Meet Me In the Middle Thanks to Google Reverse Geocoding

According to the Google geo dev blog this week, Google now is making reverse geocoding available to developers. This is pretty huge for developers... in a nutshell this enables developers to add functionality that generates an address from a lat/long pair - a much tougher process than the reverse, which is grabbing a coordinate pair from an address (geocoding). See more on this in this article

Mashup Camp - Learn, Hack, Compete!

Save the date for Mashup Camp... November 17-19, Mountainview / San Jose, CA at the Computer History Museum - the un-conference for the mashup developer community. Of note, seems that this event will overlap somewhat with the iPhone Live event, Nov 18 in San Jose. The theme of mashup camp this year - Learn, Hack, Compete! Who's coming to mashupcamp? See the Wiki


Finally, the focus of this year's event will once again be the best mashup contest, where attendees will decide on the coolest mashup created for the event. Here's how the contest works:

On Day One of Mashup Camp, attendee will be exposed to several APIs through quick-and-dirty Speed Geeking sessions and more in-depth Chalk Talks. Attendees should pay close attention to the tools described by the solution providers on Day One. Prizes will be awarded by each Solution Provider at the end of Mashup Camp for the best usage of each tool in an original mashup! In addition, attendees will have the opportunity to award a prize to the best solution provider tool.

Day Two of Mashup Camp offers attendees the opportunity to discuss the use of these APIs with their peers while working on the development of original mashups in the Hack Den under the watchful eye of Mashup Camp Hack Masters.

Day Three is competition day! On this day, Camp attendees will travel in small, organized groups from table to table as competing mashup developers present their mashups for review. Each developer will have about 5 minutes to convince each group that visits his or her table that their mashup is most deserving for one of the Best Mashup Contest prizes on offer.

EveryBlock adds Seattle, Boston, and DC

Looks like EveryBlock is still growing, now with the addition of three more cities to the portfolio (that's 8 in total) . New additions this week are Boston, Seattle, and DC. Recall EveryBlock is an extensive mashup that provide loads of public information to users, including fire inspection reports, news, restarant inspections, and much more, like photos (flickr, Panoramio), real estate listings (Trulia) and much more.. all focused on your specific neighborhood or block. See more at everyblock.com - thanks for the heads-up on this James!

Trulia real estate mashup gets updates, but how good is this information?

How much trust can we have in mashups? That's always a good question, particularly as web20 services like Zillow, Trulia and others are becoming commonplace for the consumer. But where does the data come from and how accurate is it? that's always the fear of mine. Perhaps the error lies in public information, in that case, perhaps a mashup can help you identify some issues with data stored about you or your property. Case in point. Just today, popular real estate search resource, Trulia, just announced many new features today - likely in an effort to try to one-up Zillow. But how good is the information provided by these resources? For example, if you were shopping for a home in my area and were perhaps interested in my home the information conveyed by Trulia is a little odd! Details of my property list it as a 3 bedroom, 2.5 bath (perhaps poor info served via public records), however, it's definitely 4 bedroom 3 bath property. Also, for some weird reason, when hitting my address, the zip code is reset to one that is incorrect, even if I enter the correct zip code? Finally, the street view imagery pulled from Google maps is also incorrect and shows a property that is not mine, likely a blunder resulting from the whacked reverse geocoding that is grabbing a wrong zip code. So where's the value in this? You tell me. For now, these services may need some help, perhaps provided by some true, GIS programming skills! See also www.trulia.com

Sharing your maps with GeoCommons Maker

Geocommons is coming out with a new component for their GeoCommons Suite called Maker (you may have heard a release date of Aug 18 but it looks like it will be a little later than that.. stay tuned). Essentially, the app boasts that anyone can easily become an expert map maker... and share their maps. The services developed by FortiusOne (www.fortiusone.com) have already been widely used to allow people to create and share their maps and GIS data. The following are just a few things you can see... From Olympics data and Beijing smog reports to Starbucks closing locations, IED attacks in Iraq or locations of terrorist attacks, everyone can understand a map and clearly visualize the information.

