geo2web.com

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MAPme.com - A Community Based Mapping Project

MAPme.com a social mapping site which allows everyone from travelers to special interest groups to create and contribute locations by suggesting ‘Hotspots’ and other information that other members of a map might be interested in.

Filters include ‘weirdness’ - in this case the ‘Dancing Elvis Troupe‘ in Tokyo

These travel guides are community maps where other members can leave comments or photos or even submit their own locations. Usually, these suggestions will either be added directly to each map, or they go into a moderation queue assigned to the map owner (depending on the type of map).

“Each map is like a new post in a geographic forum”, says John McCann, who managed the development of the site. “We have given the map owners as much flexibility as they could ever need in terms of being able to moderate location data, but we’ve also allowed for options for public and personal maps – public maps are generally a free for all, and personal maps are for mostly private use”.

Global Development
The development of the MAPME project took around 6 months, and was achieved on a shoestring budget by outsourcing work to all corners of the globe. Programmers working in the UK, Philippines, The Russian Federation and Australia patched together the MAPME application using open source software including the CAKE rapid development framework and of course the Google Maps API

Complexness
According to Robin Metcalfe- the lead developer of the project, the most complex undertaking was getting the permissions system right, and working out how to allow users to effectively explore a map that might have 500 or 500,000 markers. “We don’t have a map with 500, or even 5000 Hotspots on it yet, but I think our system can handle it”.

Community Mapping
While community mapping is relatively new concept and something that hasn’t really taken the online world by storm (yet), MAPme.com is also excellent for creating travel or city guides that are useful in their own right. Take for example this guide to Cebu, in the Philippines;

http://www.mapme.com/map/cebu

Future Applications
Apparently a Facebook Application, and Map Widget (built in Flash) are on the way, but for the time being map in can be exported in GPX format (easily transferable to portable GPS devices) or by KML. You can even keep an eye on any map activity by subscribing to the RSS channel for each guide.

MAPme is a great looking new site in the ilk of Flagr.com and Platial.com but on a global scale which is easier to use and better to look at. With the addition of an exportable map widget, this could easily be the best web 2.0 community mapping site on the net.

Map your World at http://www.mapme.com

Overall there is a lot of content already and subject matter that might call for some over 18’s certification but on the whole the site works well with the sense of being part of a geo-community mapping project.

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Posted by Brittany Bohnet, Google Maps Special Projects

If you’ve been following politics (or our blog) closely this year, you may have seen some Google Maps mashups from the Iowa Caucus, Super Tuesday, and the US state primaries–including an extra special primary map in Pennsylvania. We’ve recently discovered several other elections map mashups on the web that are just as interesting and we couldn’t help but share.

In order to better showcase these maps to you, we’ve created a Google Maps Elections Gallery that will serve as a collection of the best political maps mashups during the US campaign season. Here’s a sneak peek at what’s inside:

• Primary Results: Take a look back in time as you view the final outcome of the United States primaries. Check results down to the county level and measure how close the final votes were between democratic candidates Clinton and Obama.

• Fundrace: The Huffington Post brings you a map that tracks campaign donors by party, candidate, and location. Already have the Earth API plug-in installed? Try switching on the Earth mode for an even richer experience!

• Twitter: Use the Twitter map to discover what people around the world are saying about the US elections.

• Obama’s Journey/McCain’s Journey: Follow Obama and McCain’s lives, as written by Wikipedia. Whose will lead to the White House?

• Search Queries: Can search queries predict the elections? View the most popular candidate queries around the United States and discover historical trends up to six months back.

• Campaign Trail: A one-stop shop that showcases each candidate’s next campaign stop.

Whether you’re a citizen journalist, online news producer, or just love staying on top of the political news, you now have the opportunity to further engage yourself (and your readers) with the 2008 elections by adding any of these maps to your site.

To get the embeddable code for these maps, click the “Embed this map” link on any of the gallery pages. You will be taken to a new page where you can customize the size, title, and border of the map. Once you are happy with the parameters you’ve set, click on the “Get the Code” button and simply copy/paste the source code into the HTML of your website — it’s as simple as that.

Are you a developer? Browse through our getting started guide to view a list of free open source political content on the web. Use this content to come up with an elections mashup of your own. Once you’re finished building, let us help you show it off to the world by submitting your map back to us at elections@google.com.

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We are currently in Manchester for the 4th International Conference on e-Social Science, running for three days the conference covers a number of subjects relevant to the blog.
I’m presenting a paper entitled ‘Agent-Based Geospatial Simulation: Techniques, Tools and Advances in Three-Dimensional Visualisation‘, for those interested the abstract is below.

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