Painless Location Mapping for Web Pages

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Monday, August 4. 2008

Painless Location Mapping for Web Pages

Got an e-mail from Brandon Bruce about his new MapMyPage Web app. It uses the MetaCarta engine to geocode locations in your webpages and place globe next to them. Click on the globe and see the location in a pop-up map (Googe Maps).

From the FAQ:

MapMyPage uses its own proprietary technology in combination with MetaCarta's GeoTagger and the Google Maps API to identify locations in web pages and display corresponding maps. MapMyPage also provides hyperlinks to relevant content with every map including directions from Google Maps, bird's-eye views from Google Earth, photos from Panaramio, weather from Weather Underground, articles from Wikipedia, news from Google News, events from Zvents, concerts from Gruvr, activities from Viator, trips from Kayak, travel books from Amazon, travel information from WikiTravel, real estate listings from PropSmart, jobs from Indeed, classifieds from Oodle, web search results from Google, blogs from Google Blog Search, videos from YouTube, radio stations from Radio-Locator, TV listings from Yahoo TV, gifts from CafePress, and auctions from eBay.

So, does it work? Well, I'll test it below, you tell me! I pasted in the few lines of code.

I grew up in Winchester, Massachusetts, then went to school in Hyde Park in Chicago. After that I was off to State College, PA for graduate school. Now I live outside of Boston. My favorite trip I took was either to Arkansas to do trail work or to Durbin, South Africa, to help out with GIS for malaria research.

Posted by Adena Schutzberg in Google at 06:00 | Comments (6) | Trackbacks (0)

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The window that pops up is a little small, most of the balloon is clipped out of the frame. Durbin is in Indiana, while Durban is in South Africa.

For those looking to add a little geography to a page, this seems pretty cool.

#1 John Reiser (Link) on 2008-08-04 13:03 (Reply)

Thanks, John. I'm working on fixing the balloon so that it never gets clipped. It works most of the time for me, but sometimes it fails to re-adjust to the size of the map.

#1.1 Brandon Bruce (Link) on 2008-08-10 15:55 (Reply)

Sorry to be a Party Pooper - but have a play with Internet Explorer 8 - this feature is built into it...

#2 Hugh Saalmans on 2008-08-05 01:44 (Reply)

Good point, Hugh. However, many people use Firefox and Safari browsers. Additionally, the adoption of IE8 among IE users will take time - many people still use IE6.

#2.1 Brandon Bruce (Link) on 2008-08-10 16:05 (Reply)

I like the concept and the execution.

One thing I did not see here or on the MapMyPage website deals with the potential issue of revenue generated when users click the links produced by the MapMyPage application.

Several of the services provided by MapMyPage appear to be revenue generators (Kayak, Viator, pehaps others) and the affiliate of these programs is presumably MapMyPage. If revenue is generated by clicks on these types of links, MapMyPage and not he publisher will benefit.

I think it is a small tradeoff to exhange the mapping capability offered by MapMyPage for page space, but publishers should be aware that revenue is being generated and that they are not part of the equation. I do not have a problem with this concept, as long as the terms of the exchange are published.

Perhaps of more concern to some webmasters is that their readers will depart their site when these users click the MapMyPage links. In this case, control of the audience will be turned over to the affiliate of MapMyPage. For many this may not be a problem, for others, it may. In the very least, you should be sure that your privacy policy indicates this possibility and refer your users to the privacy policy of MapMyPage.

#3 Mike Dobson (Link) on 2008-08-06 12:32 (Reply)

Thanks, Mike. I included a range of contextual hyperlinks in the map window (photos, weather, etc.) to see what types of content people might want along with the map. The hyperlinks aren't part of any affiliate programs at this point, but I'll add a note to the website if that changes in the future.

#3.1 Brandon Bruce (Link) on 2008-08-10 16:11 (Reply)

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