We recently discovered a few map mashups, Flash Earth and Map Compare, which allow you to compare a variety of mapping APIs (Application Programming Interface). The first, Flash Earth, as its’ name implies uses Adobe Flash to pull in aerial and satellite imagery from Google Maps, Virtual Earth, Yahoo! Maps, Ask.com, OpenLayers, and NASA Terra. This zoomable mashup allows you to directly compare the different map services within their aerial or satellite mode. It was really interesting to see the different imagery that each service provided. Often times, if your zoomed in far enough you’ll find missing data from one service or imagery that varies by season, color, and quality. I’ve never experienced this type of comparision through any other mashup. Most of them tend to focus on street level mapping where the only thing that seems to change is the pixel width of the streets. An amazing feature found in Flash Earth is the ability to rotate the entire map in any direction using the navigational compass. You can also zoom using your keyboard or mouse wheel and it provides the ability to search a location with a street address or through latitude and longitude. Another little trick on Flash Earth is the ability to create a permanent link to your map location. This has typically been problematic when developing these types of applications in Flash.

To create this mashup the creator, Paul Neave, used “unofficial techniques” to pull in the imagery. In doing so he was able to gain better control over the service. The navigation is quite smooth because the zoomable interface was developed using Flash. Ajax mashups typically have to refresh when you zoom because image tiles need to be swapped out. When I asked Paul about how he worked around the API, he mentioned he pulled the “map images (tiles) directly by accessing their URL rather than using the JavaScript API.â€? He continued, “The API doesn’t allow you to do this, you must use their interface and layout to access the imagery. Once the files are downloaded, they’re stored in your browser’s cache similarly to the Ajax version.â€? In this instance the advantages over Ajax are apparent in the ability to more easily modify the imagery and enhance the interaction to make a more cohesive user experience.

On the other side, Map Compare displays three maps together using Ajax. It combines Virtual Earth, Google Maps, and Yahoo! Maps. It allows you to compare all three simultaneously. One of the more interesting observations between the three was the lack of mouse wheel support for Google Maps. Virtual Earth was the only one that attempts to smooth the zoom level transition by adding an effect (similar to Flash Earth). It didn’t seem to work properly and added even more of a distraction than the image reloading delay. However, Virtual Earth did offer an interesting “Bird’s eye� view, a nearly isometric view into major cities. You can then rotate your camera perspective into the four cardinal directions within this view.

In addition to this mashup, I was able to find a more technical comparison by James Church who looks at the Yahoo! and Google Map APIs side-by-side. If your looking for even more examples, you can visit Google Maps Mania. For more unusual sightings you might want to take the guided tour at Google Sightseeing. With nearly half of all mashups using some variety of mapping software we were happy to find some ways to compare these services.

In the afternoon of Day 2, Seb Chan from the Powerhouse Museum in Sydney presented on their innovative collections database. Seb started out by taking about visitor expectations have changed when comes to what they might be able to find on museum website and how they might browse collections.
Seb cited Amazon and Last FM as examples of sites that provide visitors with “recommended” items, assisting users to browse materials within a collection as influential sites in developing their own collections database. The Powerhouse’s early experiences in developing electronic exhibits on the museum floor which accessed their internal collections database also helped move their thinking along.

The Powerhouse Museum Collection 2.0 employs social technologies such as tagging and as well as search tracking. The search tracking feature is perhaps the most interesting one, providing “similar searches” for visitors based on the keywords that other visitors have used in accessing the collection. (This is a feature that we may want to incorporate for the ExhibitFiles project to help visitors find records in what will eventually be a very large collection.)

Since the Collections launch in June 14th 2006, the traffic to the Powerhouse museum website has nearly doubled and amazingly 95% of all available objects were visited at least once in the first month. Users have added 3,000 user tags of which about 100 tags had to be “moderated” mostly for spelling errors. In addition, the Powerhouse has seen tripling of public inquires including the correction of old records.

