Geekfoolery

Much like the hapless beauty queen, I’ve always believed we need more maps. Good thing we’re living in the Internet age… we’ve got more maps than we can shake a laser pointer at.

Back in the 1990’s, my jaw dropped when Mapquest came online with a searchable map of the entire US, with driving directions and guides to the nearest restaurants such. At a stroke, Mapquest seemed to put companies like Rand MacNally out of business, or at least on the ropes, with their versions of the same data for sale on CD. I knew the Internet was going to be cool, but in 1998, this seemed like too much!
Now of course, we take it for granted that given an address, we can punch up a map and driving directions.  Mapquest is still around, owned by AOL, and it’s interface is a bit more advanced than it used to be. Primarily because MSN and Google have been busy as well, coming up with pretty sophisticated interfaces of their own at maps.microsoft.com and maps.google.com. The service offering is constantly changing, but for my money, Google stays the furthert ahead of the curve. Current offerings above and beyond basic mapping include (but are not limited to) Google Street view, traffic, MyMaps, and most importantly, is how Google keeps the interface to Google Maps open so that other sites with important location-based data can overlay their info on top of Google Maps. There are hundreds of examples… from useful data like mashing up Craigslist apartment rentals and flight time info, to sillier pursuits like Google Sightseeing. GoogleMapsMania keeps me up-to-date on the latest ones.

If you own a home, this is a map you need to bookmark: Zillow.com. Started by a couple of former Microsoft/Expedia execs, Zillow takes the Mapquest/GoogleMaps interface and overlays real estate prices on top of it. Your first stop will be to check your own home’s price. Then you check the prices of your neighbor’s houses. Then everyone on the whole damn street. Then your extended family. Co-workers. How much does that stinkin’ McMansion down the street cost? What does that place you lived in growing up go for now? What about that house you made an offer of $250,000 on a few years back? It never ends. Open a bottle of wine and drive yourself insane with this site. Note: Don’t play this game if  you rent. At least not with sharp objects nearby.

After a few rounds at Zillow.com, I often find myself in need of a beer. Pubquest.com takes care of this nicely. I am not a big fan of the fizzy yellow macrobrews, so it’s nice to have a site that allows me to do a search of brewpubs that make their own beer.

The final stop on the Internet tour of maps is another Google product, discussed last because it’s not a website, it’s an application you download. Google Earth, available for free for Mac and Windows, created anew for me the wonder that I beheld when I first saw Mapquest and wondered how such a kick-ass killer app was available to the great unwashed such as as me, for free, of all things. Google Earth, a searchable 3-D model… not merely a map, a three dimensional representation of the entire earth, with terrain, and canyons, and mountains. Of the whole god damn planet! Paid versions of Google Earth allow more sophisticated interaction with the database, including attaching your GPS to it or creating flybys and animated graphics. If you need these functions available in the various paid versions, Google Earth is still a bargain, but the casual punter such as I need simply wait and enjoy, and the elves at Google will add new amazing features to Google Earth. Sometimes they’ll announce it, like the way they included astronomy data, should you decide to look up from the Earth, or sometimes they won’t… like they way they sneakily added a flight simulator to the latest download of Google Earth. You can start at any point on the Earth and click over to a F-16 or a slower prop plane, and cruise around the terrain.

As if this weren’t enough, there is one last map toy I have come across: Geogreeting.com. Like the Matrix, you can not be told what it is… you have to see it for yourself. Click here to check it out.

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