The Girl Scouts of Eastern Pennsylvania are apparently the first to offer an online tool to find the nearest "cookie sales booth." The app, accessible by clicking on the giant thin mint on their site, is put together by an official GS contractor and ultimately taps into Google Maps for directions. It's sort of too bad senior Scouts didn't get a chance to build the app themselves...

- The Morning Call

Chris Silver Smith in the Locals Only column at Search Engine Land takes on the question: How do you get your business in Google Maps if you don't have a physical address? Who has that sort of problem? Contractors who work out of their trucks - painters, roofers, etc. - who live somewhere but cover a territory elsewhere and who many not want their home addresses listed. The short answer from Michael Jones: get a PO box.

Perhaps the next iteration of local search will be geared more to business territories. Pizza places can geographically draw where they deliver or painters can determine their range, etc.?

Privately owned Terralink has the video topped cars and plans to cover every street in the country in two years. One of its main shareholders is Ian Taylor – the man who pioneered America’s Cup sailing technology - and the data is expected to be sold to public safety, navigation and mapping companies.

- TV3

The article offers up history and asks the question "what's it for?"

The key bits:

- the team hopes to release it by end of the year
- the most promising potential use:
"One is to integrate it more fully with Microsoft Virtual Earth, making it that tool that takes users to the next step in deep zoom. "

The idea is that before you pick up the rental, you use your computer to key in your destinations at the NeverLost website, then save them to a USB device. When you pick up the car, you insert the device and off you go. This solves the time consuming task of keying in the information to the in-car device.
- Hertz Online Trip Planning

NOLA.com's Dave Walker writes about All Star Weekend, held in New Orleans during the holiday weekend. It notes celebrities in town including CNN's John King:

Also in town for the All-Star festivities on Time-Warner's dime was John King, CNN's chief national correspondent and master manipulator of the Multi-Touch Collaboration Wall.

It's a good thing "chief national correspondent still comes first in his title, but I wonder how long it will be his prime descriptor? Based on the media's take, the wall (and it's master as side kick) is becoming the star. The article goes on:

If you don't know what that is, you're not among the huge numbers Blitzer said are plugging into CNN's political coverage.

The wall, developed by a New York company named Perceptive Pixel, is the breakout media star of the campaign so far.

It's basically a giant iPhone screen -- touch-sensitive and fronting enough computing power to allow King -- or whoever's poking it at an individual moment -- to zoom, squeeze and whoosh through maps and graphics.

It's "Minority Report" meets a pollster's fever dream, and King, a political correspondent for The Associated Press before joining CNN in 1997, is its first maestro.

"My son jokes with me... that he actually likes what I do now," King said. "But I'm a little worried about it, because the cab driver who brought me here today said, 'I love that map board.' It's obviously connecting with people in a way beyond what I would've thought.

"It scares me a little bit because I don't want it to become a gimmick. There are a lot of things in television that are for show and not for tell. I think this is great show and tell. You can use the technology to bring some of the nuts-and-bolts of it closer to people."

I wonder if soon instead of students learning to use PowerPoint (what a horrid thought!), they'll also learn to present using the Multi-touch Wall in school.