A little tour of my home town...

In my final week of exploring web 2.0 technology for this project I have had a look at Google Maps and Mashups. 

In the past I have frequently used Google Maps for finding locations and looking at what a building looks like via street view but I have never created a map of my own. I didn’t even know you could do it. With the expectation that it would be a difficult process I was happy to find out I was wrong. Deciding that I would map out some of my favourite places in my home town of Geelong I had no trouble pinning places such as the Geelong City Library and then drawing lines to link the places together. 

Surprised with the ease of use I thought I would link some of my own photos to each of the places. This is where I come unstuck. I found out (thanks to a Google search) you cannot simply upload your own pictures from your computer, instead you have to upload your photos onto the internet (I used Google +) and then you can put them in your map. So I tried to share the link to my photos within my map, but all I got was broken links. Feeling a little broken and defeated myself I almost gave up but after hours of trying I figured out that my pictures would appear as a placemark or as an image in the description by dragging and dropping the image in to the relevant area. I am sure there is a more technical and correct way to do what I did but I am yet to find it and truthfully I don’t care because it worked in the end. So below is the final product. 

View A Tour of my Favourite Places in Geelong in a larger map

Knowing what i know now Google Maps seems easy to use as a Mashup tool which  got me thinking as to how professionals in an information management setting could utilise it. While IM businesses could use it for the obvious and put a map on their website which pinned their location they could use it for more creative purposes as well. Maybe the likes of a historical society or library could map out a town pinning important landmarks, write a brief summary of its relevance and link some photos of the building throughout its history. Or they could use a web-mapping tool to pinpoint historic events on a map such as Bomb Site has done.   

And what about Mashups for other purposes? Well after a quick Google search here are some of the more interesting ones i found...

Flickr Sudoku 
As the  name suggests you play a game of Sudoku using numbers from Flickr. 

Screenshot from http://flickrsudoku.com/

Sleeping Time

Search the name of your friend's (or favourite celebrity's) Twitter name to find out their sleeping patterns. This site uses a persons last 1000 tweets to determine an approximate sleeping schedule.

Screenshot from http://sleepingtime.org/

Say it in Bacon (Not for Vegetarians)

This website allows you to make your own text designs using real bacon. The customised bacon design can then be printed onto a product such as a T-Shirt. 

Screenshot from http://www.sayitinbacon.com/

And on a side note if you really want to utalise your Mashup skills maybe you should try GovHack. Form a team and try to create a Mashup using Government data.