dustin33finger's blog: "iphone"

WHERE IN THE WORLD?

I'm an unabashed map geek. Have been since childhood. I can't get enough of maps, globes, and all the stuff that people have used them for throughout history. It's been mostly for conquest and control, but that's a whole another story.

So of all the dazzling features of the iPhone being described by a gaggle of professional reviewers* over the past 24 hours (see Techmeme for links), this quote from David Pogue of the New York Times jumped out for me:

"The Google Maps module lets you view street maps or aerial photos for any address. It can provide driving directions, too. It?s not real G.P.S. ? the iPhone doesn?t actually know where you are ? so you tap the screen when you?re ready for the next driving instruction.

But how?s this for a consolation prize? Free live traffic reporting, indicated by color-coded roads on the map."

You really have to see Maps in action on the iPhone to get a real sense.

We've all seen it a bit, in all those ubiquitous iPhone TV ads the last few weeks (especially the Calamari one). Google maps on the iPhone, is even the first picture in the photos Apple uses to market the iPhone on it's site (see adjacent photo).

But David Pogue shows it particularly well in his VIDEO review of the iPhone here, calling it his "favorite iPhone feature":

(As an aside, why don't more mainstream gadget reviewers use video more for their reviews?)

But coming back to the iPhone, Google, and maps, Wired magazine has a terrific article on how Google came being somebody in the online map business.

It explains how the company came to be really proactive about making online maps more mainstream and malleable by ordinary folks.

(Here's the link to the single page version of the Wired piece).

In particular, it highlights how much the company itself is a "map geek" from the top down. The pivotal moment this became clear for me personally, was when Google in 2004 bought a relatively unknown mapping company called Keyhole, that was primarily providing online maps to the government. The Wired article describes how this came to be:

"In 2004, not long after Sergey Brin downloaded a copy of (Keyhole) Earth Viewer and interrupted a Google meeting to "fly" to the house of each executive in the room, the company bought Keyhole for an undisclosed amount, renamed it Google Earth, and moved (Keyhole founder) Hanke's team into Building 45."

The rest, as they say, is history:

"Since Google relaunched the software in June 2005, the stand-alone Google Earth program has been downloaded more than 250 million times. The program's seamless zoom-in feature has become ubiquitous on television news shows.

And there are dedicated sites ? such as Google Sightseeing and Virtual Globetrotting ? built for scouring and saving odd and interesting finds from not only Google Earth but also competing 3-D globes like NASA's World Wind and Microsoft's Live Search Maps."

Until Google bought Keyhole, I like many map geeks, was paying hundreds of dollars for Keyhole's software to play with their online maps. After the acquisition, Google made much of the Keyhole product line free, available to anyone online. The more advanced version of the product is still available as a premium product, but the free one does most of what most people would want.

It's become a template on how premium software products are rapidly turning into "freemium" online services at Google and elsewhere. Google followed the same template with it's acquisition of photo software company Picasa, also in 2004**.

But here's the bit in the whole Wired article that's really most important going forward, if you're interested in how mainstream maps will really get online. It's what Google plans to do with files created in what's called the Keyhole Markup Language (KML):

In the midst of all this cacophony, Google is discovering that a smart, effective search engine is once again the key. Google Earth and Google Maps have long had search boxes, but you couldn't find much. Typing in "pizza New York," for example, brought up links to sites that Google itself had generated, usually by buying up Yellow Pages listings or crawling the Web for pizza mentions that had New York addresses.

But with the launch of My Maps, Google is anchoring its new search strategy to KML. The company is indexing all KML files on the Web ? it has cataloged several million so far ? and is working with the Open Geospatial Consortium to make KML the standard.

"Right now, Google Maps is mostly about searching for businesses," says Jessica Lee, a Google product manager. "But what we don't have is the sort of niche, long-tail content. We don't know where all the endangered species or the pandas in China live, or where the best places to go bird-watching are. By providing the tools, we can let other people create it."

The bolding is mine. This will make maps mash ups really fly.

Google is not the only company focused on the mammoth mainstream opportunities around online maps. Microsoft, Yahoo! and AOL are also very much in the game, as are a number of other large and small companies.

It's very easy to see how devices like the iPhone, in it's later generations, will really make all this online map stuff really accessible wherever we are. This week's iPhone gives a wee glimpse into how cool this stuff will really be to use.

I for one, can't wait.

P.S. Going back to maps and globes, I have an unrelated request of any reader that may information on this. I'm looking for 3-d relief globes of the world that depict the topography of the planet WITHOUT the oceans.

Some of you may have seen the giant, metal globe of the planet in the American Museum of Natural History in New York.

My current map quest (pun intended), is to have both physical and online versions of these 3-D relief maps, preferably in a globe format, so one can really see the world without the oceans. Maps that show this detail with national boundary lines would be a plus.

This really should be a Google Maps feature. I'll even settle for a Microsoft Maps version of this feature.

A geeky request for sure, but there may be some of you out there that grok where I'm coming from. Thanks.

* My favorite iPhone review of the reviews comes from Fake Steve Jobs himself. Take time especially to read the comments to the post. Some of them are hilarious as well. Namaste.

** Speaking of Picasa, Google, maps, and mobile devices, Google today announced relevant features, "Map my Photos", and "Picasa Web Album for mobile phones". Ain't technology grand?