Map of the Future
Seattlest had a dream last night wherein we were shrunk down to thumbtack size and sucked into Google Maps. All of our readers/participants could dial us up on the internet at Google Maps and watch our various exploits across the city, clicking the pinheads scattered in our wake in either map or satellite view to read our little blurbs or view our tiny photographs.
Alright, there was no dream.
We have been hearing a lot about Google Maps recently, though. Lots of goodies that go above and beyond getting you from A to B have been raining down on the interweb ever since Google opened the door to the service, because the really cool thing that Google did with their maps was to give other programmers the ability to tie their own data to them. Face it, a map is a map is a map. You don't go into a Shell station and "ooo" and "aah" over Washington state highways, and clever web browser tricks are only fascinating to a tiny segment of the populace at large. Bring in Craigslist, though, or flickr, and you're looking at a something usefull.
In that light, Seattlest give you three Google Map applications that have been making the rounds recently.
- Shelter is one of mankind's most basic needs. This website ties Craigslist real estate information to Google Maps to make it that much easier to find your new roommates. Seattlest is still searching for the web application that not only finds them, but also performs background checks on them.
- Food, shelter, cheap gasoline. Isn't that more or less the order today? You can save the Earth, or you can use this page to pinch the absolute maximum amount of pennies while buying your refined carbon. It's the great taste of Google Maps around a creamy SeattleGasPrices.com filling.
- Forget basic needs - We aspire to more than survival, do we not? Enter a latitude and longitude into this site and it will repay you with the flickr photographs taken near that location. You don't know your coordinates? This site will turn an address or intersection into the numbers you'll need. We used 1st and Union downtown to get latitude 47.607995°, longitude -122.338914°.
