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!

I think this is exactly why Twitter founders do not talk too much about their development strategies: As soon as an idea slips out of their mouth, it becomes the next Twitter we should all expect in the coming days.

This week end, Techcrunch reported on an interview Evan Williams had with Der Spiegel, where he mentions that Twitter could possibly delivers local breaking news to users based on their locations. Everybody is getting excited about it, as you can read in the comments of the Techcrunch article, but there is something that doesn’t fit in this story: Twitter doesn’t know where I am.

It is true, Twitter is not a geolocation company. It doesn’t track people based on their location and deliver services based on those locations. Yes, for ‘tweeps’ using smartphones, a latitude/longitude will be attached to all tweets transmitted to the phone. Other desktop apps will also attach your location to the tweets you send. On users’ profiles, you will see a location, but users would need to constantly update their feeds to make this location accurate in the here and now. I see this geolocation feature mainly as a way for tweeps to easily spot other tweeps.

Twitter has a problem: it is too noisy. I only use Twitter as a search engine, and for succinct communications with unknown others. Anyone who tracks their Thwirl, Tweetdeck and other app all day long to follow discussions is losing an incredible amount of time and productivity. Too many people use it has a way to grow an audience, following thousands of other tweeps, expecting follow-backs, with no intent to actually connect with the people they follow.

Anyhow, my point is that there is too much noise on Twitter. So if you couple this fact with the fact that Twitter would do a bad job delivering geo-targeted local news, you see how your stream would get even more polluted. Twitter is in no position to do this.

One interesting fact is that Twitter was early-funded by Union Square Ventures, the same VCs that early-funded Outside.in, the site that tracks the Web for news in your area. Now maybe it would be a good idea if Outside.in users could subscribe to the local news through their Twitter stream. But that’s a different story.

Finally, to spot geolocated Twitter feeds, there is Twinkle. It works great, and fits the need of the niche that is interested in getting geolocated news in their feeds.

Another way to see it is that users could turn on an alert whenever they want to get geolocated tweets in their streams. In that case, Twitter would need to have a GPS-enabled technology to track users on the go (a tracking system that doesn’t require sending tweets to be found). If Latitude is planning on opening up an API, I guess this is something doable…