ShowHopping uses data from Last.fm to map out upcoming concerts and live shows on Google Maps. Users can search by location and radius, or have the browser give their current location, and the webapp will map out all live shows in the area within a defined set of dates. Band or artist names can also be entered to narrow the search, and multiple names can be searched at once to make things easier. More »
Open-source mapping tool Crowdmap creates interactive maps for visualizing location-based data on a map and timeline. The tool crowdsources information via a web form, mobile phone, or Twitter, though it also uses news sources to document and verify incidents. More »
Would you like to browse Groupon, Citysearch, Restaurants.com, and individual store web sites, or look at them all on a Google Map? The Dealmap, a mashup of web-based coupons, is betting you’d like the latter. More »
Google – Searching – Search Engines – Google Map – Groupon
There’s more to Google Maps than a place you double-check your directions. Google’s data-stuffed site offers a lot of helpful tools for vacationers, spreadsheet nerds, bikers, and others. Today we’re digging into Google’s data-rich geo-tool and pulling out some helpful lesser-known features. More »
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The web doesn’t lack for package tracking apps, and some of them are very clever with their data. Boxoh, on the other hand, is simple, and shows you, on a map, what you usually care about most: where your package is. More »
Six months after launching City Tours in Labs, Google’s Maps team has tweaked the interface and made it more friendly to how people actually vacation: head to a city, pick places to go, and get precise directions to them.
At launch, City Tours did a decent job of knowing neat places to go inside a city, and even knew (sometimes) when they were open and what they cost. All it did for the traveler, though, was tell you how far apart those destinations were. Now City Tours includes detailed walking directions in your itinerary. And if you’re a My Maps nerd who’s picked out spots to visit on your own, you can import it and lay those map points over the cities that Google has picked out, so you get a mix of suggestions and pre-picked favorites.
There’s more to the latest upgrade, detailed at the blog post below. Have you used City Tours for a real, honest-to-goodness vacation? Tell us what works, and what you needed to DIY, in the comments.
If you want to check out a neighborhood you’re planning on moving to or just want to see how things are looking in your corner of Sunnyvale, CrimeReports mashes up local police reports with a map of the area.
CrimeReports will display, when data is available, a variety of crimes including homicide, breaking and entering, robbery, theft, theft of/from a vehicle, assault, and sexual offenses by default. You can also add in other crimes like kidnapping, arson, alarm responses, and proactive police activity like community policing and vehicles stops.
All of the above have color coded flags that can be easily read on the map. The flags are identified in the left hand column or by mouse click—both give you the type of crime and the location. You can also adjust the range of dates displayed to the last few days, last week, two weeks, month, or a custom date range via calendar. CrimeReports is a free service and requires no login.
iPhone only: Mapquest Navigator is a new turn-by-turn application for the iPhone that brings GPS to your phone on a budget. The question is: When will Google Maps do the same?
The application costs $1 in the App Store, which buys you a 14-day trial. If you decide you like the app and want to continue using it once those 14 days are up, MapQuest Navigator requires you pay subscription pricing: $4/month, $10/quarter, or $30/year—which makes it a good deal less expensive than AT&T's $10/month subscription GPS app.
MapQuest Navigator is far from the first turn-by-turn GPS in the App Store, but it is one of the least expensive for the feature set it offers (though you can’t get any cheaper than previously mentioned Waze‘s free offering). All the maps and directions come over your data connection, which means it’s a light download and generally will have up-to-date points of interest, but if you’ve got a bad data connection you may be better off opting for one of the offline GPS apps like Navigon or TomTom.
Still, the most interesting thing about MapQuest releasing a GPS app: It makes one wonder just how long it’ll be before Google offers their own (presumably free) turn-by-turn GPS app. We know Google can do text-to-speech (hell, they’re even great at speech-to-text), and now that they’re tracking traffic conditions for freeways, highways, and major streets, it seems like a natural progression. On top of that, I’ve tested a lot of turn-by-turn GPS apps, and Google Maps is still the app that does the best job of locating me quickly and accurately on a map.
MapQuest Navigator is currently available for the iPhone only.
If you’re looking to hit some garage sales, forget combing over the local paper and trying to put together a route. Gsalr makes finding and mapping garage sales a breeze.
Similar to previous mentioned Yard Sale Treasure Map, although a bit more polished, Gsalr helps you find and map garage sales in your area. Plug a zip code or state and city into Gsalr and you’ll be given a Google Maps mashup with local garage sales flagged. Each red flag represents a garage sale listing, clicking on it gives you a summary of the Craiglist listing, a link to the full post if it’s lengthy, the days the sale is going on, and address of the location.
The “Add to Trip Planner” button lets you easily toss a sale you like into the route maker. When you’re all done browsing the listings click on the Trip Planner tab in the upper right corner and get a handy turn by turn driving route to help you hit all the garage sales in the most effective way. If you know of another tool for helping you discover goods to repurpose and deals to score, let’s hear about it in the comments.
