers won’t be clustered anymore
The video below shows the new auto-clustering tool in action for the Hollywood celebrities’ map we created for the occasion.
To conclude, here is why the auto-clustering tool is a big deal for us:
1. It tackles the problem of markers overlap.
2. It becomes a new productivity tool for power-mapbuilders looking for the perfect map design.
3. It is so easy to apply that even first-time mapbuilders can figure it out on the fly.
We would also like to thank our friends who helped us spread the word about the auto-clustering feature:
- Google Maps Mania
- Slashgeo
And the news was also picked up by Kort for hovedet - The GIScovery Channel. This means a lot to us, thank you guys.
After adding walking directions a few weeks ago, Google Maps is now bringing a simplified layout to its Maps. The announcement starts by 3 words that could be Google’s motto: “less is more”. Basically, the map displayed is a little bigger, and the search box stands on top of the map. This means less cluster, more room, and a friendlier way to surf maps in general.
While Google Maps’ main challenge is to bring the whole wide world to the world wide Web, the challenge for RIA built on top of Google Maps is to the right ergonomy to squeeze in additional information: listings, marker descriptions, geographic information… As Frederic Lardinois from RWW mentions, “now that the tabs are gone, there is a stronger focus on the search form“. Good point. I guess that once again, even for online maps, search is going to be the dominant behavior to find geographic information (instead of listings or marker designs for example). At least this makes sense in a Google world.
This week, we just released our new version of the service. The announcement was made public on Monday.
To illustrate a bit how it works, I have created a map of the places to go out in San Francisco, and made a short and punchy 1′30 video demo of how I created this map.
Grab this map:
<iframe id=”c2m_map_widget” src=”http://www.click2map.com/maps/xavierv/GoOutSF/widget” width=”700″ height=”400″ frameborder=”0″></iframe>
The first exciting new feature is to show/hide tool for groups of markers on a map. As you can see on my map, I can single out places “serving food” by hiding “bars open late night” and “clubs”. This tool can be very useful to show markers by price range, type of businesses, open hours, and so on.
In addition to this, the user can get driving directions right there on the map. How convenient to plan your night out!
Finally, I kept the sweetest fruit for dessert: Batch operation on multiple markers:
This new productivity tool lets you perform operations on multiple markers with unique ease. Bulk operations allow you to update the content of several markers in a single operation! You can thus change or delete their description, the links they contain, the keywords they hold and even their icon! It’s also possible to add tabs to each marker (text, photo or Html) or to remove existing ones. You can also move or duplicate markers across existing groups and maps and geocode them from their street address. The Platinum version also makes it possible to apply a template to several markers at the same time.
Those are great milestones that have been achieved here at Click2Map. However, we’re not done yet: A map widget is under stealth development. Click2Map already offers an embed code to insert your maps in any post, but we are working on making a super good looking one that will integrate new features, and that will look much better on any given Web page, ergonomically speaking.
Article on Google Maps Mania: Two Ways to Build Google Maps Mash-Ups
Article on HyveUp: New Features on Click2Map - Screencast Demo
We’re proud to announce the release of the brand new 1.7 version of Click2Map.
Among other things, published maps now allow you and your visitors to display or hide groups of markers and to choose the “terrain” display mode.
Silver, Gold and Platinum Click2Map subscriptions moreover allow you to display itineraries on published maps. These Click2Map versions have now become even more professional with the addition of a unique productivity tool allowing you to update multiple markers at once.
Be sure not to miss any of these new features! The free 30-day Trial of Click2Map is the perfect solution to discover all the possibilities available in the most advanced Click2Map versions!
Expect another release before the end of the summer: we’re working on a brand new widget that will satisfy even the most demanding users!
Display/hide markers on published maps
All the markers present in a group can easily be displayed or hidden by simply checking or not a checkbox.Clicking on the folder representing a group displays or hides the list of its contained markers.Clicking on the panel arrow (circled in red) allows you to completely hide the marker list.
Terrain mode
This new display mode is now available both in the Click2Map editor and on all generated maps.
Directions (Silver, Gold and Platinum Click2Map versions)
A new tab labeled “Directions” can now be displayed on published maps. It offers a quick way to calculate itineraries between markers or addresses. You can choose not to display this tab in the map publication dialog box.
Batch operations on multiple markers (Silver, Gold and Platinum Click2Map versions)
This new productivity tool lets you perform operations on multiple markers with unique ease. Bulk operations allow you to update the content of several markers in a single operation! You can thus change or delete their description, the links they contain, the keywords they hold and even their icon! It’s also possible to add tabs to each marker (text, photo or Html) or to remove existing ones. You can also move or duplicate markers across existing groups and maps and geocode them from their street address. The Platinum version also makes it possible to apply a template to several markers at the same time.
Feel free to send us any feedback at support (at) click2map.com!
Antony
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