[IP] Summerized A Journey to a Thousand Maps Begins With an Open Code
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/20/technology/circuits/20maps.html
You can still search Google Maps to figure out how to get from here
to there, but why would you, when you can use it to pinpoint kosher
restaurants in Cincinnati, traffic cameras in Dublin, or hot spring
spas anywhere in the United States?
...An army of programmers, most of them doing it just for fun, has
grabbed the software code that generates the distinctive maps with
their drop-shadowed virtual pushpins, and combined it with other data
like the locations of potholes, taco trucks and U.F.O.
...(It currently has data only for homes in the San Francisco and Los
Angeles areas, but the service promises that Chicago and New York
data are coming soon.)
No one really knows how many Google map mash-ups are out there, and
it is difficult to hazard a guess on how many new ones are created
each day.
...And with that A.P.I., a programmer can create a mash-up by
combining it with other data - like apartment listings on Craigslist,
or demographic data from the United States census.
...Amazon has been allowing entrepreneurs to hijack parts of its
database and software code to create new applications like
MusicPlasma, which graphically displays connections between various
musical artists.... The site, recently renamed Liveplasma.com, has
created a similar search tool for movies and - no surprise - has a
free mapping feature for its habitués.
"It is happening so fast," said Jef Poskanzer, a longtime programmer
in Berkeley, Calif., who has created a hot springs map as well as
maps of old star forts in Paris, a yacht race and public
transportation systems in Paris and the San Francisco Bay area.
...Once you have registered for "developer status," the site copies
the code behind a particular Web site you want to imitate, allowing
you tweak it and make it your own.
...The company made it economically and technically feasible for Web
sites to present data in map form, said Bret Taylor, product manager
for Google Local.
...Mr. Taylor said one reason for the Google Maps' popularity may be
that Google allows mash-up creators to share in the revenue from ads
that Google sells and places on sites.
...Trulia has posted data only for five California cities, and that
data is a bit thin because it uses publicly available sources like
newspapers and Web sites, not the Multiple Listing Service, the
copyrighted databases belonging to local broker associations.
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