As a bit of a teaser, Sean Gorman over at FortiusOne has shared with me a sneak peek at what users will be able to create, share, and experience using Maker. The map below shows Chines Power Plant Carbon Emissions in 2007 - a very impressive map mashup!

China Power Plant Carbon Emissions 2007

Geosearch the ultimate news aggregator? You better watch out for EveryBlock

So, Metacarta has rolled out their fine, new GeoSearch (isn't that a GIS Career resource??) news aggregator, ideal for News, Real Estate, and Travel Applications - see the official PR here. But will it be the "ultimate" news aggregator that some people are speculating about? One has to ask, have you seen EveryBlock? EveryBlock is an amazing mashup for everyone that pulls news, photos, crime reports, property sales, restaurant inspections, and much more for several geographic locations. The app currently provides info for 3 major cities (New York, Chicago, and) oh, and get this, it doesn't use Google, Yahoo! or Microsoft's map data, but rather, have created their own developed the app. on OpenLayers and Mapnik - other data sources are pulled from TIGER/Line files,PostGIS, and OGR (see the full skinny from Adrian's Blog) The developer, you may know the name, is Adrian Holovati of Chicago Crime data fame. I could go on but you have to browse EveryBlock for yourself - see http://www.everyblock.com/. Oh, and for those of you attending Where2.0 or contemplating on attending it, you can hear all about EveryBlock from Holovati himself. See also the blog for more http://blog.everyblock.com/

World Time Engine 2 (beta) - local time for any place in the world

The World Time Engine is a service for home users and business professionals to search and compare local world times for any country, city, town, village, zip code, point of interest or geographic coordinates on earth. Test it out... simply enter a place and you'll receive a map along with geographic coordinates, exact time along with GMT reference time. From the developers... "If a user performs an action, for example, uploads something to a service (e.g. a twitter update) you can now obtain the local time that this action occurred based purely on the coordinates data for that user or place." See http://worldtimeengine.com

A new favorite mashup! Get Taxi Fare estimates and maps on your mobile with TaxiWiz

TaxiWiz - what a clever mashup and a fine mobile app.. TaxiWiz is now available for 9 cities and hopefully more soon! Enter a start point and destination and taxiwiz routes you on Google maps, predicts a fare, and even can provide directions and routing... this is awesome! Using the PC version simply click a start and end point on the Google map and your route is traced. You are then presented with distance of trip, suggested taxi fee + tip, and then optional routing directions. The site also offers taxi tips to users as a handy extra. See www.taxiwiz.com

• New York City (mobile version)
• Boston (mobile version)
• Chicago (mobile version)
• Las Vegas (mobile version)
• Los Angeles (mobile version)
• San Francisco (mobile version)
• Toronto (mobile version)
• San Diego (mobile version)
• Vancouver (mobile version)

Results of a search for a taxi route in New York City using the PC client. Notice the suggested route and fee listed in upper left.

The TaxiWiz Mobile app as seen using Nokia N95 8GB device. Ideally I'd love to see this app taken a couple of steps further, for example, how about integrating it with Google Maps mobile? Since I have Google maps on my device perhaps an option to see the route on a map would be a nice offering. I'd also like to see an option to call a cab company or search for local cab companies... this app could be HUGE!

Affordable fleet management + Google maps - uBlip

I followed one of those pesky google ads and found a very cool app that enables anyone with $25 a month to spend to have their own fleet management and tracking system. Users need to buy the hardware, plug it in to their vehicle's lighter, then the app tracks and logs your location. Users have acces via a web UI powered via Google maps and location information is constantly updated. Users can enabled geofencing and receive detailed reporting as well. Quite clever and affordable! Reminds of the similar app GPStracking.net which users can actually try for free (3dtracking.net) and run via their symbian handset. See http://www.ublip.com

findbyClick mobile - location-aware Google Maps mashup

Map mashups are everywhere, many of them are also mobile enabled, providing users with the ability to update and share their places from their mobile... findbyclick is just such an application - location-based intelligence and social networking all in one. Findbyclick is a clever mashup and best of all it has a mobile app as well.