Seb finished up by showing Powerhouse’s Design Hub website, which has design-related objects at its core. Currators provide narratives discussing items in the collection. The search function brings back articles, collection items, and even items from other collections. They hope to add 30 new collections from other museums to design hub by 2008.

If you read this blog regularly, you might remember that Seb presented via video conference in the New Web course that I taught in Victoria, BC a couple of weeks ago. Jim Groom did a great job of summarizing the presentation and discussion on his bavatuesdays blog, The Powerhouse Museum: The Name Says it All.

A packed day today at the National Digital Forum in Wellington, NZ. Here’s the first of probably a couple of posts as I’m going through my notes.

This morning’s keynote was delivered by Toby Travis from the Victoria and Albert Museum entitled, Let’s see what happens if … Experimenting with emerging technologies on the V&A website. Toby presented the story behind many of the innovative things the museum has been up to over the last few years. Perhaps the most compelling part of this very interesting presentation focused on the Design Your Own Arts and Crafts Tile interactive.

While it was designed as a creative tool to allow visitors to create their own tiles, it wasn’t long before visitors began to use it to connect with each other. The Design Your Own Arts and Crafts Tile interactive provided only a limited text area for adding titles to tiles that users created, but over time some visitors used these text areas and their tile designs to communicate with each other. In one instance, after a few exchanges, a visitor passed along their email address. Since the title text area doesn’t allow “@” symbols and allows for a very limited number of characters–this had to be creatively communicated. It’s a great example of how even a limited suite of (interesting) tools can still allow for innovation, and how visitors will use your site in ways that you can’t always anticipate.

Toby wrapped up by talking more broadly about the how other museums in the UK are using (or not using) Web 2.0 tools. A highlight here was the Institute of Contemporary Arts which is making extensive use of blogging. Apparently lots of staff, everyone from the Director of the museum, down has been blogging at the site.

A lively Q & A following Toby’s presentation focused, not surprisingly on internal issues of institutional support and sustainability, as well as the moderation of user-created content. These are topics that many museums (and others) are struggling with as they begin to incorporate Web 2.0 technologies.

Real World Software Development has posted an enormous list of Web 2.0 sites, the Best of the Best Web 2.0 sites. All of these site are (of course) checked by the Web 2.0 validator. Which is one step above (or below?) the Web 2.0 Bullshit Generator.

The list is extensive, but surprisingly there’s no mention of LibraryThing, Shelfari (which we wrote about recently, Our new (Beta) bookshelf on Shelfari), and Whatsonmybookshelf. Also missing is BlueDot (social bookmarking), JumpCut (video editing), and Splice (audio editing). Still there must be over 100 sites here many that I’ve never come across.

As someone who observed the first Internet bubble up-close in San Francisco, I’m finding the proliferation of Web 2.0 sites just as remarkable. Yesterday Business Week ran an article, Bubble 2.0? in it a longtime venture investor, Todd Dagres suggest a 1% success rate, “For every one that works, another 100 will fail.” I guess we’ll find out soon enough if he’s right.

Today is Election Day in the U.S. and we are once again reminded that voting is a right. (It is not a privilege as our highest elected official stated just this morning.) Over the last week or so we’ve come across some interesting sites worth sharing.

First, if you need to know where to vote go to Vote411.org. For an interesting experience in viewing the results, there is an election mashup that combines Google Earth and Google Maps (CNET has the story). It is available with the Google Earth pack. Unfortunately, it is a Windows only add on. For all platforms, the New York Times has an interesting Flash-based interactive Election Guide and Map as does the Washington Post.

To gain some historical insight and to see an interesting Web 2.0 application, take a look at the US Presidential Speeches Tag Cloud. Use the slider to see the top “keywords” in speeches over the last 200+ years. Finally, for a reminder about what today is all about, check out the Interactive Constitution at the National Constitution Center.