Summerized A Journey to a Thousand Maps Begins With an Open Code

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/20/technology/circuits/20maps.html

You can still search Google Maps to figure out how to get from here  
to there, but why would you, when you can use it to pinpoint kosher  
restaurants in Cincinnati, traffic cameras in Dublin, or hot spring  
spas anywhere in the United States?

...An army of programmers, most of them doing it just for fun, has  
grabbed the software code that generates the distinctive maps with  
their drop-shadowed virtual pushpins, and combined it with other data  
like the locations of potholes, taco trucks and U.F.O.

...(It currently has data only for homes in the San Francisco and Los  
Angeles areas, but the service promises that Chicago and New York  
data are coming soon.)

No one really knows how many Google map mash-ups are out there, and  
it is difficult to hazard a guess on how many new ones are created  
each day.

...And with that A.P.I., a programmer can create a mash-up by  
combining it with other data - like apartment listings on Craigslist,  
or demographic data from the United States census.

...Amazon has been allowing entrepreneurs to hijack parts of its  
database and software code to create new applications like  
MusicPlasma, which graphically displays connections between various  
musical artists....  The site, recently renamed Liveplasma.com, has  
created a similar search tool for movies and - no surprise - has a  
free mapping feature for its habitués.

"It is happening so fast," said Jef Poskanzer, a longtime programmer  
in Berkeley, Calif., who has created a hot springs map as well as  
maps of old star forts in Paris, a yacht race and public  
transportation systems in Paris and the San Francisco Bay area.

...Once you have registered for "developer status," the site copies  
the code behind a particular Web site you want to imitate, allowing  
you tweak it and make it your own.

...The company made it economically and technically feasible for Web  
sites to present data in map form, said Bret Taylor, product manager  
for Google Local.

...Mr. Taylor said one reason for the Google Maps' popularity may be  
that Google allows mash-up creators to share in the revenue from ads  
that Google sells and places on sites.

...Trulia has posted data only for five California cities, and that  
data is a bit thin because it uses publicly available sources like  
newspapers and Web sites, not the Multiple Listing Service, the  
copyrighted databases belonging to local broker associations.

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