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Map Mashups: the what and why and which APIs are popular

Interested in seeing which Mashup APIs are popular? This is the topic in this recent discussion post... interesting! This article from Apex devnet provides some insight on developing a mashup using the slaesforce.com platform... The second article in this series presents several concrete techniques for building mashups. By the end of the second article you will be in a position to comfortably create your own mashups on the Salesforce platform. The article looks closely at the Gogole maps API, using AJAX, and other APIs... http://wiki.apexdevnet.com/index.php/Mashups:_The_What_and_Why Of interest, some of the most popular APIs for mashups according to programmable web include:
Google maps 50%
Flickr 10%
YahooMaps! 4%
Virtual Earth 3%

Looking for data or tools for your mashup? Try some of the following:
Yahoo! Geocoding service - http://developer.yahoo.net/maps/rest/V1/geocode.html
USGS Geonames - http://www.geonames.org/export/
USGS Elevation Service - http://gisdata.usgs.gov/XMLWebServices/TNM_Elevation_Service.php

So what kind of mashup are HOT besides mapping? According to programmable web, video mashups, social mashups and photo mashups are leading the pack lately!

Housefront mashup predicts home values - send results to mobile

Are you interested in seeking the value of your home or your neighbor's? No worries, try this useful mashup (using google maps API) at housefront. Simply enter the address and the property along with estimate is provided. Optionally, send the results to your mobile. see http://www.housefront.com
The application is fast although at first glance, the reverse geocoding is a bit off.. 3 tests yielded 3 incorrect positions... I find the values are somewhat off (in our area anyway)... Zillow seems to provide better zestimates in my opinion. Finally, the send to cell doesn't seem to work for my carrier either (t-mobile) even-though they are a valid option

Save the Date - Mashup Camp Dublin, Nov 10-12 - the unconference!

3 days of mashup programming and more... and likely a bit of buzz about Google OpenSocial and the coming facebook announcement! I almost forgot, Mashup Camp Dublin is taking place in a few days.. should be interesting to watch the blog from this one See also: http://www.mashupcamp.com/, http://wiki.mashupcamp.com/index.php/AboutMashupCamp. An impressive list of developers from companies like Yahoo!, IBM, AOL, Microsoft, Google and many others are on the attendee list.

Schmap boast Schmap for Mac, online guides, an open developer platform, and customizable widgets using Google, Yahoo! or Microsoft maps

Schmap, the developer and publisher of those very cool, free guides and Schmapplets has not only just passed the 30 million download mark, but they also have some cool updates. Most recently, the company is boasting Schmap for Mac, online guides, an open developer platform, and customizable widgets.

Schmap for Mac - Schmap desktop guides are now Mac compatible: Schmap Guides for both Mac and Windows can be downloaded for free at www.schmap.com.

Schmap Guides online - Readers who don’t require all our desktop functionality can now browse Schmap Guides online, complete with the same content as their desktop counterparts. Schmap Washington DC, for instance, can be browsed online at www.schmap.com/washingtondc.

User authored “schmapplets” - open platform for users to author their own map-integrated travel or local content. A showcase selection of user authored schmapplets can be viewed at www.schmapplets.com.

Customizable map widgets - simple for anyone to customize a map widget for a website or blog, with choice of size, color, city and map or satellite image via Google, Yahoo or Microsoft. Schmap map widgets can be customized at www.schmap.com/widgets.

More about Schmap Guides:
Online and desktop travel guides available at www.schmap.com.
30 million desktop travel guides downloaded since March 2006.
Guides include photos from 50,000 travelers and local residents.
200 worldwide destinations schmapped.
Unique platform integrates maps and travel guide content.

See more about Schmap and schmapplets in the article at http://www.gisuser.com/content/view/12070/

Tha sample widget below uses the Yahoo! maps API

LiveLook serves up Webcam locations via Google Maps - a great mashup!

