One day you ask yourself if being tracked through GPS is not a tad disturbing, if this is something people would adopt, and the next day you read that tracking your friends on a map is now possible 24/7. Google announced yesterday the upcoming release of Latitude, A simple service that will ping your location every once in a while, and let a selected few of your choice know about it.

Latitude will be accessible for all G1, iPhones, Blackberry, and javascript-enabled phones in general. The privacy settings give users leeway in terms of public accessibility: Google’s servers don’t track movements, they merely provide the last waypoint where a user was marked. This means that you can’t track anyone’s daily pattern of movement. You can also determine the specificity of your beacon, showing an exact city block or just the city itself. Only friends on your contact list can see your location. You can set up different privacy levels for each contacts though.

Latitude is not a mobile-only experience. There is a Latitude gadget for iGoogle to spot friends from your laptop (Gmail contacts of course). Latitude will track your mobile location, and through Gears, it will also track your laptop position.

Shegeeks‘ blogger Corvida brings an interesting point in a blog post on Louis Gray’s blog: Location-aware services such as Loopt and Brightkite should thank Google for publicizing a service that they do better than Google for the moment.

Brightkite introduces me to new people to hang out with. [...] The amount of information available for specific check-in spots is amazing! I can see who’s been there, how many times they’ve been there, check out their profile and see if we have similar interests. Hey, they might even be friends with me on Twitter! For this sole reason alone, Brightkite and other similar services have nothing to fear for now. In fact, they might want to thank Google.

I shared a few comments in this post, where I argue that Google is more interested in building a back-end geolocalization technology that would seamlessly integrate with other Google products. latitude is just a way to get things started.

On the Fast Company site, Chris Dannen brings up the idea that Latitude could work in perfect harmony with Local Business Center, Google’s own Yellow Pages:

You don’t have to be Al Gore to see the potential; if advertisers can tap into your location and mash it up with locations of their outlets or services and your browsing history, you’ll be hit with perhaps the most targeted ads humankind has ever known. Imagine having your mobile phone kindly inform you that you’re two blocks from your best friend, and in between you both, there lies a Starbucks where you two can meet.

That sounds like something Google would do. Mapping technologies over at Google are not ready yet to support such a complex operation. Google Maps is barely in its early monetization days, so everything is going to remain pretty experimental for the next 2 or 3 years to come.

When using a third-party application to create Google Maps, you may be asking yourself the question: Will Google find and index my content, or will it just sit in the application’s database?

Honestly, I always thought that my data was just sitting in my application’s database, that the SEO value was weak, and I was wrong.

It turns out, if the application you use generates an xml file of your markers, then Google will spot it, slurp the content, sort it out, and index the useful data into their local center. This means, any marker you add on Click2Map is visible to the Google bots and will be indexed in the leading search engine database.

Why is this important for your mapping activities?

Obviously, when we put content online, we seek visibility. Virtually, the Google bots can scan any type of Web page and index its content (yep, even flash content). However, if your content is not properly displayed, the bots will have a hard time figuring it out, and the indexing process won’t be optimized.

However, it has been unveiled many times that a strong presence on Google Maps will boost your presence in Google’s universal SERPs. Google’s ongoing strategy heads towards geo-localization. The G1 is a perfect illustration of this ongoing effort towards serving a geo-localized experience to users.

Now once your content has been geo-localized with Click2Map, an xml file of your markers is created. It usually takes up to a few hours for Google to spot your content. Once it does, it records the withheld data, and stores it in its local central.

If the data has been filled in properly, and the content is business-oriented, then it will be used on Google Maps SERPs, and it will also power Google Search search results. There are also tricks to use some mapping tools to push your content a little further, such as map embeds.

In other words, when you upload your geodata to Click2Map, you get all the advantages of Google Maps and local business center, plus the wide array of additional products and services that we offer.

2008 is closing down on us. Unlike what the eighties movies predicted for the future, we are still running cars on gas (even though Prius sales boomed this year), world poverty keeps being the hidden guilt of the rich minority, and we haven’t found an instant cure for a simple cold.

A lot happened on the Web though. The mobile Web is becoming mainstream at a faster pace than we can imagine, thanks in part to the iPhone 3G. The interesting aspect of the iPhone (and other smartphones like the g1) is its geolocation feature. The phone can detect your location and guide you around.

GPS is not a 2008 technology, but associated services related to this feature are opening up new opportunities. Loopt was the most advertised iPhone app heading towards this direction this year. I was personally more impressed by the g1’s zombie run game, even though the features are still pretty basic so far.

