mapping

Metagator Popurls has a fun new feature this morning called Popurls.TV that shows you a real-time traffic map of links people are clicking on, and also where they're clicking from. Clicking any single link will take you right to the original story. It's across between Digg Spy and Twittervision, and like the former, it's a fun way to see what's popular on the site. For a more exact account of what's doing well, there are also three sets of links above the map to show you the most trafficked stories within the last hour, … Read more

Yahoo is making its biggest update in the last two years to its local search site, allowing customer reviews and proximity to influence results.

To start with, the Yahoo Local site gets a whole new look. It's better organized and more visually appealing than before. The home page shows a customized skyline for 20 cities (in San Francisco it's the Golden Gate Bridge, Coit Tower and the Transamerica Pyramid Building), along with local weather.

The top center portion of the site features rotating links to the most popular reviews, events, maps and buzz, or the most popular search … Read more

So, you want to work for Google but you don't have a graduate degree in computer science from an Ivy League school. How about being a Google local search ads sales rep contractor? As such you can earn up to $10 for each business listing that is approved by Google and verified by the business.

According to the FAQ on Google's Web site:

"As a Google Business Referral Representative, you'll visit local businesses to collect information (such as hours of operation, types of payment accepted, etc.) for Google Maps, and tell them about Google Maps and … Read more

Google will be releasing a new feature next week that will enable people to easily embed a Google Map into their Web site or blog, just like you can do with a YouTube video. No coding or programming required; just copying and pasting a snippet of HTML, a Google spokeswoman says.

"To embed a Google Map, users will simply pull up the map they want to embed--it can be a location, a business, series of driving directions, or a My Map they have created--and then click 'Link to this page' and copy and paste the HTML into their Web … Read more

On Wednesday at Siggraph, I attended an interesting panel (details here) on the subject of "The Potential of End-User-Programmable Worlds."

In addition to the two organizers, the panelists included Paul Hemp of Harvard Business Review, Asi Lang of Linden Labs (the company that runs Second Life), and Vernor Vinge. Vinge is a faculty alumnus of San Diego State University, but better known as the author of "9 or 10 science-fiction novels," as he says. (I asked about that uncertainty; he said it's more about the definition of a novel than his ability to remember what he's written.)

You may have seen some of the recent news about Second Life. Last week, Linden Labs shut down… Read more

When brilliant ideas smash against the banks of your brain and threaten to overflow the narrow borders of a digital sticky note or notepad, mind-mapping software can contain the surge, and more--it can divert thought flows into manageable streams. Part brainstorming notepad and part presentation software, FreeMind's freeware canvas for Mac and Windows provides a visual, quasi-linear outlet for complex ideas.

FreeMind isn't the only software for the job, and it doesn't do everything, but when commercial mind-mapping products such as ConceptDraw Mindmap and Mindjet MindManager cost between $150 and $300, quibbles over FreeMind's minor function limitations seem suddenly petty.… Read more

Google has added four more cities to its Maps street view: San Diego, Los Angeles, Houston and Orlando, Fla. San Diego is getting the same high-resolution imagery treatment that Google gives San Francisco; I'm not sure why. I asked Google about this and this is the response I got:

"As you probably know, Street View imagery is gathered by Google and a third-party data provider. Imagery in San Diego, like San Francisco, was gathered by Google. Our focus is on providing coverage for as many cities as possible; I don't have any additional details about our imagery … Read more

Apple's iWeb, one part of the iLife consumer apps suite, has received an interesting update this morning. iWeb is Apple's consumer-level Web site creation tool, and it gives users a simple way to drag and drop various Web site elements as well as fill in the included templates. The latest version is getting integration with two of Google's services: AdSense and Google Maps. iWeb users can now sign up for AdSense right inside the application, and pick how they want it to show up on their site. From the looks of the screenshots, it's much easier … Read more

Part of what differentiates blogging from print media is the option to link to external Web sites to offer readers additional information--something you just can't do as easily in a newspaper or magazine. While the Internet is also known as the World Wide Web, in terms of blog links, things end up looking more like nested hierarchies. A new search engine called Walk2Web aims to let users explore these hierarchies as part of an interesting visual journey, that lets you see where each blog is linking.

To begin, just enter a URL. It can be an entire site URL, … Read more