aTypical Joe: a gay New Yorker living in the rural South

Friday, October 07, 2005

Maps, McDonalds & the future of the Net

Wired on how digital maps are changing how we navigate our lives:

This technology used to be top-secret government stuff. Then, in the 1980s, McDonald’s dumped thousands into buying satellite images and developing software called Quintillion, which predicted the growth of cities and school districts. Ever notice there’s always a McDonald’s where you’d expect one? The company looked down from the heavens and dropped new franchises wherever it saw the right combination of kids, interstates, and suburbs, using one of the first geographic information systems for business analysis.

Look what we’re doing with maps now:

At their best, they’re user interfaces to the world, connecting places and people. Google has figured this out - the company knows its maps are only as good as the refinements made by users. In June, it gave away the code to its maps, as did Yahoo! Now an army of amateurs is flooding the Web with map-based analyses. ChicagoCrime.org lets users evaluate Windy City neighborhoods based on police data. Gmaps Pedometer lays out distances between any two points. And Squid Labs is working on augmented-reality screens that embed tags into 3-D space so you can tour a museum or battlefield and readily footnote what you see. And what’s more brilliant than those open source subway maps optimized for an iPod screen?

Imagine how vibrant the entertainment world would be if the big media companies acted as Google did.