Of course, here at Click2map, we are interested to see how Google Maps evolves in this space:

(in 2008) Google Maps continued to increase the coverage for Street View, which is now available in the US, France, Italy, Spain, Australia, New Zealand and Japan. You can now get walking directions, car directions enhanced by StreetView, traffic estimations and explore places by looking at geo-tagged photos and videos.(via)

A few days ago, Google Maps launched a translation feature for all Google Maps reviews. The launch of the Google Map Maker also opened the option for anyone to contribute to the effort by bringing their own pieces to the puzzle.

There is a lot going on around geodata. By locating entities, and criss-crossing different positions, the web is making it possible to better connect individuals with other individuals, and with businesses. The question remains: Even though the technology is being developed, are people adopting it? Do people use maps more often? What is the trend for 2009?

Here are a few insights from the Google Search Insights site:

Of course, here at Click2map, we believe that those numbers are not innocuous. For example, we have seen the high demand for driving directions and have responded to it. Those curves are also showing how the pioneer Mapquest has lost its leadership to Google Maps. Finally, it shows how the technical term geoweb is gaining awareness and is pushing curious minds to search for it.

In 2008, we have seen a lot of geolocation features spreading onto widely-used Web applications such as social networks. In 2009, based on this article from the Boston Globe, I think we should expect to have more info delivered to us based on our location.

For a great review of mapping in 2008, read this article: Loci 2008: Matt Cutt’s Important Local Articles of 2008.

Happy New Year!

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

Map Your Corporate Neighbors with Google Maps

Google Maps showing lists of business that occupy a given address

Yelp’s First 90 Top-Rated Restaurants in San Francisco

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.

Update: Geode Location Determination Coming to Firefox - All Points Blog

Adena at Directions Magazine shared the Mozilla announcement that Geode is coming. Geode is a geolocation add-on for Firefox which will enable localized content. ReadWriteWeb describes it as a tool that “understands location, enabling enriched, personalized, and localized content” and VentureBeat explains it’s a location determination tool, built on the W3C spec, upon which developers can build.

Over 300 iPhone Apps Use Location Look-Ups

According to Skyhook Wireless over 300 iPhone apps are location-aware as of October 3rd. According to Mobclix there are over 4,000 apps in circulation. If these numbers are correct this puts the location-aware percentage at under 10% — far, far less than I would have suspected based on my own experience. There were 5.5 location-aware apps released per day in September. The location-aware apps 61% are paid (less than the 76% found in iPhone apps as a whole according to Mobclix).

Where in the world is …

This month we’ve published a significant amount of new or updated high resolution satellite imagery for Google Earth. So if you think it is going to be easy to find the new imagery, stop and think again. You are going to have to work a little. We have put together a list of clues about where to find some of our new imagery. Here is one to get you off and running on your Google Earth tour

Google Maps and other Google Apps vulnerable to attack

“The beauty of frame injection attacks is that the attacker is able to impersonate a trusted entity without needing to bypass XSS/HTML filters or even break into the target server,” Pastor explained on the GNUCitizen site.

Problems Continue With Google Local Business Listings

A clear explanation of Google Maps recent hijacks in business listings

Today, Erick Schonfeld from Techcrunch noticed that a small Google Ads was appearing at the bottom of Google Maps. For the blog writer, the story makes sense: Google’s stocks are losing value, and so the company is tapping into its unexploited page views to increase distributed ads and revenues. Unfortunately, if you click on an ad at the bottom of a map, it will not pop up a marker on the map, it will just open the Website of the advertiser, just like regular Google ads do. Disappointing!

Image from Techcrunch

On Cnet, Stephen Shankland notices a few variations in ads appearances:

“shoe store San Francisco” shows results but “shoe store” while looking at San Francisco doesn’t. Presumably this behavior will change according to what keywords advertisers bid on.

That’s the downside of such a precipitated move: Google has applied a traditional bidding system. For maps, it would make more sense if advertisers could bid on keywords overlaid on geographic areas bids. Unfortunately, this system would require more development efforts, and it seems that Google doesn’t have time for subtleties these days.

Here at Click2map, users can chose to display Google Ads around the maps they create, and generate money out of it. Antony, can you specify in the comments if our users will get to make some money out of this new ad placement as well?

In the USA, about 1/4 of American voters have not register to vote yet. We all know how important the role of the next US president (Obama or McCain) will be on an international scale. For the purpose of pushing the 1/4 unregistered voters to go put their names on the voting lists, the Google Maps team developed a clever tool to help unregistered voters find their nearest voting location, along with detailed information related to voting deadlines specific to different states and counties.

We’re trying to help increase participation by making sure you have easy access to voting information. Google’s Voter Info Map currently puts registration, absentee and early voting information in one place.

Once again, we see how emerging mapping technologies can play a central role in the structuralization of a community’s information system. To raise awareness of such a useful community tool, the Google Maps team partnered up with scores of Hollywood stars who participated to the creation of this 5-minute video-clip. The purpose of the video is to motivate the unregistered voters to use the Google’s Voter Info Map to find the nearest place to go register.

