Navx

what color is the world today ?

No doubt you already noticed it while reading this blog : We are big fans of Google Maps mashups.  There have been hundreds of them now and we like to pick the coolest ones. But now let's talk about another one.
This mashup, for exemple, is called "World Mood Map" and it is attempting to map the world's current mood : First you enter a few lines describing your mood and then it contributes to the overall "color of the world". He thinks that it's is a fun and provoking mashup. I really don't see the interest.

So what do you think about this mashup ?  No way or yeaah ?

technorati tags: google maps mash-up web 2.0 internet 

Do you know Fatdoor ?

Fatdoor launched its service yesterday at Where 2007. The service consists in helping you get to know your neighbours, and build communities.

When you register, you enter your address and Fatdoor displays your neighbours: the ones they collected from the US White Pages  and, increasingly, the ones who registered on Fatdoor.

From that point, you can enrich your profil, or the profil of your closest neighbours, like in a wiki. Of course, if you bad-mouth about your neighbours, you will soon be banned from Fatdoor's community.

You can also create groups of interest, based on hobbies, political interests, etc. And soon, at least that's what Fatdoor is betting on, you'll know you neighbours and share your interests.

Business model ? Nope. But one day, local advertising :-)

RadiusIM: The first instant messaging service to integrate Google Maps

RadiusIM is a very cool free web based Instant Messaging service which has integrated Google Maps to let you find other RadiusIM users in your area, as well as map your existing contacts.

If you hold an MSN, Google Talk, AOL, Yahoo! chat IM account, you should try it : the registration on the service is very quick (30sec) and there is no downloads.

more details here and here.

technorati tags: RadiusIM Google Map chat 

San Francisco is THE place to be NOW

San Francisco is hosting two major conferences this week: the Web 2.0 Expo and the Location Intelligence Conference. NAVX attends both and is giving a talk at the latter one, on Tuesday at 5:30. Topic: Location-Based Advertising.

The Web 2.0 Expo is really crowded: O'Reilly pretends there are about 16 000 people, and I tend to believe it. Great keynote speech from Jeff Bezos, exciting panel session run by John Battelle who had not less than Mena Trott (Loic's boss), Joe Kraus (Excite, JobSpot) and Jay Adelson (Diggs) around the table.

Among the few things I really loved:

• Apollo : it's the first time I see what you can do with it. Basically, it allows you to work both on-line and off-line with web based applications (the issue I have with Google docs is solved here: you can still work on your document in the plane :-) ). Have a look at their eBay app or at Buzzword, a word-processing app.
• Spock: an on-line personal search. The demo is very promising.

More tomorrow about the Location Intelligence Conference.

technorati tags: Web 2.0 Location Intelligence Conference apollo spock

Let's geotag our photos !

Geomentary is a new Google Map and Google Video Mashup site, a "one man show" (only ONE developper involved in the project ) to put some regional context to video documentary. He hasn't choose yet to release it as open source or not, but If  you have a video that you want on Geomentary, you can upload it on Google Video website then come back on the site, search and tag it.

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And here is another geotagging photo site ! To see the value of using locr, look through your photos stored on your hard drive and ask yourself  "where was I when I took that photo ?" Then you can upload your photos, the locr software assists in adding the location information either manually prompting the user to locate it using Google Maps, or linking to existing geo-data (from the GPS data devices). It is integrated with Wikipedia and GoogleMaps.  Cool, isn't it?

Interested ? Have a look to this article (GpsPassion) for more info about geotagging photos.

technorati tags: geotagging photos Locr Geomentary Google Map Google Video Mashup

AtlasCT relive!

  AtlasCT, a leading developer and provider of worldwide mapping solutions, created relive!, a social networking application that allows users to take photos and write notes along trip route and link them to their locations on the map. AtlasCT won the NAVTEQ Global LBS Challenge as Social Networking Application category winner for the European region with relive!. You should try it !

  technorati tags: mapping social networking application navteq AtlasCT

Yahoo! Pipes

Yahoo released on wednesday a beta service called Yahoo Pipes, which provides a visual tool for building mashup applications. It's a service that generalizes the idea of the mashup, providing a drag and drop editor that allows you to connect internet data sources, process them, and redirect the output. After its release, tech bloggers were really excited and perhaps too much because the service started having problems and spitting up error messages on tuesday morning ! The site isn't back to normal since, here is the explication of the problem. Anyway bloggers are still enthusiastic: Tim O'Reilly, who coined the term Web 2.0, said Yahoo Pipes marks a "milestone in the history of the Internet". You can see a review here, or have a look to Google Earth Blog's article. We’ll keep trying and let you know more as the service becomes more stable.

technorati tags: Yahoo! Pipes blogger mashup tubes tagging beta web 2.0

Plazes raises €2.7 million

Plazes annonced its first institutional round of financing: They raised €2.7 million  from Doughty Hanson Technology Ventures.  Plazes is a Web 2.0 social networking site allowing users to share their location with others and find new people to contact. Read more in techcrunch and have a look to similar social mapping sites: Platial, Frappr, wayfaring or Motionbased.