I asked a colleague from work today if he had any news about new
Internet phenomena that would be cool to check out. He told me
about the concept of social software. Social software is where
someone takes an existing computer program and combines it with
another idea to make it more personalized for people. A perfect
example of this comes in the form of a new craze taking over the
world: Google Map mash-ups.
http://maps.google.com/ is already a
cool site that has taken a personalized approach to many
different ways of helping people. For example, I typed in 'Pizza
restaurants' into the finder with the name of the town my father
lives in near Atlanta, Georgia, USA and it showed me exactly
where all the pizzas were, the names of the restaurants, and
contact details (if I wished to place an order over the phone).
Pretty cool. This is only the tip of the iceberg. Other people
around the world have taken the Google Map software and combined
it with their personal interests to create a whole array of
exciting maps filled with photos and information. The ultimate
site to check some out is
http://googlemapsmania.blogspot.com/.
Let me give you an idea of what people are doing out there on
the Internet to make the world a more informed place. I'm
planning on going to live in Japan pretty soon. Well at
http://www.bento.com/tokyofood.html I could find a map of the
Kansai region (where I will probably live) which showed me
exactly where all the vegetarian restaurants are, the type of
cultural food each was (E.g.: Sri Lankan), a photo of the
establishment, as well as all the relevant information-including
reviews. You can tell I'm a connoisseur, or at least I attempt
to be one. Let's go elsewhere.
The
http://googlemapsmania.blogspot.com/ site has map categories
like current events, transportation, weather, wireless and
mobile, housing and real estate, business, stats and
demographics, employment, recreation and fitness, events and
sport, travel and tourism, and even maps of crime and sex
offenders-that's a little weird for me, but some people
obviously are keen to keep their families safe at all costs.
There is also Google map games that people have created, and you
can download tools to create a map of your own.
At
http://www.pintsearch.com/ you can see a map with some
pictures of the best pubs in London. Under current events, and
you know how 'positive' current events are, at
http://www.futurecrisis.com/places/view.php you can see a map
with all of the places where avian flu outbreaks have occurred.
At
http://www.housingmaps.com/ you can look at a map of the USA
and click on houses for sale in a city you'd like to go to. You
get the house's address, cost, and many of them have photos as
well.
There's a lot of this kind of thing in America, but the craze is
spreading to other countries too.
http://www.mackers.com/projects/dartmaps/ is a site that shows
you all of the trains in Dublin, Ireland, their destination, and
where they are on their route (in approximate real-time).
http://www.thestar.com/static/googlemaps/gtatraffic.html?xml=traf
ficcams.xml is a site link that takes you to a map where you can
click on hundreds of traffic cameras around Toronto, Canada to
actually see real photos of current traffic conditions in a
specific area.
http://www.freefoto.com/ is a cool site to see
and download professional photos taken in different locations
around the world. I had a quick look at the game called
http://www.googleearthing.com/ where you are asked to find
certain images around our whole planet. It doesn't look easy!
The list of links related to this single new form of social
software on
http://googlemapsmania.blogspot.com/ is very
impressive. I'm interested in finding out about other forms of
combined software that could help humanity in a social context.
My friend mentioned that he'd read an article about a proposed
travel site that would rate the relevance of user's comments in
relation to your own personal statistics. For example, if your
are a 20 year old male, a 60 year old woman's remarks about a
hotel will be rated as of less importance compared with another
person who falls into a similar social category to yourself.
This is an interesting and exciting craze. I can see clearly how
these specific idea-based maps will be able to help humanity in
so many ways. However, all things in life are balanced so we do
have to draw a line sometimes. Another friend at work told me a
story about an angry mob that stood waiting outside a house that
an Internet sex offenders' site informed them of a predator in
their local neighborhood. The thing is the site hadn't been
updated when the ex-convict had moved from the house, so an
innocent person had their house picketed for something that was
totally unrelated to them. On the positive side of the coin, I
do think that the possible future innovations even in this one
area of Internet-mapping could in itself have awesome results
for human society.
About the author:
By Jesse S. Somer
http://www.m6.net Jesse S. Somer is a creative
writer working at M6.Net: 'The web-hosting company for humans.'
M6.Net is working hard to help humanity experience the power and
freedom to develop their own part of the Internet, to share
their information and connect with a
