A couple of months ago I wrote about Google Maps and how it could be integrated into your web site to allow your customers to find you easily. Of course, since I wrote that article we have seen the release of Street View which is the amazing culmination of months of work by Google employees who spent their days driving around pretty much every street in urban areas of Australia with huge cameras mounted on the roofs of their cars.
The result of this endeavour is that you can now virtually walk down most streets in Australia's cities and see the actual buildings that you are looking for. While this can be useful for finding a business there are obviously also privacy implications and many people have expressed their opinions on whether this technology is a good thing or a bad thing. I'm not here to wade into that debate but I do think that it is an amazing example of existing technology being put to use in new and hitherto unconsidered ways. (I think that's a word).
But even if you choose not to use street view, and let's face it, it's currently little more than a curiousity, there are still so many things that Google Maps can do for your web site. Imagine, if you will, a web site which wants to display the locations of every parking meter in the city along with details about it such as when the park is metered, how much it costs and how long you can park your car there.
When you load this web site in your browser it immediately loads an embedded Google Map centred on a default location. This map has numerous thumb tacks dotted about the streets. If you click on a thumb tack it pops up with the information mentioned above. But you are interested in another part of the city so you click and drag the map. As the map is moved across the screen new thumb tacks appear in the new sections of the map and a list of the meters is updated on the page.
But you don't just want a passive experience. You have recently used one of the meters listed and you know that its currently clogged up with gum and can't be used. So, you click on the thumb tack representing this meter and enter these details into the page right then and there. The web site is immediately updated with this new information and the meter disappears from the map or maybe the icon changes to represent the meter's status.
Obviously, this is a contrived example. I don't think anyone cares enough about parking meters to actually use a service like this but, hopefully, it demonstrates some of the power of Google Maps that can be used in any location-based business. I can see all sorts of uses for this including real estate agents, transport companies, urban treasure hunts, you name it. And this is all possible right now. In fact, I have been working on a site which already uses this technology.
There are many other possible uses too. As a runner I like to plan routes that I can take and there have been several web sites around for some time now that allow you to do this. Just have a look at Gmaps Pedometer or Map My Run. Using these sites you can actually click various points on a map to map a route and the site will give instant feedback on the length of the route and even the elevation profile.
I also know a guy who has created a Google Maps web site showing the known locations of recent magpie sightings as submitted by his users. As any runner or cyclist could tell you, this is an indispensible resource at this time of year. Really, the only limit to what you can do with Google Maps on your web site is your imagination.
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