Foursquare “Check Ins” are now being mapped as well.
I admit it – I am a huge geolocation geek and I’m a big fan of the Peek.
So, when Peek and Xtify teamed up to provide a means to pull my own Peek’s location out of the ether, and to boot, they were hosting a programming competition, I knew I had to throw my hat into the ring. Thus, Peek Maps was born.
I really have enjoyed working on Peek Maps and the challenges it has brought. Many thanks to all at Peek, Xtify, and Foursquare for helping me in getting the project completed!
–Mark Bowytz
Once you create an account with Peek Maps, you can then grab the code and embed it into your website and instantly show off all the cool places you “Check In” with Foursquare.
Foursquare is an app for the iPhone that allows you to explore your city in a social way. Sharing your location, earning points and status, sharing tips. The exploding popularity of Foursquare is quite exciting.
TechCrunch reports: Foursquare Passes 1 Million Check-Ins A Week. Rate Doubled In The Past Month.
If you haven’t yet heard of Google Wave…you may need to peek out of the tech cave and have a look around!
Google Wave has been billed as an “email killer” and as such, has some pretty huge shoes to fill.
Developers interested in the phenomenon of Google Wave have started to add increased functionality to Wave in the form of “Wave Gadgets” (“Gadget” is Google for “widget”)
I thought it would be interesting to write about them in the early stages of Wave development and then re-visit this topic later on to see the progress.
Here are some of the first Google Wave Gadgets: (from the gallery)
Emoticony is a robot for Google Wave which replaces text representations of emoticons with the relevant image. There are currently over 50 different emoticons available, with this number continuing to grow. Look out for themed emoticons focused around specific events (Halloween, Christmas etc.) More details can be found at: http://emoticony.leestone.co.uk
Lets users edit a map together, adding markers and polys with titles and descriptions. Users can also search for addresses and businesses and add those.
Craigslist Searchy is a Google Wave robot that monitors results of a given search on Craigslist. It simply takes the URL of the results page of a search on Craigslist, and adds each result item (with its title, date, text, and pictures) to the wave, in a separate blip. The bot includes code to update the Wave when new results are found, but it is not yet functioning due to API issues.
IMDbotty replaces links to movies on IMDb with a small gadget that displays useful information about the movie (title, year, rating, cover, director(s), actors).
A simple like/dislike gadget that can be added to a blip for intuitive user rating. It tells you how many people have liked, how many have disliked, and what you selected. You can also change your selection.
A yourGmap is an excellent way to display a vast amount of information.
With yourGmap you can create maps that use Google Maps as a base and add many different markers for different locations, customize zoom settings display satellite imagery etc.
These maps, when completed, are actual working maps that can be zoomed into and you can also change your location to view different objects such as streets and addresses. Any map you create can be embedded in any web page that will handle an iFrame.
MAPme is a map authoring services based on the Google Maps API that allows for a better collaboration in a map and lets you add multimedia to them in a easier way. they also lets you export that map as a Flash Widget so you can put it in your blog, myspace or wherever flash can be placed.
This is not a new idea. it is something that uMapper does and it does it with 3 services. in the case of uMapper their best implementation is the Virtual Earth one. uMapper is more focused on the actual mapping and map pointing tools along the social factor for the maps. MAPme is more focused in replicating the Google Maps service while making more easy of use to the adding of multimedia along some MAPme only tools and of course enabling a social factor to the maps.
The MAPme pages in the site are quite messy compared to uMapper and so are the way the maps are shown. the widgets are quite basic in terms of look and functionality compared to uMapper but should prove to be a delight for Google Maps uses because it truly makes the experience portable and because they are easier to use around that the official solutions.
One thing to note is that in the MAPme map pages the only option to share the widgets is via embed code quick sharing in 3 different sizes. there is not a High Spread Sharing module you can use and the same is true for the widget. this is of course a serious disappointment to me and it does not makes sense. but the service is new so it should be able to evolve and adapt if all goes well. MAPme does represent the perfect option for those using Google Maps but not for anyone beyond that service. at least not yet.
There are a lot of way to embed maps in blogs and map widgets are offered in different capacities from the top Map providers. but none of those options are as easy as uMapper. you can create a map in less than 3 minutes and you can choose your preferred map provider from Virtual Earth, Google maps and OpenStreenMaps.
(embedded above) This is a sample uMapper Widget that shows the Long Way Down that was the latest motorbike adventure with Ewan McGregor and Charley Boorman. They travel down through Europe, and then Africa – from Tunisia to South Africa.
You don`t need to create a uMapper account to create a map and be able to save the KML info so you can recreate the map elsewhere. but you need an account for the map to be saved and so you get a umapper page for your map. in the umapper page there is a high spread sharing module by Gigya that offers you quick link installs for MySpace, Friendster, Facebook, Orkut, Blogger, LiveJournal, Wordpress and iGoogle plus the generic embed code for the widget. that can be put everywhere manually.
The uMapper Maps are created in a Flex powered Map editor where you can quickly create your map adding pointers, lines and frames into it. other advantage is that you can set the map as a map wiki so anyone can edit it. there are other map mashups that allow this but none with the ease that umapper offers. once you end creating your map, it will be converted to simple flash so you can place it anywhere. the widget itself can offer the embed code to anyone that sees it in order to make it easy to share. it would be good if they could put a high spread sharing module within the map widget too in order to make it even easier for anyone to share the map widget around. even without it, umapper offers the best embeddable maps i have seen so far. totally recommended for those looking to embed maps in their blogs or social network profiles.
Widgets Lab is a blog dedicated to finding and reviewing widgets of all types. People are always asking "what are widgets?" Well in this case widgets are simply bits of code that you can add to your blog, web site or community profile. (as in MySpace and others) Also widgets can be downloaded to work with a 'Parent' application such as Mac Dashboard or Yahoo! widgets. You can see another definition for web widgets on Wikipedia/web widget.
