Top 100 Websites

What the front end will look like, I don’t really know. What I do know is that the smarter backend will result in better applications, but just like most people don’t really know that Google Maps is powered by MapReduce or Yahoo Search is now powered by Hadoop, they don’t really know that the superior performance of their application in finding and presenting information is because the web is becoming a linked data web.

Miriam: I know we’re all still learning about this stuff, but would you be willing to make a guess at the major factors currently determining local business’ A-J rankings in Google Maps and the 10-Pack?

Need a chuckle? This is well-worth the minute to look up on Google Maps.

So, does this mean we plan on switching away from Google maps? No, Google maps are great. We don’t mind saying how much we like Google’s APIs. To Google’s credit, they haven’t just rested on their lead in this space. Despite great innovation over the last year from other players like Yahoo! Maps and MultiMap, Google have done an excellent job of staying ahead of their competition.

Have you ever heard about "pushpin apps"? These are sites that let you build your own collection of places that you can view on a Google, MS or Yahoo maps. Frappr is probably the best known of these; it's becoming the MySpace of the mapping space.

I’m talking about the expansion of Google Maps to include high resolution imagery of rural Denmark. Take a look here. Last year I wrote a paper about surveillance and Google Maps (and searching in general) and I hope to find time to rewrite it and submit it to a journal. Suggestions are welcome.

In 2005, mackers.com released Dartmaps, a website using Google Maps and local traindata from the Dublin (Ireland) area to be able to plot trains on a map. A cool application, I must say. I only now found out that about a month ago, as part of the contest “benjijbeterdanmicrosoft” (are you better than Microsoft), Arjen Kruithof launched Treinvizier, a website that shows most of the trains in the Netherlands on a map, including realtime delays.

An unofficial Google Maps blog tracking the websites, mashups and tools being influenced by Google Maps. Así se define este curioso blog en el que podremos encontrar tanto aplicaciones curiosas de esta potente herramienta de Google en los distintos blogs que lo implementan, como noticias relacionadas con dicha aplicación.

Befindet man sich in einer Stadt mit flächendeckender, kostenloser WLAN-Abdeckung (gibt es wohl z.B. bereits in San Francisco), kann man dank GPS und WLAN Google Maps nutzen, um von seiner eigenen Position aus Sehenswürdigkeiten oder Starbucks oder was auch immer zu suchen.

So I did a little googling and guess what... I'm not the first person to think of this. In fact I found several people who had already coded up web services to generate a feed based on a tracking number. I tried several, but finally settled on isnoop.net's rather cool Package Tracking With Google Maps and RSS

I quite understand that local maps need to be in the local language and so if I visit Google Maps NL page, it shows me everything in Dutch. And I was having a hard time (in following instructions in Dutch). I would go to the main Google Maps page (typically showing United States and would then navigate to Holland). That was until I realized that I could just load up the Holland map in English.