Movie stars are encouraging us to be good citizens through new technologies. This definitely is a new world order!

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

It makes no doubt today that Google Maps is the rising star of online maps provider. Even though Mapquest is still leader on the market, it doesn’t beat the search empire in terms of innovation and business opportunities.

Since I work for a company that builds its entire business assets on top of GoogleMaps (even though they can easily switch platforms), I was wondering how stable and secure was the Google Maps ecosystem. How risky is it to build a business on top of Google Maps? To explore this question, I will simply make a SWOT of Google Maps. At the end of this analysis, I hope to provide an educated response on the reliability of Google Maps.

Also, I will try to avoid talking about attributes that belong to Google in general, such as the company’s philosophy, their ability to hire talents, Adsense and so on.

Strengths
Google Maps is creating an unprecedented opportunity for local merchants to put their business on the map. As the mapping system keeps growing, it becomes a loss to omit listing your business on Google Maps. As this blogger testifies, a lot of people rely on Google geo-located business info to shop on a daily basis.

Google Maps is also part of a global innovative project that gathers Google Earth, Street View, Sketchup, Lively… It is much too soon to know if those products will become prevalent in the way we use the Web, but it sure makes the mapping product look much more compelling.

Opportunities
Since it is a geo-localization tool, it makes sense for the maps to be accessible via mobile. It also makes sense for the maps to know where you are by localizing your cell phone. Any mobile phone with a Web browser can access Google Maps, but the search company is also working deals with telephony providers to make Google Maps the map provider by default on mobile devices. Google Maps is also pushing its way in the CRM space by signing partnerships with giants like Oracle. This business development strategy ensures Google Maps’ vertical hold on the online map market.

Google Maps is also an opportunity in terms of SEO. The video below was found on Mattseo.com, and it shows a way to cheat the search results on Google Maps.

This shows that the search algorithm for geo-localized results are a bit candid, and now is the time for merciless SEO agencies to spam this whole thing out and abusively reach millions of location-seekers. That’s a great marketing opportunity.

Weaknesses
What appears to be a SEO opportunity turns out to be a weakness for Google’s business. First, a spammable engine doesn’t have any business value. Second, honest businesses can lose a lot because of this search weakness. On this forum, there is a great example of how this crack can harm a business. Basically, the story is about a flower shop in Denver. 95% of their customers are leads generated online. For ever, the flower shop showed up on top of Google SERPs. The owners invested a significant amount of money in Adsense campaigns to get there. One day, another florist randomly took pole position on the Google Maps SERPs, and our flower shop went bankrupt.

Not only can you game the system, but nobody will help the victims over at Google, simply because Google has never set up any user assistance service (aside from forums). For example, when you have a bug going on and related to the Google Maps’ API, it feels really shady to hear that Google’s not there to help.

Threats
Of course, for anybody considering building a business on top of Google Maps, the biggest threat is Google itself. As Andy Beal writes on this post, Google has a tendency to pull the rag from under API developers. MyMaps have provoked mixed reactions in the mapping community. By doing so, Google instates a feeling of mistrust: If your application works well and becomes very popular, expect Google to “me-to” you, but free.

Competing against Google is almost impossible. Almost. Here is the example of PlaceBase, a company that initially started as a white-label mapping business. A few months after PlaceBase launched, Google Maps entered the market, stealing PlaceBase’s thunder. Determined to succeed, the Founder of PlaceBase decided to focus on specific core competencies, and today his company is doing great.

Google Maps’ competition is a threat that is worth considering: EveryScape is a company that offers 360 views of stores’ interiors and exteriors, is frontally challenging Google Maps:

“I’m quite confident that if we have world coverage of interiors and exteriors, people will leave Google and come to us”, says EveryScape’s CEO.

If arrogance seems to be EveryScape main weapon to evangelize their product, the company succeeds to remind us that an innovative mapping product could show up at any time and steal Google Maps’ hype.

Conclusion:
Despite the proliferation of online maps, and the growing success of Google Maps in the mapping space, building a business on top of Google Maps remains very challenging, and requires strong entrepreneurial nerves. Google Maps is a fertile land, but it can also rise up from the ground and raze your business’ value proposition overnight.

The best approach to cope with Google’s schizophrenia is to focus on your existing customership and be the best at providing them with the tools they need to create maps. A giant is limited in speed. Be swift, lead innovation, and maybe take advantage of the few cracks in the system while it’s still there.

xavierv

Here’s a funny comics found on xkcd (and through VerySpatial.com) about Google Maps.

Who knows, when MMORPGs will merge with Google Maps and Earth, maybe the spectral wolf won’t sound so odd anymore!