Erik over at LiveLook has share details of a very cool mashup that they've developed.. enter LiveLook. This application uses the Google Maps API to mashup and present the location of webcams that are near you. By default it locates you (I assume based on IP) although you can optionally specify a region by city name etc... Check it out at http://livelook.com/

my first Yahoo! mapmixer - fort collins + Census Bureau Tiger data

I had to test the Mapmixer for myself now that I located some cool data from the US CEnsus bureau. Using data from http://tiger.census.gov I created a simple map that uses 1998 TIGER/Line^® data and 1990 Decennial Census data. I mixed it using the mapmixer app and voila.. ok this is cool! Try messing with the layer opacity tool to see the 2 different map layers that I combined. Sweet! Try for yourself at http://maps.yahoo.com/mapmixer

Yahoo! goes mixing maps with mapmixer

This is a cool app and very premlim but this Mapmixer project out of yahoo! research labs is quite cool. I'm not sure of the usefulness yet but I guess its cool! See http://mapmixer.com & http://maps.yahoo.com/mapmixer Apparently this is an internal pet project that lets users create a mashup by adding any GIF or JPG map to a Yahoo! map session as an overlay. Users can also embed the map as an iframe into their webpage (see below) . Any idea where to find some georeferenced GIFs? Thanks to slashgeo for this tip!

YAhoo! Pipes news map - a great mashup

An interesting find in this clever Yahoo! Pipe that mashes up news (topic of your choice) with a Yahoo! map. Try it out - search on a term like "esri" then scroll through the results on this map interface. The app grabs news from google news (yes indeed, GISuser.com news gets crawled by this news crawler - a great benefit of getting your news listed here) and displays on the map where you can then scroll through the results, view a synopsis and click-through for a full read if the caption looks interesting. To top it off you can get the results as JSON or KML... sweet! See the News Map Pipe HERE

The results of this search for "esri" news using the pipe shows a hit that has been pulled from GISuser.com news headlines. Source of inspiration was a post on Mapperz via BlinkGeo!

Will CraigsList ever slow down? More map mashups will be a great plus for this resource

I can't get over the amazing capabilities of CraigsList... I've been a fan and a user for a long time now (I found my Ft Collins short term rental using it) and lately I've unloaded loads of stuff using this incredible local search / classifieds utililty. Obviousy the "local" component and the immediateness (is that a word??) make CraigsList a very powerful resource. To compare... I had a car advertised in a local paper and received virtually no response to the ad.. what a waste of $50! Contrasting that is the flurry of activiry I received from a CraigsList posting. Being able to target ads to locations that are more relevant (eg. sometimes I advertise on the Boulder or Denver list, depending on the item) which brings amazing reasults when used appropriately. Ideally I'd like to see more mapping in the UI, however, to date it doesn't seem to limit the usefullness... more mobile integration would also be very cool.. ie. post from a mobile or contact me via my mobile etc... although there are simple ways to get around this or provide a hack. The map mashups of CraigsList housing adverts have been huge to say the least - see http://www.housingmaps.com/ or http://www.myapartmentmap.com/ but I'd like to see more or even map driven mashups that incorporate all the CraigsList listings. Do you know of such a mashup? Anyone getting these kind of results fromm Google Base? I found an amazing Apple iPhone map mashup that enables users to locate ebay listsings for Apple iPhones.. way cool. I envision this being much more useful by being able to mash ebay and craigslist into the map and change the search parameter to include any kind of product... imagine... search craigslist for computers neara zipcode 80528... that's what I want to see! Gotta go.. I have a guy coming over to buy a desk that's been sitting in my garage... kaching $$

ACME labs mashup with Google maps, USGS DRGs, DOQs, and more

Got a tip off (thanks Jim!) about a clever mashup from ACME labs.. I think I actually saw this a while back but its cool to revisit! According to the developers, ACME Mapper 2.0 is a high-precision general purpose mapping application, based on Google Maps with a bunch of things added on. At first glance it looks like the vanilla google maps but look deeper and there's much more... In the upper right corner are some buttons that let you change the type of map. ACME Mapper adds the Topo and DOQ types, which are not in standard Google Maps. These come from TerraServer's Web Services. In the lower right corner you can optionally have an overview map widget. In the lower right you have the Control Panel. This lets you do all sorts of stuff. All the controls have 'tooltips', so one way to find out what something does is to move your mouse over that item - a short description will pop up. So, users can easily view a Google map of any area, a hybrid nashup, USGS topo sheet, USGS DOQ, or a color aerial photo mosaic... SWEET! See http://mapper.acme.com/

USGS topo sheet, Fort Collins, CO

USGS DOQ